"The Bell Curve" - A Bogus (Pseudo-scientific) Brief For Racism & Inequality

Protesters at Middlebury College in July, 2017, and  social pseudo-scientist Charles Murray, who marched his way into eugenics infamy with his (co-authored) academic farce, 'The Bell Curve'.


Let us concede we live in treacherous times with bastardized memes and subtle mind viruses regularly unleashed on an unsuspecting populace.  In this deformed mental and intellectual atmosphere, Donnie Dotard and his lame tweets is only the most obnoxious example.  More generally,  climate denial propaganda, economic misinformation and irrational conspiracy  ideations  - such as spawned by Q Anon - are a dime a dozen.  And sadly,  relatively few Americans possess the critical thinking skills to parse BS from fact and distinguish fake news from the genuine article..

Into this moral and intellectual vacuum any kind of poseur, dilettante, or crank can seemingly make an impression, especially if he or she can generate some facsimile of genuine academic work,  i.e. a veneer of actual scholarship.  No one has performed better in this ersatz scholarship category than Charles Murray co-author of 'The Bell Curve'.  Indeed that co-authored parody of scholarship  paved the way for his later work, 'Coming Apart'  wherein we learned that all those poor whites -  displaced from their jobs -  could have landed on their feet had their IQs only been high enough.  But sadly, they weren't, so they are left to pound sand and cry for government help - like those displaced, forlorn coal miners now scratching for aid in Kentucky.

So both books have merely served to advance Murray's pet general narrative that a certain segment of Americans are destined to be in the underclass-  by virtue of lower IQ, genetically traced--   and we ought to get used to it. Even writing (with his co-author Herrnstein) at the end of The Bell Curve.:

"It is time once again for America to try living with inequality, as life is lived..."

As "life is lived"?  Such a reprehensible statement smacks of Social Darwinism as promulgated by Herbert Spencer, the British philosopher who had no patience for such niceties as government assistance.  He deemed the poor and infirm “unfit” if they couldn’t compete for resources without state assistance and it was their lot to be eliminated if they couldn’t manage. As Spencer put it (Social Darwinism in American Thought, American Historical Association, 1955):

"The whole effort of nature is to get rid of such, to clear the world of them, and make room for better.."

Author Richard Hofstadter points out (pp. 41-42) Spencer absolutely repudiated all state assistance to the poor, the needy, physically feeble, or infirm. In terms of the role of natural selection in “social evolution” such aid amounted to unwanted artificial interference in nature. Not to mention, meddling in the “natural development” of a superior society.  As Spencer put it (ibid.):

"If they are sufficiently complete to live, they do live, and it is well that they should live. If they are not sufficiently complete to live, they die, and it is best that they should die. "


Again, this could have been lifted right out of a Nazi Eugenics tract.  Just as Herrnstein and Murray's Bell Curve bilge.


So in perspective, taking  Messrs. Herrnstein and Murray's conclusion at face value, the Democratic candidates ought to just abandon their proposals to create a "wealth tax", i.e. to tax accumulated wealth instead of income. (WSJ, yesterday, p. A1).   As noted in the article:

"Liberals see extreme inequality as morally wrong  and socially divisive and regard the current system which taxes income generated by wealth more lightly than wages  as especially objectionable and  a contributor to wealth gaps such as between blacks and whites."

Whereas in Murray and Herrnstein's Bell Curve, one can simply lay the blame at a "genetic" disparity in IQ between blacks and whites.  Hence, how can a wealth tax or even a highly progressive income tax correct what nature has already pre-ordained?    That then leads to the authors' chapter on dysgenesis.

What is that all about?  Basically they use suspect research and citations, which they either mischaracterize or inflate, to attempt to make the case that blacks are intellectually inferior genetically to whites.  At the core of this dysgensis effort one beholds this skewed Bell curve:



How did they arrive at such a skewed graphic?  Well, they began by asking: "How do African-Americans compare with blacks in Africa on cognitive tests?"

Sounds simple enough, no?  But the devil as always is in the details.  The pair thus started with the null hypothesis that 'there should be no significant difference between the IQs of black Africans and African-Americans'.   This was based on testing the effects of discrimination (as African-Americans experience every day) and genes. Hence, black Africans - say in Cameroon - ought to have higher IQ scores  than African- Americans IF low IQ scores for the latter are a result of discrimination rather than genes.

To try to get to an answer the pair cite as their authority Richard Lynn of the University of Ulster.  So they cite a Lynn paper from 1991 in which he "estimated the median black African IQ to be 75... about 10 points lower than for American blacks."

Murray and Herrnstein then conclude that the difference cannot be accounted for by the "special circumstance" of African-Americans (i.e. discrimination), hence genetics must explain the difference. To try to bolster this view  (that African -Americans have higher IQs than black Africans) the pair then cite a Ken Owen paper from 1992. writing: "The IQ of coloured students in South Africa - of mixed racial background- has been found to be similar to that of American blacks."

Now note where this is going. All of a sudden we have the white genetic component entering via the "mixed" background of the South African students.   The implication almost doesn't have to be outright stated: The addition of Caucasian genes to African genes - in both S Africa and the U.S. - results in a 10 point higher IQ score over native Africans.  What accounts for the difference? Well, obviously the whities' higher IQ  genes have entered the picture!

But here's the bugbear:  In a footnote the pair cite the Owen 1992 paper as seeming to "prove" the IQ increment peculiar to both S. African mixed race students and American blacks. (Interestingly, the actual reference doesn't appear in The Bell Curve's bibliography. GO figure.)  Maybe the reason for non-inclusion is that Owen's work is not properly characterized.  For one thing, he used the nonverbal Ravens' Progressive Matrices (thought to be less culturally biased than standard IQ test)

Owen found that out of a possible maximum raw score of 60, whites scored 45, Indians scored 42, mixed race (coloreds) scored 37 and blacks scored 27.  Seems straightforward, no?   Not quite. The second bugbear was that the test's developer, John Raven, repeatedly insisted there could be no translation of his test into IQ scores. Hence, Herrnstein and Murray were confabulating IQs out of thin air.

