[Toshi]

Ok, fair enough. That's not the conclusion that I am attempting to draw. It's one of the possible conclusions (as is the corner case that Asians are secretly dumb yet work twice as hard, I suppose), and I think that relegating those possibilities to the wastebin from the get-go is an intellectual farce.

 

[gonefirefightin]

I thought this thread was going to be about revoking drivers lisences

 

[Toshi]

[Further updates crossposted from the same thread from another forum]

This I agree with, while cultural factors do affect the way RECENT asian immigrants perform academically esp if raised by parents very vigilant (i.e. super hardcore strict on their kids) about education and success, success rates are higher on avg, but I know from personal experience asian families growing up in bad ghetto areas in US cities who aren't raised by as strong parents or family units who get into trouble, hang w the wrong crowds and perform just as poorly as any undermotivated minorities in some lower socioeconomic regions of the country.

Family values, money and location factor in pretty strongly with the academic performance of most minority kids in america. Also if you look at multi-generational asian families in the US (i.e. more whitewashed asians) I doubt they perform any better than white kids of a similar socioeconomic status/location/family structure.

Also look at any of the actual home countries among asians/indians/whatever, only the hardest working/wealthiest tend to make it to the US, giving the skewed success rates we see in certain minority groups here vs back in the respective homelands, they're not all geniuses, plenty of idiots, losers and underachievers among the native population.

If there are differences between genders or ethnicities it's not going to change the distributions radically, so one would indeed expect plenty of "losers, idiots, and underachievers", just slightly less or more than would be in a perfectly normal distribution. Differences would likely show up more in the tails of the distribution, far from the mean. (Furthermore, it might not only be in the right tail! Perhaps the genetics for having more people in a group that are good at math comes with having more people in the other tail who are autistic&#8230

Your other point about generations of immigrants and assimilation is interesting. If Asian immigrants adopt an American lifestyle and start going to football practice and watching American Idol instead of doing homework and practicing violin will their scores normalize to the American mean? I did a bit of Googling and came up with this book, for which I clearly can't vouch (as is the case with all the other things I've cited in this crazy thread):

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=a05uTxwIC4EC&oi=fnd&pg=PA331&dq=asian+immigrants+americanized+performance&ots=PnDX2laHVg&sig=LtWzSzVvdE7L7PWgV2Z9Ph02HJY#v=onepage&q&f=false

Page 336.

Overall, both first- and second-generation youth, that is the children of immigrants, earned higher grades and math scores and expressed higher educational aspirations than children of native-born parents. This generalization held even after the effects of race, ethnicity, and parental socioeconomic status were held constant. … the effect of first generation did not differ from that of second generation…

Net of immigrant status, student and parental characteristics, Asians earned grades similar to their white counterparts. … Consistent with other studies, black and Hispanic youth earned grades below those achieved by whites. However, and possibly because of difficulties with English, all minority groups achieved lower reading scores than their white counterparts. Black and Hispanic youth also earned lower math test scores. …

Asian first- and second-generation youth achieved higher grades and math and reading test scores, and they were more likely to aspire to graduate from college than third-generation (and beyond) Asian youth.*…

For no group did we find a negative association between having immigrant parents and educational performance.

So it looks like [Ed Kwon's] impression has some basis in reality. 1st and 2nd generation immigrants of all races do better than 3rd and further generations. 3rd generation and further immigrants regress to the mean. Asian kids really do get "better" grades, although in this study they were merely equivalent to whites.

 

[Silver]

So it looks like [Ed Kwon's] impression has some basis in reality. 1st and 2nd generation immigrants of all races do better than 3rd and further generations. 3rd generation and further immigrants regress to the mean. Asian kids really do get "better" grades, although in this study they were merely equivalent to whites.

That wouldn't surprise me. Immigrants are the people who have the resources and/or risk taking behavior to make things happen (or flame out spectuacularly, but that's just an issue of confirmation bias at that point.)

Think of it like family run business...the second generation can usually make it work, but things frequently go to **** (anecdotal, I'm white so I'm too damn lazy to look it up) with the subsequent generations.

