He was asked about this at Middlebury college in a private discussion recorded in a bunker -- after the students (and faculty) 'protestors' would not let him speak in the lecture hall.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmvHt...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6EAS...

In the private discussion he said that more is known now about different relevant individual genes than was known when he wrote the book in terms of a general genetic inheritance, and said that the additional knowledge would affect how he worded his conclusions but not the essence. He wasn't not 'racist' in any way.

The private discussion in the bunker was between Charles Murray and a liberal professor who had worked in the Obama administration. She was hospitalized with a concussion after being attacked by some of the 'protestors' for talking to Murray. The chickens have come home to roost. https://www.facebook.com/allison.stan...

You could watch the recording of the discussion in the bunker -- complete with 'protestors' banging on the doors trying to get in to assault them -- at http://www.middlebury.edu/newsroom/ar... -- except that the college has now blocked access to that, too.

His latest book, "Coming Apart" is basically a sequel to The Bell Curve. Much data at the beginning to muscle through but it's worth the brain fatigue. :)

IQ is an individualist measurement and not a group measurement and cannot be something such as "have the highest IQ". Groups have nothing. Only individual members of a group possess attributes which can loosely be applied to a group by collectivists. Statistics on groups do not apply to individuals. E.g., from the well known example of drug testing: statistically, sampling shows that 5% of a population uses a particular drug and sampling shows that a drug test for that particular drug is 95% accurate. Some poor slob is accused of using the the drug and the test shows a positive result. Should he be found guilty of using the drug? If one goes by the statistical accuracy of the test one would have 95% chance of having used the drug. But, if one looks at it from an individual point of view, which should be the only way to judge the case, one would find that the poor slob had only a 50-50 chance of having used the drug. To find that, make a sample space and do the calculations.
I read The Bell curve a couple of times 20 years ago and could no see what the collectivists were talking about. Time for everyone, and especially here in the Gulch to drop any belief that race even exists. No need anywhere for grouping individuals in racial groups such as in "Black Caucuses" or in religious groupings or other for-me-or-against-me groups. Just see individuals. They are hard enough to deal with.

Thanks!

There are no races in our species. Race is a social construct based on self identification (OK) or others identification of you (not OK).

There is no genetic test for race, just ancestry regional likelihood that is not certain.

Alex, Donway has done much research on this and I believe articles that might be in here. Let me bring him into the conversation.
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Let's get ethnic for a moment. Most everyone has grown up with kids who were always a few steps behind the other kids.Some may have been abused, or autistic, but there always seemed to be a "Nutsy Fagan" or "Moishe Pippik" in the crowds.Some of them remained the kid whose elevator never made it to the top, but what confounded both the geneticists and racists is that many of these persons just grew up to be like everyone else and even in some cases leaders in their field. I have an aquaintance that I've known since childhood. Looking back, I think he had what's currently described as ADHD. He barely made it through school,bout- long story short he went into business and became a leader in his field bringing his company up from virtually nothing to the 2nd largest globally. Personally, I think there is a genetic component. But it crosses all racial lines, just as there is a genetic component to physicality, or musical ability, or ability to express oneself. To be science - accurate it needs to be proven through scientific method, hence the Bell Curve, we all know the difference. The kid who played the piano by ear, the kid who could think in terms of math, the kid who could never tie his shoes.

Yes, I read it back in '95 during the first controversy just to see what all the fuss is about. I still have it in my library and, if I get the time, I may read it again. There is a tremendous amount of detail that I have since forgotten, but the gist regarding race (a small part of the book) was all races have morons and geniuses with a mean center of the bell that shifts a bit when race data are compared to each other. One of the indications of the data is there is a reasonably strong genetic component where parental IQ (high or low) will most likely get passed on to the next generation, apparently regardless of race. Knowing that, presumably interracial parents will also pass their IQ on to the next generation. As I recall, interestingly, the IQ of the mother is more likely to get passed than the IQ of the father. None of this is 100%, of course, because higher IQ parents can birth lower IQ children and vice versa.

Murray & Herrnstein were mainly messengers of a data set. Frying them politically out of hand because you don't like the data is... well... very low IQ. On the other hand, frying them because you have political power and wealth to gain may be pretty smart, if unethical.

