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From the thread "Do you think geting an Econ PhD is a way to prove how smart you are?"

 

 

A reply:

With tongue firmly in cheek, to quote Larry Summers:

 

"In general, economists are smarter than political scientists, and political scientists are smarter than sociologists."

 

http://www.www.urch.com/forums/phd-economics/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

 

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Do you thing those who believe in that kind of things also believe some races are supreior to other?(Positive correlation?)

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Uh, no, not really. Race is something you're born with; career develops from sorting & choice.

 

Of course this is true, but there is also a correlation between race and this "sorting" and "choice." I never said this was causation or that one race would be inherently better at one field than another, but it is certainly the case that race is related the type of schools one is likely to attend, the subjects one is encouraged to concentrate on, the type of college one is likely to be admitted to, and so on down the line.

 

Racism is a subtle thing that many people do not acknowledge; while the Sommers comment may not have been overtly about race, there are certainly racial implications. However, as other posters have pointed out, the source is questionable...

 

Not to mention that there is a certain "Economism" among economists that I have not noticed among social scientists in other fields.

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Do you thing those who believe in that kind of things also believe some races are supreior to other?(Positive correlation?)

 

If you have a quantifiable measure of superiority (let's say iq score), and data that justifies your claim, then there is nothing wrong with saying that, on average, one group has a higher superiority level than another group.

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If you have a quantifiable measure of superiority (let's say iq score), and data that justifies your claim, then there is nothing wrong with saying that, on average, one group has a higher superiority level than another group.

 

Let's use a concrete example of "GRE quant" and "math GPA"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox

 

I wonder if adcoms know this.

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If you have a quantifiable measure of superiority (let's say iq score), and data that justifies your claim, then there is nothing wrong with saying that, on average, one group has a higher superiority level than another group.

 

if only life were that simple. this correlation does not rule out the existence of systematic bias in the measure of superiority. such a loaded word, superiority. i will hence refrain from it. intelligence is not a well-defined and distinct concept. there are many aspects to intelligence that are in some sense "orthogonal" to each other (at the very least they are independent of each other). a single-quantity measure of intelligence is in effect a weighting of these different dimensions of intelligence. it is important to keep in mind that even if we design a test to assess every component of intelligence -- i don't know of a single test that does this, but this is a theoretical possibility -- we have no clear weighting scheme to condense separate numerical measures into one composite score. this criticism is more than just an inconvenience that can be brushed aside. do note, however, that IQ is a useful measure in some arenas. my argument isn't against the use of IQ in general, but that a single test cannot establish that one group is more intelligent, or as you put "superior" (ugh), than another. (Consider also, that you assess superiority by intelligence, maybe even conflate the two, but provide no reasoning or argument why this is so.)

 

In addition, even establishing systematic differences in abilities in a well-defined set of areas (spatial and geometric reasoning, for example) is not sufficient to make a claim that the differences in abilities are intrinsic to the members of the groups. Rather, such a claim requires one to rule out the possibility of historical and societal factors resulting in the non-manifestation of the target abilities. It really isn't the case that only 20th century women are able to hold public office, despite the appearance historical evidence would furnish. Once must also consider that intelligence is perhaps not an intrinsic, immutable function of the mind/brain. Thus, social factors can affect the development of intelligence through systematic abundance or deprivation of stimuli and training. It is only after a rigorous attempt to discount this possibility is made that one can make the claim you do.

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I would say, on average, yes to the original question, albeit weakly correlated.

 

And, given we're talking about Larry "maybe we should ask if genetic factors hold back women in science" Summers, i think so... (One wonders what he would say while vacationing on the cape w/ Andrei Schleifer rather than in front of female & minority Harvard faculty.)

 

The basic problem w/ summer's position was he was, in fact, wrong. (The WSJ and american political right cast him as a hero for saying a demonstrably true, yet politically incorrect, assertion.) One out of every nine Major League baseball players is from the Dominican Republic. Therefore, Dominicans must be genetically superior to Americans, at least w/ athletics. Doesn't exactly follow, does it? Children of African immigrants outperform whites on the SAT => African immigrants are racially superior?

 

Genetic factors may be important, but most likely they are swamped by culture...

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The basic problem w/ summer's position was he was, in fact, wrong.

 

Summers did not say, as you seem to imply, that one group (in this case, males) is genetically superior to another. He said that the variance in male innate mathematical ability may be greater than the variance in female innate mathematical ability. He said nothing about the mean. His claim implies that there are both more male math geniuses and more male math idiots. The stuff happening in the right-hand tail of the distributions would explain why there are more men than women in math-intensive positions at top research universities.

