To be honest, I was looking forward to Freddie's essay, and I came away quite disappointed. It has logical problem after problem, and is largely a muddled mess semantically.
He shoots down strawmen rather than trying to honestly address the hard issues. He mixes scientific assertions with morality assertions in ways that do not serve …
To be honest, I was looking forward to Freddie's essay, and I came away quite disappointed. It has logical problem after problem, and is largely a muddled mess semantically.
He shoots down strawmen rather than trying to honestly address the hard issues. He mixes scientific assertions with morality assertions in ways that do not serve clear thinking.
Example. He makes two statements at the beginning. One is pretty scientific and falsifiable:
FdB> "Genetics play a substantial role in essentially all human outcomes, including what we define as "intelligence" or academic ability."
The other is a mess.
FdB> "Bigoted ideas about fundamental intellectual inequalities between demographic groups are wrong."
Is that an assertion about morality or about factual science? Which ideas on the subject fall under "bigoted" and which do not? What does "fundamental" mean in this context?
I sometimes like to "steelman" an argument - rather than rephrase it to an easily dismissed misimputation (strawmanning), rephrase it to make the best case. I cannot even steelman the above assertion, because I honestly don't know what he's trying to say.
FdB> "Black people aren't less intelligent than white, women aren't bad at science, Asian people do not have natural facility for math, etc."
This sounds like a profession of faith, not an attempt at clear meaningful statements. Let's try to state something more precise tho.
Here would be some actual falsifiable hypotheses which *might* underlie his assertion:
(1) "self-identified Americans of all racial and ethnic groups show the same average IQ at the group level when properly tested"
(2) "statistics about trained scientists show that women and men are equally successful in all fields of science"
(3) "as a population group, Asian-Americans have the same mathematics scores as any other racial or ethnic group"
I don't think that's what he's driving it. I think he may be trying to imply something about genetics, while trying to avoid using the word. Perhaps more like:
(1) "differing IQ results between American population groups have 0% genetic influence"
(2) "human females have genetically equal interest and ability to do science, so they would be equally represented in all sciences absent the effects of culture"
(3) "Asian-Americans' higher average math scores are completely due to cultural factors, with no genetic contribution."
But maybe not. Maybe he means:
(1) IQ varies within each racial/ethnic group, and the ranges highly overlap
(2) There are many good female scientists so it's a good option for interested young women
(3) If we all studied as hard as Asian students do, every group would achieve the same results
Overall, again I ask, is this meant to be a scientifically testable assertion, or a statement of political orthodoxy? The framing is much more suitable for the latter.
Alas, this kind of ambiguous and misleading framing just keeps occurring in Freddy's essay. I don't find much intellectual coherence to it; it's not as much that I dispute something so much as it's stated so clumsily that one often cannot even know whether they agree or disagree. Some of the above possible interpretations I would agree with, some I would not - based on my assessment of the cumulative evidence. But which did he mean?
My overall impression is that he's trying (1) to use science based arguments to defend genetics as very important to human traits (including intelligence) and also (2) to use morality based arguments and emotional terminology to distance himself from any population level issues. Thus the uneven tone. In discussing science based propositions, one can dispute their truth using evidence; one does not use labels like "bigoted" as scientific evidence for or against a hypothesis - that's injecting overt emotional and subjective biases which are the bane of real science. If one can prove a scientific hypothesis wrong, there is no need to impute evil motives to the hypothesizer - evidence over emotional manipulation.
Good questions that, alas, only Freddie can answer. He goes into more detail in his book if you're interested in digging deeper but his substack is paywalled (and he's not as inclined to engage with readers as our friend Steve QJ though sometimes he does).
To be honest, I was looking forward to Freddie's essay, and I came away quite disappointed. It has logical problem after problem, and is largely a muddled mess semantically.
He shoots down strawmen rather than trying to honestly address the hard issues. He mixes scientific assertions with morality assertions in ways that do not serve clear thinking.
Example. He makes two statements at the beginning. One is pretty scientific and falsifiable:
FdB> "Genetics play a substantial role in essentially all human outcomes, including what we define as "intelligence" or academic ability."
The other is a mess.
FdB> "Bigoted ideas about fundamental intellectual inequalities between demographic groups are wrong."
Is that an assertion about morality or about factual science? Which ideas on the subject fall under "bigoted" and which do not? What does "fundamental" mean in this context?
I sometimes like to "steelman" an argument - rather than rephrase it to an easily dismissed misimputation (strawmanning), rephrase it to make the best case. I cannot even steelman the above assertion, because I honestly don't know what he's trying to say.
FdB> "Black people aren't less intelligent than white, women aren't bad at science, Asian people do not have natural facility for math, etc."
This sounds like a profession of faith, not an attempt at clear meaningful statements. Let's try to state something more precise tho.
Here would be some actual falsifiable hypotheses which *might* underlie his assertion:
(1) "self-identified Americans of all racial and ethnic groups show the same average IQ at the group level when properly tested"
(2) "statistics about trained scientists show that women and men are equally successful in all fields of science"
(3) "as a population group, Asian-Americans have the same mathematics scores as any other racial or ethnic group"
I don't think that's what he's driving it. I think he may be trying to imply something about genetics, while trying to avoid using the word. Perhaps more like:
(1) "differing IQ results between American population groups have 0% genetic influence"
(2) "human females have genetically equal interest and ability to do science, so they would be equally represented in all sciences absent the effects of culture"
(3) "Asian-Americans' higher average math scores are completely due to cultural factors, with no genetic contribution."
But maybe not. Maybe he means:
(1) IQ varies within each racial/ethnic group, and the ranges highly overlap
(2) There are many good female scientists so it's a good option for interested young women
(3) If we all studied as hard as Asian students do, every group would achieve the same results
Overall, again I ask, is this meant to be a scientifically testable assertion, or a statement of political orthodoxy? The framing is much more suitable for the latter.
Alas, this kind of ambiguous and misleading framing just keeps occurring in Freddy's essay. I don't find much intellectual coherence to it; it's not as much that I dispute something so much as it's stated so clumsily that one often cannot even know whether they agree or disagree. Some of the above possible interpretations I would agree with, some I would not - based on my assessment of the cumulative evidence. But which did he mean?
My overall impression is that he's trying (1) to use science based arguments to defend genetics as very important to human traits (including intelligence) and also (2) to use morality based arguments and emotional terminology to distance himself from any population level issues. Thus the uneven tone. In discussing science based propositions, one can dispute their truth using evidence; one does not use labels like "bigoted" as scientific evidence for or against a hypothesis - that's injecting overt emotional and subjective biases which are the bane of real science. If one can prove a scientific hypothesis wrong, there is no need to impute evil motives to the hypothesizer - evidence over emotional manipulation.
Good questions that, alas, only Freddie can answer. He goes into more detail in his book if you're interested in digging deeper but his substack is paywalled (and he's not as inclined to engage with readers as our friend Steve QJ though sometimes he does).