In the end I think IQ is an important subset of the human gene pool, but it isn't the only one. "The Bell Curve" explores the apparent effect of IQ in human endeavor, but there are other bell curves of talents and abilities that are not studied between its covers. I figure most people who are protesting Murray at this time have never read the book and are really clueless of what it actually reports and discusses. There are "smart" charlatans at work here. I came to that same conclusion in '95.

I read the book many years ago so my recollection might be a bit fuzzy. Suggesting that IQ is wholly or partially genetic makes perfect sense to me. It's why certain cultures survived and others did not. What happened to Mr. Murray and the host professor at Middlebury College is a clear signal to me that the gap between the haves and have-nots (created mostly by and exacerbated by a fundamentally flawed monetary policy) has become painfully obvious and the 99%-ers are getting ready to erupt in larger numbers than ever before in my lifetime. Mr. Murray points out in his most recent book, "Coming Apart" how education, marriage, etc... affects one's lot in life. He does this with expert research over a number of years. The fact that an unusual proportion of lower income producers might be a certain ethnicity doesn't make him a racist as much as it makes him a competent scientist.

Charles Murray did in fact revisit "The Bell Curve" twenty years after its publication.

http://www.aei.org/publication/bell-c...

I believe he feels that subsequent science developments have reinforced his initial conclusions.

...and, to continue, i have trained students from every culture and region of the world...there is a vast difference in how minds of individuals think based on the culture they are brought up in...but, again, they can adapt...to different culture and different mindsets...based on the average individual's ability...IQ just means faster or slower..not necessarily better...it gives the higher IQ a short term advantage...which can be a disadvantage, if the higher IQ relies on just the higher IQ to "get by"...

again, the "best" culture or civilization is the one that respects the "rights of the individual" and allows freedom to flourish...

Good thing Eric Hoffer is not around to speak at colleges. His observations would elicit more violent protests than those against Murray. If his work is without bias, then the left is shooting the messenger. With that in mind, watch the Mike Judge film Idiocracy. You should laugh but also may cry as you see the decline of society when only stupid (mainly white) people breed. Enjoy!

although i have not read "The Bell Curve", it deals with probability analysis and randomness...the better book to read would be "Against the Gods" by Bernstein.

IQ does not represent intelligence, just the potential ability to acquire information at a greater pace than the average person. Mozart was born "gifted" and creative. There are "elite" athletes. But the rise of civilization was due to the individuals of lesser abilities who were free to succeed.

With that said, i have been an instructor pilot in the Air Force and at American Airlines...and i teach others how to trade the stock market. I have come across many different types of individuals, how males learn vs females (i headed the program in 1975 to bring women into pilot training for the Air Force and the Navy).

What the bell curve is telling you is that the top 5% "gets it" and the bottom 5% never will...those of us inbetween can learn it if we apply ourselves. Our ability to learn trumps the potential.

I have had new traders simply look at a market chart and "get it". When i ask them to explain how...they can't. It just makes sense to them. They can be successful traders if they learn how to "systematize" what they are seeing...but they can bust out just like those who will never be successful traders.

Once again, i applaud Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden for their epistemology of individualism and their objective philosophy and understanding of the uniqueness of the individual in life and the potential for all us to better ourselves by being free to succeed, regardless of the potential we are born with...more importantly, we are born with the ability to succeed if we are left alone and not herded into groups.

The book simply expresses Murray's views. It's largely useless data. There is no more importance than that. I see no proof for anything he says but in fact quite the opposite. That's my view.

My background is not in psych either. But I do like something I've read about design and context of intelligence testing...
If you take an individual from an indigenous jungle tribe and test with a standard western IQ test, they would likely have low score. If you take any modern western individual, and put into a jungle alone, they would likely not survive well. That does not mean either one is "inferior" to the other, its about context.

I am skeptical. I think the book says that Ashkenazi Jews have the highest IQ and this is somehow set. If that is the case, how come the brightest people in the world were Greek in 200 BC? And how come the Chinese were probably the smartest in the 1300s and the Italians in the 1400 and the british in the 1600-1800 and the people from the US in the 1900s?

Yes, when it first came out in 1994. I still have it in my library. However, I don't remember enough specifics to comment.

