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When you narrow in on a part of science it is easy to lose sight of the rest. That’s how I feel when it comes to Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read. It’s been a while since I read much about cognitive neuroscience, so it’s a novel rediscovery. Though the most interesting point that I’ve internalized so far is that the irrationality of the English spelling system does result in a cost in terms of the amount of time that children must invest to become functionally literate. Apparently the Turkish transition from the Arabic script to Latin alphabet resulted in immediate yields in literacy gains, illustrating that writing systems are not arbitrarily useful.
Second, another comment about my comments policy:
I’ve been reading your blog for some time. It is always interesting. But one thing frequently puzzles me. The prose in your main posts is always so reasonable and persuasive that I am surprised by your surly, intemperate responses to some of the commenters. Often, as in your reply to Sean, you totally ignore the commenter’s remarks and simply “go postal.” Whether or not Sean has completed “post-doctoral research” really has nothing to do with the quality of his remarks.
First, I know more than you. You really should shut up sometimes. I know the post-doctoral researcher in question, and he’s done more thought on issues of reproduction than you or Sean have forgotten. So I don’t want people to waste his, mine, or, your, time. Don’t think I don’t keep track of commenters and what they’ve said. Comments can’t be evaluated in a singular fashion. If people have commented intelligently or informatively in the past, they get slack. If not, no.
Second, a recent poll suggests that 4 percent of Americans say they are less intelligent than average. It’s pretty obvious that people overestimate their intelligence and knowledgeability, and this includes readers of this weblog. I spend time, away from other activities, writing these posts. If you don’t like them, don’t read them. I don’t care. But if you make a comment don’t waste my time. If you tell me something I don’t know, I’m going to be happy. If you make errors in areas where I am more knowledgeable than you, I will not be happy. Unfortunately many readers of this weblog are used to being the “smartest person” in the room. That means that often they think I should be happy with their incredible comments, when they only usually pass muster because of their pathetic peer groups (this tends to be a major problem with older commenters who are never told that they’re not awesome).
My main posts are “reasonable and persuasive” because I do a lot of reading and thinking. If your comments are well informed and well thought out, I won’t be surly.
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Good point.Post-modern notions tend to discourage evaluating cultures on the basis of functionality.But I think that a pretty good case could be made that some writing systems are more useful/efficient (as measured in terms of ease of use/acquisition) than others.
Take the Mayan writing system, for example*, a Rube Goldberg-style combo of logograms and syllabic characters. Mayanists and Maya nationalists alike deplore it’s replacement by the Latin alphabet (there’s a program underway that is attempting to revive use of the Mayan script), but, frankly, I’m not sure that a universally literate society could be built around it.At least not without significant modification/simplification.Hence, from a purely utilitarian standpoint, one could make a very good case that the Maya are better off with the Latin alphabet.
*
For a good account, try:
Breaking the Maya Code (Third Edition) Paperback
by Michael D. Coe (Author)
” If you tell me something I don’t know, I’m going to be happy. If you make errors in areas where I am more knowledgeable than you, I will not be happy. ”
How about areas which are more speculative and both sides (you and the commentator) are about on a equal level?
So Raj Chetty’s research seems to show that neighbourhoods really do have a significant impact on outcomes, but only if you grow up in them from a very young age. The graph at the top of this article is certainly striking:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/upshot/an-atlas-of-upward-mobility-shows-paths-out-of-poverty.html?abt=0002&abg=0
(See also: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/05/upshot/why-the-new-research-on-mobility-matters-an-economists-view.html?abt=0002&abg=0 )
Bonus points: they claim that the effect also holds within families – younger siblings benefit more from a move to a “good” neighbourhood.
Has anyone posted a good rebuttal of these claims?
Not to mention a lot of other concerns - what was the implicit agreement between Chetty and the IRS in obtaining this data? How much might Chetty have been concerned that politically incorrect analysis might jeopardize future access? To what extent can we trust the results from someone so closely aligned with a presidential candidate?
But other than Steve Sailer I haven't seem much critical discussion (lots of fawning in the Times, but not much critical discussion). The data analysis I'd imagine is pretty dense and might take some time for others to dig deep enough to comment constructively - assuming the same level of data is even made available for review.
