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because the well educated, high income parents (now with more uniformly high income extended families) tend to give a higher level of attention, resources, and

because the well educated, high income parents (now with more uniformly high income extended families) tend to give a higher level of attention, resources, and support to their children compared to the children of the poor, working, and middle classes. That's the uncontroversial perspective, yes. The more controversial, but far better-supported-by-evidence perspective is that the estimated 40-80% contribution that genes make to people's intelligence, conscientiousness, and work ethic is much more likely to be at play, here.

pyrocat 11y ago
> better-supported-by-evidence hah, ok, go ahead and make that claim with zero links to back it up. Please, tell me more about eugenics.
- burkaman 11y ago
  Saying genes contribute to intelligence is not eugenics. Here's the first link I saw: http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/v20/n1/full/mp2014105a.html http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/v20/n1/full/mp2014105a.html From the abstract: "Intelligence is one of the most heritable behavioural traits."
  - danharaj 11y ago
    Heritability is a relative measurement. You need to know what environmental factors you are controlling for in order to measure it. Because we live in societies that are highly stratified based on attributes that are genetically linked there can be environmental effects on intelligence that are difficult or impossible to correct for that create a correlation between genetics and intelligence.
    - burkaman 11y ago
      I know, that's why I linked to an article written by scientists that understand that, with hundreds of references to actual studies. The article goes into a lot of depth about what they mean by heritability, what genes are involved and how they are involved, what studies have led to these conclusions, etc. The section titled "Intelligence brings (some) genetics to ‘social’ epidemiology" addresses your concerns about environmental factors. I don't think it's very controversial to say genes contribute to intelligence. Genes contribute to everything, how could they not affect intelligence? This isn't eugenics, nobody is saying we should (or could) use this information to selectively breed humans, and nobody is saying intelligence can be correlated to race.
      - danharaj 11y ago
        I get what you're saying. I don't think it's contentious to say genetics influence intelligence. One thing that I strongly disagree with about the way intelligence research is done is that it seems highly based on tests of individual intelligence. There's no IQ test for groups of people. We know that selection happens at the level of genes, not individuals. You can't measure the fitness of genes by evaluating their effects solely on individuals because their effects may involve ensembles of individuals. Since humans are highly social beings, I'd expect our genes to be selected for intelligence at the level of cooperating brains as well as individual brains. There doesn't seem to be much research on measuring this aspect of intelligence.
  - wyago 11y ago
    Native language is an almost perfectly heritable trait, but that does not imply it is genetic. (However, it is true that saying that genes contribute to intelligence isn't eugenics. Eugenics is a methodology where you attempt to selectively breed humankind by broader intent, rather than by emergent properties of human tendencies. A proposed trait to optimize is often intelligence, but similarly frequently it's attractiveness and things like that. Genetic influence on intelligence is simply a hypothesis whose testing would have consequences on the practice of eugenics.) ------- edit ------- I see your reply to the other comment. I think a quote from the article that makes your point far better is "[...] studies have consistently shown that genetic influence on individual differences in intelligence is substantial." I negligently assumed you were specifically talking about heritability.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - burkaman 11y ago
      I can't say for sure, but I think at least in biological sciences, heritability specifically refers to genetics. From wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability): "Heritability is a statistic used in breeding and genetics works that estimates how much variation in a phenotypic trait in a population is due to genetic variation among individuals in that population."
- vox_mollis 11y ago
  Steve Hsu giving a talk @ Google on the topic, with myriad citations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62jZENi1ed8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62jZENi1ed8 Four studies cited on this handy chart: https://jaymans.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/iq-heritability-age.png https://jaymans.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/iq-heritability-... It's very well-established science that you could have easily googled, but downvoting unpopular research, pointing and shrieking "eugenics!" is a better argumentation technique, I suppose.
  - papapra 11y ago
    Your post should be submitted here too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10545689 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10545689
ashwinaj 11y ago
Not everyone has to be a rocket scientist. At least today some manual labor is required (handyman, janitors, construction workers, farmers and the like). The issue the author I think is pointing out is the fact that low wage workers are squeezed out.
YeGoblynQueenne 11y ago
> the estimated 40-80% contribution that genes make to people's intelligence, conscientiousness, and work ethic is much more likely to be at play, here. I don't think you really need to get into genetics to explain anything here. Some people get lucky, their children inherit their wealth and maybe squander it after a few generations, or maybe they don't. Neither the parents nor the children need to be particularly smart; they just need to get lucky. Using money as a measure of intelligence is very risky. On the one hand, sure, everyone wants to be filthy rich (presumably) so there's a lot of competition. On the other hand, there are large swaths of the whole world population that will find it impossible to be the next Zuckerberg or the next Bill Gates- say, a daughter of a Bangladeshi weaver is probably not going to travel to Silicon Valley and fund the next unicorn startup, sell it for billions and bequeath some of them to her children. That's not because of a difference in intelligence with someone who will follow that path. It's because we can't fit 7 billion people in Silicon Valley, and a few tens of thousands of jobs in tech. I guess you can argue that the people who are already in Silicon Valley have some sort of genetic advantage but unfortunately that way lies a whole bunch of very gnarly racial bias that is going to be extremely fiddly to untangle. Therefore, see above: using money as a measure of intelligence is very risky.