 

[ohio]

Think of it like family run business...the second generation can usually make it work, but things frequently go to **** (anecdotal, I'm white so I'm too damn lazy to look it up) with the subsequent generations.

Overachievers can **** it up in just the second generation if they try hard enough. See GWB.

 

[Silver]

Overachievers can **** it up in just the second generation if they try hard enough. See GWB.

GWB wasn't 2nd generation.

Prescott Bush...

 

[MMike]

Toshi, when you refer to you music nerdery, I assume you mean classical cover versions of Prussian Blue songs?

 

[$tinkle]

what i'm concluding from this thread is no matter how many cold hard facts you have, you're still a racist if you even so much that hint that browns aren't on par or better w/ whites/asians in academic achievement, or if they are better in physical achievement.


oh, watched a documentary on south korea as the most wired nation, and one corollary is that's the unofficial gaming addiction capital of the world.

their fascination w/ breakdancing certainly breaks the mold, however. is it cultural rebellion by trying to "go urban"?

 

[MMike]

what i'm concluding from this thread is no matter how many cold hard facts you have, you're still a racist if you even so much that hint that browns aren't on par or better w/ whites/asians in academic achievement, or if they are better in physical achievement.


oh, watched a documentary on south korea as the most wired nation, and one corollary is that's the unofficial gaming addiction capital of the world.

their fascination w/ breakdancing certainly breaks the mold, however. is it cultural rebellion by trying to "go urban"?

But how do you explain this?

 

[$tinkle]

being a gleetard, that made me cringe more than an office uk episode.

speaking of:

 

[$tinkle]

another anecdote: over half of our engineering staff consists of karthik, satish, bhanu, nivas, aneesh, asanga, pavan, ramakrishna, abhishek, diptal, nasseerudin, manohar, rajagopal & kousalya. they all hail from the subcontinent, and i don't believe any of them are natural born citizens. consider too their culture is heavily caste, so maybe these are products of privilege?

i'm guessing they didn't get academic preferences (i certainly don't see how), and i know they were hired - and now retained - based upon merits. ok, so they'll also work for 60% of white guys' demands. so it appears the free market is - to a significant extent - the great equalizer

what does this all mean? can we say it in polite company?

 

[stevew]

what does this all mean? can we say it in polite company?

america...fvck yeah...

 

[Toshi]

I'd like to present some stronger evidence for the first point of my Affirmative Action redux post, on that genetics can dictate performance. This seemingly trivial point--why do people choose others as mates? surely there's some measure of genetic assessment behind the things that culture dictates as "attractive" or not--generated a bit of a storm, and I do concede that the study that I cited (on brain size, r-factors, and IQ) is weak evidence.

Getting completely away from the race/ethnicity issue that raises so many hackles and drilling down to the level of DNA, in particular to one single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) on the gene transcribing for the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) yields this intriguing study from Cell in 2003: Egan et al. The BDNF val66met Polymorphism Affects Activity-Dependent Secretion of BDNF and Human Memory and Hippocampal Function. While this study looked at and found results applicable both to patients with schizophrenia and controls I'll concentrate on the controls:

In the group of 133 controls, BDNF genotype [ed: whether they have a val- or met-BDNF protein as determined by the val66met SNP] also had a significant effect on memory scores (F = 5.04, df = 2,130, p = .008). ... Post hoc comparisons in the normal subjects alone showed that met/met homozygotes had lower scores [on the Wechsler Memory Scale, revised version] compared to val/val (p < .005) and val/met (p = .052)... Within each group (controls, siblings, patients), each genotype group was well matched on a variety of demographic parameters, suggesting they did not account for the effect of BDNF genotype.

This is huge! A single SNP accounts for measurable, significant verbal episodic memory performance difference independent of demographic parameters. With evidence like this one must concede that arguments that put intelligence on a magical plane that transcends our genetics and physiology as silly as arguments by the ancients that the human soul resides in the pineal gland.

 

[MMike]

heh heh....."gland".....


RACIST!

 

[$tinkle]

in as serious a tone as i can possibly muster at the very suggestion, another grand experiment is earning potential for strippers. of course, there may some difficultly in controlling for certain variables, like fat, lonely, rich white guys [who are obviously a result of a racist society favoring whites] skewing results.

but doesn't it stand to reason the more tribal we get, the closer to unbiased truths we learn?

