Elsewhere (269)
Douglas Murray on utopian thinking and ineradicable vices:
To ‘destroy’ misogyny (or, for that matter, its opposite – misandry) you would have to arrive at a time when nobody of either sex… felt any need to seize on a secondary characteristic as a way to push their primary dislike. All divorces would have to go swimmingly. Men would pay alimony only with pleasure and enthusiasm. Conversely, any woman who caught their husband cheating would have to say: “Well that was just my husband: I wouldn’t want to express any conclusions about men in general.” Perhaps this is desirable. But achievable? Hardly. The trouble is some people – including some of the most powerful people on the planet – seem to believe otherwise.
Madison Breshears on overlooked gender gaps:
What, if anything, do ballet and tech have in common? The obvious answer is that both fields show highly disproportionate gender distributions. Less acknowledged but no less relevant is this uncomfortable commonality: Both are industries where it pays to be in the sexual minority. I know, because I was a ballet dancer for 16 years. In the ballet world, men’s unfair advantage in hiring and casting is as widely understood and as rarely acknowledged as is the rampant anorexia. A less skilled male dancer is more likely to land a role or get a job than a female dancer of comparable skill. Due to the scarcity of men, the hurdles to a professional career are distinctly lower than they are for most women. Anyone who says something similar about women in the tech industry does so at their own peril.
Duke Pesta and Dave Huber on “white privilege” shaming rituals:
There was a case at San Diego State University, where students were given extra credit for determining their level of “white privilege.” This was part of my own experience. We did a thing called a “privilege walk,” where you’re asked a bunch of questions designed to give the result the creators’ wanted. It gets a little ridiculous, in that one of the questions says, “I grew up in a two-parent household,” as if that’s some kind of inherent [white] privilege, doing the right thing.
And Jordan Peterson on IQ and its distribution:
Conservatives like to think there’s a job for everyone if people would just get off their asses, and liberals think that you can train anyone to do anything. No, there isn’t a job for everyone, and no, you can’t train everyone to do everything. The armed forces has done a lot of work on IQ and they started back in 1919. A law was passed as a consequence of that analysis that it was illegal to induct anyone into the armed forces who had an IQ of less than 83. Why? All of that effort put in by the armed forces indicated that if you had an IQ of 83 or less, there wasn’t anything that you could be trained to do in the military that wasn’t positively counterproductive. So how many people have an IQ of 83 or less? Ten percent of us. Now, if that doesn’t hurt you to hear, then you didn’t hear it properly. Because what it implies is that, in a complex society like ours, there isn’t anything for 10% of the population to do.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
Can’t read the Doug Murray piece without registering.
Can’t read the Doug Murray piece without registering.
Bugger, forgot. That said, I think it’s worth signing up for UnHerd. It takes 30 seconds, is free, and you don’t get bombarded with unwanted emails.
Darleen Click on transparent but fashionable lies.
Due to the scarcity of men, the hurdles to a professional career are distinctly lower than they are for most women.
I have a colleague who is in an amateur choir. They are quite good, but absolutely crying out for men of *any* ability because they don’t have a single one, and the women can’t sing the lower tones.
So how many people have an IQ of 83 or less? Ten percent of us.
I wonder if he’s referring to humankind, or a particular country. I have an idea that in localised spots, it’ll be a lot higher than 10%. Labour Party conferences, for example.
What’s never pointed out about the privilege industry is that it is predicated on the idea that all good fortune/blessings/luck/etc. is morally neutral, i.e. random and unearned. Yet, somehow the recipients are required to feel guilt (an emotion based solely upon morality) because of same.
I don’t often disagree with Jordan Peterson, but here’s clearly wrong here. What that implies is that in the U.S armed forces there isn’t anything for 10% of the population to do. Fortunately a complex society like ours offers a vast range of potentially lucrative and rewarding occupations not available to people within the armed forces. I don’t doubt that many of these are accessible to people with an IQ less than 83.
Can’t read the Doug Murray piece without registering.
Andy – you can register with a pseudonym and a mailinator.com e-mail address (e.g., notme @ mailinator.com). It is worth RTWT as the whippersnappers say.
I have an idea that in localised spots, it’ll be a lot higher than 10%.
Even Peterson, who’s generally quite fearless, is careful to dodge that bullet.
Even Peterson, who’s generally quite fearless, is careful to dodge that bullet.