So this story’s a month old but it kinda bothered me: http://reason.com/blog/2015/05/06/ancestrycom-hands-over-client-dna-test-r#.dfnoue:ELGf
The police used a warrant to obtain the identity of a man that had genetic info in a database owned by Ancestry. The info was used to identify his son’s semen sample from a crime scene. I would understand if they got a warrant to identify the actual individual, but seizing the genetic info from an innocent man seems like a huge breach of privacy. Makes me wonder if the supreme court cases on metadata and e-mail (you have no reasonable expectation of privacy from the government when you release info to third parties) will one day be applied to 23andme and Ancestry. On another note, just started Beth Shapiro’s How to Clone a Mammoth and am enjoying it so far.
The super-annuated surf-dawg bros in my peer group are all most definitely awesome if for no other reasons than that they know not to drop in on me on a wave and are also all rich enough that they can afford to stand buying several rounds at the local pub before driving off in their X5s.
(this tends to be a major problem with older commenters who are never told that they’re not awesome).
This can be true only of those who either never had children or became parents at a late age. Those of with children in or past adolescence have been forcefully exiled from this Arcadia. To the extent that we are part of this problem, it is likely due to an attempt to return to that Golden Age, when Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/upshot/an-atlas-of-upward-mobility-shows-paths-out-of-poverty.html?abt=0002&abg=0
(See also: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/05/upshot/why-the-new-research-on-mobility-matters-an-economists-view.html?abt=0002&abg=0 )
Bonus points: they claim that the effect also holds within families - younger siblings benefit more from a move to a "good" neighbourhood.
Has anyone posted a good rebuttal of these claims?Replies: @ziel
It seems to be based on a fundamentally faulty assumption – that the movement of people is random, and thus any effects seen can be attributed to location. This seems like a rather silly assumption, as people obviously move to take advantage of opportunities, and people move at different ages obviously. The “age effects” seem kind of suspect as the data isn’t from that long ago.
Not to mention a lot of other concerns – what was the implicit agreement between Chetty and the IRS in obtaining this data? How much might Chetty have been concerned that politically incorrect analysis might jeopardize future access? To what extent can we trust the results from someone so closely aligned with a presidential candidate?
But other than Steve Sailer I haven’t seem much critical discussion (lots of fawning in the Times, but not much critical discussion). The data analysis I’d imagine is pretty dense and might take some time for others to dig deep enough to comment constructively – assuming the same level of data is even made available for review.
Razib, apropos of your population post, I was curious about something. You’ve made many posts on here describing how we can ascertain from modern-day genomes that human populations were far smaller in the past than the present (which is also what the archaeological record and common sense tell us).
What if there was a huge disaster not too long from now, and 10,000 years later, there were only 5 million or so humans on Earth, similar to our previous hunter-gatherer days. Would an alien taking genotypes from these 5 million people be able to figure out that the human population had been much larger 10,000 years ago? Would they be able to guess that the number was about 7 billion? If the alien couldn’t make such a guess, why not?
A speculative question, but I’ve wondered about it for a long time.
yeah, they would know. but 5 million is a very large population. shrinking from 7 bill to 5 mill isn't really a bottleneck. 5 mill is a decent size.
Maybe it would be possible to make more of the negativity of dealing with problem commenters invisible to those of us who just want to read responses about the blog post. I find skimming past retorts depressing—well, usually … occasionally I occasionally find some comment extra annoying and hope for a smackdown. I certainly appreciate you maintaining high standards for your comments sections.
I’ve said this before but it’s an open comment thread so I’ll repeat myself: the wonderful comment policy here is a huge incentive to keep reading, quite aside from the great actual content. Keep up the good work, Razib.
Another similar example: the 15th Century invention and the eventual widespread modern adoption of a phonetic alphabet in Korea in lieu of the logographic Chinese writing system. Imagine the literacy gain there! Instead of having to memorize tens of thousands of logographs for basic literacy, just 24 letters.
In Japan and South Korea knowledge of the Latin alphabet is near universal but nobody is in a hurry to use romanizations for their own languages.Replies: @Twinkie, @Razib Khan
How about areas which are more speculative and both sides (you and the commentator) are about on a equal level?Replies: @Razib Khan
as long as people aren’t pests i’m pretty tolerant (some times you have a commenter who gets on a hobby horse and starts comment spamming).