Worse, the source for another  Lynn citation (accepted as valid by the Bell Curve pair)  that "Zambians had a lamentably low average IQ of 75" was given as Pons [1974]; Crawford -Nutt, 1978."

But in an astounding research misfire of stupendous proportions - one more likely for a green 1st year social science student- Herrnstein and Murray failed to note that Lynn had taken the Pons' data from Crawford-Nutt's paper and converted it into a bogus IQ average of 75.   At the same time the pair failed to recognize that Lynn chose to outright ignore the substance of Crawford-Nutt's paper which reported that 228 Soweto black HS students scored an average of 45 on the matrices test, or higher than the 44 scored by same age whites.   Most appalling 5 of 6 studies were omitted from Lynn's 1991 summary - by which time the average African IQ had gone down to 69.  Selection bias on steroids, anyone?

As described by one book review of  The  Bell Curve in Scientific American  (Feb., 1995) from which the preceding graphic was obtained:

"Lynn's distortions and misrepresentations of the data constitute a truly venomous racism, combined with scandalous disregard for scientific objectivity."

Adding pointedly:

"Lynn is widely known among academics to be an associate editor of the racist journal Mankind Quarterly and a major recipient of support from the nativist, eugenically oriented Pioneer Fund. It is a matter of shame and disgrace that two eminent social scientists- fully aware of the sensitivity of the issues they address - take Lynn as their scientific tutor and uncritically accept his surveys of research."

But, of course, given Murray and Herrnstein's conclusions, it is impossible to decouple their work from a clear and intentional agenda:  to attack affirmative action, .e.g.

"Affirmative action, in education and the workplace alike, is leaking a poison into the American soul."

And argue for accepting inequality (see earlier quote) as a natural norm.

Indeed, the revealing quotes of this dysfunctional pair of academics  tells me they damned well knew the unsavory nature and pseudoscience underpinning Lynn's work, but used it anyway. They used it because it advanced their own deformed elitist agenda based on their pet prejudices and presumptions, i.e. that genetics  really does separate the human family by IQ, and we ought to accept inequality instead of fighting it.  Should we then be charitable to Murray and Herrnstein for possibly being over confident in giving so much sway to Lynn's research? Hell no! Examining this book as a scientific researcher it is clearly so full of blatant holes, slipshod methodology  and  questionable sourcing that if it was submitted to physics referees - in terms of a physics context (using similar regression analyses) - it would be rejected outright.  Much like the daft papers of climate deniers are by reputable climate journals.

For example, one of the first things the budding researcher learns in any science - when applying statistics - is  not to conflate or confuse correlation with causation. And yet the Bell Curve duo commit this fundamental transgression  in spades.  We see this in the ridiculously (and excessively) long section of their book featuring analyses of data from the National Longitudinal Survey Of Labor Market Experience of Youth (NLSY for short).  The data, even without doing a single regression analysis do show a correlation between IQ and socio-economic status.

But to besiege  the reader with a blizzard of charts, graphs, tables etc. to extrapolate to a conclusion that IQ (inherited of course) translates into better paying jobs and higher socioeconomic status is simply twaddle.  It posits that the correlations obtained are actually causative.  As the SciAm reviewer of the book put it (ibid.):

"The core of Herrnstein-Murray's message is phrased with a beguiling simplicity: 'Putting it all together, success and failure in the American economy, and all that goes with it, are increasingly a matter of the genes that people inherit."


So if you are a sanitation worker, or wait staff person, instead of say a high end investment banker or stock broker, then you have to blame your low IQ genes.  Interestingly, members of Mensa - to provide an example of an inversion of the above- are often asked: "If you're so smart why aren't you rich?"

Well, for a lot of reasons!  Kudos here must go to Dr. Steven Mason in his article 'Let's Get Dumb' in one issue of Intertel's  Integra (October, p. 26, 2014). Mason, in about 5 pages,  shows that very often being smart isn't the asset so many believe, but an actual liability.  Especially in terms of 'making it in our money obsessed capitalist culture

 As Mason points out, in conjunction with this 'why aren't you rich' theme (p. 27):

"There are several reasons for this being the case. One is that employers don't especially like employees who are smarter than themselves. The result is that many of my friends belonging to high IQ societies wind up underemployed, working at jobs far below their potential."

Hey, Herrnstein and Murray, how do you process that?

Mason also notes that "kids hate those geeks who screw up the grading curve".  These kids, who aren't afraid to show their smarts are also the most victimized and bullied. No surprise then how back in 1978 my niece Vanessa expressed fear and shame at repeatedly outshining her classmates at St. Joseph Convent school in Trinidad, and asked advice. She was leaning to "dumbing down" her profile and being less conspicuous. I advised against it and told her to do it only if she felt it was critical to her ongoing emotional balance.

Perhaps the most provocative insight rendered by Dr. Mason concerns the communication gap between people of significantly different IQ. He writes (ibid.):

"It's been demonstrated, though not widely publicized in this PC culture, that complete and effective communication between those separated by more than fifteen IQ points is unlikely. It means there is no way, repeat NO WAY, that people with IQs of 115 are ever going to explain to people with IQs of 85 why it's important to graduate high school."

By the same token, it likely means a communication gap will exist between those of IQ 110-115 and those of Mensa or Intertel  IQ level (130-135) on matters of politics, including deep politics  (and I warrant most 115'ers don't even know what it means), science, philosophy, history and economics. The gap is simply too vast to be bridged.  Now carry this gap into the typical American work scenario and what do you see?  Likely enmity breaking out especially if the Mensan or Intertel member doesn't play sufficiently dumb over time. (Again explaining why  - if outed- they will not get that promotion and hence, well, remain at a lower socioeconomic station.  But this is not because of low IQ as the Bell Curve Bozos claim, but rather being enmeshed in an anti-intellectual culture .)