 

[narlus]

Toshi, if i read that correctly, you are equating memory skills w/ intelligence?

 

[Toshi]

Toshi, if i read that correctly, you are equating memory skills w/ intelligence?

No, I'm not. Intelligence is a nebulous concept best defined circularly as how well one does on tests of intelligence. The BDNF val/met SNP article was one that I randomly came across during psychiatry grand rounds this week, and I posted it to show how there is a demonstrable effect of DNA-level alterations on functional performance, which happened to be verbal memory in this case.

It's pretty dry and intuitively obvious at some level, but runs counter to the utopian egalitarian ideal that effort and socioeconomic status account for all that one may achieve academically.

 

[MMike]

No, I'm not. Intelligence is a nebulous concept best defined circularly as how well one does on tests of intelligence. The BDNF val/met SNP article was one that I randomly came across during psychiatry grand rounds this week, and I posted it to show how there is a demonstrable effect of DNA-level alterations on functional performance, which happened to be verbal memory in this case.

It's pretty dry and intuitively obvious at some level, but runs counter to the utopian egalitarian ideal that effort and socioeconomic status account for all that one may achieve academically.

You misspelled "ackademically"

 

[Changleen]

The older I get and the more I see my kid grow up the more I tend to think that nurture is considerably more important than nature, especially in the long run. I also feel it is pretty self evident that all people are not created anything like equal.

Also, the factors that have made you who you are are massively, ludicrously complex but are heavily influenced by your surroundings, and, at the same time, stereotypes exist for a reason.

 

[BikeMike]

I can't say in all honesty that affirmative action richened my college experience.

Although I strongly disagree with race-based AA in most current environments, I do believe it made my college experience significantly different than it would otherwise have been, in a good way. However, SES-based AA would have a similar impact, be much more equitable, and much more logical (at least in CA).

Anecdotally, SES appeared to have the largest impact on university performance (in undergrads.) The strength of the education a student had coming in typically made a big difference.

This is huge! A single SNP accounts for measurable, significant verbal episodic memory performance difference independent of demographic parameters.

Considering the rate at which LTP can occur and synapses can form, I would argue that genetic predisposition to more/less or better/worse connections, in the vast majority of cases, is dwarfed by learning/experience. Under reasonable conditions one could measure statically significant differences between populations that were essentially meaningless at the individual level. People are mostly concerned with other people at the individual level, and I think it usually makes sense to approach things from this angle. In this case, does it really matter if there are differentially distributed genetic-racial tendencies?

 

[Toshi]

Considering the rate at which LTP can occur and synapses can form, I would argue that genetic predisposition to more/less or better/worse connections, in the vast majority of cases, is dwarfed by learning/experience. Under reasonable conditions one could measure statically significant differences between populations that were essentially meaningless at the individual level. People are mostly concerned with other people at the individual level, and I think it usually makes sense to approach things from this angle. In this case, does it really matter if there are differentially distributed genetic-racial tendencies?

Uh, yes, because the public policies that this thread is about are based on the assumption that equal proportions of all subgroups perform at a certain level. I'm not even that hung up on the whole genetics thing even tho people are attracted to it like flies to honey (or to a insect light, I suppose): as I've written I think culture is probably the larger part. I also think culture is not something we should "correct for."

 

[BikeMike]

Uh, yes, because the public policies that this thread is about are based on the assumption that equal proportions of all subgroups perform at a certain level. ... I also think culture is not something we should "correct for."

Ah. Sorry, I was operating under the assumption that the real basic purpose of AA was not to ensure that every group is represented proportionally in whatever context, but rather to prevent maintenance of strongly prejudiced systems immediately after they have been cracked* and to provide a reasonable chance for motivated people to prove themselves and achieve good things in higher education despite having had the audacity to be born in a sucky area with crap schools.

I absolutely agree that it makes no sense to set quotas so every group is represented proportionally to their ethnic/racial/whatever percentage in society.