What if there was a huge disaster not too long from now, and 10,000 years later, there were only 5 million or so humans on Earth, similar to our previous hunter-gatherer days. Would an alien taking genotypes from these 5 million people be able to figure out that the human population had been much larger 10,000 years ago? Would they be able to guess that the number was about 7 billion? If the alien couldn’t make such a guess, why not?
yeah, they would know. but 5 million is a very large population. shrinking from 7 bill to 5 mill isn’t really a bottleneck. 5 mill is a decent size.
Plenty of American academics still argue that China and Japan should abolish Hanzi in order to make literacy easier.
But they’re obviously very functional countries as it is, so what’s the point of making it easier to learn to read and write? It obviously hasn’t helped Spanish-speaking countries become more advanced.
The Arabic script isn’t less suitable for Turkish than it is for Persian, and Iran is doing fine. Of course latinization made life easier for elementary school teachers, but at the end of the day smart people are going to learn stuff, and low IQ people just don’t read that much anyway.
this is a specious objection. how much worse would spanish speaking countries be if they had a lower literacy rate? are you saying that you basically don't give a shit about anything on the margin unless you are teh awesome?Replies: @Roger Sweeny, @spandrell
But they're obviously very functional countries as it is, so what's the point of making it easier to learn to read and write? It obviously hasn't helped Spanish-speaking countries become more advanced.
The Arabic script isn't less suitable for Turkish than it is for Persian, and Iran is doing fine. Of course latinization made life easier for elementary school teachers, but at the end of the day smart people are going to learn stuff, and low IQ people just don't read that much anyway.Replies: @Razib Khan
But they’re obviously very functional countries as it is, so what’s the point of making it easier to learn to read and write? It obviously hasn’t helped Spanish-speaking countries become more advanced.
this is a specious objection. how much worse would spanish speaking countries be if they had a lower literacy rate? are you saying that you basically don’t give a shit about anything on the margin unless you are teh awesome?
That is, of course, an empirical question, which I have no idea how to answer.
97% of young Iranians are literate, with a fairly unintuitive spelling system. I guess it takes a few years longer to become proficient than for a Turkish student, but it's no big deal in the big picture.
In Japan it's not uncommon for a famous professor to have to pause a lecture because he can't remember how to write a character. In Spain or Italy that's unconceivable even for a 10 year old kid. So what? Japan produces much more science and literature than Southern Europe together.
Many make the argument that making it easier to master writing would free time for students to learn other more practical stuff, instead of spending years learning new Hanzi or spelling quirks or whatever. I'm saying I don't see any evidence that it works like that. And it most certainly isn't worth the trouble of actually making the change. Ataturk of course had other things in mind.Replies: @jtgw
this is a specious objection. how much worse would spanish speaking countries be if they had a lower literacy rate? are you saying that you basically don't give a shit about anything on the margin unless you are teh awesome?Replies: @Roger Sweeny, @spandrell
He seems to be saying there is no margin, or at least that the gains from switching will be very, very small: “at the end of the day smart people are going to learn stuff, and low IQ people just don’t read that much anyway.”
That is, of course, an empirical question, which I have no idea how to answer.
this is a specious objection. how much worse would spanish speaking countries be if they had a lower literacy rate? are you saying that you basically don't give a shit about anything on the margin unless you are teh awesome?Replies: @Roger Sweeny, @spandrell
I’m saying is no big deal.
97% of young Iranians are literate, with a fairly unintuitive spelling system. I guess it takes a few years longer to become proficient than for a Turkish student, but it’s no big deal in the big picture.
In Japan it’s not uncommon for a famous professor to have to pause a lecture because he can’t remember how to write a character. In Spain or Italy that’s unconceivable even for a 10 year old kid. So what? Japan produces much more science and literature than Southern Europe together.
Many make the argument that making it easier to master writing would free time for students to learn other more practical stuff, instead of spending years learning new Hanzi or spelling quirks or whatever. I’m saying I don’t see any evidence that it works like that. And it most certainly isn’t worth the trouble of actually making the change. Ataturk of course had other things in mind.
That being said, I don't think it's unreasonable to talk about more or less efficient writing systems wrt a given language. E.g. how many characters or symbols must be memorized? Which system better distinguishes between homophones? Which system better distinguishes between phonemes or contrasting features, or which system introduces arbitrary distinctions that don't exist in the language? I can't believe that some systems won't measure up as more or less efficient or adequate for the purposes of mass literacy.
