I am excited for the discovery of the specific causes behind this general effect. Especially if some specific interventions are possible.
Genetic link between family SES and children's educational achievement
41–50 of 56 posts
Re: Genetic link between family SES and children's educational achievement
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
> On what evidence can you say that more research > won't/can't help On what basis can you say it will ? These studies have known drawbacks in that they serve as a rallying point for all sorts of discrimination masquerading as high-minded discourse, and we're yet to see a benefit so far, so the burden of proof here is on you. At least part of the problem here is given two children / job-applicants / defendants / what…
You are all over this thread putting words in people's mouths instead of discussing what they are actually saying. You are even painting an entire class of study with a broad brush in a guilt-by-association way. Are you sure that's actually helping your case and the conversation here?
What's an example of words I'm putting in someone's mouth? Perhaps you could reply specifically to a case where you believe I'm doing that?
Re: Genetic link between family SES and children's educational achievement
#43I'm having a hard time parsing this paper. The question I have is:
What percentage of family SES appears to be genetically correlated, intelligence or otherwise?
Re: Genetic link between family SES and children's educational achievement
#44My old hypothesis is that in a reasonably free society, families reach their "destination" socioeconomic status after 3 generations. Even if they immigrate as refugees on rusty boats, or lose everything in a holocaust or internment camps. Or, even if they win the lottery. After three generations, they hit their level, whether it's at the bottom or the top. And then they stay there. It's IQ, an absence of stimulation-…
Correct me if I'm misreading, but I have a hard time seeing how the study supports your hypothesis. In the "Discussion" section, the authors state that their heritability estimate for educational attainment was 31%, and only 20% for SES. That still leaves the door open for significant social influence. The authors summarize: "Our findings add weight to the view that genetic variation plays an important, but not exclu…
> In the "Discussion" section, the authors state that their heritability estimate for educational attainment was 31%, and only 20% for SES. That still leaves the door open for significant social influence.
Yes, that's true. However, GCTA has several limitations which mean that these numbers can be considered lower bounds on what the total genetic contribution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome-wide_complex_trait_anal...
Re: Genetic link between family SES and children's educational achievement
#45I'm having a hard time parsing this paper. The question I have is: What percentage of family SES appears to be genetically correlated, intelligence or otherwise?
j15t gives you the money quote of the results in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12025219
If you just want to know what percentage of variance in family SES is caused by the measured SNP differences, this study puts it at ~20%. This isn't too interesting since we already know that as most SNP GCTAs turn in results similar to that and there are several other studies establishing SES SNP heritability similar to that ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome-wide_complex_trait_anal... ).
This heritability doesn't tell you how the genetics is causing the higher/lower SES, though. It might be because they are increasing intelligence (most plausible); changing personality to more extroverted and Conscientious (possible); or increasing height (possible); or changing preferences to more rewarding fields like STEM (plausible given other results on subject area interest being genetically influenced); or maybe because they are yielding blue eyes/blond hair (highly unlikely). In this case, the researchers look at intelligence, since that is a trait closely linked to SES and also highly genetic.
So what you do is do the GCTA on both SES and intelligence, getting the usual 0.2-0.3 heritability estimates, then you look for overlap. This paper is interesting because it finds a great deal of overlap, indeed, almost total overlap - so you can interpret this as showing that at least part of SES is heritable and passed on in families, not because rich families are better at finding summer jobs for their kids or they leave their kids fortunes in their wills or live in better neighborhoods, but because they give their kids more intelligence genes and intelligence is important for success in modern society.
Re: Genetic link between family SES and children's educational achievement
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Bell Curve (1994) talked about the intellectual stratification that is happening in society. The author and resulting research was called "racist" and has been shouted down time and time again but much of what you say is discussed in the book. He shows correlation between intelligence and [income, parent's socioeconomic status (SES), job security/unemployment, educational attainment, and tons of other things]. Th…
> the book is generally forbidden to be discussed in > "polite" company The problem with studies like this - and also ones that for example attempt to show race-linked differences in "positive factors" - is that they're pretty useless for anything other than the uneducated using as a blunt discrimination tool. Let's say you live in a society where there are blue and green people. A study shows a genetic basis for a d…
> A study shows a genetic basis for a difference - on average across the whole population - where blue people are 10% less intelligent and 10% more violent.
> Are you justified in preferring to hire green people? No.
Why the heck wouldn't you be justified in preferring to hire people who are, on average, more intelligent and less violent?
> Are you justified in having greens-only policies? Of course not, that's not how averages work.
I agree — in the scenario, any individual blue might be preferable to the great mass of greens.
> Is there any basis for any kind of segregation? Any basis for any color-based policies? No … It's precisely because there's almost no practical use for studies like these
There's no practical use that you care to put into practice. What you're arguing for is categories of 'forbidden knowledge': stuff that everyone agrees to ignore, because its truth is too discomforting. That seems a bit childish to me: one of the hallmarks of maturity is coming to terms with uncomfortable knowledge.