Indeed. When I lived in, erm, other parts one of the things which struck me rather forcefully is how utterly, mind-bogglingly useless so many people were at completing simple, everyday tasks or following simple, 3-step instructions. I don’t know whether it’s intelligence, culture, or what…but by damned, getting shit done was hard.
if you had an IQ of 83 or less, there wasn’t anything that you could be trained to do in the military that wasn’t positively counterproductive
It is an article of faith on the left that education and training can compensate for a low IQ. Even supposedly intelligent professors of psychology believe that.
I remember a guy, around 30 years old, who was a procurement clerk, for want of a better word. White collar, educated, worked in an office of a major international company. He had about 2 or 3 purchase orders to process per week, and by that I mean he had to receive the request from an engineer, assign a number, and pass it onto the procurement department. His method of assigning a number to each PO was to think of one, then write it on a scrap of paper. It wasn’t written in a column, and the numbers weren’t in sequential order, they were just doodled on a piece of A4 he had lying around. When assigning a new number, he’d look at the paper to ensure he’d not used it before. Then he lost the piece of paper. So he just started a new one, thinking up a number then putting it on the PO. But he started re-using the numbers, and we ended up with several POs floating through the system all with the same number. This guy lacked the brains to create even a simple, two or three column ledger. He was typical for the position.
Contrast this with Russia. I went to a massive steel mill and found all the welding QA/QC was done by hand, with a burly grandmother covered in grease checking each weld in person and writing down all the details. She had an enormous ledger and shelves behind her with hundreds of these ledgers on, and each entry written perfectly, the records going back years. We audited them, and didn’t find anything to concern us. I’d imagine this woman had little more than a high-school education, if that. She’d have been a genius in the other place.
It is an article of faith on the left that education and training can compensate for a low IQ
Many leftist educators do seem to imagine that an IQ is something you can just pour into a head, any head, with sufficient education. Variations of this claim can get quite bizarre and unmoored from reality. But I suppose it’s another way for leftist educators to flatter themselves and overestimate their own importance – by in effect assuming credit for someone else’s ability.
@Karl
I don’t often disagree with Jordan Peterson, but here’s clearly wrong here. What that implies is that in the U.S armed forces there isn’t anything for 10% of the population to do. Fortunately a complex society like ours offers a vast range of potentially lucrative and rewarding occupations not available to people within the armed forces. I don’t doubt that many of these are accessible to people with an IQ less than 83.
In fairness to Dr Peterson, in the lecture, he states that the Army is a reasonable analogue for society (it being a complex, multi-layered organisation) there’s sweeper-uppers and potato peelers, right up to leaders, engineers etc. etc.
His point was if the army can’t find a use for you, there’s probably not much you can offer society .
His point was if the army can’t find a use for you, there’s probably not much you can offer society.
Agreed. Where I live, there are programs to find jobs for people of very low intelligence–grocery store baggers for instance–and I have noticed close-up how slow and inefficient these people are at even the simplest tasks.
a complex society like ours offers a vast range of potentially lucrative and rewarding occupations not available to people within the armed forces. I don’t doubt that many of these are accessible to people with an IQ less than 83.
Indeed. In the UK, roles such as senior police officer, teacher (public sector), Guardian columnist, humanities lecturer, PR executive and professional sportsman are almost exclusively the realm of the <83ers.
the Army is a reasonable analogue for society
With the added proviso that although your local grocery store can hire the occasional retarded person to do menial jobs, the military cannot afford to have such people–everyone must be able to do their job without excessive supervision and everyone must be qualified to do other jobs in an emergency. (Think of battles where, urgently needing infantrymen, clerks and cooks were given a rifle and sent into combat.)
Fortunately a complex society like ours offers a vast range of potentially lucrative and rewarding occupations not available to people within the armed forces. I don’t doubt that many of these are accessible to people with an IQ less than 83.
Professor of Gender Studies, perhaps?
Other than that, I’m trying to think of something “rewarding and lucrative” that a person with an IQ < 83 could do? (Query whether "rewarding" is should even be considered, much less the problem of defining "lucrative." I should think society would be happy if such people had positions which allowed them to be self-supporting without public assistance.) Anyway, from a quick Google search, I was directed here, which notes for IQs between 80 and 89:
“Above the threshold for normal independent functioning. Can perform explicit routinized hands-on tasks without supervision as long as there are no moments of choice and it is always clear what has to be done. Assembler, food service.” Both of those fit within several military MOS classifications, BTW.
As our society becomes more technologically complex, those are the types of jobs most likely to become completely automated.