My recollection is that Arabic script is considered (in hindsight) fairly ill-suited to Turkish, based on the structure of the language itself (lots of open syllables, vowel harmony within words, etc.) and its poor match to a writing system that doesn’t “natively” indicate vowels in a straightforward way. The ambiguity in written language was largely resolved by switching to the Latin alphabetic system where vowels are specified explicitly.
Of course there was a strong political layer to the issue as well (which I believe is also playing out in central Asia, where some Cyrillic alphabets are being discarded for Latin-derived ones).
Overall though, the adaptability of alphabets is pretty interesting. There exists a rich literature in what is basically German written using the Hebrew alphabet. German written in the Hebrew alphabet is (IMO) easier to read than Hebrew written in the Hebrew alphabet.
Hangul eventually become dominant thanks to post independence nationalism, rather than because it’s superior. Hanja is still used occasionally in SK.
In Japan and South Korea knowledge of the Latin alphabet is near universal but nobody is in a hurry to use romanizations for their own languages.
In the 1930's, when Chinese logographs were still used widely in Korea, I believe Korean adult illiteracy rate was around 70%. Today the illiteracy rate in South Korea is 2% (and it is supposedly 1% in the considerably poorer North Korea). Of course, the widespread adoption of the Hangul system was not solely responsible for this dramatic change, but I think there is consensus that the phonetic writing system helped a great deal. Again, it takes much less effort to learn 24 letters (many mimicking the shape of the mouth or the tongue the body makes when it produces the sounds) than learning thousands and tens of thousands of logographs for basic literacy.
American military officers who study Korean learn to read it a lot faster than they do Mandarin Chinese or Japanese. (Korean is still difficult to learn for Westerners, but that's another issue.)Koreans already have a phonetic alphabet that captures the sounds of their language far better than the Latin alphabet. Japanese, of course, supplement Kanji (Chinese logographs) with their native, simplified Chinese writing systems (Katakana and Hiragana), which capture Japanese inflections betters than Kanji. I think they would benefit greatly from a unified phonetic system, but it's probably too late to alter the highly entrenched hybrid writing system they use, as such a dramatic change would cause tremendous disruptions in their society and represent an abrupt break with the past. After all, Korean Hangul took over 500 years to be adopted widely in Korea.
what do you mean by knowledge? as in, everyone knows it exists, or everyone knows their ABCs? is the latter because of the media?Replies: @Twinkie
97% of young Iranians are literate, with a fairly unintuitive spelling system. I guess it takes a few years longer to become proficient than for a Turkish student, but it's no big deal in the big picture.
In Japan it's not uncommon for a famous professor to have to pause a lecture because he can't remember how to write a character. In Spain or Italy that's unconceivable even for a 10 year old kid. So what? Japan produces much more science and literature than Southern Europe together.
Many make the argument that making it easier to master writing would free time for students to learn other more practical stuff, instead of spending years learning new Hanzi or spelling quirks or whatever. I'm saying I don't see any evidence that it works like that. And it most certainly isn't worth the trouble of actually making the change. Ataturk of course had other things in mind.Replies: @jtgw
I kind of see your point. Ataturk’s writing reforms may have been correlated with increased literacy, but I can’t believe that’s the only thing he did differently from his predecessors wrt education.
That being said, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to talk about more or less efficient writing systems wrt a given language. E.g. how many characters or symbols must be memorized? Which system better distinguishes between homophones? Which system better distinguishes between phonemes or contrasting features, or which system introduces arbitrary distinctions that don’t exist in the language? I can’t believe that some systems won’t measure up as more or less efficient or adequate for the purposes of mass literacy.
In Japan and South Korea knowledge of the Latin alphabet is near universal but nobody is in a hurry to use romanizations for their own languages.Replies: @Twinkie, @Razib Khan
Whether or not the Korean phonetic alphabet is “superior” is a separate issue. But I think there is a widespread agreement that it is much easier to learn than the Chinese logographs. And, frankly, it doesn’t matter why it came to be adopted. The salient point here is that it likely contributed very strongly to the rise in literacy in Korea.
In the 1930’s, when Chinese logographs were still used widely in Korea, I believe Korean adult illiteracy rate was around 70%. Today the illiteracy rate in South Korea is 2% (and it is supposedly 1% in the considerably poorer North Korea). Of course, the widespread adoption of the Hangul system was not solely responsible for this dramatic change, but I think there is consensus that the phonetic writing system helped a great deal. Again, it takes much less effort to learn 24 letters (many mimicking the shape of the mouth or the tongue the body makes when it produces the sounds) than learning thousands and tens of thousands of logographs for basic literacy.
