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'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

philly.com

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Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#41

Post by joesb »

bittired wrote: post #28
6d0debc071 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being poor does not cause lower IQ Down the page - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6078722 - we have lancewiggs saying that the results of IQ tests are strongly driven by poverty. What basis do you have for your claim?

Here is the logic: 1. Given all of the smartest 50% of the people in the world. 2. Take all of their money away. 3. Give it to the other 50%. Lets say we were able to do those three. Now do you think being poor causes lower IQ? DON'T CONFUSE CORRELATION WITH CAUSATION!

Step 1 is more like:

"Given all of the kids who would grow up to be the smartest 50% of the people in the world."

The problem is we are not able to predict this first step.

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#42

Post by thaumaturgy »

bittired wrote: post #28
6d0debc071 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being poor does not cause lower IQ Down the page - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6078722 - we have lancewiggs saying that the results of IQ tests are strongly driven by poverty. What basis do you have for your claim?

Here is the logic: 1. Given all of the smartest 50% of the people in the world. 2. Take all of their money away. 3. Give it to the other 50%. Lets say we were able to do those three. Now do you think being poor causes lower IQ? DON'T CONFUSE CORRELATION WITH CAUSATION!

After a generation or two? Yes.

Consider the elements of an IQ test: vocabulary, pattern recognition, mathematics, abstract logic. What kind of environment would you think is more likely to teach children the things they need to do well on an IQ test?

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#43

Post by JshWright »

bittired wrote: post #32
rayiner wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the kids in the study were selected because their parents were poor, and the average IQ of the kids in the study was around 80. That certainly signals a correlation, and since these are kids and don't have agency over their economic situation, it suggests a direction of causation too.

Logically money should have no direct affect on intellectual capacity (e.g. see my other argument about taking the money away and giving it to someone else). In this case, I think the causation is in the other direction. Over time, people with less intellectual capacity will be less successful, and therefore poorer. That is rational. The other direction is irrational.

How could it not have an impact on intellectual capacity?

Good nutrition, stimulation, and education are all important during development. This things are all much easier to access when you have more money.

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#44

Post by throwit1979 »

tripzilch wrote: post #15
ctdonath wrote: post #2

tl;dr - "Poverty is a more powerful influence on the outcome of inner-city children than gestational exposure to cocaine."

> tl;dr - "Poverty is a more powerful influence on the outcome of inner-city children than gestational exposure to cocaine." It's a good thing to back up with a scientific study and facts, but I'd hardly call it surprising (the article did) except to those who have no idea what this poverty looks like. Another interesting part of the bias might be that I've never heard the term "crack baby" (or similar) outside the c…

except to those who have no idea what this poverty looks like.

I think this is a very important observation. Sometimes poverty doesn't look anything like this.

I'd like to note that although I grew up in "technical" poverty, e.g. in a small rural community with a median income of $11,121, very few saw much violence or any of the markers of poverty lifestyle this article talks about.

Although my anecdote is not scientific, I do think this has much more to do with observed culture than with an arbitrary signifier like poverty. Urban poverty and rural poverty are entirely different things, for instance. As is transient and temporary versus chronic poverty.

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#45

Post by raverbashing »

rayiner wrote: post #27
calibraxis wrote: post #11

Science vs. hysterical racism, yet again. There's a reason it's "crack baby", and not "cocaine baby". Helps imprison the right sort of person. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Sentencing_Act ) There's a much more dangerous drug than cocaine, for babies. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenatal_cocaine_exposure ) It's alcohol, a legal drug. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_alcohol_syndrome )

Alcohol isn't really that dangerous for babies either. The prevalence of fetal alcohol syndrome is less than 5% for babies of women who drink more than 14 drinks per week during pregnancy: http://www.motherisk.org/prof/updatesDetail.jsp?content_id=2... . There's very little evidence that low levels of alcohol consumption during pregnancy are bad for babies: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2023984,00.ht…

You're presenting facts, the "total abstinence" people don't like that.

