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Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

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Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#261

Post by root_axis »

Hermitian909 wrote: post #154
DanHulton wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making a lot of leaps of logic here, which might be why your colleagues are disagreeing with you. You go from "not everyone can learn algebra or calculus" and "mental disabilities exist" to "therefore intelligence is a scale and controlled by genetics and unalterable," which doesn't really track. Your previous education, your upbringing, your cultural values, these things all also have huge effects on your apt…

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…

You've offered some evidence as to why you believe some individuals are incapable of learning algebra, but you haven't offered an explanation as to why what you observed is necessarily the result of genetics, there could be dozens of additional factors at play here which are not being considered.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#262

Post by qqqwerty »

xyzzyz wrote: post #204
tgv wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Robert Plomin is not without controversy: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/there-i...

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#263

Post by kragen »

aqsalose wrote: post #253
kragen wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To start, I believe that the idea of "working memory" is largely valid. Think of it as the number of distinct ideas you can hold in your head at once, sort of like trying to hold a phone number in your head when you've just heard it for the first time. Interestingly, testing myself with the Wechsler reverse-digit-span test, I found very large improvements in working memory from taking 20-minute afternoon naps and f…

> I found very large improvements in working memory from taking 20-minute afternoon naps Sure. My ability to do anything also drops to near zero if I don't sleep enough. Yet I have not found unlimited increases in capability if sleep more and more... > modafinil Yeah, drugs are a quite different beast. Doping happens when individual athlete realizes they have hit the limits what their "natural" biology can do and yet…

Yeah, the drawback of modafinil is that it seems to reduce my ability to recall things from long-term memory. Also, it makes it hard to switch tasks when it's necessary.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#264

Post by raducu »

Hermitian909 wrote: post #154
DanHulton wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making a lot of leaps of logic here, which might be why your colleagues are disagreeing with you. You go from "not everyone can learn algebra or calculus" and "mental disabilities exist" to "therefore intelligence is a scale and controlled by genetics and unalterable," which doesn't really track. Your previous education, your upbringing, your cultural values, these things all also have huge effects on your apt…

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…

I do have poor working memory and I did struggle with algebra, especially with copying wrong sign from row to row and things like that.

But I did make paper sort of my working memory and when doing algebra I felt that I was just the very resource limited CPU that executed the instructions from paper-memory.

Algebra always made me feel like I was doing some mindfull exercise where I had to empty my mind, follow the paper script and hope I didn't mess anything while switching from row to row of calculations.

Even today, as a programmer, I struggle to remember class or function names, I just empty my mind and am really good at searching stuff in code.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#265

Post by EllieEffingMae »

tnzm wrote: post #224
EllieEffingMae wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the current state of the world, most scientific research will be co-opted by some violent apparatus or another. Does that mean we should lose hope and stop doing any research altogether?

By current state of the world, I mean that any research into this topic can't control for all the possible variables. That's why we'd have to take it with such a large grain of salt.

Good try at the "gotcha" though ;D

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#266

Post by [deleted] »

syops wrote: post #2

From the article: Over the next year, a biosciences working group revised the program’s funding guidelines, stipulating in the final draft that it would not support any research into the first-order effects of genes on behavior or social outcomes. The fact that this area is controversial suggests to me that it is worth exploration. I’ve taught mathematics at community colleges for over 20 years and I’m absolutely con…

[deleted]

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#267

Post by ZephyrBlu »

armchairhacker wrote: post #219

Genetics has a huge influence on what someone is predisposed to and what they can achieve. Certain ethnic groups and families, on average, are more likely to have certain traits and less likely to have others. But genetics doesn't matter , in that just because you have "bad" genetics doesn't mean you'll suck, whether it comes to weightlifting, intelligence, temperment, etc. Maybe you won't be in the top 0.0001%, but…

> If you look at the top 10 distance runners, they're all from Ethiopia and Kenya. But as you look further down the list into the top 100, you start to see Americans and others. Furthermore, the Americans' times are really close to the Ethiopians and Kenyans

The Americans still almost certainly have very favourable genetics for distance running, they're just less favourable than the genetics of the Kenyan runners.

If you compared the American runners in the top 100 against the average American I would be very surprised if they had similar physical attributes (Lung capacity, muscle fibers, etc).

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#268

Post by deltasixeight »

Tade0 wrote: post #180
tgv wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the number of people that haven't acquired overt communication is so low, it can hardly affect the average.

My point is that if you can produce twins, one of which will be taught how to speak, read and write and the other not and the difference in intelligence between them will be so significant, then the genetic component can't possibly amount for most of intelligence. Yes, it's the nature vs nurture argument all over again, but I think that regarding intelligence it's far from settled.

No post body was provided.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#270

Post by virgilp »

bawolff wrote: post #130
syops wrote: post #2

From the article: Over the next year, a biosciences working group revised the program’s funding guidelines, stipulating in the final draft that it would not support any research into the first-order effects of genes on behavior or social outcomes. The fact that this area is controversial suggests to me that it is worth exploration. I’ve taught mathematics at community colleges for over 20 years and I’m absolutely con…

> I’ve taught mathematics at community colleges for over 20 years and I’m absolutely convinced that not all people can learn algebra or calculus. To me it is obvious this is so since the mentally disabled can’t. There’s a level of “intelligence” that’s necessary to learn a given topic. Not everyone can learn all topics. I think most people agree that there are extremes. There probably exists a small number of people…

> i.e. if their life depended on it, they had all the resources they could want, they had no other distractions.

You just gave the definition of "cannot". Those circumstances will never happen, they're pure hypotheticals. Sure, hypothetically I might be able to play competitive tennis against Nadal. Practically, though, that'll never happen, I cannot and will never be able to do that - pretending otherwise is just naive and purely theoretical discussion.

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