Douglas Murray: It’s Sowell’s “utopian vision” and “tragic vision”, again. They believe that humanity is perfectable, that things like misogyny and misandry can be “destroyed” (or, in the words of that idiotic slogan of a few years back, that poverty can be “made history”), while the rest of us understand that people are flawed and that society must acknowledge and work around our flaws as best it can.
“They are quite good, but absolutely crying out for men of *any* ability because they don’t have a single one, and the women can’t sing the lower tones.”
I was brought up among operatic singers (my parents met through one of the country’s premier amateur societies), and was about to say much the same thing. Good tenors, especially, are like hens’ teeth.
“What’s never pointed out about the privilege industry is that it is predicated on the idea that all good fortune/blessings/luck/etc. is morally neutral, i.e. random and unearned. Yet, somehow the recipients are required to feel guilt (an emotion based solely upon morality) because of same.”
Yes, it’s fascinating to watch them tie themselves in logical knots, isn’t it? The claim that two-parent families are preferable for the upbringing of children would no doubt result in fits of the vapours, if not actual rioting, at San Diego State University, yet here it is claiming that anyone so brought up is “privileged”.
“ Fortunately a complex society like ours offers a vast range of potentially lucrative and rewarding occupations not available to people within the armed forces.”
Absolutely. The supply of things-that-need-doing – i.e., jobs – is infinite. You just might not like what a lot of them turn out to be, or what people are willing to pay you for doing them. Shovelling shit for less than minimum wage, for example. I’ve heard Peterson make this argument a couple of times, and it’s persuasive, however even the most lowly military job isn’t just running towards the enemy shouting, “BANG!”. It does require a certain minimum level of intelligence that a great many unskilled civilian jobs wouldn’t.
That said, I completely agree with him that increasing automation (encouraged by government mandated price-fixing in the labour market, I might add) is gradually reducing the availability of that kind of job to humans. And it’s probably the case that the situation in the military is a straw in the wind. A few centuries ago, they’d take anyone who could swing a big stick; it’s only since the advent of firearms and other technologies that it’s ended up closed off to that bottom 10%.
In fairness to Dr Peterson, in the lecture, he states that the Army is a reasonable analogue for society
Heaven forbid I should be unfair to the man, he’s my archetype of a living freakin’ God, but honestly the army is a rigidly hierarchical totalitarian system which is why it’s not really a good analogy for a vaguely free-market society. Professor Peterson promotes the excellent notion of competence (as opposed to dominance) hierarchies, and the beauty of capitalism is the way in which it is entirely built of independent competence hierarchies – as many, in fact, as there are competencies people are willing to pay for. I’d go so far as to say that a free market generates more of these independent ways of forging a living than any other economic system. Which is why it offers opportunities for the low-IQ (or low-anything, in fact) that the army cannot.
As our society becomes more technologically complex, those are the types of jobs most likely to become completely automated.
Possibly. However, as our society has become more technologically complex I see YouTube creating more opportunities for the low IQ than I would have ever thought possible. I suspect that the opposite may in fact be true.
one of the questions says, “I grew up in a two-parent household,” as if that’s some kind of inherent [white] privilege, doing the right thing.
“From where I’m standing, ‘privilege’ looks a lot like good choices and hard work.” ~ another quote I can’t remember the attribution for
the army is a rigidly hierarchical totalitarian system which is why it’s not really a good analogy for a vaguely free-market society.
Fortunately for Peterson’s theory, it’s a pretty good analogy for what we’ve actually got.
Yes, it’s fascinating to watch them tie themselves in logical knots, isn’t it?
Educationally speaking, we live in deranged times. As seen in these parts repeatedly, there are so-called educators whose careers seem directed at undermining the life chances of students with brown skin, and who insist that brown-skinned students needn’t learn punctuality, foresight and rudimentary grammar, which are disdained as “white values,” as tools of “white privilege,” and therefore racist. (See, for instance, the second item here and the link immediately below it.)
And the people who are undermining children’s potential in this way and excusing them from the most basic standards of competence, and even civility and self-control, are generally the same people who insist on “equity” policies – i.e., equality of outcome regardless of inputs. And they’re generally the same people who insist than any statistical differences in ability between racial groups – differences that they relentlessly exacerbate – can only be the result of racist white people, who, we’re told, are uniquely, even exclusively, prone to this vice.
It’s demented.
it’s a pretty good analogy for what we’ve actually got.
Excellent – sign me up. I identify as an Admiral.
but honestly the army is a rigidly hierarchical totalitarian system
The Army devolves decision-making down to the lowest practical level of the hierarchy, as this brings flexibility and speed. (And this goes a long way to explaining why “even” a Private needs to be smart.)
