241–250 of 282 posts
A witty comment on Twitter: The real marshmallow test was to see who could resist pontificating on meaning of the original marshmallow test until a generation passed for it to be properly replicated. And you failed, all of you. https://t.co/ayQshjt7BA
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The study and article literally say that kids in a given socio-economic group have the same life outcomes whether the grab the marshmallow or not. And not just here but the notion that hereditary wealth correlates to intelligence has been endlessly refuted. But if it were true, wouldn't it mean that blue counties, being richer than red counties, have a much higher average IQ?
> hereditary wealth correlates to intelligence has been endlessly refuted. Source? There's noise and luck (and IQ wasn't so much a factor for income historically) but given the following, how could it not be true? Intelligence leads to higher income (med school etc) Income leads to higher wealth Wealth is partly inherited. Intelligence is partly inherited.
But a summary of other issues include:
If intelligence corresponds to wealth, we would expect Nobel prize winners and widely cited scientist to be the richest people.
Royal families and their descendants, having concentrated their genes, should also be the most inventive, artistic or scientifically productive people.
It is possible to improve earnings skills, the degree to which it can be improved is the degree to which it is behavioral rather than genetic.
Rich people are scattered through the world and through history and thus have maximum genetic difference. They can not reasonably share a common gene that skips over millions of people between them, let alone crossing the Atlantic to end up in Montezuma's line. And if there were such genes, they would be extremely conspicuous.
Yet in spite of great interest and success in sequencing, no gene correlating to wealth has been found.
If some genes corresponded to earnings, it would have a geographic origin and concentration as do eye color, lactose tolerance, epicanthic folds, malaria-resistance/cycle-cell etc. Yet every region has a few rich people and many poor.
In fact, regions change in wealth over time: nations like Egypt were rich for millennia while Scandinavia and Japan were poor. This does not happen with genes eg blue eyes don't emerge and disappear over millennia at random around the world.
All of the above points to wealth acquisition as a essentially a purely behavioral activity. Even if there were any genetic components, they would be negligible to the point of being undetectable.
Pardon me for summaries rather than finding dozens of links but here is one readable citation:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11711-smarter-people-...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
So expressing that psychology is more of a controversy mill than a science is unsubstantive? Got it! I will keep that unorthodox opinion to myself until even more of their papers don't replicate.
I've come across variations of this conclusion many times now: That it is really your parents affluence and educational background that predicts your success in school and how much you will earn in the future. This is often portrayed as being unjust. To me it always seemed obvious that children with affluent and well educated parents are more likely to be intelligent, have good self-control and other traits that are…
It's only unjust if you define a person's desire to help his children above others as unjust.
This way we can actually discussing the balance of helping offspring vs social immobility rather than endlessly debunking un-facts.
A witty comment on Twitter: The real marshmallow test was to see who could resist pontificating on meaning of the original marshmallow test until a generation passed for it to be properly replicated. And you failed, all of you. https://t.co/ayQshjt7BA
FYI, it looks like you linked to a different comment, and I can't find the one you quoted
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".
My cat has food laid out for it all day. It has no "mealtimes" to get anxious over. Not sure what conclusions you can draw from the fact that your cats did indeed build up an appetite between meals.
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.
Just because something correlates with parental income doesn't mean that it isn't heritable. Take an example that you agree with. Being white (or Asian) correlates with parental income. Those traits are also rather heritable.
I agree with that, which is precisely why you should control for it, no? You’re example is correct, but not what I was talking about. You’re only talking about one kind of correlation, and assuming that the data is otherwise ignored. What I imagined was will power being easy to test for heritability if it changes from generation to generation. Being white or Asian might correlate with average income for a population,…
No.
If willpower is inherited then what is required is a serious attempt to deal with this.
If parental income is a proxy for willpower, and willpower is substantially heritable (both quite likely) then naively controlling for parental income is actually controlling away a substantial portion of the child's own willpower! The model needs to specifically allow for the heritability for willpower, which theirs does not.
So in this case, the study demonstrates roughly "the marshmallow test does not test willpower, when you control for (much of the child's) willpower".
As such it is useless rubbish, like a lot of social science research.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> hereditary wealth correlates to intelligence has been endlessly refuted. Source? There's noise and luck (and IQ wasn't so much a factor for income historically) but given the following, how could it not be true? Intelligence leads to higher income (med school etc) Income leads to higher wealth Wealth is partly inherited. Intelligence is partly inherited.
This very article shows that rich tend to succeed and poor tend to fail regardless of whether the grab the marshmallow or not. But a summary of other issues include: If intelligence corresponds to wealth, we would expect Nobel prize winners and widely cited scientist to be the richest people. Royal families and their descendants, having concentrated their genes, should also be the most inventive, artistic or scientif…
We were talking about intelligence. The marshmallow test measures delayed gratification.
>> If intelligence corresponds to wealth, we would expect Nobel prize winners and widely cited scientist to be the richest people.
It's a correlation - so we'd expect them to be richer than average, and richer on average than dumber scientists. They are - you can sell a Nobel prize for $5M.
>> Rich people .. scattered through the world .. history and thus have maximum genetic difference. They can not reasonably share a common gene that skips over millions of people between them. ... no gene correlating to wealth has been found. ...
I am not proposing "wealth" genes - how ridiculous. It would be trivial though, just find a richer ethnic group and use their novel variants. That doesn't prove causality, though.
Intelligence is a highly polygenic trait, there are probably thousands of variants involved. But here's a simpler model - inheriting a high IQ is partly due to a lack of damaging variants. There are plenty of variants associated with intellectual disability, go search OMIM. Inheriting one of them leads to not being able to hold down a job, and thus lower income.
There you go - inherited intellectual disability - an exact genetic link to wealth acquisition (or lack thereof).
>> https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11711-smarter-people-... >> controlled for other factors – such as divorce, years spent in school, type of work and inheritance
I wish I had a dollar for every social science paper confounded by genetics!
Imagine wealth and IQ are perfectly linked and 100% heritable. Wouldn't controlling for inherited wealth completely wipe away the signal?
For divorce - delayed gratification seems to be inherited - the original marshmallow experiment showed this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen...
"Absence of the father was prevalent in the African-descent group but occurred only once in the East Indian group, and this variable showed the strongest link to delay of gratification, with children from intact families showing superior ability to delay."