Taken at a more fundamental level, Mason's thesis indicates that the upper two or so IQ percentile of Americans will never be able to communicate effectively and completely with most of the rest of the population.  This gets most glaringly exposed in the political domain. Again, the need of so many voters to base their choices on atmospherics and optics ("Is he a guy I can have a beer with?") is downright disheartening. It makes me want to scream, "No you dummy! Don't worry about the damned beer but what he can do in office!"

And this  emotional tendency (often of swing voters) surely explains many of the puzzling election results over the years, from electing Gee Dumbya Bush in 2000, to the deranged semi-imbecile, criminal and grifter Donald Trump in 2016.  The takeaway?  The practical intelligence that helped put such losers into office has to be exceedingly low. So even if one is a top flight investment banker  or history professor and had voted Bush in 2000,  2004, and Trump in 2016, his working intellect can't be all that great irrespective of what Herrnstein-Murray claim.  Even Harvard Prof Harvey Mansfield attributed Trump's  election to the "lower half of the IQ curve."  And that includes all those business CEOs, market quants, and other "upper socioeconomic class" hotshots.  Oh sure, they got their tax cuts - but look what Trump's trade war has cost them, and we haven't gone beyond a technical recession yet.

Speaking of that:  the Southern Poverty Law Center has noted many criticisms of The Bell Curve, most notably Charles Lane’s thorough takedown in The New York Review of Books, have pointed out that Murray’s attempts to link social inequality to genes are based on the work of explicitly racist scientists. In an afterward to the book, Murray rejects criticisms that rest on the fact that “we cite thirteen scholars who have received funding from the Pioneer Fund, founded and run by men who were "Nazi sympathizers, eugenicists, and advocates of white racial superiority.” Murray contends that the racist pseudo-scientists he cites “are some of the most respected psychologists of our time” and that “the relationship between the founder of the Pioneer Fund and today’s Pioneer Fund is roughly analogous to that between Henry Ford and today’s Ford Foundation."

To me, such woeful blindness and shoddy work is deliberate and totally disqualifies Murray (and Herrnstein)  from claiming any objective insight into socioeconomic status and its relation to IQ.   At  the same time it shows me that those students who protested his effort to spout racist, eugenic -based rubbish at Middlebury College  2 years ago were totally justified. Indeed, as critical thinking citizens it was incumbent on them to block the dissemination of toxic racist propaganda disguised as scholarly research.

Indeed, not to do so allows the proliferation of racist memes and the sort of degenerate codswallop recently put out in a WSJ op-ed by  Heather MacDonald ('Trump Isn't The One Dividing Us By Race',  August 19, p. A19)  Let us note this hack is the author of 'The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture'.    One can only imagine here that Ms. MacDonald is a firm acolyte of the Charles Murray Bell Curve cult. Especially when she argues (WSJ, ibid.) the racial divisiveness is the product of diversity acknowledgement and "its main propagation by the academic left and mass media".   To see her spouting her balderdash live on you tube (at Hillsdale College) check out this link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE-_weLRLK4
  
Getting back to the authors of The Bell Curve, truth be told what these two have produced  is no more scholarly than Gerald Posner's 'Case Closed' which tried to finalize the specious Warren Report as the last word on the Kennedy assassination.  JFK Assassination experts document twelve of the most serious “Posnerisms” here:

http://assassinationweb.com/twpos.htm

See also:

"Coming Apart?" - Charles Murray's Arguments After..

The Cruel And Unusual Punishment Of Making The Sick Work For Their Health Care

The GOP and Trump recently reached a new low when a number of Trumpie-dominated states began to pass laws in Medicaid expansion states to make recipients work for their health care. Never mind that 95% of the 70 million Medicaid recipients are either children or adults so severely physically or mentally ill that no one would hire them even if they wanted to work.

Take the case of Thomas J. Penister of Milwaukee, recently examined in The Denver Post (January 14, p. 14A, 'Debate Over Work Requirements Begins').  Penister suffers from such severe social anxiety disorder that he's been unemployed the past five years, unable to even stuff a letter in an envelope in the presence of coworkers without flying into a panic. Fortunately, with Medicaid, he's received help and has been able to see a behavioral health specialist to deal with his anxiety.

Penister also acknowledges that while he's made progress it simply hasn't been enough to enable him to satisfactorily return to the workforce. At the same time, he's "unnerved by the prospect of losing his Medicaid".  He doesn't believe, as millions like him, that one beset by physical or mental issues should have to go out and work for his health care. (His state, Wisconsin, is one of ten and counting, that applied for a waiver seeking to implement work requirements for single adults.)

But this is what our nation has come to, as evidenced by the farce of a state of the union address tens of millions were duped into watching - and believing the swine in chief could be a uniter not a divider.  In more specific terms, the GOP are quite okay with giving away enough huge tax cuts for the CEOs and corporate parasites to be able to afford luxuries like that shown below:



















But are averse to enabling a guy like Penister to receive Medicaid to take care of his mental health. Let us note here that - as reported in a Washington Post column  - the Republican tax bill  nominally delivers $3.7 trillion in tax breaks over the next decade.  However, nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts are needed to support those tax breaks in case they don't deliver any growth or revenue. In other words, the GOOPs are hoping enough  sick Medicaid people put to work will croak and so cut down the rolls.

The claim made by the Repukes is that their plan isn't draconian or Scrooge like at all, but merely an attempt to "return Medicaid to its original intent".  That is, to act as a temporary stopgap until people can find work. The GOOPs appear to be oblivious to the fact that too many cheapo companies - like Walmart - instead of providing health care for workers, steer them into Medicaid!

But what the Reeps are most incensed about, and why they are driven to take cruel action, is that they were outsmarted by Obama - who implemented a significant expansion of the ACA by expanding Medicaid. SO that 70 million are now covered under the ACA- Medicaid umbrella, where things like preexisting conditions have no warrant. 

