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Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

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Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#201

Post by robertlagrant »

smhost wrote: post #164
Hermitian909 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the more people can learn algebra than OP implies, but as a former math educator my experience also indicates some people are genetically limited in mathematics. For reference, my specialty was working with very remedial students and only ever had a few students not make progress (~2%) but I do think that small percent was genuinely hopeless and I don't say that lightly. I have a pet theory as to why those st…

HN crowd doesn't think twice about people who try to run DOOM on a stack of pennies, but are ready to give up before trying to get algebra to run on someone with less working memory. It's weird how different the attitude is.

Saying "HN crowd" is so broad (and wrong) that you can invent any irony you like.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#202

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

EllieEffingMae wrote: post #173
NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twin studies is the oldest, best answer. People have fancy statistical trickery these days too.

Would you mind elaborating on exactly how many studies you think are engaging in "statistical trickery"?

"exactly how many"--I have no idea. I didn't mean to put those studies down, the statistical trickery can be quite cool! Hard to do right, though.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#203

Post by Ma8ee »

NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #187
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The percentage without context does not give any actual information. E.g. one could argue that environment affects 99 percent of intelligence as for example if someone dies due to environment there's no intelligence at all. So there must be some poor environment A and good environment B, and some poor genes A and good genes B that a comparison must be made between to understand exactly what this percentage means and…

Thanks for asking, I should've explained. The percentage here is percent of variance ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variance ). What it means, basically, is the extent to which you can predict a child's intelligence just knowing the parents' intelligence--not assuming the child was raised by those parents. In your second paragraph, you've actually hit on one of the apologetic clichés that's popular now. People will…

No, from a public policy perspective, the important question is what environment can we create that benefit as many people as possible. The current environment, from prenatal care to availability, cost and quality of higher education is something that is created by public policy. It is certainly not anything given.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#204

Post by xyzzyz »

tgv wrote: post #162
NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #152

In these comments: people doing apologetics for a vision of the world where everyone is born with equal potential. I am a scientist, I work on these things, and I am here to tell you that: --Intelligence is largely (~70-80% of variance) inherited --Your personality is largely determined by genetics and is pretty much settled in to what it will always be by ~30 --If you don't learn to count right by ~4 you never will…

I've never heard a number as high as 70%. Where does that come from? Otherwise: any idea how intelligence was operationalized? I also think we can only accept that we're born different, but human. If we should aspire to anything, it should be to make life good for every individual, taking their capacities into account, not to give everyone an academic degree.

70% is actually on the low side of today’s results. Observed heritability is lower in early childhood (meaning the amount of variance in intelligence among children explained by genes is “only” 20%-50%, “only” in quotes because it’s still large amount, as far as phenotypical traits are concerned), but grows to 80%+ in adulthood, even higher than that if you correct for attenuation (i.e. measurement error, which will always push the heritability down), and consider g factor instead of IQ scores (which is how intelligence is usually operationalized). IQ has been found to be exceedingly good vehicle to study the notion of intelligence, as the (most replicated finding in psychology) existence of positive manifold (google it) and g factor means that all non-contrived ways of measuring what humans usually understand intelligence is, yield pretty much the same thing, especially once you perform factor analysis.

Here is an overview paper by one of the leading researchers in the field (and one of the most distinguished researchers in psychology at large) Robert Plomin: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270739/

Unlike the rest of psychology, psychometry as a field does not have any kind of replication problem: all major results have been replicated many, many times on many different data sets. You can go to Google Scholar and find probably hundreds of replications (keyword is “heritability of intelligence”). Here is for example one from Japan: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01067719 which finds heritability to be 50% among 12 year olds, here is one from Norway https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/On-the-quest... finding 70% among military recruits, you can go on and on.

> I also think we can only accept that we're born different, but human. If we should aspire to anything, it should be to make life good for every individual, taking their capacities into account, not to give everyone an academic degree.

Clearly, but if the society denies reality, the result is expansion of higher education among people who can’t benefit from it, bullshit degrees, student debt, and general misery.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#205

Post by ZephyrBlu »

dlp211 wrote: post #195
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think at least some of those statements are independent of parenting, access to education and nutrition. Give everyone perfect parenting, a great education and lots of nutritious food and some of them still won't be able to learn calculus.

But why only calculus? Why the focus on a single subject? This is a very limited view of intelligence.

