Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class

I wrote a review for Nicholas Wade's A Troublesome Inheritance that compared the two, and explains a lot of the merit of Murray's book. I'll add that I did not like Part I of Murray's Human Diversity much at all (I found it tedious and boring, although I didn't have a problem with its core messages). In this review, I've been talking about Parts II, III, and IV. When considered as their own book, Parts II, III, and IV are well worth 5 stars, so I gave them 5 stars since you might like Part I, or else you can easily skip it. I have to recommend that you read Parts II and III of Charles Murray's Human Diversity before reading Nicholas Wade's A Troublesome Inheritance (if you read Murray's Human Diversity and want more, reading Wade's book after is fine). Here are some reasons why Murray's books is better: 1. Murray's book was published in 2020, Wade's in 2014. If you're unfamiliar with the modern study of human genetics, you might not realize that we are currently in a period of incredibly rapid progress. Those 6 years make an enormous difference. 2. Wade's book is far more speculative. Wade says himself right at the start of his book that the second half, chapters 6-10 out of 10 total are not based on scientific evidence but instead speculation. Speculation can be interesting, but it doesn't improve your understanding of the world the way that you're probably wanting out of a book like this. (I know I wanted to read about the science that the mainstream narrative obscures, and understand true facts about the world better) In contrast to Wade's speculation, Murray's book is laser focused on the facts. Wade book has 12 pages of citations and notes, Murray's book has 118 - almost 10x as much. And believe me, it comes through in the texts. Even the chapters where Wade wants to describe science to you, the citations are here and there but a lot of it is Wade explaining a concept or helping you understand a researcher's point. Whereas, Murray's writing is often like this: "Here's a study. Here's a study. Here's a study. Here's the median/average/range." Some readers may find Murray a little more difficult (I thought it was fine), but if that's the case I encourage you to just read difficult passages twice. It's better to have a difficult reading that you actually learn better facts from than an easier read that doesn't teach you nearly as much. 3. In contrast to Wade, Murray is far more restrained. Murray makes a point at the start of his book that he wants to avoid any areas where the scientists are in debate - his point with the book is to make very, very well-backed points that are still "forbidden" in modern discourse. All those sources help him back up his well-researched points. In a lot of disciplines, staying on what the scientific consensus was certain on could be boring, but not this area because even the agreed upon points are "forbidden" to discuss. This matters hugely for you as a reader, because after you read Wade's book, you'll have trouble remembering whether something you read was agreed on by researchers in 2014, or whether it was something Wade himself was just speculating on. In contrast, Murray makes restrained but important claims (1 per chapter, so 6 in Parts II and III of his book). And he really helps you understand how we're quite confident their true, and the limits of what he means by that. So when you finish Murray's book, you'll probably have a much clearer understanding of certain aspects of the world than you did before reading, and you can take Murray's restrained claims into any conversation you want, because they are grounded in mountains of empirical data. Murray does give his own thoughts, but he does so only briefly, and in a separate tiny section at the end of Parts I, II, III and the book as a whole. It is crucially helpful that he never gives his thoughts in the main core of the book itself, so this really helps you mentally separate the piles of study's w Murray's opinion (which you can also easily skip, it's only a small part of the book) 4. This point is harder to directly substantiate, but overall I think Murray just frames the issue better, in a more grounded and realistic manner, and overall will just leave you better suited for the real world after reading it. Wade's heart is in the right place, he's not hateful or anything, but he focuses a lot on past civilizations and thinks about racial connections to society and history. Historical speculation can be fun (whoa what if the Vikings had colonized Canada, or what if the Muslims controlled Spain for a different length of time), but ultimately, you want to walk away from a book like this equipped to go back into the real world. (In the few times he isn't just telling you the science directly) Murray focuses more on that sort of thing overall: How will we as a society deal with the uncomfortable facts discussed. You'll walk away from Murray's book more aware of things that actually affect your life. Conclusion: Ultimately, 2014 vs 2020 makes a huge difference in the rapidly developing field of human genetics. Wade leans into speculation, which while it can be fun with popcorn is not going to enrich you as a reader as well as Murray's grounded, societally controversial but scientifically agreed upon claims. Murray brings study after study, which really adds up to adding depth to your improved understanding. No shame to Wade though. If you've already read Murray's book and are looking for something else that is maybe a bit more speculative, Wade's book might be worth checking out. I'll add that I did not like Part I of Murray's Human Diversity much at all; in this review, I've been talking about Parts II, III, and IV. Good luck finding your next book to read!

