Political Roundtable - Part VII

[nate33]

the problem with some many? failing schools is as much about the populations they serve
as it is about the schools or the teachers/admins in those schools.
Lower socio-econ status correlates strongly with poor students. Before anyone says anything
I need to say I think students from these groups could potentially perform just as well as
students from other groups. I don't think they are inherently different on a population basis.
We just have not figured out how to get them to realize their potential. It's complicated.

This is actually not true. IQ is hereditary and can only be marginally increased through education. Smart people tend to make more money and marry other smart people. They have smarter children. Therefore, it is likely that families (of any race) in wealthier districts are likely to have children who are smarter and perform better in schools. This is not discrimination. This is genetics.

[DCZards]

the problem with some many? failing schools is as much about the populations they serve
as it is about the schools or the teachers/admins in those schools.
Lower socio-econ status correlates strongly with poor students. Before anyone says anything
I need to say I think students from these groups could potentially perform just as well as
students from other groups. I don't think they are inherently different on a population basis.
We just have not figured out how to get them to realize their potential. It's complicated.

You are absolutely right. The challenge is educating kids from disadvantaged backgrounds.

It costs more to educate poor kids who don't come to school with all the advantages of middle class and wealthy kids. Poor kids need more services from their schools than wealthy kids. They also often don't receive the outside funding that better off schools get. Money that's not counted when you look at how much per student money a school receives. Well-to-do parents can use their wealth to hire teachers, sustain school programs.

This is why I pay little or no attention when people bring up the money spent on poor or black students versus that spent on more well off kids. That data is very misleading.

[dobrojim]

What you're (Nate) saying is at a minimum scientifically controversial. For one thing, you're talking IQ
which is something different than intelligence or potential. Like I said, it's complicated.
And you don't know whether these 'lessor' children were born with lower potential or
whether it was the sum total of their environment that made them lower achievers.
And higher socio-econ areas/people have a host of advantages not shared with those
at the bottom. It is difficult at best to tease out cause-effect in assessing the whys
and wherefores of what we observe.

[dobrojim]

http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2015/03/poverty-may-affect-growth-children-s-brains

First I trust this source. Science is published by one of the premier organizations for science.

From the end (conclusion) of the article

Still, Martha Farah, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania, says that the study is “a real advance in characterizing how brain development differs” between children of lower and higher socioeconomic status, calling it a “crucial first step” in understanding how income and education levels “shape human development.” She agrees that the study provides compelling support for the idea of alleviating childhood poverty. “Even without neuroscience, the case for investment in society’s poor children is very strong,” she says. “But if brain imaging helps to focus people’s attention on the problem of childhood poverty, that’s great.”

[nuposse04]

Simply saying intelligence is mainly driven by genetics (have to specify which type too ) seems like a bit of a lazy answer. I believe epigenetics play a big role, and like anything biological process, is affected by multiple environmental factors. The only way you can saw IQ is absolutely governed by genetics is if they have major genetic defects (chromsomal trisomys or deletions) resulting in profound mental retardation. It is actually an interesting topic. I'll try to read more on it tonight. I'm just going off what I remember in my developmental biology class back in college.

[nate33]

What you're (Nate) saying is at a minimum scientifically controversial. For one thing, you're talking IQ
which is something different than intelligence or potential. Like I said, it's complicated.
And you don't know whether these 'lessor' children were born with lower potential or
whether it was the sum total of their environment that made them lower achievers.
And higher socio-econ areas/people have a host of advantages not shared with those
at the bottom. It is difficult at best to tease out cause-effect in assessing the whys
and wherefores of what we observe.

Actually, you are right that I was wrong to make the focus exclusively on IQ. What I should have said is that intelligence, behavior, disposition, work ethic, and initiative are all hereditary to some degree. Rich people, who generally get rich thanks to a high proportion of these qualities, are likely to produce offspring who also have a high proportion of these qualities. All these qualities combined helps one do better is school.

The "blank slate" is a myth. Education and training are important to help one reach one's potential, but to a great degree, one's true potential is preordained by nature. It is hereditary to a much greater degree than most people believe.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't try and provide the best education we can to all people. I'm just saying that to expect an equal outcome is fruitless. It's never going to happen

[nate33]

http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2015/03/poverty-may-affect-growth-children-s-brains

First I trust this source. Science is published by one of the premier organizations for science.