I was continuing the example the OP gave. Calculus is just a placeholder for something that requires a particular level of intelligence.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#206

Post by aritmo »

NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #152

In these comments: people doing apologetics for a vision of the world where everyone is born with equal potential. I am a scientist, I work on these things, and I am here to tell you that: --Intelligence is largely (~70-80% of variance) inherited --Your personality is largely determined by genetics and is pretty much settled in to what it will always be by ~30 --If you don't learn to count right by ~4 you never will…

In this day and age, it is easy to get the actual degree and be called a 'scientist'.

In these Internet days, it is even easier to claim you are a scientist when you are anonymous online, and make all sort of claims.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#207

Post by tnzm »

colordrops wrote: post #182
tnzm wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arbitrarily.

I'm not fluent in e-prime, sorry.

Saying "there is no essential difference between genetics and other causative factors" is arbitrarily different from saying "all is one, separateness is an illusion". That is, it differs in connotations and not in the essential content of the statement.

Which is exactly what you said, except that you chose to ignore that connotations conduct meaning, when you asked your rhetorical question. This is not e-prime, it is a plain old adverb answering the question "how?" like adverbs normally do.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#208

Post by EllieEffingMae »

tnzm wrote: post #159
EllieEffingMae wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are too many causitive factors to attempt to make a point at genetics. Any attempt to do so is racially motivated, or will be co-opted to institute racist policies. Studying genetics and how they affect one's life, future, cognitive ability, ect, is interesting and worthwhile. But genetics are not easily separated from other causal factors. However, there are certain other things that we know affects ones outco…

Fair enough. I still believe that tiptoeing around these issues gives power to those who consciously perpetrate and benefit from institutionalized violence. Like another commenter said, operating with a comfortably skewed mental model doesn't help resolve the actual socioeconomic issues.

I was a little hyperbolic in my original answer. In all honesty, I think it's probably best to continue research in this area. However, in the current state of the world I don't see how that research is especially beneficial. Every finding would have to be taken with such a massive grain of salt that I have a hard time imagining we would find practical applications for it.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#209

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

anothernewdude wrote: post #189
NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #152

In these comments: people doing apologetics for a vision of the world where everyone is born with equal potential. I am a scientist, I work on these things, and I am here to tell you that: --Intelligence is largely (~70-80% of variance) inherited --Your personality is largely determined by genetics and is pretty much settled in to what it will always be by ~30 --If you don't learn to count right by ~4 you never will…

Cool, so malnourishment throughout life will only account for at most a 30% decline. Or is that "inherited" because it's environmental, but determined by parents?

The assumption is your environment is pretty similar to everyone else's environment, which means you don't die of hunger or get boiled in acid.

But you raise a very important point, and you're right: as far as I'm aware, latest evidence says that being malnourished as a child does significantly impact intelligence as it does height (stunting). Though I believe the last piece of work I read on it claimed the effect was smaller than previously believed. That was ~2 years ago.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#210

Post by dorchadas »

syops wrote: post #87
beej71 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's some food for thought on "further study": * What percentage of your students hate math? * How do you differentiate between someone who doesn't get it because it's beyond their mental skill level versus someone who doesn't get it because they'd rather be doing literally anything else? * When you say "mentally disabled", what exactly does that mean in the context of a spectrum of ability levels across the specie…

Oh, I’ve thought a great about these things. None of your questions are new to me or are ones I’ve not considered. I did not come to my conclusion quickly. Here are some more thoughts to ponder: Children are easier to brain wash than adults and teaching basic math involves a great deal of brain washing. To what extent is it the case that a person with no exposure to algebraic concepts growing up is at a disadvantage…

I do think something similar is applicable - for any subject. I was/am a math teacher and what I've found is those who couldn't learn algebra often didn't understand the 'language' or have a good grasp of what math means (like what is a fraction, what does it represent in real life, etc). Taking time to go over these basic concepts with them vastly improved their mathematical abilities, and eventually most got to the point where they could easily do algebra.

I don't think the issue is necessarily that they're incapable, it's more that they don't have the necessary background intuition or knowledge. At least in the state i taught in, this is not surprising as elementary school teachers often dread math and fail their standardized teaching test math portion several times sometimes. It's the blind leading the blind.

I've also noticed it in reading, when they have teachers who aren't readers themselves trying to teach it to them.

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