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The Latest On Intelligence

danielwillingham.com

21–30 of 172 posts

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#21
post #4
post #2

"The extent to which genes matter to intelligence varies by social class (genetic inheritance matters more if you're wealthy, less if you're poor)." It's always seemed obvious to me that this ought to be true - that is that environment will matter more if you have greater differences in environment. In the extreme case if you feed kid A and don't feed kid B, then kid A will end up with an infinitely greater IQ than k…

Be careful about coming up with an explanation for a result, and then thinking it is obvious : http://lesswrong.com/lw/im/hindsight_devalues_science/

I'm sorry if I ended implying I was using hindsight, I meant to claim that this was obvious to me in advance. I'm pretty sure its even in my comment history where we were discussing someone's claim that IQ wasn't a real thing even though it was a heritable thing, and I asserted that "there isn't just one heritability of IQ" or words very close to that.

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is actually more subtle than that though. What they're saying is that holding social class constant , genetic difference is more important for the wealthy than the poor. For example, kid A and kid B are both wealthy and have significant genetic differences related to factors affecting intelligence. In this case kid A and kid B are likely to have significantly different intelligence from each other. Converse…

Right. The implication, in my mind at least, is that fighting poverty should be one of the key goals of society. Being in poverty effectively hides gifts as poverty will dominate "natural" ability.

Reply to scott_s: In that article, note that the study addressed the effect of pre-school on strongly disadvantaged children: "Only disadvantaged children living in adverse circumstances who had low IQ scores and a low index of family socioeconomic status were eligible to participate in the Perry program."

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#23

I didn't read the entire paper, but to someone who did, how much of a link is there between genetics and IQ? I know this isn't a popular subject, but if I remember correctly I believe that Ashkenazi Jews constitute 3% of the population yet have won 27% of the Nobel prizes in science. I would think that much like how different types of people from different regions have differing athletic capabilities, there would als…

People always ask this incorrectly. The real question is "To what degree does genetics determine the difference of average IQs between groups." The link between genetics and IQ is near 100% in an absolute sense, as tapeworms and dogs generally will score a 0 on any test.

Even the worst possible environment...say, repeated concussions to the head via a hammer, will still result in a human scoring far above any non-human.

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#24
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A mental test, perhaps, to determine if something truly is "obvious": if the fact is reversed, and you can come up with a reasonable sounding explanation for the reverse, then the original fact is not obvious. In other words, only consider something obvious if you could not explain the opposite.

A mental test, perhaps, to determine if something truly is "obvious": if the fact is reversed, and you can come up with a reasonable sounding explanation for the reverse, then the original fact is not obvious. This experiment has been tried, by a scientist who presented the exact opposite of various findings to undergraduates, who were readily able to invent rationales for the counterfactual statements, as reported i…

Eliezer Yudkowsky cites the same experiment in the essay I linked, which was my motivation for bringing it up. I'm not proposing an experiment, however, but a mental tool for people who are trying to be honestly rational. And my motivation for why this tool will work is that experiment.

Of course, using this mental tool requires that you are honest with yourself when you try to explain the counterfactual statement.

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. The implication, in my mind at least, is that fighting poverty should be one of the key goals of society. Being in poverty effectively hides gifts as poverty will dominate "natural" ability.

Reply to scott_s: In that article, note that the study addressed the effect of pre-school on strongly disadvantaged children: "Only disadvantaged children living in adverse circumstances who had low IQ scores and a low index of family socioeconomic status were eligible to participate in the Perry program."

Right, it's not an experiment for the conditions under discussion. It is, however, an experiment which demonstrates the importance of early childhood environment.

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#26
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful about coming up with an explanation for a result, and then thinking it is obvious : http://lesswrong.com/lw/im/hindsight_devalues_science/

I'm sorry if I ended implying I was using hindsight, I meant to claim that this was obvious to me in advance. I'm pretty sure its even in my comment history where we were discussing someone's claim that IQ wasn't a real thing even though it was a heritable thing, and I asserted that "there isn't just one heritability of IQ" or words very close to that.

