Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Boys who live with books ‘earn more as adults’

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 87 posts

Re: Boys who live with books ‘earn more as adults’

#61

Post by skiningham »

gambler wrote: post #56
stuxnet79 wrote: post #12

Honestly, I spent a lot of my childhood / teen years reading and engaging in other solitary activities and I sometimes feel like my time would have been better served trying to connect with my peers. I still read a lot these days, but I just do it with no expectation to derive future benefit from it. Mind you my reading these days is 70% non-fiction. I put reading in the same category of entertainment as TV and video…

Unpopular opinion time... A lot of written fiction constitutes an intelligent person intently thinking about some subject, drawing upon their experienec and communicating their ideas. This kind of thing happens much more rarely on TV and in video games. And it almost never happens in casual communication. Now, if you buy the increasingly popular notion that ideas and perspectives don't matter, than you're unlikely to…

Not disagreeing with you, but how do we consume the ideas and perspectives of people who don't write books?

Re: Boys who live with books ‘earn more as adults’

#62

Post by jschwartzi »

wbl wrote: post #50
qb45 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You could also have eugenics designed to increase the number of 'quality' people. Say, for example, giving money to people with an IQ higher than 150 to make more children. Or those with amazing athletics skills, or amazing beauty... And have a world full of Aspergers and Schizos (correlated with IQ) or some giant mutants unable to survive the next asteroid strike. I hope you get the point - we have no idea what we…

You say that like being an Aspie is bad. Of course IQ genes don't as far as we know have bad side effects. It seems Fischerian, and actually uncorrected to ASD.

A lot of people say "Aspie" when they really just mean "socially mal-adjusted turbo nerd." It happens that lots of smart people are generally nice and can read a room. You just don't hear about them because they aren't constantly talking about their IQ.

Re: Boys who live with books ‘earn more as adults’

#63

Post by my_first_acct »

Frozenlock wrote: post #19
eicossa wrote: post #14

> perhaps they gained genes from their parents that prompt both collecting books and pursuing more lucrative occupations Are you implying here that curiosity and intellectual abilities are genetically inheritable ? If so, what stops eugenics from being morally indefensible ?

>Are you implying here that curiosity and intellectual abilities are genetically inheritable ? Intelligence as we can measure it (IQ) is highly related to genetics (so you can say inheritable). IQ is correlated to 0.86 in case of twins raised in the same family, or 0.76 in twins raised appart. > If so, what stops eugenics from being morally indefensible ? Nothing! I myself have spinal muscular atrophy and know that m…

There are a number of things we can do to increase society's collective IQ, without resorting to selective breeding.

1) Prevent brain damage: Ensure that all children receive adequate nutrition, and eliminate exposure to toxins such as lead.

2) Make sure every child is educated up to his or her full potential.

3) Provide access to contraceptives, so that children are born only to people who feel themselves ready to be parents.

Re: Boys who live with books ‘earn more as adults’

#64

Post by light_hue_1 »

golemotron wrote: post #51
eicossa wrote: post #14

> perhaps they gained genes from their parents that prompt both collecting books and pursuing more lucrative occupations Are you implying here that curiosity and intellectual abilities are genetically inheritable ? If so, what stops eugenics from being morally indefensible ?

> Are you implying here that curiosity and intellectual abilities are genetically inheritable? IQ is heritable. There's over 50 years of psychometric research showing that. > If so, what stops eugenics from being morally indefensible ? The same thing that stops the reality of weapons being a defense of murder. The saddest things about education today is that it purposefully suppresses information because it might be…

The idea that IQ is heritable, as in the genes from your parents have a substantial effect on your IQ (leaving aside diseases), is far from established and most cognitive psychologists would violently disagree. Any effect from your parent's genes is drowned out by socioeconomic status, the environment, pollution, time, education, etc. For example, the correlation between your IQ and your cousin's IQ is almost negligible (the correlation between your parents IQ and yours is a bit higher but still small) and something as pervasive as the Flynn effect is an order of magnitude more meaningful. It's not even clear how verifiable these correlations are because they tend to change substantially over time. If you don't believe me head over to your local university and talk to some of the faculty, see what they think.

To round it all off. The correlation between IQ and anything useful like say.. income is absurdly weak and most of the correlation happens at the low end where it really accounts for people with some pathology.

So no. It's not sad that people aren't being fed fake racist or sexist "facts" these days. It's good that we don't place value on things that don't matter and it's sad that people hold on to racist ideas from 100 years ago that have no basis in modern science.

Re: Boys who live with books ‘earn more as adults’

#65

Post by gwern »

qb45 wrote: post #24
Frozenlock wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Are you implying here that curiosity and intellectual abilities are genetically inheritable ? Intelligence as we can measure it (IQ) is highly related to genetics (so you can say inheritable). IQ is correlated to 0.86 in case of twins raised in the same family, or 0.76 in twins raised appart. > If so, what stops eugenics from being morally indefensible ? Nothing! I myself have spinal muscular atrophy and know that m…

> You could also have eugenics designed to increase the number of 'quality' people. Say, for example, giving money to people with an IQ higher than 150 to make more children. Or those with amazing athletics skills, or amazing beauty... And have a world full of Aspergers and Schizos (correlated with IQ) or some giant mutants unable to survive the next asteroid strike. I hope you get the point - we have no idea what we…

> Schizos (correlated with IQ)

Schizophrenia may (or may not) correlate on the phenotype level, but genetically, they are inverses. Genetic risk for schizophrenia lowers IQ in GCTAs, genetic correlation, and family studies. If you select for intelligence, you will get less schizophrenia, and if you select against schizophrenia, you will get more intelligence.

