Looking at the last section of Dalliard’s critique (which is the one that addresses what I take to be one of the two central points of Shalizi’s article, namely that one can get the sorts of correlations used as evidence by “g” theorists even when there is in fact no single common factor) it seems to me that the two of them are rather talking past one another. Or, since Shalizi wrote first and Dalliard second, it seems to me that Dalliard is missing (or doesn’t care about) Shalizi’s point.
Here’s Shalizi:
The mythical aspect of g isn’t that it can be defined, or, having been defined, that it describes a lot of the correlations on intelligence tests; the myth is that this tells us anything more than that those tests are positively correlated.
and here’s Dalliard:
The question of whether or not there is a unidimensional scale of intelligence along which individuals can be arranged is independent of the question of what the neurobiological substrate of intelligence is like.
To put it differently (and if you’re skeptical that this is a fair paraphrase, I suggest you read the bits of Shalizi’s and Dalliard’s articles from which those quotations come), Shalizi is saying “yeah, sure, you can give people tests of mental functioning and they’ll correlate positively, which means you can measure people’s ‘general intelligence’ and get somewhat-consistent results; but that doesn’t mean there’s any single underlying factor”, and Dalliard is saying “yeah, sure, there might not be a single underlying factor, but because of those positive correlations you can measure people’s ‘general intelligence’ and get somewhat-consistent results.”
I should add that Dalliard does also offer, or at least gesture towards, some empirical evidence against the sort of no-common-factor model Shalizi is describing. Probably the work by Jensen that Dalliard quotes a few bits from here is more convincing than his quotations on their own; I found the latter vague and handwavy. Can anyone who has Jensen’s book tell me whether it offers much actual support for what “it has been noted that”?
Looking at the last section of Dalliard’s critique (which is the one that addresses what I take to be one of the two central points of Shalizi’s article, namely that one can get the sorts of correlations used as evidence by “g” theorists even when there is in fact no single common factor) it seems to me that the two of them are rather talking past one another. Or, since Shalizi wrote first and Dalliard second, it seems to me that Dalliard is missing (or doesn’t care about) Shalizi’s point.
Here’s Shalizi:
and here’s Dalliard:
To put it differently (and if you’re skeptical that this is a fair paraphrase, I suggest you read the bits of Shalizi’s and Dalliard’s articles from which those quotations come), Shalizi is saying “yeah, sure, you can give people tests of mental functioning and they’ll correlate positively, which means you can measure people’s ‘general intelligence’ and get somewhat-consistent results; but that doesn’t mean there’s any single underlying factor”, and Dalliard is saying “yeah, sure, there might not be a single underlying factor, but because of those positive correlations you can measure people’s ‘general intelligence’ and get somewhat-consistent results.”
I should add that Dalliard does also offer, or at least gesture towards, some empirical evidence against the sort of no-common-factor model Shalizi is describing. Probably the work by Jensen that Dalliard quotes a few bits from here is more convincing than his quotations on their own; I found the latter vague and handwavy. Can anyone who has Jensen’s book tell me whether it offers much actual support for what “it has been noted that”?