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Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by conversation

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Re: Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by conversation

#221

Post by snowwrestler »

lutusp wrote: post #161
snowwrestler wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that "color" does not physically exist[1], it is a construct of human perception and language. Thus you cannot scientifically study color at all--if you try, what you are actually studying is human perception and language. This is not an unscientific concept, because human perception and language are naturally occurring, albeit incredibly complex, phenomena. Animals do not see colors, they react to physi…

> Animals do not see colors, they react to physical phenomena including photons. Come on. This is a roundabout way to try to define animals in terms of what they don't have -- not color perception, which many animals have, but words to describe the colors. Of course animals see colors, in the most basic biological sense. Many see colors more efficiently than we do, indeed see more colors, colors we can neither imagin…

You're basically doing what I said people do, which is to use color to describe how animals act. That does not mean that color, as a concept, has any meaning in the mind of an animal.

The electromagnetic spectrum is continuous; our concept of color is a completely arbitrary way of dividing it[1] up into sections. That was the point of the Radiolab episode (and a lot of academic research before it): different human cultures divide up the electromagnetic spectrum in different ways, each of which is as valid as another.

Animals might not have this concept at all; for example it would be just as physically valid to think of the electromagnetic spectrum the way we think about sound--as a continous spectrum from "quiet" to "loud". We know that divisions are arbitrary when it comes to sound--that's why the "this amp goes to 11" joke in Spinal Tap is funny.

[1] Edit to add: only a tiny portion of it

Re: Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by conversation

#222

Post by frobozz »

xenophanes wrote: post #116
electrograv wrote: post #30

Saying "Children aren't born smart" is equivalent to saying "Intelligence is determined entirely by one's environment", if I understand the claim correctly. While I'm sure talking to ones children contributes in a massively positive way to their IQ, I think it's extremely inaccurate and ignorant to the existence of real-world outliers to claim that it's the only factor. To provide just one example (out of many, I'm s…

You claim to "demonstrate that it's a lot more complex than just environmental factors". But the correct conclusion from what you said is that you demonstrated that it's a lot more complex than just the environmental factors that you thought of. You seem to be concluding genetic factors ("always had an intrinsic motivation"). But "not all environment" does not imply "some genetics", that is a false alternative. There…

Doesn't the claim that human choice isn't a product of environment and genetics bring along all the baggage of "free will"? If my choices aren't based on my experiences (i.e how my physical self perceives my environment) or how my brain was initially configured in-utero, then it starts to suggest that I have a supernatural soul that makes those choices for other reasons.

Re: Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by conversation

#223

Post by bnolsen »

It also helps to have an engaged and decedt dad around. As a generalization, moms tend to be more protective and dads tend to be more "come on and grow up already".

Children need to be treated like they are real people and encouraged to make good, responsible decisions of their own accord, not just be ordered around like they are troublesome objects. That means parents need to be responsible stewards of their children.

Re: Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by conversation

#224

Post by nether »

r0h1n wrote: post #64

Father of a 3.5 year old brought up using tons of "targeted talking" here: our son has a vocabulary and logical comprehension skills that are significantly beyond his peer group. As a result I'd noticed in the past that he prefers engaging with other adults in conversation over kids his age. Yesterday was his first PTA meeting and the feedback from his teacher seemed to confirm it too. She narrated an incident when t…

Well, I'm a shitty parent, but my kid turned out brilliant.

- No one, ever

I'm a great parent, but my kid's been pretty middling in his academics.

- No one, ever

Just the standard self-selection bias in response to an article with strong ego triggers (being a good parent/person, having high-achieving kids).

Re: Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by conversation

#225

Post by BigChiefSmokem »

electrograv wrote: post #30

Saying "Children aren't born smart" is equivalent to saying "Intelligence is determined entirely by one's environment", if I understand the claim correctly. While I'm sure talking to ones children contributes in a massively positive way to their IQ, I think it's extremely inaccurate and ignorant to the existence of real-world outliers to claim that it's the only factor. To provide just one example (out of many, I'm s…

Even poor kids saw the inspiring Apple ads from the 90s...

;)

Re: Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by conversation

#226

Post by foobarbazqux »

nether wrote: post #224
r0h1n wrote: post #64

Father of a 3.5 year old brought up using tons of "targeted talking" here: our son has a vocabulary and logical comprehension skills that are significantly beyond his peer group. As a result I'd noticed in the past that he prefers engaging with other adults in conversation over kids his age. Yesterday was his first PTA meeting and the feedback from his teacher seemed to confirm it too. She narrated an incident when t…

Well, I'm a shitty parent, but my kid turned out brilliant. - No one, ever I'm a great parent, but my kid's been pretty middling in his academics. - No one, ever Just the standard self-selection bias in response to an article with strong ego triggers (being a good parent/person, having high-achieving kids).

I'm a brilliant kid, but who cares, I had shitty parents.