 

Apologies if you knew this already, but it's not clear from your post. And while I know very little psychology, everything I've read seems to indicate that Summers' claim was not outrageous: there is some empirical evidence both for and against his claim.

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Summers did not say, as you seem to imply, that one group (in this case, males) is genetically superior to another. He said that the variance in male innate mathematical ability may be greater than the variance in female innate mathematical ability. He said nothing about the mean. His claim implies that there are both more male math geniuses and more male math idiots. The stuff happening in the right-hand tail of the distributions would explain why there are more men than women in math-intensive positions at top research universities.

 

Apologies if you knew this already, but it's not clear from your post. And while I know very little psychology, everything I've read seems to indicate that Summers' claim was not outrageous: there is some empirical evidence both for and against his claim.

 

Moreover, he wasn't even saying that this claim was true, he was just suggesting it was possible, and therefore worthy of investigation. The faculty's response to this idea - that maybe we should investigate why females are underrepresented in the sciences, rather than just assuming it's entirely due to discrimination - was rather horrifyingly closed minded.

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ne out of every nine Major League baseball players is from the Dominican Republic. Therefore, Dominicans must be genetically superior to Americans, at least w/ athletics.

 

"American" is not a race with a specific set of genes. There is no way you can tell that someone is "American" unless you have their passport (although maybe they have more nutrition than some poor African villages, but that's a phenotype - not genotype).

 

Doesn't exactly follow, does it?

Correlation doesn't imply causation (especially that we don't know what's causing the perceived conditional mean differences - ceteris paribus could be violated! - e.g. maybe they have more baseball scouting during youth or comparative advantage in playing baseball during the winter in open stadiums) but if you are saying "Americans" are obviously not less talented in baseball by definition (e.g. nationalism rhetoric), then that's not science!

 

Children of African immigrants outperform whites on the SAT => African immigrants are racially superior?

Are they, really? That's impressive!

 

Genetic factors may be important, but most likely they are swamped by culture...

How would you test this "likely" hypothesis? On the topic of women, all Summers said was "we have three competing explanations, let's do some serious scientific work and decide which one is more supported by data." That some people protested shows they have no clue what science is about. Now, I am sure Summers didn't mean the kind of "research" pseudoscience that was done by the Nazi's with their head-size measuring tools.

 

Consider a thought experiment: suppose Summers was talking about how male tarantula spiders have a larger genetic variance in ability to escape from predators than female tarantula spiders at a biology convention. Would anyone have a problem studying that? Do you think male and female tarantulas are born with identical distributions of ability (mean, variance, skewness, kurtosis etc)? How do you know that?

 

Of course, someone might say "Wait a minute! He's a sexist and just wants to make a biased study that will support his bigotry." That is possible only if he hides the study in a court-sealed envelope (the kinds that have accusations against prisoners in Guantanamo Bay). Instead, let's rigorously study the topic and then have the methods questioned by trained scientists - perhaps using alternative methods, not observers with prejudice against the scientific method (irony) on politically correct topics. Should we abandon all research that, if true, some people may find offensive? What about smokers having a shorter life expectancy - how is that not "smokist"? Maybe we will find out that social differences is the culprit, it will help us design better policies, e.g. information campaigns on parenting.

 

Note: high variance doesn't make men "better." In fact, from a risk-averse parent's point of view, ex-ante, a male child would be a "riskier" prospect.

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Summers did not say, as you seem to imply, that one group (in this case, males) is genetically superior to another. He said that the variance in male innate mathematical ability may be greater than the variance in female innate mathematical ability. He said nothing about the mean. His claim implies that there are both more male math geniuses and more male math idiots. The stuff happening in the right-hand tail of the distributions would explain why there are more men than women in math-intensive positions at top research universities.

 

Apologies if you knew this already, but it's not clear from your post. And while I know very little psychology, everything I've read seems to indicate that Summers' claim was not outrageous: there is some empirical evidence both for and against his claim.

 

Where did I say he implied one group is genetically superior to each other?

 

I called him, "Larry "maybe we should ask if genetic factors hold back women in science" Summers. Where's the difference with what you said? I didn't say he said anything about the mean either. And of course there is empirical evidence for what he said. There is also empirical evidence for Dominican Republicans being racially superior to Americans at baseball.

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Moreover, he wasn't even saying that this claim was true, he was just suggesting it was possible, and therefore worthy of investigation. The faculty's response to this idea - that maybe we should investigate why females are underrepresented in the sciences, rather than just assuming it's entirely due to discrimination - was rather horrifyingly closed minded.

 

I called him, "Larry "maybe we should ask if genetic factors hold back women in science" Summers -- pretty clear i said he framed it in the form of a question, isn't it?