I find it funny how the "total abstinence" people come up with such amount of unproven facts, like "any consumption of alcohol" will cause harm. You'll be hard pressed to find a mother that hasn't consumed any alcohol whatsoever during pregnancy in Europe.

This looks like it works as well as the "total abstinence" for sex works.

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#46

Post by bittired »

JshWright wrote: post #43
bittired wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Logically money should have no direct affect on intellectual capacity (e.g. see my other argument about taking the money away and giving it to someone else). In this case, I think the causation is in the other direction. Over time, people with less intellectual capacity will be less successful, and therefore poorer. That is rational. The other direction is irrational.

How could it not have an impact on intellectual capacity? Good nutrition, stimulation, and education are all important during development. This things are all much easier to access when you have more money.

> Good nutrition, stimulation, and education are all important during development.

But not so important that they would have a 40 point IQ difference. If it is, show me the studies confirming that.

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#47

Post by bittired »

rayiner wrote: post #39
bittired wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Logically money should have no direct affect on intellectual capacity (e.g. see my other argument about taking the money away and giving it to someone else). In this case, I think the causation is in the other direction. Over time, people with less intellectual capacity will be less successful, and therefore poorer. That is rational. The other direction is irrational.

It depends on how you ascribe causation to hereditary factors. Does it make sense to say that a 4 year old is poor because of his low IQ? I don't think so, because a 4 year old has no agency over his economic circumstances.

I actually don't believe at a micro-level that causation comes into play at all. I was responding to the statement that at a macro-level there is probability of causation, and it is more rational that poverty is caused by stupidity than poverty causes stupidity. The latter is nonsense.

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#48

Post by mhurron »

tripzilch wrote: post #15
ctdonath wrote: post #2

tl;dr - "Poverty is a more powerful influence on the outcome of inner-city children than gestational exposure to cocaine."

> tl;dr - "Poverty is a more powerful influence on the outcome of inner-city children than gestational exposure to cocaine." It's a good thing to back up with a scientific study and facts, but I'd hardly call it surprising (the article did) except to those who have no idea what this poverty looks like. Another interesting part of the bias might be that I've never heard the term "crack baby" (or similar) outside the c…

Crack Cocaine and Cocaine are not quite the same thing. Cocaine is known and used in the US as well. Crack was a US ghetto phenomenon, it is not used as some code-word for blacks.

The results are surprising in the sense that what was said, and generally believed even by professionals in the field, at the height of the issue was that it would be impossible for these children to develop at all. Poverty has a known affect on development, it was believed that these crack babies wouldn't even have the chance to hit that level.

The surprise comes from that the previous belief couldn't be more wrong. The actual effect was basically non-existent.

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#49

Post by bittired »

6d0debc071 wrote: post #40
bittired wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is the logic: 1. Given all of the smartest 50% of the people in the world. 2. Take all of their money away. 3. Give it to the other 50%. Lets say we were able to do those three. Now do you think being poor causes lower IQ? DON'T CONFUSE CORRELATION WITH CAUSATION!

In other words, do I think the removal of something posited to be developmentally advantageous would lower IQ after the developmental period had passed?

No, I was saying that money in pocket != intelligence.

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#50

Post by antoko »

bittired wrote: post #28
6d0debc071 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being poor does not cause lower IQ Down the page - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6078722 - we have lancewiggs saying that the results of IQ tests are strongly driven by poverty. What basis do you have for your claim?

Here is the logic: 1. Given all of the smartest 50% of the people in the world. 2. Take all of their money away. 3. Give it to the other 50%. Lets say we were able to do those three. Now do you think being poor causes lower IQ? DON'T CONFUSE CORRELATION WITH CAUSATION!

You don't seem like an idiot but all your comments in this thread seem to be making the same obvious error.

"Being raised in poverty" is a broad term that means all kinds of things, you seem to think it is merely a measure of wealth. This myopic view is why you're so very very wrong.

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