181–190 of 282 posts
Our cats have never in their lives had to worry about food, yet they still become anxious around mealtimes. That suggests that it is trait common to all mammals regardless of their "wealth".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now that I think about it how is athleticism not considered a parameter of IQ? If you can learn to shoot a basketball 10x faster and with more accuracy than me, isn't your brain learning faster than mine?
Because IQ is a very specific thing. It doesn't mean you know a lot or are good at high school maths. IIRC an ideal IQ test would be something you could take even if you can't read and haven't learned maths and it will tell you something about your general problem solving skills. And as we all know, people can be excellent problem solvers without being very athletic at all, so mixing that into the score would actuall…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now that I think about it how is athleticism not considered a parameter of IQ? If you can learn to shoot a basketball 10x faster and with more accuracy than me, isn't your brain learning faster than mine?
Motor skills and muscle memory vs brain thinkings stuff (logic, analysis, problem solving, etc). I don't know what the difference is between the two in terms of how much brain activity and ability they require, but it seems like there would be a difference.
> The researchers also, when analyzing their test’s results, controlled for certain factors—such as the income of a child’s household Is that a valid thing to do? If "will power" was a strongly inherited trait, and the theory is that will power leads to increase household income in adult life, then this controlling would remove most of the signal. The original paper relied partly on a questionnaire that asked the par…
If some underlying willpower was the cause for the behaviour and willpower would lead to better outcomes, then there would be differentation between children within the same income bracket who score different on this test, right? But that is not the case:
This new paper found that among kids whose mothers had a college degree, those who waited for a second marshmallow did no better in the long run—in terms of standardized test scores and mothers’ reports of their children’s behavior—than those who dug right in.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> this controlling would remove most of the signal That's the whole point of controlling. If all of your signal can be explained by a correllation, then you aren't measuring what you think you are. If "willpower" (waiting for second marshmallow) was important, it would be important regardless of whether your parents are rich or not. This means that among poor kids, those with willpower would be more successful, and a…
If willpower is the strongest indicator for income then controlling for parent’s income leads to some strange circular reasoning: willpower is not a strong influence of income when controlling for income.
- Willpower is non-socially inherited
- Willpower is proportionally developed (to their final amount) in children at the time of testing
I would assume the hypothesis of the researchers was that children were more tabula rasa at the age tested, and therefore controlling for variables wouldn't be circular.
Response by one of the original authors: https://jasoncollins.blog/2018/05/31/the-marshmallow-test-he...
"The differences between the experiments could also be behind the difference in size of correlation. Each study used different measures of achievement. The marshmallow test in the replication had a maximum wait of only 7 minutes, compared to 15 to 20 minutes in the original (although most of the predictive power in the new study was found to be in the first 20 seconds). The replication created categories for time waited (e.g. 0 to 20 seconds, 20 seconds to 2 minutes, and so on), rather than using time as a continuous variable. It also focused on children with parents who did not have a college education – too many of the children with college-educated parents waited the full seven minutes. The original study drew its sample from the Stanford community."
About this: " This new paper found that among kids whose mothers had a college degree, those who waited for a second marshmallow did no better in the long run—in terms of standardized test scores and mothers’ reports of their children’s behavior—than those who dug right in. " Since "standardized test scores" tends to measure IQ, it seems this can be re-phrased as "those who did well on the will-power test did not nec…
Now that I think about it how is athleticism not considered a parameter of IQ? If you can learn to shoot a basketball 10x faster and with more accuracy than me, isn't your brain learning faster than mine?
> The researchers also, when analyzing their test’s results, controlled for certain factors—such as the income of a child’s household Is that a valid thing to do? If "will power" was a strongly inherited trait, and the theory is that will power leads to increase household income in adult life, then this controlling would remove most of the signal. The original paper relied partly on a questionnaire that asked the par…
>> Is that a valid thing to do? If "will power" was a strongly inherited trait, and the theory is that will power leads to increase household income in adult life, then this controlling would remove most of the signal. Exactly. The way to control for the income of a child's household while not filtering out a possible inherited trait, would be to do the test with only adopted children. Then it would be ok to control…
It's truisms like this that make me cut psychologists and economists slack when results fail to reproduce.
If experiments are prohibitively expensive or impossible to recruit large enough populations, the right answer isn't to just toss hands up, but to do the best you can with what you have.
So respect to all the people working in "messy" real life fields and still trying to push the frontier of knowledge!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> this controlling would remove most of the signal That's the whole point of controlling. If all of your signal can be explained by a correllation, then you aren't measuring what you think you are. If "willpower" (waiting for second marshmallow) was important, it would be important regardless of whether your parents are rich or not. This means that among poor kids, those with willpower would be more successful, and a…
If willpower is the strongest indicator for income then controlling for parent’s income leads to some strange circular reasoning: willpower is not a strong influence of income when controlling for income.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> Is that a valid thing to do? If "will power" was a strongly inherited trait, and the theory is that will power leads to increase household income in adult life, then this controlling would remove most of the signal. Exactly. The way to control for the income of a child's household while not filtering out a possible inherited trait, would be to do the test with only adopted children. Then it would be ok to control…
> The way to control for the income of a child's household while not filtering out a possible inherited trait, would be to do the test with only adopted children. It's truisms like this that make me cut psychologists and economists slack when results fail to reproduce. If experiments are prohibitively expensive or impossible to recruit large enough populations, the right answer isn't to just toss hands up, but to do…