Besides, here's one practical use for such a study: in your example, if blues were a much higher proportion of the prison population than they are of society at large, knowing that they are less intelligent and more violent on average is information which can help one determine if that is fair or not.
Re: Genetic link between family SES and children's educational achievement
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
On what evidence can you say that more research won't/can't help? [1 SD is not a 'small difference'. (2 SD's if you compare to Ashkenazic Jews).]
> On what evidence can you say that more research > won't/can't help On what basis can you say it will ? These studies have known drawbacks in that they serve as a rallying point for all sorts of discrimination masquerading as high-minded discourse, and we're yet to see a benefit so far, so the burden of proof here is on you. At least part of the problem here is given two children / job-applicants / defendants / what…
> These studies have known drawbacks in that they serve as a rallying point for all sorts of discrimination masquerading as high-minded discourse, and we're yet to see a benefit so far, so the burden of proof here is on you.
You're arguing for deliberate ignorance because reality is uncomfortable.
> At least part of the problem here is given two children / job-applicants / defendants / whatever, who are absolutely identical in every way except for a specific cosmetic phenotype, what possible justification is there for treating them differently based on correlation between that phenotype and some other characteristic over a large population?
If two people are identical in every observable way, and that single observable way indicates a strong difference between them, why wouldn't one differentiate based on that single observation? They are, after all, indifferentiable in every other way.
Indeed, mathematically speaking if one ignores the single useful datum you posit, then one will make worse decisions: if you have no other data and just flip a coin between greens and blues in your thought experiment a few posts back, then you will choose worse than if you bias your coin towards greens. That's just a fact; whether you choose to ignore it based on the discomfort it causes you is up to you.
Re: Genetic link between family SES and children's educational achievement
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's precisely because there's almost no practical use for studies like these (...) Let's say that green people have a higher rate of suicide attempts when they have mental illness X. This is very useful knowledge -- this means that one should treat X in green people more aggresively, because it's more dangerous for them. Let's say that green people are more likely to suffer from alcoholism. This is very important…
> This is very useful > knowledge -- this means that > one should treat X in green > people more aggresively, > because it's more dangerous > for them. No you shouldn't, you should asses each patient individually, especially if - as per say qualification for a job - this fact is discernible by actually examining the person. Otherwise you will let a small 10% increase in likelihood for one group blind you to the needs…
> No you shouldn't, you should asses each patient individually
Assessment means making observations; making observations means observing; observing means actually opening your eyes to the facts as they are. You'd be killing your patients if you ignored the fact that greens commit suicide more often on average.
Re: Genetic link between family SES and children's educational achievement
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
The usefulness is if you see a deficiency in a student (or anyone) you can properly understand the reason for it. When you understand the reason you have a chance at actually making things better. I.e. use the data after seeing the performance of someone, rather than using it to predict their performance.
> When you understand the reason This right here is the problem. Armed with a small amount of data about information over a population on average gives you absolutely no information about any specific case, and the green-skinned child gets special treatment to bring them up to scratch, where the blue-skinned child gets written off as "she's achieving less well because blue-skinned children do". That's the problem, an…
> Armed with a small amount of data about information over a population on average gives you absolutely no information about any specific case
That's akin to saying that being armed with all of medical science's knowledge about appendicitis gives one absolutely no information about any specific case. There's a valuable point buried deeply there (every case is different), but the statement itself is just plain wrong. A physician or surgeon must have reasons to treat a specific instance of appendicitis differently than the statistically expected range of instances; a person would have reasons to treat a random green or blue person differently than the statistically expected range of persons.
> the green-skinned child gets special treatment to bring them up to scratch, where the blue-skinned child gets written off as "she's achieving less well because blue-skinned children do".
Economically speaking, investing resources in bringing green children up to scratch has a higher rate of return than doing the same for blue children. That really does mean that spending resources on the latter is wasting them on average (although certainly not in specific cases, where it really is a good investment). So, do you impoverish the world by wasting resources or do you enrich it by prudently investing them?
Re: Genetic link between family SES and children's educational achievement
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the book is generally forbidden to be discussed in > "polite" company The problem with studies like this - and also ones that for example attempt to show race-linked differences in "positive factors" - is that they're pretty useless for anything other than the uneducated using as a blunt discrimination tool. Let's say you live in a society where there are blue and green people. A study shows a genetic basis for a d…
> A study shows a genetic basis for a difference - on average across the whole population - where blue people are 10% less intelligent and 10% more violent. > Are you justified in preferring to hire green people? No. Why the heck wouldn't you be justified in preferring to hire people who are, on average, more intelligent and less violent? > Are you justified in having greens-only policies? Of course not, that's not h…
> Why the heck wouldn't you be
> justified in preferring to
> hire people who are, on
> average, more intelligent
> and less violent?