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The Latest On Intelligence

danielwillingham.com

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Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#31

Post by yesbabyyes »

mynameishere wrote: post #23
Xcelerate wrote: post #11

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-hum…

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.

I'm pretty sure you're wrong. I think research suggests that dolphins, parrots, bonobos and some other animals have tested higher than humans.

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#32

Post by OmegaHN »

This article is very hard to digest because of the writers switching of "intelligence" and "IQ". Intelligence =/= IQ. IQ is a score on a test, and intelligence is a vague set of mental skills and processes to solve problems of varying degrees and subjects. To say that they are equal is like saying that athleticism is equal to the number of pounds you can bench.

If the writer is talking about IQ, then these investigations aren't interesting, as IQ is a very small subset of intelligence (the ability to solve those types of problems on a test, which you can easily train for). If the writer is talking about general intelligence, then the writer really shouldn't be mentioning IQ at all, as it is notorious for being confused as actual intelligence.

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#33

Post by slurgfest »

OmegaHN wrote: post #32

This article is very hard to digest because of the writers switching of "intelligence" and "IQ". Intelligence =/= IQ. IQ is a score on a test, and intelligence is a vague set of mental skills and processes to solve problems of varying degrees and subjects. To say that they are equal is like saying that athleticism is equal to the number of pounds you can bench. If the writer is talking about IQ, then these investigat…

Any argument containing the word "intelligence" at all is hard to digest, because the idea is so totally vague as to be useless.

Unless you operationalize it as something measurable. Such as IQ.

There is no point talking about intelligence in the abstract unless you can actually say what you actually mean in such a way that 30 readers won't develop 30 completely different interpretations of what it is you are saying.

What is "actual intelligence"? And let's not, like Humpty Dumpty, say that words mean just what we choose them to mean.

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#34

Post by character »

Daniel Willingham knows a lot about this subject (I took into to cognition with him a couple of years ago). Of course in the linked article he is just paraphrasing other people's work, but he does a lot of similar stuff himself especially on developmental neuroscience in learning and reasoning. It is very interesting to be taught by someone who knows a ton about learning and how to learn from the neurological point of view.

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#35

Post by Xcelerate »

OmegaHN wrote: post #32

This article is very hard to digest because of the writers switching of "intelligence" and "IQ". Intelligence =/= IQ. IQ is a score on a test, and intelligence is a vague set of mental skills and processes to solve problems of varying degrees and subjects. To say that they are equal is like saying that athleticism is equal to the number of pounds you can bench. If the writer is talking about IQ, then these investigat…

Without a consistent, objective definition, "intelligence" makes no sense. If you would like to dissociate IQ and intelligence, go ahead, but IQ is a metric that has correlations with many other factors (test performance, income, a whole slew of things really).

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#36

Post by Symmetry »

mistercow wrote: post #6
Symmetry wrote: 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…

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…

The mental model I'm using here is that IQ is the result of something like (Genetic g) * diminishing_returns(nutrition). And that nutrition is something like K1*(social_factor) + K2 + noise(). So noise is going to result in smaller deviations when the social_factor is higher.

Before reading that website I would have expected that variations in the first term for nutrition would be small compared to the second term, so I wouldn't have necessarily expected this to show up between affluent and poor kids in the US. But between affluent kids in the US and kids from sub-Saharan Africa I certainly would have.

EDIT: In fact, I would have guessed the working-class/middle-class IQ differences were an order of magnitude lower.

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#38

Post by brittohalloran »

mistercow wrote: post #6
Symmetry wrote: 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…

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…

I think it implies that if you're wealthy, you are able to fully meet your intellectual potential, thus the greater spread for wealthy children.

Re: The Latest On Intelligence

#39

Post by Alex3917 »

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…

Not sure if this is true, but I heard recently that the best predictor of IQ is actually the gene that controls determines the size of your mom's vagina, because that is what mediates the risk of brain cell loss due to lack of oxygen at birth. Kind of a funny, but also quite telling about the state of genetics.
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