American military officers who study Korean learn to read it a lot faster than they do Mandarin Chinese or Japanese. (Korean is still difficult to learn for Westerners, but that’s another issue.)
Koreans already have a phonetic alphabet that captures the sounds of their language far better than the Latin alphabet. Japanese, of course, supplement Kanji (Chinese logographs) with their native, simplified Chinese writing systems (Katakana and Hiragana), which capture Japanese inflections betters than Kanji. I think they would benefit greatly from a unified phonetic system, but it’s probably too late to alter the highly entrenched hybrid writing system they use, as such a dramatic change would cause tremendous disruptions in their society and represent an abrupt break with the past. After all, Korean Hangul took over 500 years to be adopted widely in Korea.
In Japan and South Korea knowledge of the Latin alphabet is near universal but nobody is in a hurry to use romanizations for their own languages.Replies: @Twinkie, @Razib Khan
knowledge of the Latin alphabet is near universal but nobody is in a hurry to use romanizations for their own languages.
what do you mean by knowledge? as in, everyone knows it exists, or everyone knows their ABCs? is the latter because of the media?
what do you mean by knowledge? as in, everyone knows it exists, or everyone knows their ABCs? is the latter because of the media?Replies: @Twinkie
English is part of the compulsory secondary education in most of East Asia.
Honestly, I think the Japanese like Kanji *because* it's hard. It's not really hard in a way that affects the average person's life. You're not really expected to write kanji longhand, and most computer programs and cell phones fill in for you. Moreover, despite the thousands of them, you can get by pretty well with reading comprehension of about 350-500 or so, and read everything short of the classics and literary fiction with a comprehension of about 2,000 characters. That said, it's something that could take a lifetime to master. I doubt more than 1% of Japanese could write free hand the correct kanji for the 2,000 or so needed for proficient literacy, much less the 20,000 or so that exist. One on occasion can watch kanji writing contests on Japanese television. It's safe to say the writing system is a bit fetishized.Replies: @Twinkie
And as someone who taught English in Japan to people who ranged from high school students to educated professionals with Master’s degrees in Engineering and design, I can tell you that the level of comprehension is abysmal. The only people who have more than rudimentary skills are folks who have lived abroad or Eikaiwa hobbyists. Most use of Romanji are for visitors and the like. If you ask a Japanese person to transliterate some Japanese into Romanji, they usually can’t without major errors.
Honestly, I think the Japanese like Kanji *because* it’s hard. It’s not really hard in a way that affects the average person’s life. You’re not really expected to write kanji longhand, and most computer programs and cell phones fill in for you. Moreover, despite the thousands of them, you can get by pretty well with reading comprehension of about 350-500 or so, and read everything short of the classics and literary fiction with a comprehension of about 2,000 characters. That said, it’s something that could take a lifetime to master. I doubt more than 1% of Japanese could write free hand the correct kanji for the 2,000 or so needed for proficient literacy, much less the 20,000 or so that exist. One on occasion can watch kanji writing contests on Japanese television. It’s safe to say the writing system is a bit fetishized.
As you alluded, most East Asians in East Asia (save those educated in English-speaking countries and/or attended international schools locally) speak English very poorly and comprehend even less. But, to be fair, I think their reading comprehension is substantially better than their conversational English as a rule. At least that was my experience working in East Asia. But they seem to be making greater efforts to teach conversational English in recent years by employing expatriate teachers as you were.There is a great deal of cultural prestige in being able to recite and write beautiful classical Chinese phrases in East Asia. That reflects a longstanding tradition of reverence for Chinese classical scholarship. But that only pertains to the traditional elite culture, and does not generalize to the rest of the Western-oriented public. Really, you get more doe-eyed looks from young women in Japan or Korea when you speak French or Italian than when you whip up a "learned" phrase in Chinese characters with a brush and ground ink.
Honestly, I think the Japanese like Kanji *because* it's hard. It's not really hard in a way that affects the average person's life. You're not really expected to write kanji longhand, and most computer programs and cell phones fill in for you. Moreover, despite the thousands of them, you can get by pretty well with reading comprehension of about 350-500 or so, and read everything short of the classics and literary fiction with a comprehension of about 2,000 characters. That said, it's something that could take a lifetime to master. I doubt more than 1% of Japanese could write free hand the correct kanji for the 2,000 or so needed for proficient literacy, much less the 20,000 or so that exist. One on occasion can watch kanji writing contests on Japanese television. It's safe to say the writing system is a bit fetishized.Replies: @Twinkie
I didn’t say East Asians spoke English well, merely that it was compulsory up to the secondary school level.
