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What You Can Do About Climate Change

nytimes.com

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Re: What You Can Do About Climate Change

#111

Post by Banthum »

jcoffland wrote: post #109
TeMPOraL wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://pumpkinperson.com/2016/02/11/the-incredible-correlat...

From the Wikipedia page: > A study (1999) by Capron and Duyme of French children adopted between the ages of four and six examined the influence of socioeconomic status (SES). The children's IQs initially averaged 77, putting them near retardation. Most were abused or neglected as infants, then shunted from one foster home or institution to the next. Nine years later after adoption, when they were on average 14 years…

That results indicates that if you take children and go from "abused or neglected as infants, then shunted from one foster home or institution to the next" to a stable adopted family home, you can increase IQ scores.

Which is pretty obvious. There is always an amount of abuse that will destroy someone's IQ. Bringing them back to a decent middle-class upbringing will restore them to their baseline.

But once that baseline is achieved, evidence is that it can't generally be improved. One can learn skills and knowledge but IQ is stable. Above lower-middle class American abuse-free households, increases in SES don't affect IQ.

E.g. People have inherent talent at sprinting. Malnutrition or abuse can destroy this talent. But once people have decent upbringing, and try hard, and have support, what determines the champion is genetics. Which is why pretty much all champion sprinters have west African ancestry (since they have inherited traits that make them good sprinters).

EDIT: Here's a source for you on IQ heritability: American Psychological Association’s Task Force on Intelligence report.

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.134...

“If one simply combines all available correlations in a single analysis, the heritability (h2) works out to about .50 and the between-family variance (c2) to about .25.” And “By late adolescence h2 is around .75 and c2 is quite low (zero in some studies).” (p. 85).

Re: What You Can Do About Climate Change

#112

Post by Banthum »

jcoffland wrote: post #65
Banthum wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding 9), if you're reading this you should have as many children as possible. Your high-IQ genes will be passed on to them; only the intelligent of the next generation will have the foresight and technical ability to develop real (technological) solutions to environmental problems. It's pretty well-demonstrated that the moralistic approach to climate change, where you harangue people into recycling or biking or…

It's troubling that you believe your genetics are responsible for economic success and education.

Factual beliefs should be a foundation for moral convictions, not the other way around.

Re: What You Can Do About Climate Change

#113

Post by jcoffland »

Banthum wrote: post #111
jcoffland wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the Wikipedia page: > A study (1999) by Capron and Duyme of French children adopted between the ages of four and six examined the influence of socioeconomic status (SES). The children's IQs initially averaged 77, putting them near retardation. Most were abused or neglected as infants, then shunted from one foster home or institution to the next. Nine years later after adoption, when they were on average 14 years…

That results indicates that if you take children and go from "abused or neglected as infants, then shunted from one foster home or institution to the next" to a stable adopted family home, you can increase IQ scores. Which is pretty obvious. There is always an amount of abuse that will destroy someone's IQ. Bringing them back to a decent middle-class upbringing will restore them to their baseline. But once that basel…

In the case of the foster children, they initially scored low on IQ test but once placed in a better environment their scores went up significantly. This demonstrates that environment can have a huge effect on IQ scores and casts doubt on tests which claim that a correlation between IQ and family members implies IQ is mostly a result of genetics. Since family members generally live in similar environments their similar IQ scores can be explained by environment. It is even plausible that IQ score is mostly a result of environment.

Now, I can not prove that to be the case but it is far from settled that better genes = better IQ = better socioeconomic status. That reasoning implies that people in third world countries are poor because they are stupid which I just don't believe, partly because I've actually been to some of those countries.

Re: What You Can Do About Climate Change

#114

Post by jcoffland »

ThomPete wrote: post #106
jcoffland wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the point. Cars are optional. The question is, is giving them up worth the cost?

Cars are not optional for most people. They dont just buy them for fun, especially not in china, india and large part of europe. So the answer is no its not worth the cost.

And if the cost is that the planet is going to heat up like Venus within the next 100 years?

Re: What You Can Do About Climate Change

#115

Post by flukus »

nawitus wrote: post #10

I thought the best single thing was going vegan. Anyway, I sometimes think it's quite funny how my own lifestyle is so much more green than the average "green" person. I don't have children, I don't own or drive a car, I only use public transporation, 99% of which runs on electricity. I'm vegan, I haven't been on an airplane for like maybe 4 or 5 years. I live in a modern, energy efficient and small apartment. I buy…

Alternatively, stick to monogastric (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monogastric) animals which produce drastically less CO2e.

Save the world by eating bacon!

Re: What You Can Do About Climate Change

#116

Post by greglindahl »

wazoox wrote: post #76
nawitus wrote: post #10

I thought the best single thing was going vegan. Anyway, I sometimes think it's quite funny how my own lifestyle is so much more green than the average "green" person. I don't have children, I don't own or drive a car, I only use public transporation, 99% of which runs on electricity. I'm vegan, I haven't been on an airplane for like maybe 4 or 5 years. I live in a modern, energy efficient and small apartment. I buy…

Actually, I'm pretty sure vegans need many energy-intensive or non-local complements or alternatives to simple, local animal products providing essential nutrients like eggs or butter (avocado, or almonds for instance, are almost everywhere terrible from an environmental point of view). Vegetarian is certainly better for the planet; vegan is probably hardly better if not worse. For instance having a couple of hens in…

Wait, are you saying that "having a couple of hens in your backyard" is similar to buying eggs from the grocery store? Because the typical vegetarian eating eggs doesn't get them from hens in their backyard.

Re: What You Can Do About Climate Change

#117

Post by wazoox »

greglindahl wrote: post #116
wazoox wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I'm pretty sure vegans need many energy-intensive or non-local complements or alternatives to simple, local animal products providing essential nutrients like eggs or butter (avocado, or almonds for instance, are almost everywhere terrible from an environmental point of view). Vegetarian is certainly better for the planet; vegan is probably hardly better if not worse. For instance having a couple of hens in…

Wait, are you saying that "having a couple of hens in your backyard" is similar to buying eggs from the grocery store? Because the typical vegetarian eating eggs doesn't get them from hens in their backyard.

No, this is different for me but apparently not for vegans (no animal product of any sort because it's exploitative, every animal is a person, etc).

Re: What You Can Do About Climate Change

#118

Post by greglindahl »

wazoox wrote: post #117
greglindahl wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, are you saying that "having a couple of hens in your backyard" is similar to buying eggs from the grocery store? Because the typical vegetarian eating eggs doesn't get them from hens in their backyard.

No, this is different for me but apparently not for vegans (no animal product of any sort because it's exploitative, every animal is a person, etc).

The vegans I know call one bad and the other worse. However, the point that I was getting at is that you're recommending that people be vegetarians instead of vegans because of the environmental efficiency of feeding chickens scraps in the backyard, but almost everyone doesn't have a backyard, or chickens.

Re: What You Can Do About Climate Change

#119

Post by wazoox »

greglindahl wrote: post #118
wazoox wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is different for me but apparently not for vegans (no animal product of any sort because it's exploitative, every animal is a person, etc).

The vegans I know call one bad and the other worse. However, the point that I was getting at is that you're recommending that people be vegetarians instead of vegans because of the environmental efficiency of feeding chickens scraps in the backyard, but almost everyone doesn't have a backyard, or chickens.

Unfortunately this is a deep political problem I don't feel like treating in a HN comment box :)

I'd simply say that I think that we need to reorganize our world at a simpler scale, build smaller communities, sharing more local resources (like backyards and chickens and potato plots), step back on globalisation, reduce our consumption and environmental footprint, reduce division of labour, share work more, ...

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