The clueless Reeps also miss the boat regarding the fact many people on Medicaid are working, but their health care and its ancillary costs can't be met by their incomes. Take the case of  Matthew Fischer and his wife highlighted in the Denver Post's extended look at Medicaid recipients in Colorado  back in July. As the Post noted, "both have health insurance and work full time".  It "covers major medical issues picks up substantial costs for their child's medical care" - though they inevitably hit their maximums in January each year.   But there is much it doesn't provide and that's where Medicaid comes in. That includes: the wheelchair ($25,000), the formula their 11 -year old (Cecilia) which needs to be ingested through a feeding tube. ($500 a month), and the nurse who accompanies their daughter to school and attends to her needs.  As the Post explains:

"All of that is covered through a Medicaid waiver, making Cecilia among the 45 percent of the state's Medicaid recipients who are age 20 or younger."

But that's the key characteristic of these Philistines on the Right:  they don't care that people are already working.  If they're not earning enough money it's all on them,  not the inequitable system,  which is geared more to Wall Street than Main Street.

I'll go one further: This GOP plan to make those on Medicaid work for their care is merely a cruel effort to punish the poor and infirm.  This attitude can mostly be traced to the Repukes' fondness for Social Darwinism. While they reject scientific Darwinism and evolution, they have a boner for Herbert Spencer's specious form.  Indeed, Richard Hofstadter, in his Social Darwinism in American Thought, (American Historical Association, 1955) observes that Spencer rejected all services for the poor and disabled as encouraging a fundamental weakness in society which induces corruption, sloth and all the other vices. It was also Spencer, not Darwin, who coined the phrase "the survival of the fittest". 

Oh, another choice saying of Spencer's was the following:

"If they are sufficiently complete to live, they do live, and it is well that they should live. If they are not sufficiently complete to live, they die, and it is best that they should die."

Hmmmm.... they "should die".   The basic GOP health care plan exposed, the death solution plan!

But this degeneracy of making sick people work is only the beginning of erosion of the general welfare as embodied in the Preamble of the Constitution. The Pukes ultimately want to cut Medicaid to the bone so even if the  chronically infirm want to work they can't get health care.  This is the goal of these barbarians:  to savagely slice all social services in line with Spencerian Social Darwinism so the poor and sick mostly die off. Then the country will be made safe for the rich parasites to do whatever they're doing now - including  screwing the poor fools still tying their wealth to phantom assets in the bubbling stock market. But then when it crashes and all those who couldn't afford to lose their saving are penniless,, no amount of caterwauling or imploring- say by their new employer Wal-Mart (to its low paid workers) will get them the gov't help they need. They will truly be on their own, to starve or at least be malnourished (for lack of food stamps) or perish in a nasty H5 N1 Bird flu pandemic because Medicaid lacked the federal matching funds to survive in their state.

Why James Damore's Google "Memo" Is a Load Of Right Wing Anti-Female Balderdash

The Culture Wars are back on again, this time fired up by a 23 year old conservative twerp  and former Google Software engineer named James Damore.  Like most young conservatives he has zero clue about the deep politics issues of our time, and is more concerned with hurling his verbal vomit into so-called "manifestoes". In this case, a 3,000 word effort blasting Google's "left bias" for "creating a politically correct monoculture" that ignores differences between the sexes.

Do we all kowtow to this wet behind the ears techie and part time sociologist, biologist who isn't shy about filling us in on those difference? Hell no! His manifesto waxes long about the supposed traits of females which makes them less able to cope in a software programming environment, but doesn't hold up to scrutiny.  One wonders where this twerp even got the time to write a 10  page manuscript given he's supposed to be programming code.  

Some of the screwball tropes exposed in his ten page "memo" and my responses:

1) Political orientation is actually a result of deep moral preferences and thus biases. Considering that the overwhelming majority of the social sciences, media, and Google lean left, we should critically examine these prejudices:

Damore adds as an aside, in a footnote:

Of course, I may be biased and only see evidence that supports my viewpoint. In terms of political
biases, I consider myself a classical liberal and strongly value individualism and reason.

-------------------------

This is mostly the usual classic, conservative codswallop supported by neither neurobiology or sociology. It is more a product of the political stereotypes spewed out over decades by right wing talk radio and more recently FOX news and others (Sinclair Broadcasting). Nor is there a basis in ethics or morality, so "deep moral preferences" doesn't wash in the way Damore has spun it.  As the Jesuits at Loyola taught me, and with which I can agree even as an atheist, "deep moral preferences" must include seeing the human family as one's own.  You act therefore to reduce unfair disparity via social justice initiatives.  You do not act like a knuckle dragger to advance social Darwinism.

There is indeed no basis in standard evolution theory for the latter.  For example, ‘survival of the fittest’ was never uttered or stated by Charles Darwin himself, in any of his treatises. It was, rather, promoted by the English sociologist Herbert Spencer, in a misguided attempt to extrapolate Darwinian principles to the social sphere. (E.g. The Study of Sociology, 1873, serialized for an American audience in Popular Science Monthly)

In his serialized tracts, Spencer absolutely repudiated all state assistance to the poor, needy, physically feeble, or infirm – based on a bastardized “survival of the fittest”  or "preference for the strong" concept. He believed, erroneously, that people are like beasts that had to be forced to compete for precious resources. If they didn’t do this, they’d produce degenerate, weakened humans- unfit in the evolutionary scheme. Hence, the name “Social Darwinism”.

This Social Darwinism remains embedded in the current incarnation of rabid individualism disseminated by conservative ideologues, who salivate non-stop at the prospect of using it to dismember social safety nets.  Damore's manifesto reeks with the false scholarship of Herbert Spencer in his references to disparities being "natural and just" and  "humans being naturally competitive".

Also his blanket assertion that "the overwhelming majority of the social sciences, media, and Google lean left" can also be challenged on multiple grounds. Indeed, he seems to need to be reminded (assuming he read it at all),  of the words of the original capitalist, Adam Smith. In his 'Inquiry into the Wealth Of Nations' Smith evoked a more rational attitude when he noted there are:

"needs in a civilized society that a barbaric one refuses to address."