Perhaps the goals of the policies need to be changed. While it may be stimulating discussion to wonder if there are differences in talent distributions among populations, if the end goal shifts from arbitrary proportional representation in whatever context to giving everyone, as much as possible, a really fair chance, whether or not there are differences in distributions ceases to matter.

*special case, in which short-term race-based AA makes a fair amount of sense.

 

[Toshi]

Yup. I'm all for equal opportunity, and if that means equalizing for SES and local school quality then I'm fine with that. I'm not fine with using race in the equation since the correlation between race and the above factors is very weak and the racial-based policies actively discriminate against Asians, who may be of any SES (including disadvantaged, see SE Asian immigrants for example) yet are "unfortunate" enough to do well in school thus escape aid from the powers that be.

Letting a middle-class child of black or Latino parents into Stanford with an SAT of 1200 while rejecting a lower-middle-class Chinese student with a 1500 because of their respective races/because they already have "too many Asians" just isn't right. Think this doesn't happen? Look at the first post with Mr. Castro's example.

 

[$tinkle]

Letting a middle-class child of black or Latino parents into Stanford with an SAT of 1200 while rejecting a lower-middle-class Chinese student with a 1500 because of their respective races/because they already have "too many Asians" just isn't right. Think this doesn't happen? Look at the first post with Mr. Castro's example.

a subtle thread drift i didn't catch first time around: why latinos? they weren't enslaved, and my understanding is that slavery was the #1 reason behind AA in academia. are they lumped in w/ blacks? if so, this further undermines any claim by blacks to preferential treatment based upon race.

 

[Toshi]

John Tierney plays the Larry Summers argument in the national media. From yesterday's NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/science/08tier.html

When Dr. Summers raised the issue to fellow economists and other researchers at a conference in 2005, his hypothesis was caricatured in the press as a revival of the old notion that &#8220;girls can&#8217;t do math.&#8221; But Dr. Summers said no such thing. He acknowledged that there were many talented female scientists and discussed ways to eliminate the social barriers they faced.

Yet even if all these social factors were eliminated, he hypothesized, the science faculty composition at an elite school like Harvard might still be skewed by a biological factor: the greater variability observed among men in intelligence test scores and various traits. Men and women might, on average, have equal mathematical ability, but there could still be disproportionately more men with very low or very high scores.

These extremes often don&#8217;t matter much because relatively few people are involved, leaving the bulk of men and women clustered around the middle. But a tenured physicist at a leading university, Dr. Summers suggested, might well need skills and traits found in only one person in 10,000: the top 0.01 percent of the population, a tiny group that would presumably include more men because it&#8217;s at the extreme right tail of the distribution curve.

&#8220;I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong,&#8221; Dr. Summers told the economists, expressing the hope that gender imbalances could be rectified simply by eliminating social barriers. But he added, &#8220;My guess is that there are some very deep forces here that are going to be with us for a long time.&#8221;

Dr. Summers was pilloried for even suggesting the idea, and the critics took up his challenge to refute the hypothesis. Some have claimed he was proved wrong by recent reports of girls closing the gender gap on math scores in the United States and other countries. But even if those reports (which have been disputed) are accurate, they involve closing the gap only for average math scores &#8212; not for the extreme scores that Dr. Summers was discussing.

Some scientists and advocates for gender equity have argued that the remaining gender gap in extreme scores is rapidly shrinking and will disappear. It was called &#8220;largely an artifact of changeable sociocultural factors&#8221; last year by two researchers at the University of Wisconsin, Janet S. Hyde and Janet E. Mertz. They noted evidence of the gap narrowing and concluded, &#8220;Thus, there is every reason to believe that it will continue to narrow in the future.&#8221;

But some of the evidence for the disappearing gender gap involved standardized tests that aren&#8217;t sufficiently difficult to make fine distinctions among the brighter students. These tests, like the annual ones required in American public schools, are limited by what&#8217;s called the ceiling effect: If you&#8217;re measuring people in a room with a six-foot ceiling, you can&#8217;t distinguish among the ones taller than six feet.

