gjm comments on Rationality Quotes Thread January 2016 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: elharo 01 January 2016 04:00PM

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Comment author: Lumifer 26 January 2016 05:00:45PM *  3 points [-]

Got a link?

It's in his explanation of NRx piece. To quote from there ("biological hypothesis" is the one which says biology strongly affects IQ):

I don’t want to dwell on the biological hypothesis too much, because it sort of creeps me out even in a “let me clearly explain a hypothesis I disagree with” way. I will mention that it leaves a lot unexplained ... For a sympathetic and extraordinarily impressive defense of the biological hypothesis I recommend this unpublished (and unpublishable) review article. I will add that I am extremely interested in comprehensive takedowns of that article (preferably a full fisking) and that if you have any counterevidence to it at all you should post it in the comments and I will be eternally grateful.

Getting to The Bell Curve,

Whose reliability is pretty controversial.

Since we're quoting Yvain, let's continue:

Meanwhile, The Bell Curve was lambasted in the popular press and by many academics. But it also got fifty of the top researchers in its field to sign a consensus statement saying it was pretty much right about everything and the people attacking it were biased and confused. Three years later, they re-issued their statement saying nothing had changed and more recent findings had only confirmed their opinion. The American Psychological Association launched a task force to settle the issue which stopped short of complete agreement but which given the circumstances was pretty darned supportive. There are certainly a lot of smart people with very strong negative opinions, but each one is still usually met by an equally ardent and credentialed proponent.

As to

Alas, I have none and must make do with hands.

I recommend acquiring some. They are highly useful :-)

Comment author: gjm 26 January 2016 05:45:08PM -1 points [-]

It's in his explanation of NRx piece.

Gotcha. Unfortunately, the link to that "sympathetic and extraordinarily impressive defence" is broken. I don't suppose you happen to know of another source for it?

Since we're quoting Yvain, let's continue

It's maybe worth saying a word or two about the context for that quotation: Yvain was writing about the tendency to take "someone wrote a decent-looking rebuttal to X" as justification for saying "X has been refuted and debunked". His argument is not "TBC is in fact right because all these people say positive things about it" -- that's just the mirror image of the thing he's objecting to. It's "You don't get to claim that TBC has been refuted just because lots of eminent people trashed it -- look, lots of equally eminent people defended it too." With which I agree. Which is why I called it "pretty controversial" rather than, say, "known to be bad".

Comment author: Lumifer 26 January 2016 05:56:39PM 2 points [-]

another source for it?

Well, the usual...

Comment author: gjm 26 January 2016 06:01:21PM 0 points [-]

D'oh!