As you alluded, most East Asians in East Asia (save those educated in English-speaking countries and/or attended international schools locally) speak English very poorly and comprehend even less. But, to be fair, I think their reading comprehension is substantially better than their conversational English as a rule. At least that was my experience working in East Asia. But they seem to be making greater efforts to teach conversational English in recent years by employing expatriate teachers as you were.
There is a great deal of cultural prestige in being able to recite and write beautiful classical Chinese phrases in East Asia. That reflects a longstanding tradition of reverence for Chinese classical scholarship. But that only pertains to the traditional elite culture, and does not generalize to the rest of the Western-oriented public. Really, you get more doe-eyed looks from young women in Japan or Korea when you speak French or Italian than when you whip up a “learned” phrase in Chinese characters with a brush and ground ink.
Has South Korea a higher literacy rate than Japan? No.
Korean children don’t spend thousands of hours learning Chinese characters. Is there evidence that this has resulted in better education in any other subject compared to Japan or China? No.
I mentioned Turkish vs. Persian because it’s more on the margin, but Korea vs. Japan is a better example. Mentioning pre-war literacy rates is disingenuous. You have to compare modern education systems. Taiwan and Japan have no iliteracy issues. And Japan’s writing system is beyond fucked-up.
Hell, Hong Kong teaches their kids to read and write in (formal) Mandarin, read with Cantonese pronunciation. Which is ridiculous. Most people are completely unable to write their own mother tongue (Cantonese). It’s so bad that most people use english to write text messages because they don’t know how to type Hanzi, and handwriting is too cumbersome.
So what? Hong Kong is a rich and advanced economy, their academic performance one of the best in the world. That’s with one of the most dysfunctional language systems on earth.
Efficiency is cool. But it doesn’t change outcomes.
But that's not really the point here. Perhaps if Japan had an easier-to-learn phonetic system, it would be even better off. And perhaps if South Korea still relied on Chinese logographs, it would be worse off today.
Read the following entry about Korean Hangul in wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul#Other_namesPre-modern Korean elites acknowledged Hangul as being so easy to learn that it was taught to women and children for basic literacy (while the scholarly elite retained Chinese scripts for status).With all due respect, you have not demonstrated that. You merely showed that high IQ and industrious people can overcome inefficiency and can still be very successful.
And Hong Kong wasn't built by the Chinese, but by the English-speaking British, before whose coming it was nothing but a group of some sleepy fishing villages.Replies: @Joe Q.
Everybody in China and Japan know latin letters, if only because they type on a computer with them. Doesn’t mean their English is any good, but they must know their ABC.
Commenting on your remarks about the Perry Preschool Project in an old blog of yours.
The success of Perry students has persisted long-term but not the IQ gains.
Nobel Laureate James Heckman argues that this program (and others) succeed by training soft skills that are retained into adulthood:
http://www.nber.org/papers/w18121.pdf
Also, Heckman reports that some Big Five personality skills can be taught, so the Judith Harris’ claim that genes and peers are the only factors determining personality is flapdoodle.
huh, vox heckman vox dei? you sound stupid rejecting all of behavior genetics on heckman’s word. nobel prize winners have been wrong in the past. i’m skeptical of the robustness of some of these results, but presumably we’ll know in ~10 years since lots of ppl are trying to replicate.
Hi Razib,
I don’t know if you’ve seen this yet, but I’m curious about what you think about this study (i.e. is it safe to generalize these findings to humans as well?): http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2015/03/03/genetically-more-like-dad/#.VXemzs46Jst.
Korean children don't spend thousands of hours learning Chinese characters. Is there evidence that this has resulted in better education in any other subject compared to Japan or China? No.
I mentioned Turkish vs. Persian because it's more on the margin, but Korea vs. Japan is a better example. Mentioning pre-war literacy rates is disingenuous. You have to compare modern education systems. Taiwan and Japan have no iliteracy issues. And Japan's writing system is beyond fucked-up.