 

Also, Jhai, if academics at Harvard really think it's purely discrimination, then they would be, in fact, very closed-minded. If they think it has to do with culture, though, they'd be right on the money. Summers line of inquiry does show that he probably thinks it's more genetics than culture. I say this, in part, not based on what he said, but b/c I know he's a conservative, and conservatives have been backing him up on this issue by stating their agreement, as have commenters here. I don't think it's wrong to investigate the idea of genetics -- by all means do -- but I have, and the arguments wanting. Since he's a bigshot he should have realized this too. (I like my Harvard prof--geniuses/presidential advisors to be somewhat intelligent.)

 

My current Econ program, i think, is probably somewhat representative. There is a grand total of 1 American females. Maybe it's mostly 'cause of genetic factors like you suggest, or maybe not. There are roughly 11 chinese girls (and 5 guys) in the program. Maybe it's b/c of genetics, maybe not.

You be the judge...

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chauchau: You said he was wrong. I say he wasn't, especially in light of Jhai's point (which I should have included) that he was only speculating about possible causes.

 

Edit: Ah, so your argument is that culture differences swamp genetics and/or there are no genetic differences whatsoever. This was not clear to me from your blanket statement that Summers was wrong. Apologies for the misunderstanding. As I said, I know very little psychology, but from all I've read, there is empirical support for both sides of the argument regarding genetic differences in distribution. And there are certainly cultural differences, which may be even more important.

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"American" is not a race with a specific set of genes. There is no way you can tell that someone is "American" unless you have their passport (although maybe they have more nutrition than some poor African villages, but that's a phenotype - not genotype).

 

Correlation doesn't imply causation (especially that we don't know what's causing the perceived conditional mean differences - ceteris paribus could be violated! - e.g. maybe they have more baseball scouting during youth or comparative advantage in playing baseball during the winter in open stadiums) but if you are saying "Americans" are obviously not less talented in baseball by definition (e.g. nationalism rhetoric), then that's not science!

 

Are they, really? That's impressive!"

 

 

 

 

I must not have written very clearly -- I would very much agree with what you're saying. Very clearly, the idea that Dominican's are somehow racially superior to "Americans" in athletics is of course ridiculous on its face. It's culture -- Dominican children live for baseball (perhaps in the way American children did 70 years ago...) But we're given the same statistics, essentially, as in the women in science case. Indeed, you've hit the crux of the matter "Correlation doesn't imply causality".

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Children of African immigrants outperform whites on the SAT => African immigrants are racially superior?

 

Are they, really? That's impressive!

 

Why is that impressive? If anything it should be expected, as immigrants who come here legally (as do most Africans) tend to be well educated or at least driven and will pass on their genes and work ethics to their kids.

 

I would guess that on average, children born in the US to African immigrants are more intelligent than white Americans. Am I racist for saying so? I hope not. I'd say the same thing about European and Asian immigrants, and South American immigrants as well.

 

Many of y'all will become US immigrants I imagine. Don't you expect your kids to score above 50th percentile on the SAT? I would imagine so...

 

But back to the issue. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together could see that men are on average stronger and faster than women (check your world records in powerlifting or track, just in case you have any doubts). You will also see very disproportionate numbers of people of West African descent as Olympic sprint medalists, and the same for those of East African descent in distance running. So it is clear (I hope) that physical characteristics are distributed differently among races and sexes, why couldn't aptitude for intellectual tasks such as mathematics or chess be the same?

 

Notice how your "average" girl tends to be a better artist than your "average" guy. Most girls have very nice handwriting, while guys tend to be kind of bad. However, look how many great artists have been male versus female. Now of course social norms of the past (and present?) have biased that significantly, but I don't see why we should jump over someone who simply suggests the possibility of difference (either in mean or variance).

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I got lazy and didn't feel like reading all the responses, though I did see Summers' name thrown around a bit (and since I brought up the first negative comment, I feel slightly responsible).

 

1) Larry's comment was blown out of proportion, a bit, thougt it was stupid to say.

 

2) I have known women in the hard sciences who chose to leave. Their reasons mostly centered on the fact that they were sick of being hit on by male professors. Their guess as to why this happened is that there are so few women in the field, and the male profs wanted a chance to get with them (if not them, who else?). Pretty f*cking disgusting, to me, that women are being driven out of the hard sciences by lonely, desparate men who seem to dominate the field, and like to sexually harass their students. (For the purposes of this thread, I think we can safely include economics as a "hard" science.)

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Kartelite, I don't think immigrants are necessarily smarter just because they are recent immigrants. Everyone else "white" in America is a past immigrant (ok, minus ex-slaves,ex-indentured servants). I could turn it another way - their ancestors were smarter on the margin to be able to leave earlier (if anything, it was harder back then with higher relative costs of transportation, bad credit markets, English in foreign schools less widespread etc). Anyway, the argument is too weak either way whether past or current first-generation immigrants are "smarter."