David, this is OT but you might find it interesting enough to comment on later:
http://quillette.com/2018/04/08/academias-consilience-crisis/
“…decaying scholastic integrity, brought about by a lowered bar for achievement in many social studies programs. How dare we balk at the number of doctorate degrees dished out in exchange for diary entries when review boards and supervising professors are lending them, with abandon, the credibility reserved for double-blind control studies? Fidelity to truth is regularly undercut by the stubborn provincial impulses of wannabe-scholars peddling bald assertion as currency. This is industrial-scale snake-oil retail, and it uses affectations of scholarly decorum as a marketing ploy.”
Gardening is a good job for those of minimal intelligence. One advantage they have is they tend not to get bored. Unlikely to be automated away soon either.
Also people of low IQ need not be stupid at everything. There’s a few great footballers who can “see” a football field instantly and don’t over think the game.
A tenth of the people I teach are in the bottom 10% (!) and many of them are quite capable of doing routine jobs well. They generally struggle with complex algebra, but they can do quite a lot if you are patient. The usual issue is that they give up because they have to work so much harder to make the same progress and they are always slow.
Truck driver. Concrete layer. Changing tyres. Anything requiring more patience than skill.
I’d rather an IQ of 83 and hard working than one of 93 and lazy, drug-using or bent. So do employers — we can find work for the stupid when they leave school (being Catholic the school has a bit of a social mission in this regard). We can’t do anything with the bent or lazy.
That suggests to me that the less capable are more likely to find a spot in the Army than in the society in general, since there are more routine tasks and tasks can be developed to take advantage of the skills (or lack thereof) of the people available to do them. This underlines Peterson’s point: that the bottom 10% (or so) in intelligence are unlikely to find a place to contribute.
Well, there’s the rub, no? The bottom 10% (or so) rarely offer competencies that people are willing to pay for, and even more rarely, that they are willing to pay enough for that the individual in that intelligence range can become self-supporting.
…there are competencies people are willing to pay for.
I don’t disagree, but the question ultimately is “how much,” as Sam Duncan points out above. The problem is not the existence of potential competencies as it is governmental interference in the price for same. See, e.g. “minimum wage.”
Case in point: I visited a local fast food place for a take out order. The young person behind the counter needed only to 1) manipulate a touch screen to take my order, 2)see the price of my order calculated by a computer, 3) take my money, 4)key it in, 5)give me my change which was also calculated by the computer and 6)hand me my order. Of those six simple tasks, five were muffs. I shit you not. And each time I pointed out a mistake, I received a look which should be reserved for first contact with an alien species.
I got my correct order ultimately, and I’d be willing to toss the kid a few bucks for finally getting it right. But fifteen dollars and hour?
We can’t do anything with the bent or lazy.
As I think Peterson points out in the video, there’s no obvious correlation between high IQ and virtue.
this is OT but you might find it interesting
Thanks, will take a peek when I’ve a moment.
“Above the threshold for normal independent functioning. Can perform explicit routinized hands-on tasks without supervision as long as there are no moments of choice and it is always clear what has to be done. Assembler, food service.” Both of those fit within several military MOS classifications, BTW.
The error there is that a Soldier only ever performs MOS related tasks and is neither required nor responsible to be able to perform everything in the Manual of Common Tasks (or equivalent for the Marines, Navy, or Air Force) which includes thing like land navigation (with map, protractor, and compass – no GPS), being able to operate a SINCGARS radio (which includes loading the presets and COMSEC correctly), perform first aid, maintain a variety of weapons, and a plethora of other things that require the individual to be able to calculate, analyze, and decide – which is why there is a cap on the number of ASVAB Cat IV recruits (generally corresponding to 80-89 IQ).
In a Cavalry unit even the Chaplain is required to know how to call in an air strike…
In my life, I’ve seen any number of Down’s Syndrome people working productively at simple jobs. Mind you, they are invariably cheerful, honest and cooperative.
A tenth of the people I teach are in the bottom 10% (!)
Are you sure about this? I’m not trying to be a jerk here — I’m honestly curious as to the proportion of your students having an IQ under 80. My understanding is that many students with uncommonly low IQ were in specialist programs (notwithstanding the efforts made to mainstream as many as possible), so the bottom 10% of the total population and the bottom 10% of the student population may not be the same.
And while a truck driver with an IQ of 85 is believable, what about somebody with an IQ of 75? These are people who have trouble filling out forms, using computers, or reading a schedule. I’m not sure they’re going to be the best candidates for a job that requires using GPS, filling out driver logs for DOT, and navigating rush hour traffic. These workers are the ones that Dr. Peterson is talking about, given that most IQs in the 80s are considered “mainstream enough” for government work.
