Perhaps the assumption that all folks should function independently is simply a myth. Many people with an intellectual disability have fulfilled lives working in supported work settings and blossoming in supported living situations.
This topic is of vital concern if we want to maintain a civilized society. What happens when a not-trivial proportion of people do not have the cognitive ability to support themselves and their families in an economy in which hard work is not enough? We have outsourced or automated much of our manual labor, which is what these people relied on in times past. A strong back and strong work ethic compensated for lesser cognitive ability.
That seemed to me to be the clear takeaway from The Bell Curve when I read it years ago, and the theme was amplified in Coming Apart. Instead of working on possible solutions to the problem these books brought up, we spent our time vilifying the authors as racist and imagining that government welfare and minimum wages would fix it.
Regarding IQ and criminality: I understood that within siblings, the one with the lowest IQ is the most likely to be involved with the criminal justice system.
Regarding the American military and IQ: In his book, and on Youtube, author Hamilton Gregory discusses what was known as Project 100,000, or McNamara's Folly. During the Vietnam war, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara lowered the required IQ of draftees in order to get more bodies into the military. The result was tragic and horrific. Many men died because of soldiers who didn't have sufficient intelligence to aviod killing people - and themselves.
Regarding the Flynn Effect: be careful. Flynn himself pointed out that if you went back in time 100 years, adjusting for what is known as the Flynn effect, the average person would not be sufficiently intelligent to understand what was going on at a baseball game. Obviously, not true. So what ever has happened over time with intelligence testing and adjusting for average score, it can't be as simple as 'people are getting smarter.' If it were, my grandparents would have been morons (technically) while starting their families.
This is right on target: truth.....which is why morally depraved democrats will censor and bully anyone raising this issue. And the democrats will lie and slander till they are blue raising psychotic false narratives to avoid discussing this issue.
Old time Progressives had a solution to this problem, it was called Eugenics. Current big government progressives try to solve the problem by creating huge government social services bureaucracies that provide lifetime employment for the middle of the distribution without providing any help to the low end of the distribution.
The instability caused by the cognitive disadvantaged and the subsequent economic disadvantage is due to giving them the political power to demand free stuff. The solution is to reinstitute the poll tax and to let those who claim to care take care of these individuals with their time and their money.
Well, in some of the countries where I work there are men and women sweeping the streets and squares, with pleasing results compared with the filth in our streets. It's not high status work, but there is a certain dignity about helping to keep the city clean, and being paid to do it. We send around a big machine instead, and that misses half the junk. I think we could create many jobs that don't require more than a willingness to work faithfully at a simple task. But we're enamored of labor saving uses of technology, which eliminates many opportunities for unskilled labor.
Expanding on Jordan’s and Glenn’s introductory comments about groups of “losers” who threaten the stability of society and particularly in my mind to our urban areas, I see basically two. The first are the mentally ill drug addicts who constitute the bulk of the homeless population and the second are the increasingly visible roving bands of young Black men who even when not engaged in overtly criminal activity still manage to scare regular citizens and tourists and drive them out of the city’s core area. The tolerance shown to the open use of drugs and public camping by the homeless has basically destroyed the livability of many areas in several west coast cities and the police find themselves helpless in dealing with the borderline and frequently overt criminal behavior of minority youth in the wake of the George Floyd murder. Liberal politicians, especially, appear unwilling to even acknowledge the threat that these two groups pose let alone propose actions to deal with the problems they have created. At the very time that we most need the energy efficiency of high density urban life these two groups threaten to drive people away from our central cities. A solution must be found.
This is undoubtedly going to be an unpopular view, but given the recognition that individuals are unlikely to be able to meaningfully integrate themselves into a modern day technologically advanced society below a certain cognitive threshold, I wonder if as a society we don’t pay nearly enough attention to the possible dysgenic trends of 21st century civilization because of the taboo of eugenics.