 

Many of y'all will become US immigrants I imagine. Don't you expect your kids to score above 50th percentile on the SAT? I would imagine so...
Correcting a stats mistake: you want to compare E[sAT|prospective immigrant's children] against E[sAT|white American], not against E[sAT] which is lower. Here's a different question for you to think about, "Should immigrants 'obviously' expect a larger income?" This one seems a lot more fundamental than any statements about intelligence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impact_of_immigration_to_Canada

 

E.g. you'd think that even if immigrants had the same genes but more hard working on the margin, they'd still find it profitable to come by your argument. Even this statement is flawed because "not very intelligent" immigrants would still come as long as they can do better here than where they came from.

 

It seems that the welfare state is not a good tool for evaluating "revealed intelligence" or "revealed expected productivity."

 

Part (b), asking us to agree that E[sAT|Testmagic users' children]>E[sAT] is superfluous - we are not representative immigrants (at all!). E[sAT|children of PhD hopeful] is high, our "immigration" intent if any does not bind here.

 

Second, I think "hard work" is mostly cultural/upbringing/individual willpower - not genetic in the same way IQ is autocorrelated. Immigration isn't really about genetic superiority (it's neither necessary nor sufficient), it's about hard work and trying to maximize utility in a new environment with other kinds of positive/negative externalities (one of these two would probably be necessary in most cases).

 

why couldn't aptitude for intellectual tasks such as mathematics or chess be the same?
It has to be - innate productivity is randomly distributed even within races, there's no reason why races should overlap (simply because it's unlikely -- of course in what way they don't "overlap" is non-trivial at all).

 

Notice how your "average" girl tends to be a better artist than your "average" guy. Most girls have very nice handwriting, while guys tend to be kind of bad. However, look how many great artists have been male versus female.
Same for cooking (restaurant chefs etc - such jobs can choose from "+2 " standard deviations above the mean since one provides output for many consumers). Music composition? Not sure about knitting or other "traditional" female trades.

 

Now of course social norms of the past (and present?) have biased that significantly, but I don't see why we should jump over someone who simply suggests the possibility of difference (either in mean or variance).
Of course not - the opposition's behavior was inexcusable.
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Kartelite, I don't think immigrants are necessarily smarter just because they are recent immigrants. Everyone else "white" in America is a past immigrant (ok, minus ex-slaves,ex-indentured servants). I could turn it another way - their ancestors were smarter on the margin to be able to leave earlier (if anything, it was harder back then with higher relative costs of transportation, bad credit markets, English in foreign schools less widespread etc). Anyway, the argument is too weak either way whether past or current first-generation immigrants are "smarter."

 

Well, assuming that all immigrant populations are on average "smarter" would still mean more recent generations should be more intelligent, as there will be more "regression to the mean" of future generations. If I took two people to the moon with an IQ of 160, I think it would be unreasonable to think in 200 years all the moon's inhabitants would be so smart, although the original couple's kids should be close.

 

E.g. you'd think that even if immigrants had the same genes but more hard working on the margin, they'd still find it profitable to come by your argument. Even this statement is flawed because "not very intelligent" immigrants would still come as long as they can do better here than where they came from.

 

But it is not just a question of "wanting to come." It is much easier to get residency in the US to study or be a doctor/computer programmer than it is for an uneducated/unskilled worker. And I think that skill is at least somewhat related to intelligence, which is in turn somewhat related to intelligence of offspring.

 

 

Part (b), asking us to agree that E[sAT|Testmagic users' children]>E[sAT] is superfluous - we are not representative immigrants (at all!). E[sAT|children of PhD hopeful] is high, our "immigration" intent if any does not bind here.

 

Agreed to an extent; I'd assume your average IQ is well above the average immigrant's. But due to how many other educated people come over, I think the average immigrant's IQ should still be higher than 100 (global mean, let's say).

 

Second, I think "hard work" is mostly cultural/upbringing/individual willpower - not genetic in the same way IQ is autocorrelated. Immigration isn't really about genetic superiority (it's neither necessary nor sufficient), it's about hard work and trying to maximize utility in a new environment with other kinds of positive/negative externalities (one of these two would probably be necessary in most cases).

 

It has to be - innate productivity is randomly distributed even within races, there's no reason why races should overlap (simply because it's unlikely -- of course in what way they don't "overlap" is non-trivial at all).

 

Agreed. Overall I was in agreement with much of what you had said, but didn't think finding immigrant test scores higher than white Americans should surprise anyone.

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