Now a team of psychologists at Duke University has looked at the results of tests with more headroom. In an article in a forthcoming issue of the journal Intelligence, they analyze the test scores of students in the United States who took college admissions tests while they were still in the seventh grade. As part of an annual talent search since 1981, the SAT and ACT tests have been given to more than 1.6 million gifted seventh graders, with roughly equal numbers of boys and girls participating.

The Duke researchers &#8212; Jonathan Wai, Megan Cacchio, Martha Putallaz and Matthew C. Makel &#8212; focused on the extreme right tail of the distribution curve: people ranking in the top 0.01 percent of the general population, which for a seventh grader means scoring above 700 on the SAT math test. In the early 1980s, there were 13 boys for every girl in that group, but by 1991 the gender gap had narrowed to four to one, presumably because of sociocultural factors like encouragement and instruction in math offered to girls.

Since then, however, the math gender gap hasn&#8217;t narrowed, despite the continuing programs to encourage girls. The Duke researchers report that there are still four boys for every girl at the extreme right tail of the scores for the SAT math test. The boy-girl ratio has also remained fairly constant, at about three to one, at the right tail of the ACT tests of both math and science reasoning. Among the 19 students who got a perfect score on the ACT science test in the past two decades, 18 were boys.

Meanwhile, the seventh-grade girls outnumbered the boys at the right tail of tests measuring verbal reasoning and writing ability. The Duke researchers report in Intelligence, &#8220;Our data clearly show that there are sex differences in cognitive abilities in the extreme right tail, with some favoring males and some favoring females.&#8221;

The researchers say it&#8217;s impossible to predict how long these math and science gender gaps will last. But given the gaps&#8217; stability for two decades, the researchers conclude, &#8220;Thus, sex differences in abilities in the extreme right tail should not be dismissed as no longer part of the explanation for the dearth of women in math-intensive fields of science.&#8221;

FWIW I was one of the kids in the Duke group's analysis as I was part of the JHU SET program (http://cty.jhu.edu/set/index.html) and thus took the pre-recentering SAT in grades 6, 7, 8, 11, and 12. I am both male (last I checked) and met their threshold from grade 7 on.

 

[Westy]

Isn't there an option to just not identify yourself as any race? Although not fair it would make sense to just not claim to be Asian or any race if you felt it would be held against you.

 

[Toshi]

Isn't there an option to just not identify yourself as any race? Although not fair it would make sense to just not claim to be Asian or any race if you felt it would be held against you.

That'd work if there was no in-person interview and if one's name were generic and not, say, "Toshimasa" . Even if explicit race-based criteria are banned then a large subjective "applicant desirability" category or other such fiddling can be introduced through which the same goals are accomplished.

 

[ohio]

I've changed my views on this. I was previously aligned with Toshi. Argued it out with my aad, an experimental psychologist who typically falls on the wrong side of PC. In this case, he pointed out that simply suggesting the possibility (or as Fox News says "just asking the question") produces bias and confirms existing biases among the population. So Summers wasn't wrong, but he was stupid and was feeding bigotted stereotypes for making the public suggestion PRIOR to actually doing any research.

Similarly, on the topic of race, there has been plenty written on the topics of racial priming, Gladwell's "Blink" being the most accessible. While the scientist in me says we should always have open discussions and arguments, the sociologist/psychologist/linguist says that we need to be enormously careful about the power of suggestion and aware of the harmful affects of even acknowledging race. That isn't to say we should ignore, but it does mean there is some merit to the desire to quell or manage open dialogue on these topics.

 

[$tinkle]

i assume with this we're talking about his remarks regarding gender differences in '05, which some took to say, "go make me some pie"

So Summers wasn't wrong, but he was stupid and was feeding bigotted stereotypes for making the public suggestion PRIOR to actually doing any research.

we have fundamental differences of understanding on this. his remarks on women & professional success was not spit-balling. he was a scheduled guest speaker & he gave his prepared remarks.

that they don't rise to the standard of academic rigor suitable for this audience is debatable. i bet if he had gushed over them with equally sustainable footnotes this would never have seen the light of day

Similarly, on the topic of race, there has been plenty written on the topics of racial priming, Gladwell's "Blink" being the most accessible. While the scientist in me says we should always have open discussions and arguments, the sociologist/psychologist/linguist says that we need to be enormously careful about the power of suggestion and aware of the harmful affects of even acknowledging race. That isn't to say we should ignore, but it does mean there is some merit to the desire to quell or manage open dialogue on these topics.

whatever happened to the "i follow the facts wherever they lead me" mindset? if you allow for mollycoddling, public policy can be manipulated by emotion, which could lead to prayer in school & other Jesus freak outpourings, no?