He also pointedly stated (Vol. II, p. 648):

"What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconvenience to the whole "

THIS is the basis for the true classical liberalism (governing markets) that Damore purports to embrace yet seems to have vacated his brain when he set out his left-right  "bias" markers. Smith recognized, unlike such modern high priests of conservative economic thought as Martin Feldstein and Milton Friedmann, that any economics devised to create more inequity can't be sustained. Eventually, as Lenin predicted in his essay on Imperialism, it must consume its seed corn and also its raison d'etre.

Echoing Smith, Charles Reich poignantly noted in his book, Opposing the System, Crown Books, p. 103:

"When society itself comes to be modeled on economic and organizational principles, all of the forces that bind people together are torn apart in the struggle for survival. Community is destroyed because we are no longer 'in this together' because everyone is a threat to everyone else. "

In such a capitalist-driven, consumerist organizational economic model, wherein the resource “pie” for the non-wealthy elite grows ever smaller, the young are threats to us oldsters, as we are threats to them, as neighbor is to neighbor. It can't be otherwise. This capitalist model has seen fit, in other words, to destroy our areas of commonality and common cause, replacing neutral civic space with demeaning commercial space and commercialist, market values. Reich's appeal, as well as Smith's is to a traditional capitalism as opposed to the "cowboy" mutation that most conservos today embrace.

----------

  2) On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just
socially constructed because:
● They’re universal across human cultures
● They often have clear biological causes and links to prenatal testosterone
● Biological males that were castrated at birth and raised as females often still identify
and act like males
● The underlying traits are highly heritable
● They’re exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective
Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these
differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men
and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why
we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
-------------------------------

That males and females "differ biologically in many ways" is not up for debate. What is up for debate is Damore's contention that these biological differences translate into radically different psychological  and job aptitude differences (e.g. women "have more neuroticism, higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance" so are less capable in high stress jobs). Also there is Damore's contention that biological traits define personality differences. For example, Damore blabs:

"Women, on average, have more openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also
interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing). This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading."

None of these assumptions, claims is substantiated by any research published in respected, peer-reviewed  journals of sociology or psychology. If in fact they were, Damore doesn't cite them which indicates he's merely regurgitating stereotypes imbibed from non-academic sources. Or he's confected his own biased conjectures based on limited experience and maybe frequenting right wing sites.

My own experience has been that if a female physics student is given the opportunity to be systematic and excel in a serious challenge she will do it. Often she will easily surpass even talented male counterparts. One of the more challenging physics projects I've assigned was completed by two female students. It entailed the careful computer modeling of a standard Newtonian orbit - including the code and the base equations used. It was of such a high standard it became one of the few student projects published in The Journal of the Barbados Astronomical Society.

The project entailed using a set of initial conditions (for position) to then construct a Newtonian orbit  by using appropriate differential equations for acceleration and velocity.  Thereby the girls  obtained successive iterations in position, a and v,  and a complete orbit. Their result is shown below:


Nor was this a "one off" or exceptional. In other words, whenever female physics students were given the same opportunities they generally surpassed the male students, in attention to detail and the overall quality of their work.

The upshot is that nearly all Damore's assertions may be merely based on his own limited  expectations of how females perform in a working environment as opposed to how they actually perform. So he expects they will be "agreeable" or "have a stronger interest in people rather than things" so sees that in female peers.  In other words, he is hostage to his own innate confirmation bias.

3) We always ask why we don't see women in top leadership positions, but we never ask why we
see so many men in these jobs. These positions often require long, stressful hours that may not
be worth it if you want a balanced and fulfilling life.

Status is the primary metric that men are judged on, pushing many men into these higher
paying, less satisfying jobs for the status that they entail. Note, the same forces that lead men
into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and
dangerous jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93% of
work-related deaths.
-------

This again is merely more social Darwinist bunkum,  recycled to attempt to justify gender stereotypes to fit the standard conservative milieu i.e. "women are to be kept barefoot and pregnant".  Damore would obviously deny this but his prose fairly reeks of the underlying template that screams: "women are inferior workers to men".  Even Google CEO Sundar Pichai noted that "to suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK."

The WSJ in its editorial Aug. 9 ('Google's  Diversity Problems', p. A14) tried to attack that rationale for letting Damore go,  averring:

"In other words its OK to express views as long as they are not antithetical to Google's political culture."

Which misses the point entirely, As author Charles Reich noted in his 'The Greening of America' it actually endorses throwback views antithetical to human decency and inclusion. These are every bit as objectionable as a racist tract used to justify the exclusion of black workers.

The WSJ may whine and moan, but Damore's firing is going to stand. Strangely, the organ of high finance seems to have forgotten that workers in corporations have absolutely no free speech rights, or First Amendment ones. This was pointed out over a quarter century ago by Charles Reich in his book 'Opposing the System.'  Citing the case of 'Waters v. Churchill' (p. 146). He noted "the Supreme court made clear that an employee's speech is not protected if the employer  believes the speech might interfere with the efficiency of the employer's operations."

Since it is clear that allowing Damore's presence (after his memo went viral) would definitely undermine Google's efficiency of operations, it was clear Google had to give this right wing troll the heave ho, all the Right's whining aside.  Indeed, Damore's timely firing may have well kept Google on the right side of the law, especially if the company or its employees felt the memo had created an adverse work environment.

Especially pathetic is Damore's assertion:

"the same forces that lead men into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and dangerous jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93% of work-related deaths."

What exact "forces' are these? Damore doesn't elaborate so I presume we're just expected to guess. But without specifying them his words end up as merely an empty rumination, devoid of any substance. Indeed, Damore tries to make his point later referring to  "the Left tends to deny science
concerning biological differences between people (e.g., IQ and sex differences)." But the "Left" does no such thing.