- A lot of people I know.

Re: Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by conversation

#227

Post by Fargren »

foobarbazqux wrote: post #219
electrograv wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you claiming people are solely the product of their environment? There is substantial scientific evidence to the contrary. Keep in mind I'm not saying it's a deterministic inherited thing (it's clearly not). However I believe there is strong evidence that everyone is born with a unique personality and potential. An "environmental chaos theory" does not do justice to unexplained outliers, those with recognized min…

I think what you're missing is that, for whatever reason, we are genetically programmed to seek balance. Whatever is missing in your childhood environment, you will search for as an adult. The metaphor that comes to mind is this: imagine yourself as a spring, standing upright. In childhood, this spring was held down by a heavy boot. Now that the boot has lifted, what has happened to the spring? Is it back to the orig…

I have no idea, having not done the experiment. Maybe it's shorter and crooked. I don't understand the metaphor.

Re: Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by conversation

#228

Post by foobarbazqux »

Fargren wrote: post #227
foobarbazqux wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what you're missing is that, for whatever reason, we are genetically programmed to seek balance. Whatever is missing in your childhood environment, you will search for as an adult. The metaphor that comes to mind is this: imagine yourself as a spring, standing upright. In childhood, this spring was held down by a heavy boot. Now that the boot has lifted, what has happened to the spring? Is it back to the orig…

I have no idea, having not done the experiment. Maybe it's shorter and crooked. I don't understand the metaphor.

Just that the oppressed seek liberation. Some find it, some don't, but they all seek it. If they stop seeking it, they find liberation by becoming the oppressor, either by oppressing others or oppressing themselves.

Re: Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by conversation

#229

Post by EliRivers »

electrograv wrote: post #30

Saying "Children aren't born smart" is equivalent to saying "Intelligence is determined entirely by one's environment", if I understand the claim correctly. While I'm sure talking to ones children contributes in a massively positive way to their IQ, I think it's extremely inaccurate and ignorant to the existence of real-world outliers to claim that it's the only factor. To provide just one example (out of many, I'm s…

Saying "Children aren't born smart" is equivalent to saying "Intelligence is determined entirely by one's environment", if I understand the claim correctly.

I don't think it is equivalent. Saying "Children aren't born smart" means no more than that; they don't come out of the womb smart. The degree to which the smartness they develop will depend on an innate potential to be smart and the degree to which it will depend on environmental factors is not addressed by the statement.

Re: Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by conversation

#230

Post by thaumasiotes »

david927 wrote: post #184
thaumasiotes wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a reasonable perspective. But people other than the parent sometimes read comments! I'll do my best at a level-zero explanation of "intelligence" in the literature: Let's start by modestly noting that I routinely got the top score on Latin tests in high school (this was worth a small box of chocolates!). Someone applying the concept of "intelligence" might predict that I would also do well in math class. The…

The question isn't, "Is there intelligence?" The question is "What is intelligence in terms of a definition?" You're saying that if many people find you beautiful, there's a quality driving that, and it's "beauty". That's fine. Beauty exists. But aren't you almost admitting that it is a quality and therefore subject to what evaluates it? In other words, if 5 people call someone beautiful or ugly, are they beautiful?…

> You're saying that if many people find you beautiful, there's a quality driving that, and it's "beauty".

That's not it.

1. Imagine that we have a system we're happy with for quantifying people's beauty.

2. Imagine that we discover that, in a sample population of 100,000 or so, higher beauty predicts lower willingness to wait in line, lower frisbee golf scores, and redder tablecloths in the home.

The idea here is that from (2) we conclude that (3) there is a single variable, "beauty", responsible for your rating in (1), but also responsible for your frisbee golf scores and the color of your home tablecloths. Now, in addition to using the system in (1), we could in theory rate people's beauty by visiting their home and checking the tablecloths, or by checking a frisbee golf score sheet (lest this sound ridiculous, I'll observe that a real test of intelligence in children consists of the instructions "draw a man", "draw a woman", and "draw yourself": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draw-A-Person_Test).

In the literature, "intelligence" or g refers to this hidden variable that explains performance across all the various IQ-driven tasks. To discredit the idea, you'd want to find a test which correlated positively with one well-accepted IQ test, and negatively (or zero) with another. Another commenter pointed out that, since we don't have a specific physical metric for intelligence, we can't rate people as having a certain number of "intelliunits". That's correct, and it means that an intelligence-discrediting test could have pretty much any content at all; all that's required is that it be positively related to one existing IQ test and negatively related to another. This turns out to be extremely difficult.

This somewhat murky nature of intelligence as defined means that you're rated in terms of a comparison to the population (we can't say "you have 70 intelliunits", but we do know how to determine that you're smarter than Bob, Carol, and Tom, but dumber than Jennifer). An IQ of 115 means, approximately, that you're smarter than 5/6 of the reference population, which is conceptually all European whites.

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