Assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen in

1. New Freakonomics study guide, explained and downloadable here.  Elsewhere on the Steve Levitt front, he argues with Roland Fryer that black and white kids have roughly the same mental abilities when measured at age one.

2. Google map of Mars, hat tip to Yana.

3. Here is a new cost-benefit study of the war in Iraq, from a hawk-friendly point of view.  The authors are Steve Davis, Kevin Murphy, and Bob Topel; I’ll let you know more once I’ve read it.

Comments

anon

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I thought that there weren't any reliable tests for IQ before the age of 3 (or is it 7)?

Matt

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Wow, PJGoober, that's quite a post you have there. Especially those last two sentences.

Biological determinists these days generally ascribe to Charles Murray's working thesis that the racial gap stays roughly constant over time (within and between generations). It shows up as early as 2-3 years old (not 14-17 as you suggest that neoteny implies). This study, right or wrong, is in direct conflict with that theory.

PJGoober

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PS.I don't profess to know all the answers, I am open to new data, but I just wanted to explain how Levitt's and the Bell Curves findings may be compatable.

Bernard Yomtov

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I've only read the abstract. The authors recognize the possibility that genetic differences would emerge later in life, but they seem to downplay that possibility. Has anyone read the full article? Do they present any other evidence on that point?

PC Disclaimer: I'm not saying that there are racial genetic disparities in intelligence. I'm just saying that this appears to be very weak evidence on the subject.

Maybe you should spring for the five bucks and read it yourself before criticizing it.

Ronald Brak

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In Australia one would obviously expect black people to be gentically more intelligent that white people because of the heavy load of disease and parasites people had to adapt to in Europe. This would presumably lead to less selection for intelligence and more selection for disease resistance amoung whites. But as African blacks were enslaved mainly because of their disease resistance I guess it is possible that blacks in the U.S. are just as genetically unintelligent as whites.

Kyle N

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This is a hotbed topic, but I wonder, if it si established that there is a racial bell curve, what then? I contend that culture and family life are so overwhelmingly more important that it doesn't much matter.

spencer

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I have little interest in the question of whether the resident of Iraq are better off because of the war. I want to see if the US is more secure or more powerful
because of the war. The other question is not why we spend our resources on war.

Barbar

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Koko the gorilla has an IQ between 70 and 95? I would love to see the test she took.

I thought IQ tests compared "mental age" to "actual age." At what age did she take the test? What human age was she being benchmarked against?

Or is it just that she scores within a couple of standard deviations of the mean human, or better than 5% of the human population? Really now. Again, I would love to see the test.

Gorillas fundamentally lack a number of human cognitive abilities that even really stupid people have.

I'm a little skeptical to say the least.

Ronald Brak

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I just wanted to ask a question about the last China fact of the day. If only one percent of U.S. car sales are to first time buyers does that mean the average American goes through about a hundred cars in their life time?

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