We do acknowledge differences in IQ and sex (biological) differences, but we absolutely reject the notion that these differences translate into  psychological manifestations that would disqualify a person of particular gender - or race- from doing a specific job.  That includes an African -American from being an investment banker and a young female Ph.D. from being a rocket scientist or astrophysicist. Let me also add that for anyone to drag IQ into worker profiling and job qualification smacks totally of Charles Murray's "Bell Curve" nonsense which I already skewered, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2017/07/was-splc-wrong-to-educate-middlebury.html


4)   Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of humanities and social sciences lean left (about 95%), which creates enormous confirmation bias, changes what’s being studied, and maintains myths like social constructionism and the gender wage gap. Google’s left leaning makes us blind to this bias and  uncritical of its results, which we’re using to justify highly politicized programs.

--------

Again, we have an assertion unsupported by actual statistics. Where - from what journal of sociology - did Damore obtain the "95 percent" figure?  Where is the fully cited reference and humanities' job by job tally of percentages disclosing a leftward tilt?  Since Damore has offered only his own bloviations without citation then this is mere blowing smoke.  He's attempted to garner specious support for his trope by tossing out generalities and pseudo stats with no backing.

5) Stop alienating conservatives.
○ Viewpoint diversity is arguably the most important type of diversity and political
orientation is one of the most fundamental and significant ways in which people
view things differently.
○ In highly progressive environments, conservatives are a minority that feel like
they need to stay in the closet to avoid open hostility. We should empower those
with different ideologies to be able to express themselves.
--------------

More  victimization and whining as is now typical of the poor little Righties.  They scream their own incessant invective over talk radio, and in "memos" and online forums but crawl into little holes when challenged in other public forums, or work environments. Pardon me while  I play the world's smallest violin for them.  Did Damore even ask himself why "conservatives" are a minority in many of these high caliber environments, especially academia?  Maybe it's because their lot - embracing a "dog eat dog" culture and world - simply doesn't fit into those work environments.

The WSJ editorial stated at the end:

"Many on the left are dismissing Mr. Damore as an alt-Right nut"  and "the monolithic progressive culture incubated on college campuses has spread to corporate America"

The first part is essentially correct, meaning the arguments of Damore could have emanated from Alt Right sites or groups. The second part is a dramatic oversimplification.  It is not that there exists a "monolithic progressive culture" either on college campuses or in some corporations (like Google). Rather,  that as one enters environments where the life of the mind trumps the almighty buck one simply finds fewer conservatives in general - given the preponderance are about making money, not investigating new quasars, or quantum entanglement.  Damore and the WSJ basically just whine because conservative thought and ideas are not dominant everywhere. But why the hell would it be if there exist different priorities for progressive minds and conservative ones?   This is not so much biological in origin as  based on political outlook, and that outlook often hinges on intellectual markers.

Damore's stereotypical rot almost reminds me  of Todd Akins' comments in an interview that  went public back in August, 2012. To quote, after being asked why he supported banning abortion:

“It seems to me from what I understand from doctors, if it’s a legitimate rape female bodies have ways to shut that down.”

Damore's speculations on female biology and how it relates to female job performance being limited  in assorted areas, bears many similarities.   Maybe Damore needs to go back to university and take a few modern sociology courses. At the very least he needs to learn how to cite appropriate research sources when he purports to write future company "memos" or personal manifestos. 

Another Icon of Right Wing Loony Tunes: Michael Savage

If one scans the landscape- web sites, Facebook entries etc.  of right wing idiots and loony tunes, one name sure to appear is that of Michael Savage. Just like Limbaugh, Hannity, Glenn Beck, O'Reilly and Larry Schweikart,  this tool seems to be one of the specially lionized imps by Tea Baggers (aka "constitutionalists"), radical conservatives and others who value anti-intellectualism over anything else.

According to Rational Wiki:

"An ultra-radical conservative, Savage, along with such others as Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, has been a contributor to the ongoing demonization of liberal people and viewpoints, helping to maintain the current level of mutual fear and loathing in American politics. He is rabidly xenophobic, misogynistic and homophobic, and hates potheads with a burning passion"


As in the case of Larry Schweikart, this dope is a fake. So, all the huzzahs he gets from his boot lickers, groupies and sycophants are all for nothing- just empty banter. Most probably, his fawners and followers don't even know the history of this phony, including that he deliberately changed his original (Russian-Jewish) name  (Michael Alan Weiner) to "Michael Savage" - which was the "inspiration" for Savage Nation. Obviously, as psychologists will tell you, if you pick a psychotic name you will act the part of a psychotic. So it's no different with Savage.

Again, from Rational Wiki:

"Savage sews irrational, unfounded liberal-bashing with his life story. Explaining the thesis of the book (Savage Nation), he has said: "Only a more savage nation can survive...Not a more compassionate nation...We're not going to survive by being overly compassionate to our enemies."

But what about to our own people, like hungry children on food stamps, or moms and dads that have to work 20 hours a day and still can't make ends meet on minimum wage - so must go onto food stamps to have enough food? Evidently, Savage doesn't care to extend compassion to them either. How can he if he seeks to implement "savage Nation" and presumably have all his savage followers at his beck and command to do it?

The "nation" he espouses is one only for the fittest, so "survival of the fittest" would be its motto - after Herbert Spencer - who once famously dismissed any societal obligations to needy or disabled people that often begged at alms houses for services:

"If they are sufficiently complete to live, they do live, and it is well that they should live. If they are not sufficiently complete to live, they die, and it is best that they should die."

This, we can say, is the "philosophy" of the Savage-worshipping lackeys boiled to its essence. They'd let hungry kids on food stamps starve, let poor blacks continue to rot away in urban ghettoes and get shot every night under some ruse, even as they themselves blame others for their predicaments.

Rational Wiki for perspective again:

"Savage's style and views are so outspoken, vitriolic, and hyper-masculine that even the conservative pundit Bernard Goldberg included Savage in 110 People Who Are Screwing Up America. Media Research Center founder Brent Bozell has called Savage "crazy right" and has also said: "Michael Savage is to talk radio what Jerry Springer is to talk television"

So we can well imagine what his followers are like.