From the end (conclusion) of the article

Still, Martha Farah, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania, says that the study is “a real advance in characterizing how brain development differs” between children of lower and higher socioeconomic status, calling it a “crucial first step” in understanding how income and education levels “shape human development.” She agrees that the study provides compelling support for the idea of alleviating childhood poverty. “Even without neuroscience, the case for investment in society’s poor children is very strong,” she says. “But if brain imaging helps to focus people’s attention on the problem of childhood poverty, that’s great.”

It's an interesting article on the use of brain scans, but I don't see how it refutes what I just said. It is saying that people of poor backgrounds tend to have a less developed brain. It then infers that the cause/effect direction is that poverty causes the poor development, that's a logical leap that is unwarranted based on the data available. It could easily be that the children of poor people lack the brain flexibility to develop as quickly. From the article:

But unknown genetic factors that influence brain size and also correlate with income could play a role in the results, says Ian Deary, a psychologist at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom who is well known for his work on intelligence. He cites recent studies concluding that both genetic and environmental factors influence socioeconomic status.

For what it's worth, there is certainly a great deal of literature that indicates that extreme poverty and malnutrition does indeed impact brain development. A kid starving in the 3rd world will have a lower IQ that he would have had if he had adequate nutrition. But once you get to an adequate level of nutrition (like that experienced by 99% of Americans), then additional nutritional differences don't matter much.

[dckingsfan]

You might be right, you might be wrong. But we can't argue that some of the schools are failing and we should try something. We have thrown huge money at those schools (see nate's argument). And what about publically funded and run charter schools.

The reality is that we don't know how well most charter schools are doing. Because they are typically not required to provide test, attendance, suspension, etc. data like traditional public schools are required to do.

Case in point: about 2 months ago a group of independent researchers released a report on the results of 7 years of mayoral control of DC schools. Throughout the report they note that they were not given access to data on charter schools.

Btw, charter school teachers are increasingly joining teacher unions. They are weary of the low pay, arbitrary decisions by administrators, job insecurity and lack of voice/input that often goes along with teaching in a charter school.

The REAL reality is that some charter schools are doing quite well as are some public schools. The reality is that when there are public schools that are failing and charter schools that are doing well - parents are moving their kids. And vice versa, when a charter school doesn't do well, parents vote with their feet.

What you don't take into consideration is that parents will find the best school for their kid based upon the choices available. The only argument to that is that low-income parents are stupid and should be allowed a choice. Well-to-do parents always have a choice with private schools.

So, we do know how the schools are doing by this most important metric.

BTW, you might want to note that some data provided by the Charter schools was not provided by the public schools. Thought that was interesting as well.

But all-in-all, staying with the failing public schools (not the ones that are working) is our very worst choice. They are at their systemically broken.

[dobrojim]

What you're (Nate) saying is at a minimum scientifically controversial. For one thing, you're talking IQ
which is something different than intelligence or potential. Like I said, it's complicated.
And you don't know whether these 'lessor' children were born with lower potential or
whether it was the sum total of their environment that made them lower achievers.
And higher socio-econ areas/people have a host of advantages not shared with those
at the bottom. It is difficult at best to tease out cause-effect in assessing the whys
and wherefores of what we observe.

Actually, you are right that I was wrong to make the focus exclusively on IQ. What I should have said is that intelligence, behavior, disposition, work ethic, and initiative are all hereditary to some degree. Rich people, who generally get rich thanks to a high proportion of these qualities, are likely to produce offspring who also have a high proportion of these qualities. All these qualities combined helps one do better is school.

The "blank slate" is a myth. Education and training are important to help one reach one's potential, but to a great degree, one's true potential is preordained by nature. It is hereditary to a much greater degree than most people believe.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't try and provide the best education we can to all people. I'm just saying that to expect an equal outcome is fruitless. It's never going to happen

Oh boy. I don't think there is any sound science to support your statements (bolded).

Obviously there is variation as we look at different individuals within and across populations.

No one expects totally 'equal outcome' given that that variation exists.

I can't help but be struck by how often it seems to me in our discussions your conclusion ends
up being something along the lines of "that's how it is and we're never going to fix it".
(Maybe I'm wrong)
I do not mean for this to be insulting. Perhaps you might characterize my approach as
unrealistically hopeful that by force of will, some/many things can be made to be better.
(emphasis on unrealistically). It's clear we are very different.

I'm curious what significant social, political, environmental problems can you think of that might
realistically be amenable to improvement by deliberate directed human intervention?
(I'll leave the definition of significant and realistically to you)

You're king for a day (or a year or 5 years). What would you do to improve the lives of your subjects?
You have significant but not unlimited resources. Let your imagination flow.