We constantly lament the rapid aging of first world countries as younger people have fewer and fewer children and first world population structures increasingly shift towards the elderly. We realize the stress that this potentially places upon future generations as far as supporting systems like Social Security. Yet I see very little analogous discussion of possible dysgenic trends that may also end up stressing our collective safety net in years ahead. Commenter Nathan Robinson glibly asserts that those unable to successfully compete in the modern-day economy should be taken care of by the welfare state, but I wonder if at times we take it for granted just how non-trivial it is to form productive societies that are wealthy enough to be able to take care of the least capable.
Glenn and Jordan talk about the bottom 10 percent in IQ, basically as the left tail analogue to the top 10 percent of the intelligence distribution whom Murray and Herrnstein dub the cognitive elite. I’m very curious about the differential reproductive rates between those two groups today. Given Western society’s sacrosanct belief in the rights of the individual, coupled with our aversion towards anything remotely smacking of eugenics, my guess is that the Chinese will be more likely to adequately tackle the particular concerns that Glenn and Jordan discuss, in large part because their morality would be far more likely to tolerate actions that would be deemed beyond the pale in American society today.
This is more or less the central question of manufacturing engineering. You hear about "factories full of robots," but when you visit a 21st century factory there's usually a guy standing next to the robot moving full boxes to the pallet or whatever. I've met people who did jobs like that happily for decades, including a few who are probably sub-80.
The tight labor market is encouraging more innovation here, as every factory is understaffed and desperate for workers.
"What should we do about people who simply lack the cognitive ability to compete in our economy?" Not sure why this is a difficult question. If people have significant cognitive impairments that make it impossible to work, they should be taken care of by the welfare state. Is the argument that existing disability benefits are too stingy and such people are falling through the cracks? If so, then raise them. Is the argument that they need easier access to housing, more services, etc.? If so, provide it. As Peterson gets at, democratic socialist policies are designed to make sure people who cannot compete are still given lives of relative comfort. Other countries have dealt with this problem, I am not sure why it's considered especially tricky.
I'm glad you posted this. I've listened to the entire interview three times all the way through. Regarding this clip, it's weird how everyone is so touchy about differences in cognitive ability when so many other advantages are just taken for granted. It's "tough luck" for those who lack those other advantages. A beautiful woman, a tall male, or a handsome Dan, or a great athlete -- all their life journeys are greased by their genetic gifts. And people just accept it and move on. No crying about it. I guess it's because they are observable visually, whereas cognitive ability is not.
You and Jordan touched on it, and Andrew Yang first gained fame by talking about it. ("It" being the idea that there is less and less crucial work for those on the left side of the cognitive curve.) Our society best find some new success touchstones rather than just having wealth and/or job status. Like Jordan mentioned, smart and wealthy people sometimes live miserable existences. There are many paths to joy and contentment; can't our politicians win elections without sowing discord to do so?
I laughed at your reaction to Jordan's, "Do you remember 'The Bell Curve'?" I love Peterson and think he's great, but I suspect he doesn't make for the easiest conversation. He ultimately holds it all together, but the tangential journeys come with regularity!
Great conversation between intellectual giants, although it could have gone deeper. Jordan's entire project is about individual behavior change through his 12 rules for character building. How did this conversation not investigate the potential efficacy of said rules for addressing the social ills Glenn talks about so often? This is worthy of follow-up, especially given Glenn's interest in individual respect and dignity outside of group identity and search for actual solutions to social problems. Also, I wish Jordan had gone into a bit more detail about his own recent struggles with addition after Glenn was so open about his - personal vulnerability when you're generalizing about all humanity throughout history is always a plus. Otherwise, a great listen, please have a follow-up about our individual search for heroic meaning and entanglements with victimhood sometime in the future.
Perhaps the assumption that all folks should function independently is simply a myth. Many people with an intellectual disability have fulfilled lives working in supported work settings and blossoming in supported living situations.