At the risk of being rude: I don't believe you. It's just too hard for us to disassociate current knowledge from our intuition. I do believe that your prior statements are in support of the one in question, but I do not believe that those statements make this one obvious. (That is, I don't believe you when you say your prior statements would clearly imply the current one.)

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#27
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scott, that is a correct point, but that important warning works both ways in many controversies about scientific findings on issues that people think they know about from personal experience. Human intelligence research, when discussed among laymen, is particularly an area in which people make strong claims on the basis of "it's obvious that" or "everyone knows" when the strong claims are neither obvious nor things…

A mental test, perhaps, to determine if something truly is "obvious": if the fact is reversed, and you can come up with a reasonable sounding explanation for the reverse, then the original fact is not obvious. In other words, only consider something obvious if you could not explain the opposite.

Another good rule of thumb is that if you're ever in a position where you feel the need to assert that something is "obvious", it probably isn't.

All too often people try to end a debate by asserting that some point (from which their position inevitably follows) is "obvious". If it were obvious, they likely wouldn't be having the debate in the first place. It's much more likely that someone disagrees with the foundation of an argument than that they agree with the premises but are too stupid to see their consequences.

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is actually more subtle than that though. What they're saying is that holding social class constant , genetic difference is more important for the wealthy than the poor. For example, kid A and kid B are both wealthy and have significant genetic differences related to factors affecting intelligence. In this case kid A and kid B are likely to have significantly different intelligence from each other. Converse…

Right. The implication, in my mind at least, is that fighting poverty should be one of the key goals of society. Being in poverty effectively hides gifts as poverty will dominate "natural" ability.

How do you define "poverty"? Most impoverished Americans have TVs and microwaves.

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#29
Kevin Mitchell has a very interesting take on intelligence here: http://wiringthebrain.blogspot.com/2012/07/genetics-of-stupi...

Basically he suggests thinking about the formation of intelligence to be something like trying to run an obstacle course while holding an armful of things and trying to drop as little as possible. Essentially, he is arguing that there is some optimal or standard brain and since any mutation introduced into the brain is more likely to be harmful than beneficial, more intelligent individuals are not those that inherited some specific genes for intelligence but are most likely those who avoided the most damaging non-specific mutations.

That’s [runaway selection of intelligence boosting genes] all nice, though admittedly speculative, but those mutations are the ones that we would expect to not vary in human populations – they would now be fixed. In particular, there is little reason to expect that there would exist new mutations in such genes, present in some but not all humans, which act to further increase intelligence.

To test this he suggests using symmetry as a proxy for robustness in the individual. This fits well with the fact that all attempts thus far to find a common genetic basis for intelligence have failed, the correlation between intelligence and immune function, ideas that intelligence was indirectly selected when optimizing for healthy mates and findings that Nootropic like substances tend to have the least effect on already intelligent minds. In the last case, it is interesting to note nootropics should then be viewed not cheating but more leveling of the playing field. Taking this further, genetics are not the only obstacle course - there is still variation in the womb environment and early childhood. The interplay of genes and the stability of process in the growing brain; affected by a lack of stimulation, poor nutrition and a stressful womb environ would likely have more impactful effects on intelligence than pure genetics.

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#30
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry if I ended implying I was using hindsight, I meant to claim that this was obvious to me in advance. I'm pretty sure its even in my comment history where we were discussing someone's claim that IQ wasn't a real thing even though it was a heritable thing, and I asserted that "there isn't just one heritability of IQ" or words very close to that.

At the risk of being rude: I don't believe you. It's just too hard for us to disassociate current knowledge from our intuition. I do believe that your prior statements are in support of the one in question, but I do not believe that those statements make this one obvious. (That is, I don't believe you when you say your prior statements would clearly imply the current one.)

It's reasonable for you not to believe me, which is why I dug up the link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2210604

Except I think the author would point out that there isn't just _one_ heritability for things like height because height would be much more heritable in environments where everyone has adequate nutrition as opposed to in environments where nutrition was a matter of luck, for instance.

Rereading the blog post I was referring to, I'm not as certain that the author would actually agree with me here, but at the time I thought the point was so obvious that anybody who thought about it would agree.

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