Slate running an article on the heritability of intelligence is just about as unbiased as a pamphlet on economics put out by Bolsheviks.
Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by conversation
71–80 of 292 posts
Re: Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by conversation
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
What you call "denial", I call reasonable doubt. And by that, I mean we don't have any concrete way to measure intelligence potential/capacity in the same way we can measure 12 inches. We know what 12 inches mean, but can anyone tell me what it means to be smart? What subjects do I need to learn to qualify? And to what level of detail? Why do we conclude Stephen Hawkins is smart? Who is an example of someone that isn…
We do have concrete ways to measure intelligence, and have had them for over a hundred years. The literature on this subject is quite extensive.
> We do have concrete ways to measure intelligence, and have had them for over a hundred years.
Concrete, yes. Accurate, absolutely not. Any number of people have exploited the systematic errors in I.Q. testing for purely racist and political objectives.
> The literature on this subject is quite extensive.
Indeed it is:
Re: Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by conversation
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
C.f. the cited book by Hart & Risley, Meaningful Differences In The Everyday Experiences of Young American Children. "The more parents talked to their children, the faster the children's vocabularies were growing and the higher children's IQ test scores at age 3 and later. [...] [By age 4], an average child in a professional family would have the accumulated experience with almost 45 million words, an average child i…
How did the researchers determine causation? What if there is simply a gene for strong language which is responsible both for the parents' financial success and the child's academic success, and the extra words were simply a by product?
> How did the researchers determine causation? What if there is simply a gene for strong language which is responsible both for the parents' financial success and the child's academic success, and the extra words were simply a by product?
Yes, it might well be the classic confusion of cause and effect, but your argument will have no effect on the OP, who is a psychologist.
For reasons that may or may not be obvious, as part of their training, psychologists are made blind to the possibility that they might confuse cause and effect.
Re: Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by conversation
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
A 100 to 115 IQ maxed out on potential will get you very far in life, but not as far as a 130 to 145 IQ maxed out on potential will.
Not really. There's an upper limit to the survival value of intelligence. Not to oversimplify, but that limit is reached when the person says, "What? I should add to the world's problems by having children?" In all seriousness, the fact that the average I.Q. is located where it is, tells us that's the outcome natural selection blindly chose. And natural selection is always right.
The average IQ produced by natural selection depends on the environment. There is no ideal level of intelligence apart from environment. If the Earth had a uniform climate, terrain, and so on from pole to pole, this presumably would not be the case.
Re: Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by conversation
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
We do have concrete ways to measure intelligence, and have had them for over a hundred years. The literature on this subject is quite extensive.
> We do have concrete ways to measure intelligence, and have had them for over a hundred years. Concrete, yes. Accurate, absolutely not. Any number of people have exploited the systematic errors in I.Q. testing for purely racist and political objectives. > The literature on this subject is quite extensive. Indeed it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man
Gould has been exposed as a fraud.
Re: Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by conversation
#76Believing everyone is tabula rasa when it comes to intelligence is one of those white lies society tells itself to make itself feel better. Of course the environment one grows up in is important but this article is kidding itself into thinking it is the primary factor.
We inherit so many other traits from our parents, why should intelligence be any different? What makes it so special that it requires a convoluted explanation that rests on so many assumptions?
Re: Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by conversation
#77Saying "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…
> Saying "Children aren't born smart" is equivalent to saying "Intelligence is determined entirely by one's environment", if I understand the claim correctly.
You don't understand the claim correctly. The claim is that environmental factors (particularly being talked to) are essential to development of intelligence, not that environmental factors determine intelligence entirely.
The distinction between necessary conditions and necessary and sufficient conditions is pretty critical.
Re: Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by conversation
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We do have concrete ways to measure intelligence, and have had them for over a hundred years. Concrete, yes. Accurate, absolutely not. Any number of people have exploited the systematic errors in I.Q. testing for purely racist and political objectives. > The literature on this subject is quite extensive. Indeed it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man
Gould has been exposed as a fraud.
[deleted]
Re: Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by conversation
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
What you call "denial", I call reasonable doubt. And by that, I mean we don't have any concrete way to measure intelligence potential/capacity in the same way we can measure 12 inches. We know what 12 inches mean, but can anyone tell me what it means to be smart? What subjects do I need to learn to qualify? And to what level of detail? Why do we conclude Stephen Hawkins is smart? Who is an example of someone that isn…
We do have concrete ways to measure intelligence, and have had them for over a hundred years. The literature on this subject is quite extensive.
What's "intelligence"?
Re: Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by conversation
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could it of been the fact that you were in such an environment, and had such a desire for something different be the source of your inspiration? I am not even talking money necessarily here, but the lack of intellectual stimulation? That made the doses you received all that much more intoxicating? All I am saying is that a particular environment can affect someone in unexpected ways.
Why do you think his other family members did not share this desire?
I come from a unique environment that has allowed me to draw some very interesting conclusions.
I am from a family of 3 children. Two adopted and one "unexpected" natural birth.
One of the three of us has been in prison many times (and we have no other relatives that I know of that have ever been in trouble beyond the occasional speeding/parking ticket).
The other of the three of us is a carbon copy of their biological mother (dress sense, social sense, taste in music/books/films, mannerisms, extreme anti-social behaviour, etc) - they hadn't spoken until my sibling was 25 - so that was 25 years without contact, visibility, etc - and they still turned out to be a near carbon copy.
I followed in my parents footsteps in many ways, more than I realised at the time.
All three of us agree that we got the same toys, the same lollies, same schooling, same opportunities, etc... so we can only put the differences down to nature - and I can tell you that I'm a big believer that nature plays a BIG role in defining what we are...
I've often said "we don't just LOOK like our parents, it's also the nuances in the structure and wiring of our brains".
I have a few kids of my own, and while they are quite different (nerd v/s jock, introvert v/s extrovert, etc) - there are many similarities, unlike my siblings and I.