PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD • Hacker News Board

Re: PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD

#161

Post by qmmmur » Wed, Sep 09, 2026, 12:32 PM UTC

wongarsu wrote: post #103

karmakurtisaani wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the feeling you want to blame "woke" ideologies for this decline. Please correct me if I'm wrong. In my opinion we just have it too easy nowadays. Too much entertainment, screens and not enough challenges to keep kids thinking they need to be as sharp as they can be.

The "Fox News" right is just as guilty of letting ideology override reason as the "woke" left. As are many other groups (most of Western politics is a bit more complicated than the US's left/right split)

As far as I can see most left wing political platforms at least have a plan to fund education unlike right wing parties which constantly seek austerity measures and general defunding of humanities and education.

Re: PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD

#162

Post by tptacek » Wed, Sep 09, 2026, 2:10 PM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #153

kenjackson wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that quickly though.

People beat around the bush but the heritability of IQ is extremely high, modern studies put it around 80%. So if one group has an IQ of 140 and another of 100, it'd imply about 32 of those 40 points are generally able to be explained by genetic factors. For some contrast that tends to be around, or a bit above, the estimated heritability for height. And so you'd see that easily in a single generation. It'd be akin t…

This isn't true; 80s and 90s-vintage twin studies put it around 80%, but those numbers have been slashed; even hereditarians don't stand by them anymore. Molecular genetics results (contested by hereditarians, in fairness) situate it closer to 15-30%. David Bessis has a good piece about this.

And that's before you get to the slippery definition of what "heritability" means. It does allow you to use the words "explained by genetic factors", but in a very specific way, one in which the number of hands you have isn't similarly explainable, but how much TV you watch is.

Re: PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD

#163

Post by somenameforme » Wed, Sep 09, 2026, 2:41 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #162

somenameforme wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People beat around the bush but the heritability of IQ is extremely high, modern studies put it around 80%. So if one group has an IQ of 140 and another of 100, it'd imply about 32 of those 40 points are generally able to be explained by genetic factors. For some contrast that tends to be around, or a bit above, the estimated heritability for height. And so you'd see that easily in a single generation. It'd be akin t…

This isn't true; 80s and 90s-vintage twin studies put it around 80%, but those numbers have been slashed; even hereditarians don't stand by them anymore. Molecular genetics results (contested by hereditarians, in fairness) situate it closer to 15-30%. David Bessis has a good piece about this. And that's before you get to the slippery definition of what "heritability" means. It does allow you to use the words "explain…

That's quite a meaningless statement. Molecular genetics is in its infancy and so you're appealing to absence lack of evidence, which exists for most of everything, as evidence of absence - quite nihilistic! A quick search similarly suggests rates as low as 10% for the heritability of (non-European) height based on molecular genetics, undoubtedly for the same reasons.

And we've already had this conversation and in spite of your obsession with bias confirming 'blogs written by very smart people' - the heritability of TV watching is zero. Actually lol looking this up, it turns out there has indeed been a study done on this [1], as part of a study on the heritability of sedentary behaviors in general. And yeah, it's zero.

You are right that the number of hands you have is not heritable, but is only because heritability is defined as the percent of variation in a trait, between populations, that can be explained by genetic factors. When basically everybody has two hands, there is no variation, so there is no heritability to measure. It'd be like discussing the heritability of hair color if everybody had black hair. It's not some sort of clever insight or retort, though I'm certain your blogs framed it as the wittiest thing ever.

[1] - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4193845

Re: PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD

#164

Post by tptacek » Wed, Sep 09, 2026, 3:15 PM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #163

tptacek wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true; 80s and 90s-vintage twin studies put it around 80%, but those numbers have been slashed; even hereditarians don't stand by them anymore. Molecular genetics results (contested by hereditarians, in fairness) situate it closer to 15-30%. David Bessis has a good piece about this. And that's before you get to the slippery definition of what "heritability" means. It does allow you to use the words "explain…

That's quite a meaningless statement. Molecular genetics is in its infancy and so you're appealing to absence lack of evidence, which exists for most of everything, as evidence of absence - quite nihilistic! A quick search similarly suggests rates as low as 10% for the heritability of (non-European) height based on molecular genetics, undoubtedly for the same reasons. And we've already had this conversation and in sp…

This comment doesn't actually say anything. I get that you're unhappy with the comment that I wrote? But that's all I get from it.

The one specific claim you make here, that height has heritabilities measured at around 10%, is false. In fact, the comparisons between the steadfastly high heritabilities of simple physical phenotypical traits like height and complex behavioral characteristics is a big part of the current scientific conversation about behavioral genetics.