A friend shared this with me. A guy with a 75 IQ sharing part of his story.
https://youtu.be/0Grs_jJ5U6w
This topic is of vital concern if we want to maintain a civilized society. What happens when a not-trivial proportion of people do not have the cognitive ability to support themselves and their families in an economy in which hard work is not enough? We have outsourced or automated much of our manual labor, which is what these people relied on in times past. A strong back and strong work ethic compensated for lesser cognitive ability.
That seemed to me to be the clear takeaway from The Bell Curve when I read it years ago, and the theme was amplified in Coming Apart. Instead of working on possible solutions to the problem these books brought up, we spent our time vilifying the authors as racist and imagining that government welfare and minimum wages would fix it.
Regarding IQ and criminality: I understood that within siblings, the one with the lowest IQ is the most likely to be involved with the criminal justice system.
Regarding the American military and IQ: In his book, and on Youtube, author Hamilton Gregory discusses what was known as Project 100,000, or McNamara's Folly. During the Vietnam war, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara lowered the required IQ of draftees in order to get more bodies into the military. The result was tragic and horrific. Many men died because of soldiers who didn't have sufficient intelligence to aviod killing people - and themselves.
Regarding the Flynn Effect: be careful. Flynn himself pointed out that if you went back in time 100 years, adjusting for what is known as the Flynn effect, the average person would not be sufficiently intelligent to understand what was going on at a baseball game. Obviously, not true. So what ever has happened over time with intelligence testing and adjusting for average score, it can't be as simple as 'people are getting smarter.' If it were, my grandparents would have been morons (technically) while starting their families.
Worth noting, the Army requires an ASVAB of 31. This translates roughly to an IQ of 92.
This is right on target: truth.....which is why morally depraved democrats will censor and bully anyone raising this issue. And the democrats will lie and slander till they are blue raising psychotic false narratives to avoid discussing this issue.
Old time Progressives had a solution to this problem, it was called Eugenics. Current big government progressives try to solve the problem by creating huge government social services bureaucracies that provide lifetime employment for the middle of the distribution without providing any help to the low end of the distribution.
Whose job is it to solve this problem?
The instability caused by the cognitive disadvantaged and the subsequent economic disadvantage is due to giving them the political power to demand free stuff. The solution is to reinstitute the poll tax and to let those who claim to care take care of these individuals with their time and their money.
IQ is a taboo subject because many have been conditioned to believe that discussing it is something only eugenicists do.
Well, in some of the countries where I work there are men and women sweeping the streets and squares, with pleasing results compared with the filth in our streets. It's not high status work, but there is a certain dignity about helping to keep the city clean, and being paid to do it. We send around a big machine instead, and that misses half the junk. I think we could create many jobs that don't require more than a willingness to work faithfully at a simple task. But we're enamored of labor saving uses of technology, which eliminates many opportunities for unskilled labor.
Expanding on Jordan’s and Glenn’s introductory comments about groups of “losers” who threaten the stability of society and particularly in my mind to our urban areas, I see basically two. The first are the mentally ill drug addicts who constitute the bulk of the homeless population and the second are the increasingly visible roving bands of young Black men who even when not engaged in overtly criminal activity still manage to scare regular citizens and tourists and drive them out of the city’s core area. The tolerance shown to the open use of drugs and public camping by the homeless has basically destroyed the livability of many areas in several west coast cities and the police find themselves helpless in dealing with the borderline and frequently overt criminal behavior of minority youth in the wake of the George Floyd murder. Liberal politicians, especially, appear unwilling to even acknowledge the threat that these two groups pose let alone propose actions to deal with the problems they have created. At the very time that we most need the energy efficiency of high density urban life these two groups threaten to drive people away from our central cities. A solution must be found.
This is undoubtedly going to be an unpopular view, but given the recognition that individuals are unlikely to be able to meaningfully integrate themselves into a modern day technologically advanced society below a certain cognitive threshold, I wonder if as a society we don’t pay nearly enough attention to the possible dysgenic trends of 21st century civilization because of the taboo of eugenics.