First, and most importantly, if you haven't read this book, don't bother writing a review. It's pathetic that anyone would even need to say this, but this author and this book definitely spark some urge in humans to act like they can represent content without actually reading the content. It's immoral to write a review of a restaurant without ever dining there, it's immoral to review a movie without having seen it, and it's equally immoral to review a book without reading it. I want to be crystal clear: I read the entire book, even the acknowledgements following its conclusion. Did I find anything in the book that turned me off? Yes. But it had nothing to do with Murray's propositions and it had zero to do with any of the science Murray brings forward to support his assertions and hypotheses. To be fair, I am not a social scientist or statistician or geneticist. Murray makes it clear at the beginning of the book, however, that he didn't write it for those folks, at least not primarily. All one needs to be is accepting of science and able to evaluate scientific claims. The book is heavy with data and scientific concepts. Murray does a good job of priming the reader with the necessary scientific foundation to navigate each chapter. I found his explanations mostly readily accessible. I never sensed any agenda in how he attempts to establish the base science across every area. His conclusions are pretty much all couched in language that caveats the state of the science as 'there is definitely more to be discovered here, so any conclusions should be provisional' - rarely does he make an issue binary, and he constantly asserts that what is being learned now is making obvious the need to pursue more questions and more branches of investigation. He does shine a lot of light on the lack of success of social programs over the past hundred years or so, and I detected no agenda other than the desire to see taxpayer money spent on programs that can demonstrate success against their stated goals. I was surprised to learn that he is strongly supportive of universal basic income and education vouchers, but as I read more and more about his views these revelations lost their surprise. Murray clearly subscribes to the Rawls "veil of ignorance" model where luck plays a huge role in outcomes and we should recognize this in the ways we organize societies and economies. I look forward to reading the work of folks that disagree with Murray just as much as I look forward to reading more of Murray's works.

Murray"s book debunks three main tenants of the Standard Social Science Model: gender is a social construct, race is a social construct, and class is a function of privilege. Now to do this he must present some pretty hard, and to me difficult to understand statistics. To not do so he opens himself to attack from the now dwindling number of Jay Gould type sociologists. Getting through the book took me some time and I must admit to skipping over a few of the sections where he explains his use of data; the last statistics course I had was over fifty years ago. But still when the dear reader, and that includes someone like me with more than a few broken neurons, it is clear that nature is more important than nurture and that John Locke, the behaviorists, social justice warriors, and a lot others are on the losing side of the debate. Now despite the fact that I struggled with some of the math, I still give the book five stars. It's worth the time to read Murray's book. As Sergeant Preston would state at the end of each episode, "Well King, this case is closed."

Murray is able to summarize vast swaths of material from multiple academic fields to solidify himself as one of America's most important cross-disciplinary social thinkers of the past several generations. The central idea of this particular book is simple, but profound. It simply says that people are not absolutely equal, and that we cannot continue to pretend that we are. Why? Precisely because the people who end up suffering the most are society's most vulnerable classes. Written with Murray's characteristic and compelling rigor, it's worth taking the time to think deeply about something that Murray has been warning us about for the past 30-40 years.

A lot of information based on an extremely large bibliography with sound argumentations. I found it fascinating though sometimes the argumentation is pretty lenghty because of a lot of data used as a point. I don't regret reading it but it took a quite a time. I think there is a lot of truth on the argumentation that cognitive abilities are heritable.

Murray has written a very valuable, concise book on the most exciting developments in human sociobiology. Most impressively, he has done so in a way that 1) uses several statistical concepts and 2) is readable for a non-STEM/stats graduate like myself. Despite the numerous media calumnies that make him out to be a Nazi, Murray writes in a very empathetic and positive manner. Women, non-whites, and working-class people are not talked down to or demeaned. His chapters on gender differences especially highlight the absurdity of claiming any group to be innately better than another. Murray has put together the evidence suggesting biological/genetic explanations for certain differences between genders, races, and classes. The first and third have the most comprehensive/consistent evidence behind them, while the second is more rooted in speculation. But even on race, the sequencing of human genomes has shown a great deal of genetic influence on non-behavioural traits. If the taboo weakens, as Murray predicts, we might one day find that some cognitive differences can also be detected with genomic research methods. I am personally skeptical of this- if anything, the consensus that Race Is A Social Construct has gotten more entrenched in the past few years. However, the Race/IQ topic is small beans in this book. The book's gender chapters are perhaps the most engrossing, and I suspect a casual liberal will find much to agree with. Murray points out how sex differences in personality and work/study preferences actually become *larger* in more gender egalitarian countries. Therefore, Western European countries have more "stereotypical" gender divides in college majors than poorer nations elsewhere. Murray of course notes that female representation in once all-male fields did improve dramatically after the first two waves of feminism in the 19th-20th centuries. However, since then progress has seemed to stagnate. It is convincingly shown that women's choices, based in large part on biological inheritances, are driving this, not Western male sexism. Similarly, Murray points out that the role of genetic factors in class differences can be low when public goods are unevenly distributed. He notes that one study found heritability rising in sync with the expansion of public education. But there is a point of diminishing returns. Once a country has reached a certain stage of development, anything beyond 'normal' parenting and schooling is rarely effective. The scientific literature on growth mindsets, stereotype threats, and early childhood education are all rather weak. Most often, big pedagogical schemes have no impact in the long run. Human Diversity has so many citations that the final 30% of its pages are exclusively taken up by them. But the book is all the better for it. Studies from geneticists, sociologists, and neuroscientists are all listed. Murray places the empirical literature in the hands of the reader, so that they can see the science is fairly well settled. And it is not settled in the direction that modern progressivism has us believe. In our inequality-obsessed age, where war cries for ending all inequities are the norm, this book is needed now more than ever.

What an eye opener! I highly recommend the book. It has lots of recent data that will probably surprise you.

ho trovato il libro veramente interessante, senza entrare in dettagli dico che andrebbe letto da chi sostiene le teorie gender più estreme tanto di moda oggi