pyrocat 11y ago

> better-supported-by-evidence hah, ok, go ahead and make that claim with zero links to back it up. Please, tell me more about eugenics.

burkaman 11y ago
Saying genes contribute to intelligence is not eugenics. Here's the first link I saw: http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/v20/n1/full/mp2014105a.html http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/v20/n1/full/mp2014105a.html From the abstract: "Intelligence is one of the most heritable behavioural traits."
- danharaj 11y ago
  Heritability is a relative measurement. You need to know what environmental factors you are controlling for in order to measure it. Because we live in societies that are highly stratified based on attributes that are genetically linked there can be environmental effects on intelligence that are difficult or impossible to correct for that create a correlation between genetics and intelligence.
  - burkaman 11y ago
    I know, that's why I linked to an article written by scientists that understand that, with hundreds of references to actual studies. The article goes into a lot of depth about what they mean by heritability, what genes are involved and how they are involved, what studies have led to these conclusions, etc. The section titled "Intelligence brings (some) genetics to ‘social’ epidemiology" addresses your concerns about environmental factors. I don't think it's very controversial to say genes contribute to intelligence. Genes contribute to everything, how could they not affect intelligence? This isn't eugenics, nobody is saying we should (or could) use this information to selectively breed humans, and nobody is saying intelligence can be correlated to race.
    - danharaj 11y ago
      I get what you're saying. I don't think it's contentious to say genetics influence intelligence. One thing that I strongly disagree with about the way intelligence research is done is that it seems highly based on tests of individual intelligence. There's no IQ test for groups of people. We know that selection happens at the level of genes, not individuals. You can't measure the fitness of genes by evaluating their effects solely on individuals because their effects may involve ensembles of individuals. Since humans are highly social beings, I'd expect our genes to be selected for intelligence at the level of cooperating brains as well as individual brains. There doesn't seem to be much research on measuring this aspect of intelligence.
- wyago 11y ago
  Native language is an almost perfectly heritable trait, but that does not imply it is genetic. (However, it is true that saying that genes contribute to intelligence isn't eugenics. Eugenics is a methodology where you attempt to selectively breed humankind by broader intent, rather than by emergent properties of human tendencies. A proposed trait to optimize is often intelligence, but similarly frequently it's attractiveness and things like that. Genetic influence on intelligence is simply a hypothesis whose testing would have consequences on the practice of eugenics.) ------- edit ------- I see your reply to the other comment. I think a quote from the article that makes your point far better is "[...] studies have consistently shown that genetic influence on individual differences in intelligence is substantial." I negligently assumed you were specifically talking about heritability.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - burkaman 11y ago
    I can't say for sure, but I think at least in biological sciences, heritability specifically refers to genetics. From wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability): "Heritability is a statistic used in breeding and genetics works that estimates how much variation in a phenotypic trait in a population is due to genetic variation among individuals in that population."
vox_mollis 11y ago
Steve Hsu giving a talk @ Google on the topic, with myriad citations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62jZENi1ed8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62jZENi1ed8 Four studies cited on this handy chart: https://jaymans.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/iq-heritability-age.png https://jaymans.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/iq-heritability-... It's very well-established science that you could have easily googled, but downvoting unpopular research, pointing and shrieking "eugenics!" is a better argumentation technique, I suppose.
- papapra 11y ago
  Your post should be submitted here too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10545689 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10545689

ashwinaj 11y ago

Not everyone has to be a rocket scientist. At least today some manual labor is required (handyman, janitors, construction workers, farmers and the like). The issue the author I think is pointing out is the fact that low wage workers are squeezed out.

YeGoblynQueenne 11y ago

> the estimated 40-80% contribution that genes make to people's intelligence, conscientiousness, and work ethic is much more likely to be at play, here. I don't think you really need to get into genetics to explain anything here. Some people get lucky, their children inherit their wealth and maybe squander it after a few generations, or maybe they don't. Neither the parents nor the children need to be particularly smart; they just need to get lucky. Using money as a measure of intelligence is very risky. On the one hand, sure, everyone wants to be filthy rich (presumably) so there's a lot of competition. On the other hand, there are large swaths of the whole world population that will find it impossible to be the next Zuckerberg or the next Bill Gates- say, a daughter of a Bangladeshi weaver is probably not going to travel to Silicon Valley and fund the next unicorn startup, sell it for billions and bequeath some of them to her children. That's not because of a difference in intelligence with someone who will follow that path. It's because we can't fit 7 billion people in Silicon Valley, and a few tens of thousands of jobs in tech. I guess you can argue that the people who are already in Silicon Valley have some sort of genetic advantage but unfortunately that way lies a whole bunch of very gnarly racial bias that is going to be extremely fiddly to untangle. Therefore, see above: using money as a measure of intelligence is very risky.