More on tenure and toddlers

Let us take upon our round shoulders for a moment the mantle of yer average dragknuckle right winger.

Imagine that we believe that intelligence and general superiority is inherited. Stands to reason, what?

Acknowledge that a good many useful professions, such as academia, the arts, government work, science research and maybe even schoolteaching, do not pay enough money to support a family.

Then you have to include that the stupid will steadily overwhelm us all, as the Good People fail to breed. And of course all those civilised households of learning friendly adults are not passing on their quaint habits of reading and discussion.

Then the bloody hoi polloi will rule, right? And they’re probably not even proper white people.. and certainly not pukka.

Of course it is not true – ability is more complex than that, and smart people can be recruited from a wider social group. But it is true that we will see a steady decrease in second generation ideas workers – and that’s probably not such a good idea.

And let’s face it – we already know from the experience of our various communities that being an ideas worker for many people does preclude children (unless ones partner is contributing heaps or someone’s forebears are rich)..

And that just fills me with terrible sadness.

““Imagine that we believe that intelligence and general superiority is inherited. Stands to reason, what?””

“No, it doesn’t, and thank God, because if your argument was true democracy would be a fraud.

See: Gould, S. J., “The Mismeasure of Man.””

Gould wrote books about many topics, and even knew a great deal about some of them, but “The Mismeasure of Man” is not one of those books. His expertise no more qualified him to write with authority on the heritability of intelligence than it did on string theory or linguistic analysis.

A substantial part of intelligence is heritable, but regression toward the mean prevails over time; biology is no threat to democracy.

Er, not sure what my point is in the previous comment, other than to snark at a bit of the post that I thought was sloppily written. I’m certainly not denying that things have changed — it’s the same in the sciences — and I appreciate that the original post wasn’t necessarily about the underlying cause of those changes.

Chun, I doubt this will convince you, but, sadly, The Mismeasure of Man is one of Gould’s worst books. It’s filled with straw-man arguments, ignores the existing evidence, and picks & chooses who he will argue against. For example, Gould omits any mention of the eugenicists of the left, such as Margaret Sanger.

I would recommend Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate instead.

not to get all “Alan Bloom”-ish, but it saddens me that, in philosophy departments, of all places, we find the same constraints as elsewhere on women and men who want a realistic shot at balancing childraising with a meaningful academic career (so I say, typing onehanded with a wriggling monsterlet trying to escape my cluches, and a long-neglected article in another window on the screen). If anyone could tell us how to live a worthwhile life, rich and satisfying in every possible respect, it would be philosophers, no? We love wisdom, after all, and strive to live examined lives. But these days we don’t turn to philosophers and their recent writings to learn about the care of the soul. Instead we read about supervenience or whether a sufficiency criterion constrains the feasibility of a just saving principle. Interesting stuff, to be sure, but when we read these articles they aren’t often from people with kids _and_ a life partner who is also in academia. My wife and I are trying to figure out a way for both of us to have meaningful academic work and a home worth living in, but it does sadden me that institutionalized philosophy (as opposed to institutionalized philosophers!) doesn’t help me in these efforts more or less than any other official scholarly community. So much for a philosophy of life.

ooo! the little guy looks tired — might be nap time = an hour of writing and course prep. Or laundry.

Aside from my jokey start about knuckle dragging and inheritance – which led to what I thought was an interesting skirmish about Gould (cos I think the book is defensible in some places) – I wanted to add to Anthony’s remark.

A huge part of the underlying problem, at least here in Australia, is about sustaining a balanced humanistic society. Smart engineers don’t learn history; clever technocrats are monolingual. Professional life involves engagement with public debate. Builders on the plains of heaven need philosophers, as Loren so poignantly shows.

Technocrats who work here are just as miffed as liberal arts people – we just worship sports. Undervalued is underpaid and it shows in family formation.

David–

This is just anecdotal, but here’s my experience: I’m a US lawyer with lots of lawyer friends. All of them have good salaries–in some cases, exceptionally good. A surprising number do not plan on having any children. Those who do plan on having children–still a majority, if only slight–plan to have only one or, at most, two.

Those who have the highest salaries tend to be those who do not plan any children.

Perhaps there’s something in the water? The fancy sparkling bottled water…

We need Thomas to have lots of babies to get over being dispirited.

And Fred, this is the broadest level of generalisation, of course – and you are absolutely right about the antitechnocrats in my liberal arts mob although they take to computer applications like demons. I work sometimes for CSIRO (in my liberal arts capacity, tee hee..), which has a heap of very widely cultured people..

And I want the rest of your URL, if you have one.. please?

Chun dismissive reply is noteworthy for its failure to address any of criticisms of “The Mismeasure of Man.” Scientific criticism (Chun reports that he likes scientists) was widespread from the book’s publication, appearing in peer reviewed journals ranging from Science to Nature to Applied Psychological Measurement. Briefly stated, the crtitiques make several points:

1. The book’s claim that many have misused evidence of the heritability of intelligence to push racist political agendas is obviously true but just as obviously irrelevant to the question of whether a portion of intelligence is heritable.

2. The book’s claim that science is inherently biased because the work of scientists reflects “the unconscious and very personal prejudices of the scientists themselves” is a trivial observation that could as easily be directed at Gould. Writ large, it is the stuff of Stanley Aronowitz and his ilk (someone should write a book called the mismeasure of Kuhn), and it is the kind of superficial analysis that gives bullshit such a bad name.

3. Brigham and Goddard richly deserve the criticism that Gould levels, but so what; tossing aside the work of everyone for the sins of Brigham and Goddard makes about as much sense as rejecting modern astronomy because Ptolemy and Aristotle claimed the universe was geocentric.

4. Factor analysis is not evil; it is a quantitative method with limits, and its value lies in the skills of those who use it. The misuse of quantitative analysis is neither new (Mark Twain) nor unique to factor analysis.

5. Whether intelligence is a single characteristic or a set of characteristics makes for interesting arguments, but the resolution of that argument has no bearing on the underlying question of heritability.

To suggest that some component of intelligence is heritable is not to suggest that all intelligence is heritable, or that intelligence is distributed differently among identifiable groups of people; it is merely to suggest that it does not randomly emerge from the ether, like pixie dust sprinkled by fairies.

Finally, a note about scientists. Chun writes:

“One of the things I enjoy about scientists is how, in general, they avoid stupid varieties of credentialism: “this professor may be brilliant in linguistics, but he obviously knows nothing of the received findings in political science,” etc.”

The key word in that sentence is “stupid.” Credentials matter, not because they prove the worth of an idea, but because they are a useful sorting mechanism; when someone posts that he has proven Riemann’s hypothesis, or that he discovered that Einstein erred by claiming that matter cannot exceed the speed of light, I am more likely to take his claim seriously enough to read his work if he makes the claim in a peer reviewed journal rather than on the Free Republic. None of us can master every discipline; it is hard enough to keep up with our own. This blog stands out among the many because its writers have earned credentials and produce work worthy of those credentials. That is why my bookmarks include Timber but not the Free Republic. But if someone publishes the proof of Riemann’s hypothesis on the Free Republic and the proof stands up to analysis, I will take it just as seriously as if it had been published in a refereed journal.