Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by conversation • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by nwzpaperman » Wed, Oct 02, 2013, 6:13 PM UTC

derivagral wrote: post #201

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…

> Are you claiming people are solely the product of their environment? There is substantial scientific evidence to the contrary. I'm genuinely interested in what/where this is, any links / searches?

The body of research can be found by searching "human biodiversity".

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

#232

Post by bradleyland » Wed, Oct 02, 2013, 6:21 PM UTC

derivagral wrote: post #201

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…

> Are you claiming people are solely the product of their environment? There is substantial scientific evidence to the contrary. I'm genuinely interested in what/where this is, any links / searches?

This debate is commonly referred to as the nature versus nurture debate:

https://www.google.com/search?q=intelligenc+nature+vs+nurtur...

It's a vigorous and deep debate. Happy reading!

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

#233

Post by drzaiusapelord » Wed, Oct 02, 2013, 6:27 PM UTC

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…

Unfortunately, we live in an age where its politically incorrect to remotely hint at genetic determinism. Men and women are exactly the same. Dumb people and the ultra smart are exactly the same. Articles that contradict this don't get much traction in the media and certainly don't get on the front page of HN.

We're probably a generation or two away before we can accurately look at these issues without activist groups and other political groups declaring them invalid because of misplaced idealism.

Somewhere there's a modern day Galileo saying "but some children are born smart!"

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

#234

Post by hosh » Wed, Oct 02, 2013, 6:32 PM UTC

Talking to kids like an adult -- what a concept!

I'm glad this article came out, and getting this method more in the mainstream.

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

#235

Post by dllthomas » Wed, Oct 02, 2013, 6:33 PM UTC

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…

Intelligence is entirely environmental: if your environment contains nano- and bio-tech that will rebuild your brain to be physically identical with another person's, you will have the same IQ.

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

#236

Post by Zimahl » Wed, Oct 02, 2013, 6:38 PM UTC

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…

That's a nice thought but not a fact. Some who are held down search for what they were deprived, some don't. I would assume the many examples of this are all anecdotal since they make great stories. The flip side is not that uncommon and thus not celebrated and reported about.

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

#237

Post by thehme » Wed, Oct 02, 2013, 6:42 PM UTC

This is a wonderful article and I am glad that Slate published it. Wouldn't it be great if there were more people like Dr. Suskind working in all sectors of our world?! Her research and findings are definitely something I have seen firsthand, but I am glad to learn that we have research now that proves my observations. In fact, I believe that people who work for an hourly wage and who work long hours to make ends meet, do not have the time/energy to cook for their families. Instead, with their low income, they look to find easy and quick ways to feed themselves and their families, sometimes resorting to fast food, if not always. In turn, the children in these families grow up thinking this is the way things are done and never learn to cook for themselves. All they have been taught is to eat what comes out of a can or box, instead of preparing themselves and egg and toast. Consequently you have generation after generation not learning to cook, to eat fast food, and this, to me, is the reason why we have been steadily becoming the most obese and disease plagued people in the world. I hope that soon there will be solid research to show that my observation is correct, but more importantly that like developing good language skills, being healthy is something attainable by even those in low income households through simple discipline.

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

#238

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 02, 2013, 6:43 PM UTC

[deleted]

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

#239

Post by goggles99 » Wed, Oct 02, 2013, 6:43 PM UTC

This claim can be dis-proven by common sense. Lets look at families with more kids. Each kid should be smarter and smarter because the other kids talk and converse.

Kids who go to day care with other older, talking kids should be brilliant.

I am sure that there are many other no-brainier situations when kids hear more words and have more conversations and are not smarter as well.

Why do these big scientific articles like this always seem so trivially flawed and ridiculous? Is is just me?

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

#240

Post by delian66 » Wed, Oct 02, 2013, 6:44 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #221

lutusp wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 cu…

The frequency of the perceived light coresponds roughly to color. The frequency of the perceived sound corresponds roughly to pitch. So I think that "quiet" to "loud" is analogous to "pale" to "bright", when it comes to visible light.

>>different human cultures divide up the electromagnetic spectrum in different ways ... Yep, different human cultures divide up the sound spectrum in different ways too ... So what ?

Some people have absolute pitch perception, allowing them to reproduce a musical tone, that they had heard exactly, even without knowing its proper name, just like some people can distinguish between color hues, that other people lump together as generic "pink", "green", "blue" or "yellow".

Having a vocabulary of specific names may ease learning/training, but it seems to me, that no matter how many different words for colors you teach a child with daltonism, the child will still fail a color blindness test.