[dckingsfan]

I will take on one aspect of your question (implied) dobrojim. Can government fix all problems? Is there a time where you shut down non-effective failed policy implementations?

I think you can see the law of unintended consequences come into play on "the war against crime", "the war against drugs" & prohibition. We "have" to do something to "fix" these problems. Sometimes the fixes are worse than the problems.

It is very difficult to stop these programs when started. We are only now coming to our senses on the war on crime and war on drugs.

We had to damn near kill the economy with HUD/Fannie/Freddy trying to "fix" home purchasing - and we can't kill that one either.

SS/Medicare/Medicaid are great programs. But they have been moved to unsustainable with all the additions to those programs.

If our representatives came at these problems with - given our limited resources, what can we accomplish vs. we have to fix everything, I think we would be in much better shape. But that again would involve ending programs...

[doclinkin]

in the highlighted quote you question the conclusion that slavery was the cause of africa's inability to keep up with the world, however in ur post above u talk about population loss. not the same thing.

Then I must not have explained myself clearly. This whole tangent on the slavery topic came up because TSW postulated that the constant drain of able young people from Africa due to the slave trade would have severely impacted their ability to grow and develop as a people. I merely tried to put the magnitude of the population loss in context.

More context then, which speaks to popper's original question, and while it may say nothing against your assertion that the exportation of human beings as a commodity undermined the growth of Africa as a world power, still it may suggest more starkly the problems with um call it 'forced immigration' at this end of the pipeline:

I'd also be interested to compare the average lifetime earnings (or purchasing power) of AA slave decedents to citizens of those countries where most slaves came from (western Africa I think?). In other words, do slave decedents today benefit economically from living in the US compared to what they likely would have experienced had their ancestors not been forcefully removed from Africa.

Problem being the countries in question suffered from more exploitation than forced export of human lives. but still their culture and values were left intact. Consider instead the US graduation rates of African-born immigrants:



Compare and contrast with the graduation rates of American-born descendents of slavery and you see a stark difference.

[dobrojim]

I will take on one aspect of your question (implied) dobrojim. Can government fix all problems? Is there a time where you shut down non-effective failed policy implementations?

I think you can see the law of unintended consequences come into play on "the war against crime", "the war against drugs" & prohibition. We "have" to do something to "fix" these problems. Sometimes the fixes are worse than the problems.

It is very difficult to stop these programs when started. We are only now coming to our senses on the war on crime and war on drugs.

We had to damn near kill the economy with HUD/Fannie/Freddy trying to "fix" home purchasing - and we can't kill that one either.

SS/Medicare/Medicaid are great programs. But they have been moved to unsustainable with all the additions to those programs.

If our representatives came at these problems with - given our limited resources, what can we accomplish vs. we have to fix everything, I think we would be in much better shape. But that again would involve ending programs...

I agree with much of this with the exception of the blame cast solely on HUD/FanFred for the 2008 collapse.
They were contributing factors but there were worse players. Banks encouraging liar loans because they
knew they were going to unload them on someone else. Rating agencies operating with huge conflicts of
interest. A general opacity in the system. Unfettered greed running rampant. Some huge problems were
done by people operating completely within the law as per the notorious example of Magnetar, as told in
this episode of this American Life, who by themselves and acting legally were a huge problem without even
considering anyone else.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/405/inside-job

There was considerable blame to go around.

And yes, I will readily concede that it is far more difficult to end something than it is to start it.

[nate33]

in the highlighted quote you question the conclusion that slavery was the cause of africa's inability to keep up with the world, however in ur post above u talk about population loss. not the same thing.

Then I must not have explained myself clearly. This whole tangent on the slavery topic came up because TSW postulated that the constant drain of able young people from Africa due to the slave trade would have severely impacted their ability to grow and develop as a people. I merely tried to put the magnitude of the population loss in context.

More context then, which speaks to popper's original question, and while it may say nothing against your assertion that the exportation of human beings as a commodity undermined the growth of Africa as a world power, still it may suggest more starkly the problems with um call it 'forced immigration' at this end of the pipeline:

I'd also be interested to compare the average lifetime earnings (or purchasing power) of AA slave decedents to citizens of those countries where most slaves came from (western Africa I think?). In other words, do slave decedents today benefit economically from living in the US compared to what they likely would have experienced had their ancestors not been forcefully removed from Africa.

