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The Intelligence Myth – Why I cringe when someone tells me my child is smart

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Re: The Intelligence Myth – Why I cringe when someone tells me my child is smart

#11

Post by smt88 »

xiphias2 wrote: post #7
torstenvl wrote: post #2

It's hard to identify the thesis here. Is the thesis that intelligence is a myth? If so, the post provides precious little evidence in support. Is it that smart children are overburdened by expectations and anxiety? If so, the "evidence" is a set of personal anecdotes and hyperbolic generalizations. It is, quite simply, not factual that teenagers are made to study 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. If that occurred,…

She's a single mom who has a son. It doesn't seem to me that she has an understanding of how much more picky females are than males when it comes to sexual selection. Her son needs to compete hard in his life, whether she likes it or not.

Whatever biological concept you're thinking of here, you're incorrect to generalize it to humans.

Our complex brains, societies, and medicine (like birth control) significantly change our mate selection. We are not antelopes.

Re: The Intelligence Myth – Why I cringe when someone tells me my child is smart

#12

Post by camdenlock »

zarathustraa wrote: post #10
bitreality wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It reads like a 1000 word humblebrag.

Success is a social construct. Intelligence is a social construct.

Those are staggeringly enormous claims. Got any scientific evidence?

Re: The Intelligence Myth – Why I cringe when someone tells me my child is smart

#13

Post by zarathustraa »

camdenlock wrote: post #12
zarathustraa wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Success is a social construct. Intelligence is a social construct.

Those are staggeringly enormous claims. Got any scientific evidence?

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15426432.2016.1...

Re: The Intelligence Myth – Why I cringe when someone tells me my child is smart

#14

Post by camdenlock »

xiphias2 wrote: post #7
torstenvl wrote: post #2

It's hard to identify the thesis here. Is the thesis that intelligence is a myth? If so, the post provides precious little evidence in support. Is it that smart children are overburdened by expectations and anxiety? If so, the "evidence" is a set of personal anecdotes and hyperbolic generalizations. It is, quite simply, not factual that teenagers are made to study 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. If that occurred,…

She's a single mom who has a son. It doesn't seem to me that she has an understanding of how much more picky females are than males when it comes to sexual selection. Her son needs to compete hard in his life, whether she likes it or not.

The latest well-replicated scientific experiments and research findings show strong evidence for what you’re saying here about firmware differences between the two sexes.

Perhaps a further question, though, is: SHOULD it be this way? Should we actively try to rein in this tendency of our firmware, just as we try to rein in other tendencies like our quickness to anger?

The meat still matters, for sure, but I wonder if we should be trying harder to transcend its less helpful qualities.

Then again, perhaps the competitiveness you’re referring to could be viewed as a net positive...

Re: The Intelligence Myth – Why I cringe when someone tells me my child is smart

#15

Post by daseiner1 »

xiphias2 wrote: post #7
torstenvl wrote: post #2

It's hard to identify the thesis here. Is the thesis that intelligence is a myth? If so, the post provides precious little evidence in support. Is it that smart children are overburdened by expectations and anxiety? If so, the "evidence" is a set of personal anecdotes and hyperbolic generalizations. It is, quite simply, not factual that teenagers are made to study 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. If that occurred,…

She's a single mom who has a son. It doesn't seem to me that she has an understanding of how much more picky females are than males when it comes to sexual selection. Her son needs to compete hard in his life, whether she likes it or not.

incels on hackernews. that’s a new one

Re: The Intelligence Myth – Why I cringe when someone tells me my child is smart

#16

Post by camdenlock »

zarathustraa wrote: post #13
camdenlock wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are staggeringly enormous claims. Got any scientific evidence?

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15426432.2016.1...

This paper already assumes that success is a social construct, and so it is not evidence of the kind you’d need to substantiate your initial enormous claims.

From the very first part of the abstract: “[...] the literature has not fully explored distinctions between the ways leaders of these organizations socially construct success, [...]”

Re: The Intelligence Myth – Why I cringe when someone tells me my child is smart

#18

Post by Finnucane »

smt88 wrote: post #11
xiphias2 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She's a single mom who has a son. It doesn't seem to me that she has an understanding of how much more picky females are than males when it comes to sexual selection. Her son needs to compete hard in his life, whether she likes it or not.

Whatever biological concept you're thinking of here, you're incorrect to generalize it to humans. Our complex brains, societies, and medicine (like birth control) significantly change our mate selection. We are not antelopes.

>We are not antelopes

On the internet, nobody knows you're a gnu.

Re: The Intelligence Myth – Why I cringe when someone tells me my child is smart

#19

Post by XMPPwocky »

nicolethenerd wrote: post #4

There is a distinction between the pressure that comes from growing up in a "tiger family" and the consequences of growing up with the "smart" label, and I feel like the author is conflating the two. Personally, growing up with the label (but not the parental pressure) was one of the best things that could have happened for me and my education - the fact that others believed (whether true or not) that I was lightyear…

> And more importantly, the fact that I believed it meant that I was able to operate free of insecurities or imposter syndrome that so many of my peers faced.

How the heck did you convince yourself to believe it? As a "gifted" kid, what I learned very quickly was that adults will happily exaggerate minor talents (which one acquires primarily through just spending time on them, a task made markedly easier when everybody else hates you) to absurdity- at one point I got an evaluation back from a summer program at Stanford telling me I might grow up to be "one of the best programmers of our age". What did I do to earn such acclaim? Got ahead of the rest of the class making a game, read the documentation for Flash, and used the extra time to add "voice controls" to my game (specifically, you'd shoot by yelling anything into your microphone, it was just triggered by levels.)

Seriously- how can you take that sort of praise seriously, and not just as a "look at the cute kid who knows more Adobe Flash than the rest of his age group"?

Re: The Intelligence Myth – Why I cringe when someone tells me my child is smart

#20

Post by camdenlock »

smt88 wrote: post #11
xiphias2 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She's a single mom who has a son. It doesn't seem to me that she has an understanding of how much more picky females are than males when it comes to sexual selection. Her son needs to compete hard in his life, whether she likes it or not.

Whatever biological concept you're thinking of here, you're incorrect to generalize it to humans. Our complex brains, societies, and medicine (like birth control) significantly change our mate selection. We are not antelopes.

You’re right that there are multiple factors, but you also can’t discount the role of phenotypic brain “firmware”.

Yes, science reveals inconvenient truths. It tells us that we’re responsible for climate change, and it also tells us that our brains come pre-loaded with a wealth of routines shaped by millennia of evolution.

Can’t just accept some results and pretend others aren’t also well-supported. Well-supported scientific findings are what they are.

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