In a recent dustup  circulated on Youtube ("Michael Savage tears a liberal professor to pieces") Savage harangued a professor  trying to educate him on minority presence in riots in AZ.  Like Limbaugh - Savage saw fit to use bombast and epithets ("You're full of crap!") when the prof tried to reason with him.

Incredibly, Savage's delirious followers, instead of seeing the absence of reason and logic on their hero's side, chose to dump on the prof instead. And by extension any or all who had ever taught in academia as - get this " "lording it over their students" and "giving them Ds if they don't accept what they're told".
 
Cartoon concepts, anyone?  People like this obviously never attended college, were never exposed to critical thinking. Also,  when they go so far as to assert academics "never contributed a thing, a service, or product in their lives" they leave themselves open to ridicule and sharp rejoinder. . Hmmmm....how about imparting, or trying to, fact-based knowledge and critical thinking - which if YOU had a modicum of you wouldn't be slavering after every word of a crackpot like Savage?

Following their own logic to its end conclusion:  college is value-less to everyone, since all the profs are simply blathering nonsense and "on the dole". They aren't "doing" anything.  But if that has substance why are so many going to college, even with the high debt it entails? Perhaps they realize that doing so assures higher earning power and income at the end of the day - much higher than HS grads.

As for "products" and "services" - funny, but most of those I see all around me today - from smart phones (for "selfies) to Youtube and Twitter, are merely ramping up ever more time wasting and stupidity by the users.. I mean, how many times can you take your own selfie or show kitties punching doggies on video? Oh, and then dispatch tweets about them?  Such transitory nonsense evaporates compared with the value of hard-won knowledge which most of these yahoos wouldn't recognize if it bit them in the ass.

As for "giving Ds" - I seldom ever had occasion to do so myself, unless a student really did something dumb - say like turning in a lab or physics homework and writing on top: "I ought to get an 'A' just for turning it in!". Yeppers, and in red ink! Uh, no Buster, you get a big fat D- if it's incomplete or the data is copied from someone else.

Am I "lording it" over the little imp for giving him a D-minus? Of course not! Just trying to educate him at least in the basic sense that you don't dictate grades to your physics prof! But as we know, this sort of education breeds in the babies of the right the sense of victimization and being picked on. Who? By all those bad, nasty liberals of course!

Those 'libruls' who want to take their guns and bibles away, and teach their kids about global warming and evolution.

It's sad that so much internecine strife in this country today is based on perceived victimization and demonization. But with the likes of Limbaugh, Larry Schweikart and Savage around and people not adequately trained in critical thinking, what would you expect?


See also: Test - Are You A Racist?

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/jaime-oneill/57783/are-you-a-racist-take-this-simple-test

Atheists Still Among Most Hated in US Of A - Along with Muslims

How one Reepo blogger portrayed atheists.

According to a new survey by the Pew Research Center, we now know which groups have earned the most vitriol in the good ol' US of A.. Atheists and Muslims actually appear to be in a statistical tie. While atheism itself is not a religion (it has no consistent belief system or rituals or sacred texts) it is often included in religious polls to help account for those who reject religion, instead of just non-affiliated believers. My own take, and it's just me, is that such surveys usually succumb to a dog whistle type of approach that arouses the supercilious sanctimony of most of the American faithful who thereby  invoke their fantasized moral superiority.

 But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves.

Given the absurdly  high level of xenophobia in the United States toward Muslims since 9/11,largely fueled by the Fox-heads, Murdochites and other Reich wing media,  it is not surprising, but it's still depressing to find these two groups  - containing many upstanding citizens - to be ranked so unfavorably. Worse, atheists are shuffled to the bottom and universally disliked by just about every religious group there is. WHY?

Why are  ‘Muricans so damned scared of us? Well, I suspect for the same reason they’re terrified of Ed Snowden (61% see him more as ‘traitor’ than patriot) and also because they lack the cojones to live their lives as authentic, critically thinking individuals – not merely consumers. So, they amble through the day scared of their own shadows and anything that smacks of being a threat in their little consumer toy world. They are also the toddlers who most want the NSA to change their panties for them, and keep them "safe" - probably lest those nasty Muslims and atheists come after them.

 But that's just my jaundiced view and it could be wrong, or an over-generalization. Anyway, let's get to the finer details.

Among those polled, atheists received a rating of 33 or lower (on a scale between 0-100) from 40 percent of respondents and only 20 percent of respondents gave atheists a rating higher than 67. (I warrant that this 20 percent are actually among the upper quintile of I.Q. in the country, that is, roughly 120 on the Wechsler scale. Hence, the vast majority dissing atheists are uniformly DENSAN.)

Interestingly, while many tend to conflate the U.S. with its evangelical Christian base, Jews and Catholics ranked the highest on the list. Noted Hemant Mehta on the Friendly Atheist blog:

“[…] When you removed Evangelicals from the survey, their own approval rating dropped from 61 to 52, suggesting that Evangelicals think much more highly of themselves than the rest of us do.”

What makes that so interesting is no other groups in the poll have that kind of drop if you remove them from the list. Meaning they may have less political leverage than even they believe. But again, this isn't terribly surprising. As the old cliché goes: "The squeaky wheel always gets the attention" and the evangelicals have received top political attention for so long precisely because they keep so much noise.  Jews and Catholics would more likely be favored because together they comprise more of the populace, and are also much less obnoxious than evangelicals.

But dishearteningly, the data also shows that no religious group likes atheists very much, and also atheists and  evangelicals both seem to be the archenemies of the US religious spectrum, ranking each other under 30 on the scale. I believe in the case of the fundies it's probably because they're so obnoxious with their 'Elmer Gantry' style mode of proselytizing. In the case of the atheist, I believe most critics are simply terrified of us - well, because people by nature fear what they don't understand and most haven't a clue what an atheist really is. (Many imagining the depiction in the graphic)

When it comes to the political demographic, Republicans really hate atheists, which they ranked at 34. The only group Republicans hate more are Muslims, which they ranked one point lower at 33.  This is not surprising, really, because we all know repukes are the most intellectually bankrupt, infantile, anti-scientific, and xenophobic bunch there is in the USA while atheists are among the most scientific, intelligent and independent thinking.  Hence, a mutual hatred would be expected!

