The Bell Curve

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The Bell Curve is a controversial 1994 book by psychologist Richard Herrnstein and marketist political scientist Charles Murray.

The "most provicative claims in the book" are^[1]:

Human “general intelligence” is a scientifically valid concept.
IQ tests do a pretty good job of measuring it.
A person’s IQ is highly predictive of his/her success in life.
Mean IQ differs across populations (blacks < whites < Asians).
It isn’t known to what degree differences in IQ are genetically determined, but it seems safe to say that genes play a role (and also safe to say that environment does too).

Items 1 and 2, at a minimum, have been pretty well refuted; RationalWiki has a pretty thorough analysis.

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↑
2018-03-27 Ezra Klein: Editor-in-Chief
- related: 2018-03-29 For someone who doesn’t like to be called a racist, Sam Harris sure writes a lot of racist stuff (via)

[klein-1] 2018-03-27 Ezra Klein: Editor-in-Chief
related: 2018-03-29 For someone who doesn’t like to be called a racist, Sam Harris sure writes a lot of racist stuff (via)

[2] related: 2018-03-29 For someone who doesn’t like to be called a racist, Sam Harris sure writes a lot of racist stuff (via)

[1]

The Bell Curve

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