Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (A Free Press Paperbacks Book) |...

Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (A Free Press Paperbacks Book) | Richard J. Herrnstein, Charles Murray | Intriguing

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Bell Curve: Intell...

	Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (A Free Press Paperbacks Book) Richard J. Herrnstein, Charles Murray Free Press, 1996 - 912 pages average customer review:based on 193 reviews view larger image
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This data analysis still holds up 12 years later.

The Media considered this class="textlinks">book controversial. But, this book opened up to the public what the specialists (psychometricians) already knew. In 1995, 52 of them signed a statement, "Mainstream Science on Intelligence," which fully supported Herrnstein and Murray (H & M). Also, the book is leveraging the extensive research from a well known psychometrician, Arthur Jensen from Berkeley.

The book is extensive but easy to digest. The authors impart the information at different levels. For the casual reader in a hurry, they wrote abstracts of each chapter in italic so one could cover the entire material in not much more than an hour. For the interested layperson, the book is structured in readable chapters amounting to 550 pages. And, for the committed reader including specialists the authors added 200 pages of notes and appendices.

Twelve years after this book was published all of H & M findings still hold true. This is especially the case when looking at SAT scores and college acceptance levels of different ethnic groups. Recent research by Arthur Jensen continues to support this book's main findings. H & M were aware that some of the topics they covered were controversial. Thus, their analytical methodology was most rigorous including extensive use of Logistic Regression. In the appendices they disclosed all their statistical results so one could double check their interpretation of the data.

The book is divided in four parts. Part I discloses that our society is stratified by intelligence levels. This is true in education and the work place. The Ivy League schools are harder to get in than they used to be. The entry to the professions (lawyers, doctors, professors, engineers, etc...) is increasingly competitive as they are populated by individuals with ever higher IQ. H & M state this upward stratification of cognitive ability is market driven. The economic returns are so much higher in hiring top performers vs just above average ones.

Part II reveals that regardless of ethnicity different cognitive classes are associated with different behaviors. Intelligent individuals experience lower rate of poverty, unemployment, divorce, and welfare dependency. They also incur lower high school and college drop out rates vs not so intelligent individuals. H & M found that IQ had a far stronger association with behavioral outcomes (unemployed, etc...) than socio economic background.

Part III divulged that ethnic groups have different IQ levels. Doing a meta analysis of all available studies, H & M observed an average difference of one standard deviation (15 points) between the IQ of whites (100) and blacks (85). Arthur Jensen, in his authoritative tome "The g Factor" documented an even larger difference. As predicated by H & M study in Part II, such a difference implies different social outcomes. Many of these outcomes (higher unemployment rate, lower wages, etc...) are attributed to racial discrimination. But, H & M observed that these differences in social outcomes disappear once adjusted for cognitive ability. When focusing on individuals with the same IQ the gap between blacks and whites wages disappears. The authors concluded that our society differentiates between different cognitive ability levels and not between race.

Part IV reviews all the policy efforts we have taken to reduce the mentioned gap in IQ. The authors indicate that most policies (special education programs, Head Start) have not fared well in terms of sustainable narrowing in IQ gap. The authors review the impact of Affirmative Action in higher education and the workplace. They have no reservation with the concept but only with its flawed implementation. They observed that among 25 of the most selective universities, the average black SAT score was 180 points below whites. The authors indicate that such a disparity in cognitive ability has isolated the black community within these elite universities. The authors suggest that a more appropriate matching of black students' ability and college competitiveness would result in higher graduation rate and more successful social outcomes. Within the workplace they noticed a wide discrepancy in capabilities and job performance between ethnic groups. They expressed concerned that hiring practices associated with Affirmative Action has implication on the quality of the delivery of key services such as education (teachers), and law enforcement (police officers).

The authors convey an ominous vision in one of the last chapters: The Custodial State. The Government will recognize the existence of a growing and permanent underclass with no potential for upward mobility. Government childcare will replace many family responsibilities for this unable underclass. Per the author: "strict policing and custodial responses to crime will become acceptable." The Custodial State is a high-tech lavish version of today's Indian reservation.

In the last chapter, the authors offer their benign alternative to the Custodial State: A Place for Everyone (APE). Saddly, APE seems as utopic as it is desirable. APE is a return to the communal spirit of our agrarian days when all different cognitive classes worked harmoniously together. The authors advocate a simplification in the tax code and legal code so all could abide and follow them. That's highly unlikely. Both codes are becoming increasingly complex. This in turn accentuates the isolation of the highest cognitive class from the lowest. It is unclear what will change that.

If you are interested in this topic, I also strongly recommend "The g Factor" by Arthur Jensen that was published four years after this book. Arthur Jensen is considered the most authoritative scientist on the study of cognitive ability.

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Intriguing

This class="textlinks">book may not be the most direct or blunt book about IQ, but its popularity made it instrumental in changing the signposts of what is considered legitimate discussion on the topic today.

First, to clear out a misconception. This book is not primarily about Race. It only touches on race indirectly because race is an intractible part of society and reality today. H&M (Herrnstein and Murray) bend over backwards to exclude race from their analysis when they can. When trying to show the relationship between Intelligence and Income, they first limit themselves to WHITES ONLY so that the argument of racial discrimination cannot arise. Then they appply this to welfare, education, poverty single-parenthood...just about anything of concern to society at large today.