 

[Silver]

whatever happened to the "i follow the facts wherever they lead me" mindset? if you allow for mollycoddling, public policy can be manipulated by emotion, which could lead to prayer in school & other Jesus freak outpourings, no?

This assumes you're talking to rational adults, and not Americans.

I'll make you a deal...stop trying to teach creationism in schools, and then we can talk about how the mud people are stupider than whites. We'll leave out the Asians so you still feel like your obese zombie worshiping ass is the pinnacle of human development.

 

[$tinkle]

I'll make you a deal...stop trying to teach creationism in schools, and then we can talk about how the mud people are stupider than whites.

shall we also stop doing medical research to develop meds which target diseases over-represented by minorities? don't want to point out how some have predispositions toward anything remotely darwinian, getting everyone all butt hurt

for someone who takes joy in mocking those who eschew facts, you sure get a nappy dugout over this.

 

[Silver]

shall we also stop doing medical research to develop meds which target diseases over-represented by minorities? don't want to point out how some have predispositions toward anything remotely darwinian, getting everyone all butt hurt

for someone who takes joy in mocking those who eschew facts, you sure get a nappy dugout over this.

No, I'm fine with that.

I'm not ok with a bunch of mouth breathing rednecks with an IQ of 80 who worship a Jewish zombie getting up and putting the spooks back into place because the scientisits proveded that them naggers are stopid.

Go back to the Harvard Law student...she never even brings up the chance that blacks might be more intelligent than whites, because she's sure of the outcome.

 

[ohio]

i assume with this we're talking about his remarks regarding gender differences in '05, which some took to say, "go make me some pie"
we have fundamental differences of understanding on this. his remarks on women & professional success was not spit-balling. he was a scheduled guest speaker & he gave his prepared remarks.

that they don't rise to the standard of academic rigor suitable for this audience is debatable. i bet if he had gushed over them with equally sustainable footnotes this would never have seen the light of day
whatever happened to the "i follow the facts wherever they lead me" mindset? if you allow for mollycoddling, public policy can be manipulated by emotion, which could lead to prayer in school & other Jesus freak outpourings, no?

This isn't about following the facts or academic rigor. I'm not suggesting that we curb the research, in fact, I encourage it. What I'm suggesting is that it's irresponsible to talk about hypotheses publicly, prior to doing the research, because of the well understand sociological effects of discussing these types of hypotheses.

It is the same as asking "Did Glen Beck rape and murder an thirteen year old girl in 1993?" Simply asking the question, whether with the real intent of searching for facts or truth, has effects on the emotions and actions of the general populace. Do the research first, THEN discuss facts not hypotheses.

 

[$tinkle]

This isn't about following the facts or academic rigor. I'm not suggesting that we curb the research, in fact, I encourage it. What I'm suggesting is that it's irresponsible to talk about hypotheses publicly, prior to doing the research, because of the well understand sociological effects of discussing these types of hypotheses.

bloody hell, we have sufficient research to come up w/ fda approved meds, but not enough to demonstrate behavioral & intellectual propensities/capabilities? we can point out positives in a vacuum, but not in contrast?

does the fact i cannot follow this thinking indicate maybe i'm not as 'pure' as my ancestry led me to think?

It is the same as asking "Did Glen Beck rape and murder an thirteen year old girl in 1993?" Simply asking the question, whether with the real intent of searching for facts or truth, has effects on the emotions and actions of the general populace

now you're talking push-polls, which is rove's bailiwick. summers didn't do a push-poll, he related relevant anecdotes & more, which gave feminists the vapors. i bet a pillowcase full of neck massagers these women did the equivalent of furious googling & were found wanting.