Re: Boys who live with books ‘earn more as adults’

#66

Post by qb45 »

gwern wrote: post #65
qb45 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You could also have eugenics designed to increase the number of 'quality' people. Say, for example, giving money to people with an IQ higher than 150 to make more children. Or those with amazing athletics skills, or amazing beauty... And have a world full of Aspergers and Schizos (correlated with IQ) or some giant mutants unable to survive the next asteroid strike. I hope you get the point - we have no idea what we…

> Schizos (correlated with IQ) Schizophrenia may (or may not) correlate on the phenotype level, but genetically, they are inverses. Genetic risk for schizophrenia lowers IQ in GCTAs, genetic correlation, and family studies. If you select for intelligence, you will get less schizophrenia, and if you select against schizophrenia, you will get more intelligence.

Good catch. I'm not sure where I got this idea that schizophrenia is more likely to develop in high-IQ individuals, but that's what I thought.

Re: Boys who live with books ‘earn more as adults’

#67

Post by golemotron »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #64
golemotron wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you implying here that curiosity and intellectual abilities are genetically inheritable? IQ is heritable. There's over 50 years of psychometric research showing that. > If so, what stops eugenics from being morally indefensible ? The same thing that stops the reality of weapons being a defense of murder. The saddest things about education today is that it purposefully suppresses information because it might be…

The idea that IQ is heritable, as in the genes from your parents have a substantial effect on your IQ (leaving aside diseases), is far from established and most cognitive psychologists would violently disagree. Any effect from your parent's genes is drowned out by socioeconomic status, the environment, pollution, time, education, etc. For example, the correlation between your IQ and your cousin's IQ is almost negligi…

Wow. You need to read some behavioral genetics. Let me know if you care to. I'll give you references. They've found g heritable in primates other than humans as well.

The amount of work we do to believe that biology is not a factor is stunning. This is what a 'cultural taboo' looks like.

Re: Boys who live with books ‘earn more as adults’

#68

Post by qb45 »

wbl wrote: post #50
qb45 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You could also have eugenics designed to increase the number of 'quality' people. Say, for example, giving money to people with an IQ higher than 150 to make more children. Or those with amazing athletics skills, or amazing beauty... And have a world full of Aspergers and Schizos (correlated with IQ) or some giant mutants unable to survive the next asteroid strike. I hope you get the point - we have no idea what we…

You say that like being an Aspie is bad. Of course IQ genes don't as far as we know have bad side effects. It seems Fischerian, and actually uncorrected to ASD.

Did somebody really manage to isolate some "IQ genes" and demonstrate that just changing them makes one dumber or smarter with no other effects?

Re: Boys who live with books ‘earn more as adults’

#69

Post by tokenadult »

eicossa wrote: post #14

> perhaps they gained genes from their parents that prompt both collecting books and pursuing more lucrative occupations Are you implying here that curiosity and intellectual abilities are genetically inheritable ? If so, what stops eugenics from being morally indefensible ?

You ask a legitimate question. My first part of my answer to your question is that my previous comment provided a link. The link is to a thoughtful review article by a careful scientist (Eric Turkheimer). Professor Turkheimer's writings are just about all available for free downloading from his faculty website at the University of Virginia, so you can follow the development of his thought over decades of active involvement in behavior genetics research, often in collaboration with other leading researchers on the same topic.

Simply put, it is possible to affirm the scientific observation that ALL human behavioral characteristics are more similar among close relatives than they are between two randomly selected individuals from the whole human population--that's just agreeing with the facts, and that's ALL that "human behavioral characteristics are heritable" means. Second, it is possible to affirm the scientific observation that EVERY human behavioral characteristic tends to show variance even between identical (monozygotic) twins--which means that some variance in human behavioral characteristics must be influenced by factors other than the human genome. Following the facts leads to both of those conclusions.

But Eric Turkheimer is not an advocate of policies that would be characterized as "eugenic" policies (he is very aware of the history of that subject) and neither am I. It's possible to study and understand nature without falling into the naturalistic fallacy that assumes that human society must mirror all aspects of "nature." We have the opportunity to use human intellectual capabilities and observation of reality to make the human community enjoy something other than strictly "natural" conditions, and often should.

Thanks for asking. I invite all readers looking to read the entire (not too long) article I linked to in my first comment here.

Re: Boys who live with books ‘earn more as adults’

#70

Post by davidf18 »

There is going to be a correlation that those who have many books at home are likely to be more educated than those who do not and that as a rule those who are more educated are going to have higher incomes.

There is also going to be a correlation that those who have more books at home and read them are going to be more curious about the world than those who do not and this curiosity, too will lead to a higher income statistically.

My father is a humanities prof. at a major university who had thousands of books in his home office that we would read as children growing up. We would discuss books and ideas at the dinner table. Thus, in effect we children received a liberal arts education at home.

Today, with a $75 kindle people have access to great libraries for many of the classics are freely accessible. Shakespeare, Twain, George Elliot, Dickens, Shaw, ... all free to download and read. Moreover, many ebooks still under copyright can be checked out electronically from public libraries and read.

The studies reported of course were observational. It would be interesting to prospectively perform a study placing books in a number of households and seeing how children develop over 20 years.

Post reply on HN