Problem being the countries in question suffered from more exploitation than forced export of human lives. but still their culture and values were left intact. Consider instead the US graduation rates of African-born immigrants:



Compare and contrast with the graduation rates of American-born descendents of slavery and you see a stark difference.

It is absolutely true that African immigrants outperform American-born African Americans, and in some studies, they outperform American whites. It's difficult to conclude much from this though because African immigrants generally come from a pool of very wealthy elites in Africa. They're not a representative sample of the population as a whole. A similar pattern can be seen in Indian immigrants.

An unfortunate consequence, however, is that with Africa's best and brightest immigrating to the 1st world, Africa gets left behind. This is a dynamic that has been in place for the past few decades, and the brain drain is almost certainly affecting Africa in recent years. I don't know to what degree there was a "brain drain" in the slavery era. Have you seen any studies that suggest that the slaves taken were the best and brightest from the community? Did slavers have the opportunity to pick out the strongest, or did they prey on the weak? I have no knowledge on the matter.

[dckingsfan]

I will take on one aspect of your question (implied) dobrojim. Can government fix all problems? Is there a time where you shut down non-effective failed policy implementations?

I think you can see the law of unintended consequences come into play on "the war against crime", "the war against drugs" & prohibition. We "have" to do something to "fix" these problems. Sometimes the fixes are worse than the problems.

It is very difficult to stop these programs when started. We are only now coming to our senses on the war on crime and war on drugs.

We had to damn near kill the economy with HUD/Fannie/Freddy trying to "fix" home purchasing - and we can't kill that one either.

SS/Medicare/Medicaid are great programs. But they have been moved to unsustainable with all the additions to those programs.

If our representatives came at these problems with - given our limited resources, what can we accomplish vs. we have to fix everything, I think we would be in much better shape. But that again would involve ending programs...

I agree with much of this with the exception of the blame cast solely on HUD/FanFred for the 2008 collapse.
They were contributing factors but there were worse players. Banks encouraging liar loans because they
knew they were going to unload them on someone else. Rating agencies operating with huge conflicts of
interest. A general opacity in the system. Unfettered greed running rampant. Some huge problems were
done by people operating completely within the law as per the notorious example of Magnetar, as told in
this episode of this American Life, who by themselves and acting legally were a huge problem without even
considering anyone else.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/405/inside-job

There was considerable blame to go around.

And yes, I will readily concede that it is far more difficult to end something than it is to start it.

yep, but when government is driving a program vs. enforcing laws, bad things happen. For example, if the USDA was trying to sell meat - you can believe a lot of tainted meat would slide by

But I think we are basically on the same page...

[nate33]

Oh boy. I don't think there is any sound science to support your statements (bolded).

Estimates in the academic research of the heritability of IQ have varied from below 0.5[2] to a high of 0.8 (where 1.0 indicates that monozygotic twins have no variance in IQ and 0 indicates that their IQs are completely uncorrelated).[6] Eric Turkheimer and colleagues (2003) found that for children of low socioeconomic status heritability of IQ falls almost to zero.[7] These results have been challenged by other researchers. IQ heritability increases during early childhood, but it is unclear whether it stabilizes thereafter.[8] A 1996 statement by the American Psychological Association gave about 0.45 for children and about .75 during and after adolescence.[9] A 2004 meta-analysis of reports in Current Directions in Psychological Science gave an overall estimate of around 0.85 for 18-year-olds and older.[10] The general figure for heritability of IQ is about 0.5 across multiple studies in varying populations.[11] Recent studies suggest that family environment (i.e., upbringing) has negligible long-lasting effects upon adult IQ. [12]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

For decades, scientists argued back and forth, spilling much ink in the debate between whether intelligence was naturally given or the product of nurture and environment. However, in recent years, Plomin said the scientific community has come to the consensus that intelligence is on some level the product of your genes.

Specifically, IQ is about 50 percent heritable. (For context, height is 90 percent heritable; weight is 70 percent.) A number like 50 percent heritability does not mean that you get 50 percent of your intelligence from your parents, and 50 percent from the environment. It’s a more complex, abstract statistical estimate. Essentially, what heritability estimates is the ratio between how much the range of genetic differences can affect a given trait compared to how much a range of environmental factors can affect that same trait.

"I think there is very little disagreement in the scientific community," said Plomin. "No one even does studies anymore to look at whether intelligence is heritable."

