The Latest On Intelligence • Hacker News Board

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#101

Post by hazov » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 9:13 PM UTC

justin_vanw wrote: post #97

hazov wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just curious how you can support your point about squirrels, besides you falling prey of the bias of trying to advance an argument with a sole point. For example, can these squirrels ancestors had better nutrition than the average squirrel, can we know about that just after seeing they mastering fire or wondering if they could learn calculus? I believe this type of question, the relation between nutrition and intel…

My point is that humans are much more intelligent than squirrels. Is this because of environment? Not at all, it is because we have the genetic programming to develop huge brains. The difference in intelligence between humans and squirrels is determined almost entirely by heredity. The reason I point this out is that it is very common to see comments about heredity not being a factor in human intelligence. It may wel…

In the comments of this post however I saw exactly the same point you're saying in your first paragraph, maybe in other discussion forums people denying this is more common.

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#102

Post by EREFUNDO » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 9:15 PM UTC

Studies have shown that the first 5 years of a child's life is when the brain develops the most. Proper nutrition and exposure to simple problem solving will significantly increase the chances of the child having a higher IQ.

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#103

Post by scott_s » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 9:17 PM UTC

rikelmens wrote: post #80

gwern wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the fish oil/IQ links I know tend to either be poor quality studies, show no effect, or show a fade-out... For example, > Supplementation of a mother’s diet during late pregnancy and 3 months postpartum with long-chained fatty acids has also been demonstrated to improve cognitive performance in human children (Helland et al. 2003). http://www.pediatricsdigest.mobi/content/111/1/e39.full But to follow up: Hell…

I agree in regard of fish oil quality. That's why I use algae derived DHA supplements.

He meant that the studies are of poor quality, not that the studies only used poor quality fish oil.

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#104

Post by roguecoder » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 9:22 PM UTC

Xcelerate wrote: post #67

I thought it would be interesting to note that my karma score seems to be going up and down a lot on this topic in short periods of time. On other topics, it seems to increase slowly. I'm trying to think of what deeper conclusions could be drawn from this that people have what appear to be strong and varying opinions on something that should be rather scientific and objective.

It can't be scientific and objective, because it is not measuring something scientifically and objectively defined and most of the differences being discussed can be erased by manipulating the testing circumstances.

That doesn't mean it is never worth measuring, but it seems particularly silly to obsess over IQ when better data on actual outcomes exists for things like educational interventions. The best applications of IQ are in identifying areas of deficit in individuals (one definition of learning disability is an area of cognitive performance that varies significantly from all others.) The worst applications of IQ are to funnel more resources to already-advantaged children or to make demographic generalizations. Given that, it hardly seems unreasonable to mostly ignore the IQ-obsessed research and focus on specific, repeatably-defined cognitive tasks instead.

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#105

Post by realitygrill » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 9:23 PM UTC

gwern wrote: post #73

tokenadult wrote: post #5

I would upvote this twice if I could. I have read the underlying paper Nisbett, R. E., Aronson, J., Blair, C., Dickens, W., Flynn, J., Halpern, D. F., & Turkheimer, E. (2012, January 2). Intelligence: New Findings and Theoretical Developments. American Psychologist, 67, 130-159. http://psychology.msu.edu/pers_hambric3/PSY493%20Spring%2020... Daniel Willingham reviews in the submitted post, and the paper is a joint re…

My problem with upvoting is that I have read the underlying paper, and I'm not impressed at all. This paper takes a hugely nurturist approach, and at parts verges on dishonesty. I consider myself - if not an expert, at least very well informed - on the topic of dual n-back and I was flabbergasted when I read pg11 of the PDF. There is not a single mention of the many failures to replicate, methodological critiques, or…

At least you're not succumbing to the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect, gwern.

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#106

Post by Retric » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 9:28 PM UTC

slurgfest wrote: post #88

gwern wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with upvoting is that I have read the underlying paper, and I'm not impressed at all. This paper takes a hugely nurturist approach, and at parts verges on dishonesty. I consider myself - if not an expert, at least very well informed - on the topic of dual n-back and I was flabbergasted when I read pg11 of the PDF. There is not a single mention of the many failures to replicate, methodological critiques, or…

Labeling the paper with the epithet "hugely nurturist" tells nothing about the paper but everything about what you are doing. You are attempting the early dismissal of some viewpoint you disagree with on a more or less political grounds but this has not very much to do with science. Most cognitive tasks used inside an MRI are about as meaningless as benchmarks. It seems gratuitous to turn this into evidence of intent…

To check your biases what percentage of someones Height is based on DNA vs environmental factors? Ok, now compare that with IQ.

In the US environmental factors represent ~20 point shifts in IQ. However 50 point differences are not all that uncommon (75 vs 125) even among family members. Which suggest huge differences based on DNA.

PS: When the average nutrition level increases the importance of DNA also increases.

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#107

Post by slurgfest » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 9:34 PM UTC

jongraehl wrote: post #99

slurgfest wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Labeling the paper with the epithet "hugely nurturist" tells nothing about the paper but everything about what you are doing. You are attempting the early dismissal of some viewpoint you disagree with on a more or less political grounds but this has not very much to do with science. Most cognitive tasks used inside an MRI are about as meaningless as benchmarks. It seems gratuitous to turn this into evidence of intent…

Surely you're aware that a tremendous amount of ink and (social-)scientist hours have been spent doing "science" with the presumption that there "are no genes for IQ" etc., so it makes sense to be on guard against biased writing (at least by publication/file-drawer bias) on the topic. You have gwern wrong. He's an unbiased scientist on this topic.

