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The Latest On Intelligence

danielwillingham.com

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Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#111

Post by anthonyb »

Symmetry wrote: post #95
CWuestefeld wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc is one of the classic logical fallacies[1]. You persist in the assumption that poverty causes lower IQ, rather than the possibility that both poverty and lower IQ are correlated because they share a common cause. [1] See http://www.skepdic.com/posthoc.html

The way you do a controlled experiment in science is that you have a number of subjects, you subject only some of them to some new condition, and then you look for statistically significant differences between the group subject to the condition and the one that wasn't. That was what happened in the study I mentioned. Now, you can say that this wasn't absolute proof and you'd be right, because science doesn't provide…

The problem is that often there will be several factors linked together. Richer households will have better nutrition, but they'll also behave differently, have more books, associate more with other richer families, etc. It's really hard to unlink these factors, even when trying to control studies statistically.

Nutrition is a really low hanging fruit, and you have to be pretty poor for it to have any effect.

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#112

Post by Cyndre »

In my opinion the reason poorer people have less IQ then wealthier people, and also why adopted poor babys into middle class homes have higher IQ's comes down to what they spend their time thinking about. Poorer people spend their time worrying about food, money and basic needs. This occupys alot of their thought. Richer people don't need to worry about the basic needs and spend their time worrying about larger more complicated things.

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#113

Post by roguecoder »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #89
Symmetry wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc is one of the classic logical fallacies[1]. You persist in the assumption that poverty causes lower IQ, rather than the possibility that both poverty and lower IQ are correlated because they share a common cause. [1] See http://www.skepdic.com/posthoc.html

They do share a common cause: a lack of money. Increasing guaranteed income improves those measured outcomes: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/003465399558... That is, by giving their parents money you improve children's cognitive performance. I'm not sure what more causal evidence you are looking for. Also see https://files.nyu.edu/mw109/public/loken_mogstad_wiswall_fam... for the statistics involves.

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#115

Post by slurgfest »

makmanalp wrote: post #110
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…

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?

If you think I am defending the paper because I am its ideological ally, you have not understood what I said

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#116

Post by gwern »

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…

> 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.

Not relevant to my point about the one-sided presentation.

> Most cognitive tasks used inside an MRI are about as meaningless as benchmarks. It seems gratuitous to turn this into evidence of intentionally dishonest malfeasance and frame the whole thing as some kind of pseudo-political debate. Just engage the data, please?

I don't see what MRIs have to do with this... the DNB studies that matter are, at core, very simple: you give someone a Raven's or BOMAT test, randomly train them on DNB or not, and give them a second test.

> Setting aside the political tone you've taken here: the idea that nature and nurture are dichotomous (or can even be meaningfully separated) is not supportable.

Everyone knows that there is in IQ or psychometrics in general a continuum of positions from nurture to nature, and while only ideologues take a 100% position and everyone sensible acknowledges that there's substantial contribution from both, there's still a very big difference between someone like Nisbett and, say, Arthur Jensen.

I don't know what you're talking about with your dichotomies and caricatures, and I don't really care: because it's not relevant to my point about how accurate a presentation of evidence this Nisbett et al 2012 paper is.

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#117

Post by rikelmens »

scott_s wrote: post #103
rikelmens wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, you are right.

And the second link I've posted is wrong, I meant to post this one: http://www.dhaomega3.org/

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#118

Post by gwern »

realitygrill wrote: post #105
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…

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

Heh. And I started reading the paper with such high hopes when it came out months ago, too.. For those not familiar, realitygrill is referencing a classic Crichton quote:

"Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. (I call it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.) Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#119

Post by anthonyb »

OmegaHN wrote: post #66
Xcelerate wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The examples you gave exactly match my intentions. I'm not sure where we are disagreeing, unless you are interpreting the phrases "intelligence" and "intelligence quotient" as more exclusive than most people. If that is the case, give me your definition of "intelligence", and we'll see where we go from there.

I'm saying that interpreting IQ as intelligence is extremely narrow-minded and misleading to the general public. There is absolutely no evidence that IQ is a decent measure of intelligence. My point is that intelligence is a much broader subject than simple IQ, and using IQ as a measure of intelligence will produce both false positives (by training for the exam) and false negatives (by not targeting other areas of in…

> There is absolutely no evidence that IQ is a decent measure of intelligence.

Other than it correlates with all sorts of positive life factors, you mean? Like health, earning power and lack of a criminal record?

Nobody is saying that IQ is intelligence, including the author of the article. But it's a fairly large component of it.

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#120

Post by ralfn »

justin_vanw wrote: post #69

"A great deal of time has been wasted in the effort of measuring the heritability of traits in the false expectation that somehow the genetic nature of psychological phenomena would be revealed." There is a strong cultural bias among much of the research community to go out of their way to deny any genetic factors in intelligence. Perhaps this is well intentioned, but it is absurd. I have come across very few squirre…

I love your example! Way out of my depth here, but i do have a question:

The squirrel obviously has a genetic trait that causes it to have a small brain. We can tell its iq just by looking at it, without considering its DNA. Would the same logic apply, when there is no visual/physical trait present?

Can one brain cell be dumber than another? Could they be wired in a less optimal way?

Genetics likely explain the difference between a retard and a functioning human, but csn they also explain the difference between an iq of 100 and an iq of 105?

When people have this debate about intelligence, the inevitable political argument is that maybe, we as a society could invest more in ourselves, our children and our neighbours children.

The relevant question, perhaps, should be: how much impact could "nurture" have? Is somebody with an iq of 120 physically limited to become smarter? Or is that person already in the range, where the genes were all good?

I dont think anybody doubts that a retarded person has a genetic disadvantage. But does the same apply to an average human being?

And if that limit exist, is it a personal limit, or one you share with most other humans on this planet?

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