We constantly lament the rapid aging of first world countries as younger people have fewer and fewer children and first world population structures increasingly shift towards the elderly. We realize the stress that this potentially places upon future generations as far as supporting systems like Social Security. Yet I see very little analogous discussion of possible dysgenic trends that may also end up stressing our collective safety net in years ahead. Commenter Nathan Robinson glibly asserts that those unable to successfully compete in the modern-day economy should be taken care of by the welfare state, but I wonder if at times we take it for granted just how non-trivial it is to form productive societies that are wealthy enough to be able to take care of the least capable.
Glenn and Jordan talk about the bottom 10 percent in IQ, basically as the left tail analogue to the top 10 percent of the intelligence distribution whom Murray and Herrnstein dub the cognitive elite. I’m very curious about the differential reproductive rates between those two groups today. Given Western society’s sacrosanct belief in the rights of the individual, coupled with our aversion towards anything remotely smacking of eugenics, my guess is that the Chinese will be more likely to adequately tackle the particular concerns that Glenn and Jordan discuss, in large part because their morality would be far more likely to tolerate actions that would be deemed beyond the pale in American society today.
This is more or less the central question of manufacturing engineering. You hear about "factories full of robots," but when you visit a 21st century factory there's usually a guy standing next to the robot moving full boxes to the pallet or whatever. I've met people who did jobs like that happily for decades, including a few who are probably sub-80.
The tight labor market is encouraging more innovation here, as every factory is understaffed and desperate for workers.
"What should we do about people who simply lack the cognitive ability to compete in our economy?" Not sure why this is a difficult question. If people have significant cognitive impairments that make it impossible to work, they should be taken care of by the welfare state. Is the argument that existing disability benefits are too stingy and such people are falling through the cracks? If so, then raise them. Is the argument that they need easier access to housing, more services, etc.? If so, provide it. As Peterson gets at, democratic socialist policies are designed to make sure people who cannot compete are still given lives of relative comfort. Other countries have dealt with this problem, I am not sure why it's considered especially tricky.
I'm glad you posted this. I've listened to the entire interview three times all the way through. Regarding this clip, it's weird how everyone is so touchy about differences in cognitive ability when so many other advantages are just taken for granted. It's "tough luck" for those who lack those other advantages. A beautiful woman, a tall male, or a handsome Dan, or a great athlete -- all their life journeys are greased by their genetic gifts. And people just accept it and move on. No crying about it. I guess it's because they are observable visually, whereas cognitive ability is not.
You and Jordan touched on it, and Andrew Yang first gained fame by talking about it. ("It" being the idea that there is less and less crucial work for those on the left side of the cognitive curve.) Our society best find some new success touchstones rather than just having wealth and/or job status. Like Jordan mentioned, smart and wealthy people sometimes live miserable existences. There are many paths to joy and contentment; can't our politicians win elections without sowing discord to do so?
I laughed at your reaction to Jordan's, "Do you remember 'The Bell Curve'?" I love Peterson and think he's great, but I suspect he doesn't make for the easiest conversation. He ultimately holds it all together, but the tangential journeys come with regularity!
Great conversation between intellectual giants, although it could have gone deeper. Jordan's entire project is about individual behavior change through his 12 rules for character building. How did this conversation not investigate the potential efficacy of said rules for addressing the social ills Glenn talks about so often? This is worthy of follow-up, especially given Glenn's interest in individual respect and dignity outside of group identity and search for actual solutions to social problems. Also, I wish Jordan had gone into a bit more detail about his own recent struggles with addition after Glenn was so open about his - personal vulnerability when you're generalizing about all humanity throughout history is always a plus. Otherwise, a great listen, please have a follow-up about our individual search for heroic meaning and entanglements with victimhood sometime in the future.