Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!husc6!harvard!ksr!alcatraz!benson
From: benson@alcatraz.UUCP
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,sci.bio
Subject: Re: Knowledge and the Academics
Message-ID: <167@ksr.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 18-Jun-87 07:42:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: ksr.167
Posted: Thu Jun 18 07:42:38 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 20-Jun-87 01:49:16 EDT
References: <16224@brahms.Berkeley.EDU> <160200002@inmet> <2172@mmintl.UUCP> <123@snark.UUCP>
Sender: nobody@ksr.UUCP
Reply-To: benson@ksr.UUCP (Benson Margulies)
Organization: Kendall Square Research, Cambridge MA
Lines: 47
Xref: utgpu sci.philosophy.tech:178 sci.bio:392

In article <123@snark.UUCP> eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) writes:
>In article <2172@mmintl.UUCP>, franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) writes:
>> I am curious about why "is intelligence heritable?" was included in this
>> list.  This seems to me to be very much a scientific question, albeit one we
>> can't really answer yet.
>
>Intelligence is *extremely* heritable. The results that show this are solid
>but not as well known as they might be due to the fact that hereditarianism
>in general is out of fashion and 'politically incorrect'.
>
>Empirical evidence: the I.Q. and aptitudes of identical twins raised apart are
>quite strongly correlated -- sorry, I don't have numerical statistics handy.
>

That is, Cyril Burt, who invented his data, as documented in the Gould
book and elsewhere.


>All of this data is discussed, from a strongly environmentarian viewpoint,
>in Stephen Jay Gould's _The_Mismeasure_of_Man_ -- a book I recommend for
>facts and style while disagreeing almost totally with its analysis and
>conclusions. Gould is a fine and lucid writer when his Marxist sympathies
>are dormant.
>

I'm not a statistician, but I know enough about it to find Gould and a
host of other plausible. You might considered submitting a CV for
consideration.

In any case, I'll throw a different two cents in: I'll believe that
some intelligence is inheritable. I won't believe, and am strongly
convinced of the pseudo-scientific quality of the "studies" that
"prove", that blacks (or any other 'race') as a class are less
intelligent.

Most of the heat of the heredity versus environment debate is
generated by the curious fact that the publishing hereditatians keep
"proving" such racial factoids.

Herrenstein and Burt were/are grinding axes, so they have no one else
to blame if they get the same in return.

--benson

Benson I. Margulies                         Kendall Square Research Corp.
harvard!ksr!benson			    All comments the responsibility
ksr!benson@harvard.harvard.edu		    of the author, if anyone.