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>It seems that excluding extreme cases (e.g. mental deficiencies and the unicorns the likes of Newton) overall intelligence has more to do with your early devel

>It seems that excluding extreme cases (e.g. mental deficiencies and the unicorns the likes of Newton) overall intelligence has more to do with your early development than your genetics. This has been getting more and more supportive evidence from adoption studies (including separated twins incidents), use of surrogates, egg and sperm donors show very little correlation between pure genetics and IQ or academic performance. This is, to put it charitably, not the consensus of the relevant science. Once you get adequate nutrition, which western countries have, IQ if influenced far more by genetics than environment. Adoption studies show consistently that adopted children's IQs resemble their genetic parents not their adopted parents. Twins separated at birth tend to have very similar IQs and personalities. Programs like Head Start and brain training regimens have proven to have little impact on IQ and future outcomes - which you wouldn't expect if environment was the prime factor. We are biological robots, we should expect our source code to have a significant influence on our cognition. The "environment is all that matters" idea is basically Lysenkoism and its popularity is more do to ideology than science. Your statements are from a mirror world. I assure you, you're misinformed.

dogma1138 11y ago
To put it charitably that's not the case, the majority of the latest studies show that if you are born to a "low-IQ" (less than 90) then genetics play a huge role (I personally have no quarrel with classifying IQ of 90 or lower as a mental deficiency, but i might have been more clearer on that), however for children who are born to average and above-average parents genetics seems to play a minor role compared to environmental factors especially during the early-adulthood development phases (or exactly before your "IQ" seems to stabilize). Here is an example of a study which is one of the largest (if not the largest) studies that were conducted in this field (over 11,000 individuals) which seem to point to that exact conclusion. http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/07/01/0956797612473119 http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/07/01/095679761247... Overall it seems that if you born with a higher "genetic" IQ than the environment will have a much bigger influence on the final outcome (average to highly gifted) while if you are born with a (considerably) below average genetic IQ potential then it wont. edit: Can't find a non-paywall for the research but there is a high level synopsis and analysis of it for journalists. http://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/education/nature-nurture-intellectual-development-children http://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/education/nat...
chrispeel 11y ago
I'd be happy for a couple of references from you (Moshe_Silnorin) and dogma1138.
- Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
  I don't want to play study tennis with dogma. However, here are some representative examples: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3182557/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3182557/ http://cdp.sagepub.com/content/13/4/148 http://cdp.sagepub.com/content/13/4/148 IQ and its heritability are about as uncontroversial among psychiatrists as global warming is among climate scientists. Here's a good blog post about the personal implications of this, and how this knowledge can be used productively and charitably: http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/31/the-parable-of-the-talents/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/31/the-parable-of-the-tale...
  - dogma1138 11y ago
    That's not completely honest and not the main issue here, it's not about heritability and the IQ potential but the actual fixed IQ of adults. People with higher genetic potential for intelligence are considerably more influenced by their environment and for longer periods than people with lower potential. So unless we are talking about <100 and in many cases <90 IQ individuals the environment plays a bigger role than pure genetics in the final outcome, I've linked a very recent and very extensive study on that same subject.
    - Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
      Dogma, the claim I disagree with is this: overall intelligence has more to do with your early development than your genetics. You know what has a huge influence on your early development, your genetics. Do you really think I could be as good at math as Terry Tao if I had spent my childhood practicing? If we raise a chimp right, could it beat Terry Tao? Yes, high IQ people vary more between tests, but much of this is regression to the mean. And still scores are relatively stable. The common superstition that environment and effort matter more than innate capacity is false - also perseverance is hereditary to some extent, too. I have not read the paper, but I very much doubt this effect would mean environment matters more than genetics. If you clone Terry Tao, and let this clone be raised by two average-IQ parents, he will not grow up to be average. The summery you provided doesn't seem to discount the value of biological interventions to any great extent, as the "extended period of synaptogenesis" would likely have a genetic cause, given our knowledge about the heritability of IQ.

dogma1138 11y ago

To put it charitably that's not the case, the majority of the latest studies show that if you are born to a "low-IQ" (less than 90) then genetics play a huge role (I personally have no quarrel with classifying IQ of 90 or lower as a mental deficiency, but i might have been more clearer on that), however for children who are born to average and above-average parents genetics seems to play a minor role compared to environmental factors especially during the early-adulthood development phases (or exactly before your "IQ" seems to stabilize). Here is an example of a study which is one of the largest (if not the largest) studies that were conducted in this field (over 11,000 individuals) which seem to point to that exact conclusion. http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/07/01/0956797612473119 http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/07/01/095679761247... Overall it seems that if you born with a higher "genetic" IQ than the environment will have a much bigger influence on the final outcome (average to highly gifted) while if you are born with a (considerably) below average genetic IQ potential then it wont. edit: Can't find a non-paywall for the research but there is a high level synopsis and analysis of it for journalists. http://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/education/nature-nurture-intellectual-development-children http://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/education/nat...

chrispeel 11y ago

I'd be happy for a couple of references from you (Moshe_Silnorin) and dogma1138.

Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
I don't want to play study tennis with dogma. However, here are some representative examples: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3182557/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3182557/ http://cdp.sagepub.com/content/13/4/148 http://cdp.sagepub.com/content/13/4/148 IQ and its heritability are about as uncontroversial among psychiatrists as global warming is among climate scientists. Here's a good blog post about the personal implications of this, and how this knowledge can be used productively and charitably: http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/31/the-parable-of-the-talents/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/31/the-parable-of-the-tale...
- dogma1138 11y ago
  That's not completely honest and not the main issue here, it's not about heritability and the IQ potential but the actual fixed IQ of adults. People with higher genetic potential for intelligence are considerably more influenced by their environment and for longer periods than people with lower potential. So unless we are talking about <100 and in many cases <90 IQ individuals the environment plays a bigger role than pure genetics in the final outcome, I've linked a very recent and very extensive study on that same subject.
  - Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
    Dogma, the claim I disagree with is this: overall intelligence has more to do with your early development than your genetics. You know what has a huge influence on your early development, your genetics. Do you really think I could be as good at math as Terry Tao if I had spent my childhood practicing? If we raise a chimp right, could it beat Terry Tao? Yes, high IQ people vary more between tests, but much of this is regression to the mean. And still scores are relatively stable. The common superstition that environment and effort matter more than innate capacity is false - also perseverance is hereditary to some extent, too. I have not read the paper, but I very much doubt this effect would mean environment matters more than genetics. If you clone Terry Tao, and let this clone be raised by two average-IQ parents, he will not grow up to be average. The summery you provided doesn't seem to discount the value of biological interventions to any great extent, as the "extended period of synaptogenesis" would likely have a genetic cause, given our knowledge about the heritability of IQ.