At best this is "the other guy swung first." At worst it is just a straw man. What you claim the other guys do is irrelevant. Territory defense is irrelevant. Facts are relevant and fist-fights do not uncover them. Why can't the critique proceed on a higher level than "those Xists are deliberately lying again"?

If your way of judging a paper is to look at who wrote it, then conclude that the paper is bad based on some kind of guilt by association with the "wrong school" then you are not being honest with yourself.

The nobler objective is not to discredit and guard against "nurturists" but to do justice to reality. Cognitive science shouldn't be so much like a kung fu movie...

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#108

Post by rustynails » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 9:49 PM UTC

Symmetry wrote: post #72

CWuestefeld wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty huge assumption, that micro-nutrients are a significant part of any difference. You've assumed, first, that it's poverty that causes the lowered IQ, rather than that both poverty and lower-IQ are both effects of a common cause. Second, even if there really is a causal chain, why in the world would you assume that the difference is related to nutrition? Why not, for example, cultural differences in the…

If poverty doesn't cause lowered IQ how would explain children adopted into non-improrished households having higher IQs? I don't have good evidence that nutrition is the primary factor here, but there is a lot of research saying that nutrition is important with respect to IQ.

I come from a reasonably well off family. Ma parents did not think they could have children, so they adopted a boy and a girl. Then I came along.

I look like my parents, think like my parents and in many ways, behave like my parents. However, I have outright rejected their religious beliefs (so there are some differences, but these could be the lack on indoctrination or maybe circumstance. My sister met her biological mother for the first time when my sister was 23. They both smoked, wore similar clothes, had similar musical tastes, similar social past times - in just about every way, they were very alike. More importantly, my sister is almost nothing like me, despite the very similar nurture/environment. My brother was a very similar story, always in trouble with the law. My parents had a strict policy, if one got something, we all got it. However, they recognized strengths and nurtured those. So we have a family whose genetics have driven our looks, personalities, interests, careers (if you consider crime a career for my brother) and in my view, intelligence was also varied. Adoption did not influence my siblings as far as I can see (by comparison with biological parents). All I have ever seen in my life in nature, nature, nature. To add to this, we all have kids, and guess what? Our kids are all similar to their parents too. Looks/behavior and again, I'd argue intelligence. Having said all of that, we are all intelligent in our own ways. As an example, my brother is very street wise- he's a great manipulator, a player. He can handle himself in many situations. I fundamentally reject any urgument that nature plays no part in any aspect of what makes a person, including intelligence. Do you think the similarities end with looks?

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#109

Post by slurgfest » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 9:49 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #106

slurgfest wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Labeling the paper with the epithet "hugely nurturist" tells nothing about the paper but everything about what you are doing. You are attempting the early dismissal of some viewpoint you disagree with on a more or less political grounds but this has not very much to do with science. Most cognitive tasks used inside an MRI are about as meaningless as benchmarks. It seems gratuitous to turn this into evidence of intent…

To check your biases what percentage of someones Height is based on DNA vs environmental factors? Ok, now compare that with IQ. In the US environmental factors represent ~20 point shifts in IQ. However 50 point differences are not all that uncommon (75 vs 125) even among family members. Which suggest huge differences based on DNA. PS: When the average nutrition level increases the importance of DNA also increases.

Please step back a bit.

Let's say you are measuring IQ (whatever it indicates) in some giant between-subjects design or meta-analysis which also includes some number of "independent variables" outside your experimental control. Then you do some kind of multiple regression.

What you are doing is building a very high-level, black-box model finding maximum likelihood parameters to fit some observed data. Each underlying data point is a slice of a snapshot of the behavior of a very complex system.

This is worthwhile insofar as we can account for variance that we might see in future samples and can therefore predict and confirm that we have an understanding of the system. It doesn't actually give us visibility into the complex system because regression terms rarely correspond to anything concrete. This offers only the vaguest possible constraint on attempts to decompose the overall effect into causal factors.

The weights in the regression do not, individually, have a meaningful interpretation outside of the model. (The implication and meaning of a term in a theory depends on the meanings of other terms in the theory).

But for some reason we decide to disregard this, and are primarily interested in which weight is bigger. And the reason we are interested is as a way of showing which ideological school is right or wrong: where the ideological schools are some version of "DNA is so important" and "environment is so important". If one school is vindicated - what? Everything they say is true?

We are testing hypotheses, not people. To badly paraphrase Popper: we send our theories to die in our stead...

Are you getting an idea of what I am saying about nature vs. nurture here or are we just talking past each other?

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#110

Post by makmanalp » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 10:00 PM UTC

slurgfest wrote: post #88

gwern wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with upvoting is that I have read the underlying paper, and I'm not impressed at all. This paper takes a hugely nurturist approach, and at parts verges on dishonesty. I consider myself - if not an expert, at least very well informed - on the topic of dual n-back and I was flabbergasted when I read pg11 of the PDF. There is not a single mention of the many failures to replicate, methodological critiques, or…

Labeling the paper with the epithet "hugely nurturist" tells nothing about the paper but everything about what you are doing. You are attempting the early dismissal of some viewpoint you disagree with on a more or less political grounds but this has not very much to do with science. Most cognitive tasks used inside an MRI are about as meaningless as benchmarks. It seems gratuitous to turn this into evidence of intent…

I'm more worried about this:

> There is not a single mention of the many failures to replicate, methodological critiques, or skeptical meta-analyses about n-back.

Can you refute that?