The Latest On Intelligence

I consider myself - if not an expert, at least very well informed - on the topic of dual n-back and I was flabbergasted when I read pg11 of the PDF. There is not a single mention of the many failures to replicate, methodological critiques, or skeptical meta-analyses about n-back. Some of that can be explained by the January 2012 date, but only a very some of it because a lot of that long predates 2012 or 2011, and it can't be explained by the people involved being ignorant because they thank Jaeggi, Duckworth, Jonides, and Sternberg - who certainly would know!

Someone reading this paper would come away with a very different understanding and expectation for dual n-back training than someone reading my http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20FAQ . So all I can think is, "if this is how Nisbett et al act on the one section where I know almost as much as them, how are they misleading me in all the other sections?"

> Supplementation of a mother’s diet during late pregnancy and 3 months postpartum with long-chained fatty acids has also been demonstrated to improve cognitive performance in human children (Helland et al. 2003). http://www.pediatricsdigest.mobi/content/111/1/e39.full

But to follow up: Helland et al 2008 http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/122/2/e472.sho...

> CONCLUSION. This study suggests that maternal concentration of n-3 very-long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids during pregnancy might be of importance for later cognitive function, such as sequential processing, although we observed no significant effect of n-3 fatty acid intervention on global IQs. Neonatal fatty acid status had no influence on BMI at 7 years of age.

(One may not be surprised inasmuch as most efforts to boost IQ in kids like the Abecedarian project show fadeout.)

The original linked posts lightly implies that the points made are a consensus of the field. That's a bit like going to the Democratic Convention and concluding that politics aficionados have reached a consensus on who should be president next year.

For instance, that APA statement in response to The Bell Curve? There were several intelligence experts who signed a different document[1]. If you want an independent, randomized survey of experts in the field, there is also the excellent Snyderman & Rothman survey [2].As the Rothman study indicates, the picture the media painted of what many intelligence researcher believed, and what they actually believe, is rather different.

Turkheimer himself has said that he disagrees that "the possibility of genetic differences between the races for IQ, agree that the question is a legitimate matter for scientific inquiry, to be settled by cool-headed evaluation of the empirical evidence." [3] While that doesn't mean he is wrong, one should not limit your reading of the field to the likes of Turkheimer; one would do well to read some of the prominent 'opposition' such as Linda Gottfredson and Arthur Jensen. Jensen, by the way, is considered the most eminent living man in the field, and he favors the hereditarian viewpoint. Not that science should be done by consensus or a raising of hands, but it's handy to know what is and isn't considered tenable by modern researchers. There's more disagreement in the field than the linked post lets on.

In the third link below, the Cato Institute held a discussion between the 'environmentalists' Ceci, Flynn and Turkheimer, and the hereditarian Linda Gottfredson. It's worth a look.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstream_Science_on_Intellige... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snyderman_and_Rothman_(study) [3]http://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/11/21/eric-turkheimer/race-...

The problem is, their answers don't please many who'd ask such questions. Einstein claimed:

"This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career."

Or take Chomsky:

"A lot of the educational system is designed for that, if you think about it, it's designed for obedience and passivity. From childhood, a lot of it is designed to prevent people from being independent and creative. If you're independent-minded in school, you're probably going to get into trouble very early on. That's not the trait that's being preferred or cultivated. When people live through all this stuff, plus corporate propaganda, plus television, plus the press and the whole mass, the deluge of ideological distortion that goes on, they ask questions that from another point of view are completely reasonable...."

So let's turn the question around (because it's not about Jews being the Master Race or being culturally superior to say Africans): how do we triumph over dominant institutions which are out to turn us into idiots?