Hell, Hong Kong teaches their kids to read and write in (formal) Mandarin, read with Cantonese pronunciation. Which is ridiculous. Most people are completely unable to write their own mother tongue (Cantonese). It's so bad that most people use english to write text messages because they don't know how to type Hanzi, and handwriting is too cumbersome.
So what? Hong Kong is a rich and advanced economy, their academic performance one of the best in the world. That's with one of the most dysfunctional language systems on earth.
Efficiency is cool. But it doesn't change outcomes.Replies: @Twinkie
Well, if I were to quibble a bit, the male literacy rate in South Korea is 99.2%. That in Japan is 99% (but the female literacy rates are, respectively, 96.6% and 99%). The North Korean rate is reported as 100%/100%, but we should take that with a giant grain of salt.
But that’s not really the point here. Perhaps if Japan had an easier-to-learn phonetic system, it would be even better off. And perhaps if South Korea still relied on Chinese logographs, it would be worse off today.
Read the following entry about Korean Hangul in wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul#Other_names
Pre-modern Korean elites acknowledged Hangul as being so easy to learn that it was taught to women and children for basic literacy (while the scholarly elite retained Chinese scripts for status).
With all due respect, you have not demonstrated that. You merely showed that high IQ and industrious people can overcome inefficiency and can still be very successful.
And Hong Kong wasn’t built by the Chinese, but by the English-speaking British, before whose coming it was nothing but a group of some sleepy fishing villages.
But that's not really the point here. Perhaps if Japan had an easier-to-learn phonetic system, it would be even better off. And perhaps if South Korea still relied on Chinese logographs, it would be worse off today.
Read the following entry about Korean Hangul in wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul#Other_namesPre-modern Korean elites acknowledged Hangul as being so easy to learn that it was taught to women and children for basic literacy (while the scholarly elite retained Chinese scripts for status).With all due respect, you have not demonstrated that. You merely showed that high IQ and industrious people can overcome inefficiency and can still be very successful.
And Hong Kong wasn't built by the Chinese, but by the English-speaking British, before whose coming it was nothing but a group of some sleepy fishing villages.Replies: @Joe Q.
How narrowly is literacy defined? I can easily appreciate that Japanese and Korean speakers have roughly equal ability to read and understand texts of equal complexity, but I’m not sure that their ability to write texts of equal complexity (e.g., dictation) would be the same. Just too many stories (including some in this thread) about Chinese or Japanese speakers forgetting how to write the character for “knee”, or “sneeze”, etc.
I have no clue, I am afraid. But that’s a good question, to answer to which I aim to find out in the future.
My East Asian linguistic skills have degraded very badly due to lack of use of late, and my knowledge of Chinese logographs has disappeared the fastest. I could read probably about 3,000 at my best (when I lived and worked in East Asia), but can only read a tiny fraction of that now, and can only write an even tinier fraction. I can still read (sound out) everything in Korean, but of course, I don’t necessarily comprehend all. My Japanese is somewhere in-between. But the entirety of the reason for this personal situation is due to the fact that Korean writing is phonetic!
I remember on this comment thread: https://www.unz.com/gnxp/admixture-cultural-and-biological/ there was discussion about the African ancestry in Colombia. I maintained that Colombia had a large number of people of significant African descent, where others maintained that this number was basically negligible.
I was able to find this study which has admixture estimates for various populations throughout Colombia which show that indeed, many populations throughout Colombia do have significant African heritage.
Here is the study:
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/45822469_Genetic_Make_Up_and_Structure_of_Colombian_Populations_by_Means_of_Uniparental_and_Biparental_DNA_Markers
Here is the relevant table:
Afro Chocoanos are about 68% African.
People from Cartagena are about 43% African.
Those from Cauca and Valle del Cauca are around 20% African.
In Medellin the number is 10%, in Bogota 3%.
So depending on where you go, it is entirely possible to get the impression that Colombia is a white/indigenous country with only a few people with any significant African heritage. But that is not the full story. About 10% “black” nationally seems right, with many people who may be some part black.
Perry preschool is an outlier study among these kind of studies. Look at the funnel plot here: https://twitter.com/KirkegaardEmil/status/609779638131380225
Re. racial admixture in Colombia. See John Fuerst’s post here: http://humanvarieties.org/2015/05/18/regional-admixture-and-aptitude-in-colombia/
You can also find a lot more stuff like this in the current draft of the regional and national part of our Admixture in the Americas project. I have updated the PDF to the newest version here: https://osf.io/7i59n/