 

[ohio]

does the fact i cannot follow this thinking indicate maybe i'm not as 'pure' as my ancestry led me to think?
now you're talking push-polls, which is rove's bailiwick. summers didn't do a push-poll, he related relevant anecdotes & more, which gave feminists the vapors. i bet a pillowcase full of neck massagers these women did the equivalent of furious googling & were found wanting.

Not the same technique, the same effect. Christ man, I just a few posts ago stated that I didn't think Summers was a bigot, let alone intentionally trying to push some bigoted agenda. Try to keep up.

 

[$tinkle]

in my belief, it's not enough to try to not offend.
others have to htfu from time to time

coming up short doesn't equate to failure, it means your ego won't get stroked w/ a blue ribbon

bfd

 

[Toshi]

While the scientist in me says we should always have open discussions and arguments, the sociologist/psychologist/linguist says that we need to be enormously careful about the power of suggestion and aware of the harmful affects of even acknowledging race. That isn't to say we should ignore, but it does mean there is some merit to the desire to quell or manage open dialogue on these topics.

How does the existence of explicit policies that discriminate based on race play into your theories about "the power of suggestion... [and] the harmful affects of even acknowledging race"? I can't think of much else that could be done to further propagate harmful stereotypes.

I also agree with Silver that having mouth-breathers--regardless of their race--use any such research out of context as justification for their own intolerant behavior is undesirable. I don't think that that possibility should squelch discussion or that research should be kept under wraps until fully defensible, however.

 

[$tinkle]

holy crap:

Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination, they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.

I advance it, therefore, as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstance, are inferior to the whites in the endowment both of body and mind.

where is your "god" now?

 

[Toshi]

John Tierney plays the Larry Summers argument in the national media. From yesterday's NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/science/08tier.html

Mr. Tierney continues to beat the drum in this week's NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/science/15tier.html?src=sch&pagewanted=all

So why are women still such a minority in math-oriented sciences? The most balanced answer I’ve seen comes from two psychologists at Cornell, Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams — who, by the way, are married and have a daughter with a graduate degree in engineering. After reviewing hundreds of studies in their new book, “The Mathematics of Sex” (Oxford), they conclude that discrimination is no longer an important factor in keeping out women.

They find consistent evidence for biological differences in math aptitude, particularly in males’ advantage in spatial ability and in their disproportionate presence at the extreme ends of the distribution curve on math tests (the topic of last week’s column). But given all the progress made in math by girls, who now take more math and science classes than boys and get better grades, Dr. Ceci and Dr. Williams say that differences in aptitude are not the primary cause of the gender gap in academic science.

Instead, they point to different personal preferences and choices of men and women, including the much-analyzed difference in the reaction to parenthood. When researchers at Vanderbilt University tracked the aspirations and values of mathematically gifted people in their 20s and 30s, they found a gender gap that widened after children arrived, with fathers focusing more on personal careers and mothers focusing more on the community and the family.

This highlights the idiocy of basing policies on crude outcomes like the % of females (or Asians) in XYZ field. Preferences differ as do aptitudes. Even distributions of the population across every field is not the ideal outcome in the real non-normal world. As the author puts it:

If more women prefer to study psychology and medicine than physics and engineering, why is that a problem for Washington to fix?

 

[ohio]

How does the existence of explicit policies that discriminate based on race play into your theories about "the power of suggestion... [and] the harmful affects of even acknowledging race"? I can't think of much else that could be done to further propagate harmful stereotypes.

Don't equate my position with support of affirmative action. I think that AA is really just a bandaid solution (a bad one at that) and should not be the first line of defense. Primary education and community building are so much more valuable.

My argument is that there is a place for racial sensitivity in science, and even the pursuit of pure science can have adverse effects when hard science types forget they don't work in a vacuum and psychology/sociology/neurology are just as real as chemistry.

Preferences differ as do aptitudes. Even distributions of the population across every field is not the ideal outcome in the real non-normal world.

And I believe that this science is worth pursuing, exposing, and discussing. But it is not worth postulating upon, publicly, prior to results. It's also a very different result to find both ability and opportunity are equal but preferences are not, than to find that ability is unequal. I'm not sure how I would treat such a finding, since exposing it would only exacerbate the problem...