I've read it three times. Simply because one names an inconvenient fact does not make one a racist! Murray and Hernstein also made the point that there are hundreds of thousands of black people in this country with IQs greater than 130. They also emphasized that factors other than simply IQ matter, and made suggestions on how the difference might be partially ameliorated. And supposedly, northern Asians average IQs three points higher than average Caucasian scores. I should add that I think that cultural standards--or lack thereof--also contribute mightily to crime and unemployment, as well as other social ills. One other point: I've read a couple of other books on the subject, and many experts seem to agree that IQ is 40-60% genetic. I haven't heard any of them being called racists....

I would not expect much change in such a short period of time. While everything is evolving, the process of evolution in most cases is extremely slow.

I haven not read the book, but I have a few comments on your summary/questions.

- Is 40%-80% of IQ genetic?
It rings true for me. My suspicion is if a child is abused or neglected, it could have a huge impact. Once you provide for them and don't abuse them, the genetic components begin to take over. So you get a lot of benefit not abusing kids but not much further benefit from giving them the very best education, environment, etc.

- Is there an IQ disparity according to race?
I suspect there may be but the correlation is not large enough to be useful. If you take a bunch of arbitrary traits (e.g. height, body dimension ratios, etc) and compare them with performance on various tests (e.g. IQ test), you can find some correlations. Suppose we find that short people are better at math and tall people are better at remembering faces. The correlation won't be strong enough to consider only short candidates when hiring for a mathematical job.

Does the book address the merits of the IQ test itself? Performance on the test itself is a useless ability. We're interested in it to the extent it reveals something scientific or correlates with other things such as ability to run a business, ability to reason, etc.

"shouldn't liberals love Charles Murray?"
Even more today than when I first heard about the book 20 years ago, it seems like people approach scientific questions starting with their desired answer.

Many lines of hominids with differences in size, appearance, and abilities coexisted on earth. It wasn't a simple march of evolution as grade-school posters about evolution suggest. All modern homo sapiens appear to have a common ancestry, but what we find out that the last common ancestor was before anatomically modern humans appear? Maybe the races predate anatomical modernity and have different abilities on average because of it. That would be very exciting. As a scientifically-minded person, I don't get what's in it for liberals and conservatives. I understand it if they're getting paid to write commentary saying society is unjust/just, the races are the same/different, or just anything to fire people up emotionally so they watch the ads. Most people are not getting paid that way, so I don't get what's in it for them. Reasonable disinterested people should only want the truth.

He published it in 1994... it would be interesting to see an updated version that reflects the past 23 years. My prediction is that the gap between those of the highest levels of cognitive ability and lowest levels has continued to widen in the past 2 decades.

awebb, Your short summary of Murray is right on. Mr. Shipley is also right on the mark. In our politically correct world it is deemed appropriate to ignore science, in this case genetics, and espouse whatever you "feel" ought to be, and never resort to factual evidence. It took a lot of courage for Charles Murray to publish his book.

Thanks for weighing in anyway. Your right inline with what Murray demonstrates in the book. Using a variety of studies over the past 40-50 years, he shows that many social ills (ex. illegitimacy, crime, child neglect/abuse, etc.) are highly clustered at the lower end of the cognitive ability distribution (regardless of race). While the media would have you believe that these problems are evenly distributed among all individuals, it simply isn't true.

I have not read the book but have some insight into its discussion. I support the premise that there is a genetic tendency for inherited intelligence. Smart people tend to have smart kids and the converse. There are ALWAYS exceptions. For the most part the current "social justice" movement is an effort to camouflage the hypothesis that the people most affected have lower IQ'a than the non-affected aka white middle class. Many years ago I got into a discussion with a close friend who was an elementary school principal in Ann Arbor, MI. She talked about some of the problem kids in her school and what her efforts were to resolve the issues. After several home visits her statement to me : "My God, it IS genetic" has stuck me with all these years. While this is N=1 political correctness will not allow this discussion or any relevant studies to explore this paradigm - sadly.

One has to be exceedingly careful about the comment about an IQ disparity between people. It's much more accurate to say that the means of the two populations are different. Assumptions about individual people cannot be made using statistical differences between groups.

So, you can't use a statistical difference between the means to discriminate against someone. You also cannot use a statistical difference between the means of results to prove there was discrimination. (What is commonly done).

This is an incredibly hot button subject. There is a real world and a real answer. Whether we like it or not shouldn't matter -- but it matters a lot!