Category: The Dish

Race and IQ Update

Brad DeLong says the question is largely irrelevant to actual social inequality:

If inherited genetically-based IQ were the source of the extra edge that the children of the rich get in our society, than we would expect a parent with 4 times average lifetime full-time earnings–say $200,000 a year–to have a kid with a lifetime average income of $51,500 instead of the average of $50,000. But it is not $51,500. It is $150,000.

I agree with Matt that "where people end up [in our society] is substantially out of their hands" (although not by any means completely): luck and inheritance of many kinds of things are incredibly important. But this does not mean that equality of opportunity is a mirage. For most of the things that are out of the hands of the individual are not out of our collective hands at all. Genetic influence on IQ is one of the big things that are out of our collective hands–and it turns out it is really not that big a thing at all.

Frontal Cortex’s Jonah says the debate is a function of our obsession with quantifying things.

Understanding Ahmadinejad

Ahmadinejadbehrouzmehriafpgetty

One key is not to under-estimate him:

Wherever he speaks and whomever he addresses, Ahmadinejad is always communicating with a domestic audience of millions of citizens in Iran, as well as with the rest of the Muslim world. He knows his audience well and, while he may convey an air of clumsy haphazardness, his discourse and demeanor express a meticulously crafted, politically astute message of pious populism. He is very much a product of recent Iranian history, and understanding his early years and rise to power provides insight into current circumstances in Iran, his own likely course of action, and the prospects for Iranian political reform.

But Abbas Milani sees some reason for optimism: the kind of bottom-up gradualist evolution that thwarts theocracy with realism and individual free thought, however tenuous, however beleaguered:

An even larger number of those working with the regime, particularly among the thousands of often-Western-educated mid-level managers, are increasingly aware that the status quo is untenable. As the economy continues to falter, and as radicals like Ahmadinejad seek more stringent enforcement of Islamic laws—by, for example, charging more than 160,000 women in the past two months of being insufficiently veiled—it is easy to imagine the emergence of a grand coalition, consisting of technocrats within and outside the regime, disgruntled reformists, quietist clerics, members of the Iranian private sector, women demanding equality, students, democratic parties, and labor unions, all willing to compromise in favor of a better society…

A strategy in Iran that forges democracy through a politics from below would have ramifications throughout the Middle East.

The whole essay is worth absorbing. Orin Judd is encouraged by Rafsanjani’s response to Ahmadinejad; Jim Hamlen less so. Hat tip: Sign and Sight.

(Photo: Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty.)

Quote For The Day II

The Derb really is fearless:

Q: But there are different kinds of intelligence, aren’t there? The Bushmen of the Kalahari have their own kind, to help them survive. You, with your book-smarts and your desk-smarts, wouldn’t last a week in the Kalahari.

The Derb: That is very likely true, but if so, it belongs to the category of melancholy truths. I mean, it’s a truth that does nobody any good, and which, if you think through its consequences, will make you feel sad.

It certainly isn’t going to do the Bushman any good. If the terrain over which he exercises his keen hunter-gatherer intelligence becomes interesting to some mining company, or builder of dams, or foreign conqueror, he will be swept from it like a bug from a picnic table. His superior intelligence, however admirable it may be from a metaphysical point of view, will avail him nothing in a clash with modernity.

There may indeed be different kinds of smarts, each worthy in its own way. In the world as it is, though, the kind of smarts that gets you a coherent nation under stable government, with a fair shot at security, prosperity, good health, and comfort for yourself and your descendants, is one particular kind — the kind measured by I.Q. tests.

Having lost a lot of my conservative readers, I guess I need to brace myself for losing a bunch of liberal ones. Of course, the bushman can live a full life without destroying the global climate. But that’s another question.

Moralizing Romney

First, he tells Obama not to talk about his past drug-use, even though Obama isn’t really bringing it up and is being forthright when asked. Now, he reminds voters that Giuliani has been married twice. Look: no one is or should be electing a saint. And there comes a point at which moral preening about a squeaky clean private life comes off as icky.

Dobson On Romney

According to a Focus On The Family macher,

it’s "doubtful" that James Dobson would personally endorse Mitt Romney because of "the tremendous difference in theological views."

But I thought there was no purely religious criterion for selecting the GOP’s candidates? Haven’t I been deluding myself for the past few years? Or is Dobson now deemed irrelevant to the party? (Hat tip: Marc.)

Huckabee On Climate Change

The Economist gets it about right:

On green issues, he is all mood and little substance. He says God wants us to look after the earth, and touts his own use of a flex-fuel car. But he has no serious plan to reduce greenhouse gases. A carbon tax, he claims, sounds too much like a tax. And a cap-and-trade system sounds "a bit like buying indulgences from the ancient church," he told the Wall Street Journal.

Pejman echoes – but much the same could be said of Bush. Here’s factcheck.org on Huck’s fiscal record. Personally, I prefer big government conservatives who actually tax people. More honest than borrowing from your kids.