The relationship is clear. People with high IQ succeed (on the average), low IQs have a heightened risk of pathology and welfare dependence (once again on the average).

Of course this has to be applied to the thorny problem of racial differences in average IQ as well. And thats what many of the negative reviews concentrate on. Nonetheless it is a fact that the major races differ in average IQ, and this leads them to statistically different life outcomes.

One gripe I have about the book is what H&M call their "relentlessly moderate" tone. Reality is not relentlessly moderate. By that I mean there is no such thing as "sitting on the fence" in this case. For example they seem to argue for quotas (affirmative action) in quite a few places. To say they dont is obfuscation. However I realize this is necessary to be considered a "scholorary work" in todays political and social climate.

Overall whatever your views, this book will be of interest to any honest reader. Simply because it does more to argue any position, it lays out a plethora of data on Intelligence, its origins and its impact on the modern world.

Highly Recommended.

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Scholarly, Non-PC Study

This is a fascinating though disturbing read. Herrnstein and Murray have produced a collection of well documented trends and facts which don't bode well for America. One can just look around and see these trends playing out daily. According to H&M low IQ is often connected to bad behavior and choices. Many people lack the intelligence to extrapolate the consequences of their actions. This may be true though moral decline, apathy, and general coarseness are probably larger contributors to societal ills. Naturally those within the lower deciles of intelligence tend to cause the most problems for themselves and society. (Lower decile does NOT refer to Down Syndrome or otherwise impaired individuals!) As an overall ethnic group blacks have the lowest average IQ. This seems borne out in the profusion of generational welfare, dismissiveness toward education, sexual promiscuity/rampant illegitimacy, use and sale of illegal drugs, violent crime, and degradation within this group. Yet this wasn't the case in the first half of this century. Chalk it up to LBJ's Great Society welfare debacle which debuted in the 1960's. Guaranteed welfare rewards unacceptable behavior. It also reinforces a victim mentality and sense of entitlement over education and work. At any rate the NLSY indicates average IQ among blacks hovering well below Asians and Caucasians. Note that critics connect lower scores to the lingering effects of slavery and racism among American blacks. Yet African blacks have low scores as well so is the legacy of slavery/racism a viable issue? Whites don't get off the hook either. H&M note that "three-quarters of all white illegitimate births are to women below average in IQ, and 45% are to women with IQs under 90." They (white women) have poor job prospects, poor maternal skills, and the outlook for their offspring is no better than the aforementioned blacks. The huge influx of uneducated, highly fertile immigrants plus increasing dullness within our own population suggests a frightening downward spiral. No remedies are anticipated.

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The best book about intelligence ever!

I'm really perplex, one review of mine was retired. I really would like to
Know why!
If I were offensive against any people I'm sorry.
I've noticed that people only want to read good things about them as if the real world it
wasn't real at all. It's a pity because they fool themselves living as they were in a kind of
Disney Land, trying to push the dust under the carpet, and avoiding to face the truth.
About this class="textlinks">book I affirm my conviction that It is a superb book, the best one about this
Subject ever written (intelligence), I'm sure all human beings should read It all around the globe to discover and learn more about our future in this planet since our future it depends directly from intelligence. I only have one more thing to say, I really don't believe the authors wrote this book with any racist purpose, It's just a scientific very well written book, when we avoid to face It we act like Catholic Church trying to force Galileo Galilee to admit the planet earth as the center of the universe (what was a complete absurd). When Black men say they can play basketball better than us, nobody has stood up to protest, and we never thought was important to protest indeed in this case. The fact that this book says White Caucasians Males and orientals like Chinese and Caucasian Indians are more intelligent people, and they are constructing a kind of "Superior Cognitive Ability Class"; it doesn't means that the others are dumb. If this book had something negative about White Males or Chinese for example, who would protect us from the reviews against us once there are no affirmative actions in our favor?
Buy this book, read it carefully and enjoy It, It's a very important book for everyone. What I have noticed is that people haven't understood the results of the "Bell Curve". This book is about averages, do you know what has been happening in Brazil nowadays? So I will tell you. They have the same racial structure United States have, Whites and Blacks.
The Whites came from Europe and the Blacks from Africa and a very few number of people from Asia. But there is a huge difference. There you have half people Whites and half people Blacks
with a high tendency of Blacks become the majority of population soon, and with the same opportunity to access University, and do you know what Black men are trying to force congress to do, to vote affirmative actions there too! Only because the other races have surpassed them in Colleges admittance exames.
The most prestigious Engineering College from all South America is in Brazil in the richest State from that country called Sao Paulo, is the "Polytechnic School of Engineering from Sao Paulo University" , there aren't Blacks studying, just only few ones, you will find only Whites mainly males, and Asians mostly Japanese and Chinese.
And I ask to you, Why?
This is one more argument in favor of what this book is about, in average the I.Q. of White males and Asians are higher. Even White females aren't in a good situation about their I.Q.'s. Take a look at Madonna and Spears for example, and the cheer-leaders.
Thank you very much.

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