Of those six simple tasks, five were muffs. I shit you not.
Contrary to my assertion above, I really am a prick at heart. To wit: one of my little daily delights is waiting for the cashier to ring up an order for, say, $9.78 (£6.84), hand them ten dollars (seven pounds), and then give them three pennies (four pence) after the machine has already told them to give me twenty-two cents (16p).
To their credit, most are able to figure out that they can simply hand me a quarter (20p), but it’s fun watching the little hamster running in the little wheel while they’re working on the problem.
The bottom 10% (or so) rarely offer competencies that people are willing to pay for
I think I disagree with you there, it seems to me that marketable competencies are distributed throughout the population independently of IQ, it’s just that a lack of general intelligence presents a formidable barrier to offering the full working package as it were. As well as barring you from the preponderance of jobs for which the only qualification is a minimal mental capacity.
Which is why I’m optimistic about the way in which technology might reduce the limitations low IQ imposes on ones ability to uncover and market those talents, and the capacity for ‘micropayment’ schemes to separate those competencies from the need to fulfil entirely pre-defined employment roles.
I really am a prick at heart.
My arithmetic is terrible. You’re a fiend.
Of possible relevance to the discussion of IQ and marketable skills: https://www.photius.com/rankings/national_iq_scores_country_ranks.html
Gardening is a good job for those of minimal intelligence.
Gardening is a hobby, not a job. Food production is largely automated and requires more than an 83 IQ. General labour for professional landscaping might be all right; certainly designing, planning and managing the job will require more than an 83 IQ.
Incorrect. If you garden on your own property then it’s a hobby.
But if other people pay you to tend their garden then it’s a job.
So how many people have an IQ of 83 or less? Ten percent of us. Now, if that doesn’t hurt you to hear, then you didn’t hear it properly. Because what it implies is that, in a complex society like ours, there isn’t anything for 10% of the population to do.
Yes, but Bell Curve. There’s also some high IQ people who contribute to significant amounts of counter-productivity. I think you know the kind of high IQ people to whom I refer…
Riposte of note.
Riposte of note
to a feminazi.
The offshoot thread featuring Ms Katy Stoll is also worth a squint. Citing a statistic is now “bullying,” apparently.
@Governor Squid,
When I mentioned handing me my change above, that was the problem which constituted the muff, except mine was worse. The bill was something like $4.17 and I handed over a fiver before realizing I had seventeen cents in change, which I handed over after he’d keyed in $5.00. He took the seventeen cents from me, but eyed me like a master swindler when I told him, my change was one dollar and not eighty-three cents. Getting my correct change involved a manager and a 60 second explanation of the transaction.
A commenter on the Shapiro thread: “Facts don’t care about your fillings.”
That’s a thing of beauty, that is.
@jabrwok: Italy has the fourth highest national IQ? Really?
That’s a thing of beauty, that is.
Ms Stoll’s rhetorical technique, currently very fashionable, is what happens when someone tries to display their woke credentials (often by being needlessly obnoxious) but is ill-prepared for a rebuttal or any kind of debate. And so instead they frame the person who can out-argue them as somehow obviously malign and therefore unworthy of further engagement. What’s funny is that the people who do this, and do it a lot, don’t seem to realise that the rest of us can see.
R. Sherman:
In one of my first jobs, I worked with a woman who was lovely and bubbly and friendly and dumb as a stump. She once rang up a purchase for eight bucks and change, and when the customer handed her a tenner, she accidentally keyed it in as a hundred. She excused herself, ran to the back room, grabbed sixty bucks from her purse, ran back to the register, borrowed thirty bucks from me, took the tenner from the customer, and then put the hundred bucks in the till.
The register said she needed to make $91.xx in change, so she pulled all the cash back out of the drawer, took out her sixty, gave me back my thirty, and gave the customer her dollar and whatever. The whole time, she never gave a second thought to what she was doing.
I was the new kid, so I didn’t feel it was my place to laugh at the ditzy 30-something, but the customer and I exchanged a look that spoke volumes. (My cow-orker was eventually let go after being caught in delicto flagrante in the storeroom with one of the Italian guys from the pizza place next door.)
I daresay things haven’t improved in the labor pool in the 30-odd years since.
Italy has the fourth highest national IQ? Really?
Well, according to that list. I didn’t check a lot of ’em.
The worldwide distribution appears to match what I’ve seen elsewhere though.
Model students.