Naturally also, among Republicans the stock of evangelicals soared, to a ranking 71, a full 4 points over the second spot held by Jews. This also is not surprising since an anti-scientific, regressive and knuckle-dragger party would naturally be enamored of a religious group that most reflects its anti-scientific, knuckle-dragger values. Or as they say in Barbados, “scheit stick to scheit”.

Democrats were slightly more favorable to atheists, but not by much. They ranked them 46, pushing Mormons under at 44, but were slightly more trusting of Muslims at 47. This also is not too surprising given most Dems today are nominal and basically unthinking  toadies of the corporate state. Since consumption and making money are what’s most important to them, they would not trust a group that appears so “anti-American”, i.e. as to refuse belief in a deity.  (Besides still believing that “most atheists gotta be commies”)

Why is hatred for atheists so universal? This is far from the first poll to suggest that atheists are the most hated religious group (or non-religious group) in the US. For reference, a  2011 poll found that US citizens trusted atheists on par with rapists. With this kind of fervent hatred and distrust, what does the future hold for a group so hated in their own country? Not much – and I would advise any atheist who wants to run for office to latch onto a Potemkin religion – just for show – first. The large native nitwit populace certainly won’t cast votes for you otherwise, even if you’re running for the school board!

 Earlier, in March of 2006, a University of Minnesota study by Penny Edgell, Associate Professor of Sociology, and co-authors, Doug Hartmann and Joseph Gerteis  disclosed that atheists occupied  the bottom rung of social respect for minorities in American society. At that time, we were regarded as contemptuously as communists were in the 50s, and rated in social worth below Muslims, immigrants and homosexuals.[1]

The 2006 study noted that a significant number of respondents associated atheism with an array of moral misbehavior, including criminality and materialist emphasis. In addition, the findings “seemed to rest on a view of atheists as self-interested individuals who are not concerned with the common good.”[2] 

This take is nothing short of astounding given that as a nation and people, Americans are notorious for giving short shrift to the “common good” as evidenced by consistently voting for no-tax, low tax or tax cutting candidates. This despite the fact they know the outcome will starve government of the resources needed to advance the needs of the vulnerable, such as the 17 million kids currently on food stamps - and deprived of enough food because of last December's cuts to food stamps. Seems to me then that these Americans are projecting their own self-interest, miserliness and disrespect for the common good on atheists! We know that this psychological projection is a common device when people feel inferior to, or bested by another group. So they project their own defects onto the hated, perceived superior group.

The truer fact is that Americans (especially the Reeptard crowd who are hardest on atheists)  may not like to confront, is that the U.S. has been committed to a rugged individualism since the country’s founding. The historic confluence of free market capitalism (exalting such individualism) and evangelical Christianity probably occurred in the U.S. ca. 1885 with the publication of the Rev. Josiah Strong's book Our Country, Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis, [3]

As author Richard Hofstadter notes, the acceptance of Social Darwinism in the U.S. coincided with the visit of Herbert Spencer in 1882, for a speaking tour. Spencer, for those unaware, was a British philosopher who sought to extend the principles of natural selection in Darwinian Evolution, to society as a whole.  As Hofstadter also points out[4], Spencer absolutely repudiated all state assistance to the poor, needy, physically feeble, or infirm. In terms of the role of natural selection in “social evolution” such aid amounted to unwanted artificial interference in nature. Not to mention, meddling in the “natural development” of a superior society.

We know the Rightist-corporate elite (including many of the ‘robber barons’) latched on to this as a kind of dogma, and then performed another “miracle” of sorts, by blending this hyper-individualism with Christian virtue (proto-Calvinism and its work ethic), and a strict, constructionist view of The Constitution.  That Americans forget this basis for rejecting the common good in the national zeitgeist, while blaming atheists for it, is nothing short of amazing in terms of hypocritical acrobatics. Or it perhaps discloses a tragic absence of historical knowledge or perspective. (Or psychological projection as I already noted.)

In general, the respondents believed they “shared a basic sense of moral right and wrong” with everyone but atheist fellow citizens. Difficult to comprehend when the bulk of those actually in prison for major felonies are members of one religion or the other! And this study emerged after more than 30 years, during which Americans have been led to believe by their media that the seeds of social tolerance had finally sprouted.

 That  these "Americans", who pride themselves as being inheritors of the principles of liberty from John Stuart Mill, Franklin, Jefferson and others, could descend to such an abominable level of prejudice was appalling in itself.  That it could still manifest in the 21^st century is even more outrageous.

Of course, author Morris Berman has noted another, more depressing alternative: that graciousness, tolerance and humanity may no longer be possible in a nation (in the words of Nicholas von Hoffman) rife with a collection of “asses, dolts and blockheads.”[5] A people that choose to live in a self-fabricated  consumer and media fantasyland, or a bubble cut off from all reality. The question is why any sane, rational and well-informed atheist should take a cue from such a forlorn lot or allow their prejudices to dictate future behavior.

The only response of a rational atheist is to laugh these demented yokels off and make common cause with the Europeans who at least have grown up enough (most of them) to doff the religious nappies..

---

[1] University of Minnesota News, March 31, 2006, “Atheists Identified as America’s Most Distrusted Minority, According to new U of M Study.”

[2] Ibid.

[3] See, e.g. ‘The Vogue of Spencer’, Chapter 2, in Richard Hofstadter: Social Darwinism in American Thought, American Historical Association, 1955.

[4] Op. cit., pp. 41- 42.

[5] Morris Berman: Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire, W.W. Norton & Co.. page 282. Berman cites a number of authors, including Hoffman, who agree most Americans live in a bubble divorced from reality and take their truth directly from an untrustworthy government or corporate media allied with them, rather than finding it out by their own research and independent thinking.