Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

I always wondered if the teachers understood how much effort people put in. Especially in something like math, where you can't just waffle.

I got the feeling as a kid that a lot of my classmates would just give up. I mean they're sitting there acting like they're concentrating on math, but they aren't. In other classes intermittent attention is enough, you pick up social cues and repeated stories that you've heard, and poof you have a history essay. With math there's a need to have all the steps.

How do you control for that as a teacher observing the kids? How do you know whether a kid has actually tried to learn stuff at home?

I still remember my brother was baffled at how I got top grades in math when he never saw me studying. Of course I tended to do that when he wasn't around.

> The real moral issue is popularizing the idea that it is unfair or the gains ill-gotten if people are successful, that their earnings are like loot that should have been "divvied up". It comes from and breeds jealously, resentment, division, hate, and crab mentality.

That's not really what I'm saying. The ways in which society hands out wealth and power today are not necessarily the ways in which it always has or always will. What specific traits lend one toward success are a bit subjective and take different forms at different times and places. So if right now, some individual cannot succeed as easily as another, those tables may very well turn at some point in the future.

To the degree that we justify whoever is being rewarded now, because they are smart/resilient/beautiful (by current standards) or whatever allows them to succeed, we must also acknowledge that under different circumstances it may very well be that we would be congratulating someone else for completely different justifying reasons. By the same token, if someone is not rewarded by society, we should resist the urge to justify their lack of success in terms of some intrinsic deficiency, when indeed they very well may have succeeded with the same traits in a different version of society. The arbitrary nature of how society chooses to reward individuals clashes with attempts to justify the status quo, which would much prefer to describe outcomes as an inevitable consequence of various conditions, like genetics, that can be used to explain why some are wealthy/powerful and others destitute.

It is this framing that I find to be morally suspect, because it tries to justify the current social hierarchy in absolute terms, when the reality is a bit more complex and subject to the prevailing whims of the times we live in.

> If people do well because they are intellectually gifted, physically gifted, because they work hard or because their parents raised them well or because a coach just happened to see them playing basketball while sitting in traffic driving through a poor neighborhood. Then great. Someone else doing well does not make my life worse.

Agreed. I only want to acknowledge that these are but a few of the many ways society can choose to value its individual members. The genetics, or upbringing, or nutrition, or behaviors of those who have achieved success are not predictive of obtaining wealth or power in all versions of society, past and present, and so should not necessarily be treated as more important or superior in any universal way.

Two factors.

First, there are clearly a large number of people out there who have no business trying to pass algebra 101. Even if they theoretically could with sufficient effort and tutoring, it is not worth their time, nor is it going to lead to that much that is beneficial.

Second, teaching is already hard. Teaching math also requires an understanding of math that is rare. Hence finding people who are good math teachers is hard. Finding people who are good math teachers and willing to do it for a math teachers salary is even harder. If it were trivial to improve our teachers we would off course do it. But it is not at all trivial.

I think this matters less in a liberal arts college, but especially if you are going to ask students to build on their algebra 101 with other courses. If passing algebra 101 took a lot of effort, chances are that the other courses are going to take the same amount of effort, if not more.

Going to Stanford or Harvard doesn't mean you're genetically superior though, there are a lot of other things selecting people who go there before ""intelligence""

> My own experience suggests that whilst yes, genetics is an important factor in life outcomes, other things that are hugely important also aren't adequately researched, because genetic determinism is so widely accepted.

This.

IQ !== Success.

I used to go to college with two very bright people. I couldn't catch up with them. Because one of them was ridiculousely intelligent and the other was up there close.

20 years on, the first one is working at Mcdonald's. Yes, I couldn't believe it too. The second one is a teacher (not that this is a bad job), who told me he hates the job and how much he messed up his career.

For me it's persistence/perseverence >> IQ / Intelligence.

If you have someone who is average IQ but is willing to go through hell to achieve what they want, then I'd rather go for the average IQ girl/guy.

Another thing that doesn't get mentioned when discussing IQ and race is humility. If you have a high IQ and think you can do better than other people/race why not invest that gift and give back to this world. Why not be humble about it and help your fellow humans making this world a better place. Sitting there and claiming you are better than X and Y because your race is Z shows how weak you really are. Be humble about what you have and invest your time and effort in becoming better as a person, be a role model for your family, son, daughter, your community and your country.