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/intelligence-and-genetics-do-some-people-inherit-an-edge

Another interesting element to this is that the heritability of IQ manifests itself differently with age. At young ages, environmental influences seem to make more difference. But those differences regress back to the mean as the children age. If you separate identical twins, put one in pre-school and the other in a non-stimulating environment, the preschool twin is likely to outperform the non-stimulated twin in IQ tests taken at age 5. But by age 15, the differences in IQ will diminish. They'll eventually converge to an almost identical IQ by their 30's or 40's, regardless of differing environmental influences (assuming adequate nutrition). Essentially, if you don't stimulate someone's mind, they'll eventually stimulate themselves.

[nate33]

Oh boy. I don't think there is any sound science to support your statements (bolded).

More scientific support of my statements:

Below the fold is a table reproduced from the paper Genetic Influence on Human Psychological Traits A Survey. Please do not read the table as a gauge of the “geneticness” of the trait. (whatever that means) Rather, it should give you a rough sense of the “pull” that biological inheritance will have on an individual. Biology may not be destiny, but it is definitely probability.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/06/heritability-of-behavioral-traits/#.VbvP9_lBnC8

[nate33]

Baltimore killings soar to a level unseen in 43 years

BALTIMORE (AP) — Baltimore reached a grim milestone on Friday, three months after riots erupted in response to the death of Freddie Gray in police custody: With 45 homicides in July, the city has seen more bloodshed in a single month than it has in 43 years.

Police reported three deaths — two men shot Thursday and one on Friday. The men died at local hospitals.

With their deaths, this year's homicides reached 189, far outpacing the 119 killings by July's end in 2014. Nonfatal shootings have soared to 366, compared to 200 by the same date last year. July's total was the worst since the city recorded 45 killings in August 1972, according to The Baltimore Sun.

The seemingly Sisyphean task of containing the city's violence prompted Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to fire her police commissioner, Anthony Batts, on July 8.

"Too many continue to die on our streets," Rawlings-Blake said then. "Families are tired of dealing with this pain, and so am I. Recent events have placed an intense focus on our police leadership, distracting many from what needs to be our main focus: the fight against crime."

Strained relationships between police and the public also play a role, according to Eugene O'Donnell, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Arrests plummeted and violence soared after six officers were indicted in Gray's death. Residents accused police of abandoning their posts for fear of facing criminal charges for making arrests, and said emboldened criminals were settling scores with little risk of being caught.

The department denied these claims, and police cars have been evident patrolling West Baltimore's central thoroughfares recently.

But O'Donnell said the perception of lawlessness is just as powerful than the reality.

"We have a national issue where the police feel they are the Public Enemy No. 1," he said, making some officers stand down and criminals become more brazen.

"There's a rhythm to the streets," he added. "And when people get away with gun violence, it has a long-term emboldening effect. And the good people in the neighborhood think, 'Who has the upper hand?'"

The riots and anti-police rhetoric has consequences. As I've mentioned on multiple occasions, the statistics available indicate that police are NOT racially biased in the number of police shootings. What we've had is a few isolated incidents being blown out of proportion by the media and the black activists, with the end result being more black people dead as crime rises.

[Zonkerbl]

No. I'm comparing flow to flow. Population is a flow too. People keep getting born.

Actually, I'm not even comparing anything to population. Population is merely used for context. I'm comparing abduction rate to death rates. Population is going to be based on birth rate minus death rate, and both are variable.

Oh snap.

Not only are you comparing a stock to a flow but you are doing it intentionally to deceitfully claim a number is less significant than it actually is. It's straight out of "how to lie with statistics." It's hard to imagine how you could use statistics in a less scientific way.

Let's apply your logic to malaria:

Malaria killed 90 million Africans in the same timespan between 1500 and 1800. There were only 60 million Africans in 1600. Therefore, the continent is now uninhabited!

I don't care about the particulars of this argument. It is possibly one of the boringest, most pointless discussions we've had in this thread.

Not only did you deliberately compare stocks to flows to distort the truth, to put it kindly, but you then proceeded to call my competence as an economist into question. Let me just point out again, for the record, that you were dead wrong.

Please keep serving up softballs for me, Nate, and I will be more than happy to smack those pizzas right out of the park.

[nate33]

I'm not sure how you hit anything out of the park, but whatever. You go on believing that.

[Benjammin]

I feel dumber for reading the last several pages. The mental gymnastics necessary to support emotional arguments is breathtaking. I especially enjoyed reading that Christianity is "anti-intellectual". The number of universities and hospitals founded by Christians is just a happy accident.