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The IQ trap: how the study of genetics could transform education

49 points by gadders 9y ago

kome 9y ago
I want to share this as well: The Globalization of the IQ Wars https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/04/race-iq-charles-murray-global-bell-curve https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/04/race-iq-charles-murray-gl... Please don't believe that IQ related studies are mainstream in social and psychological literature: they are very contested. That said, citizens and policy makers should decide if trusting them or not.
- gwilkes 9y ago
  Contested yes, it seems they are downright detested. No one wants to talk about this. In the west because of how political anything related to IQ is, I doubt much will happen here. It's more likely China will take the lead in the area of research.
  - pasabagi 9y ago
    I think the problem is, you can't really quantify something that isn't clearly defined. Intelligence is very badly defined. So IQ is the kind of fundamentally flawed science that lends itself very easily to politicization - just like eugenics before it. Leading this area of research is really just a waste of everybody's time - just like leading the 'area' of phrenology. There's lots of interesting scientific work about definable attributes of thinking beings - like problem-solving ability, or memory, or spatial sense. These don't suffer the same 'politics' problem, since their topics are clear and possible to concisely express.
    - arethuza 9y ago
      I've always thought the idea of trying to represent "intelligence" in all of its multi faceted glory with a single number is just plain silly.
      - SmellyGeekBoy 9y ago
        I've always felt uneasy about the whole concept of IQ but never really been able to put it into words. I think you've hit the nail square on the head here wrt my thoughts on the subject. Thanks!
      - iguy 9y ago
        all of its multi faceted glory with a single number Think of this number as the first principal component, generated from all these different things. Talking about it doesn't imply that other directions don't exist. But it's not so strange to work on the leading effect before worrying about sub-leading ones.
        pasabagi 9y ago
        As a sort of reductio-ad-absurdum, imagine if somebody came up with 'GQ', or 'goodness quotient'. It's absolutely the case you could use a battery of tests to check how likely somebody is to do anti-social behaviour. 'Goodness' is about as conceptually well-defined as intelligence.
        iguy 9y ago
        Isn't the chinese government working on that? :) But more seriously, yes, to figure out how useful the first component is, you want to know something about how much bigger the first eigenvalue is than the second. For the case of IQ, my understanding is that the answer is "quite a lot". The best studies are from the army testing people and assigning them to roles (and seeing how they do). And it seems pretty hard to come up with tests which are better predictors than IQ. I think the one perpendicular component worth measuring for some jobs is manual dexterity? And eyesight, which is a rare thing anti-correlated with IQ, because of teenage bookworms we think. (That said, note that this isn't the whole population, they set a floor by only accepting reasonably healthy young men etc.)
        pasabagi 9y ago
        The chinese government is working on it - but they are, at the very least, not convinced it is science. Not to mention, most people are horrified. I don't doubt that IQ, like Social Credit, is a useful administrative tool. However, something being useful from an administrative standpoint does not make it scientific. It also doesn't make it desirable. There are very many things that are absolute inconveniences from an administrative standpoint, that are absolutely necessary from a human one. Rights, basic freedoms, and so on.
  - Quarrelsome 9y ago
    Go to Stormfront. They discuss IQ to death. If we wanna talk about education we should talk about stuff we CAN change like fast-tracking talent, project based education and smashing the absurd social structures we allow to fester due to age-segregation. There's tons we can do as opposed to wasting time on stuff we cant like change genetics.
    - toasterlovin 9y ago
      But one day, in the not too distant future, we will be able to change genetics. And when that day comes, if we have taken the time to understand the relationship between intelligence and genetics, then we can finally take permanent measures to equalize humanity by giving everybody as much intelligence as possible.
- toasterlovin 9y ago
  Actually, the measurement of IQ and it’s predictive ability for things like job performance and life outcomes are some of the best replicated research in all of psychology and the social sciences.
nabla9 9y ago
>In Plomin’s study, the young person with the second-highest GPS for intelligence achieved results only slightly above average. That’s not surprising, though: environmental factors still play an important role. The effect can also be nonlinear. As far as I know correlation between wide polygenic score (GPS) and intelligence is linear (r ≈ 0.30) only because linear correlation is measured? It would be interesting to see the effect of wide polygenic score to different extremes, very high and low g. I would hypothesize that genes are more important factor in low intelligence scores than they are in high IQ. Environmental factors seem to work the same way. There is some evidence that there is a right skew to the IQ distribution and it's not perfectly normal.
- OscarCunningham 9y ago
  The IQ distribution is normal by definition. Test scores are normalised to put them exactly on that curve. In order to say that the distribution is skewed you have to choose some other way of normalizing it that you think is "objective". (If you actually did this though, I think you would be correct. The best scientists and mathematicians aren't just twice as good as everyone else, they're hundreds of times as good. So the high intelligence tail is heavy, in some sense.)
  - nabla9 9y ago
    Intelligence researchers don't use normalized IQ for anything serious (they are not comparable across countries, for example). They use raw test data to generate the real distribution. I tried to avoid using the 'IQ' and use g-factor or intelligence, but I slipped at the end. I'm sorry about that. >. So the high intelligence tail is heavy Yes. Intelligence seems to have fat tails on both directions and it's also right skewed.
- iguy 9y ago
  second-highest GPS for intelligence achieved results only slightly above average This doesn't need much explaining, the correlation between the score and test results just isn't that high. That's all. Saying "environmental factors" here is, I think, nothing more than a polite way of saying "noise". People think about nonlinearities too. My understanding is that we're a long way from having such good data that it would help our predictions to include them. Steve Hsu writes about this, I can't find the perfect link but here's a start: http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2014/11/additivity-and-complex-traits-in-mice.html http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2014/11/additivity-and-complex-...
jonnybgood 9y ago
The only predictive thing of people with high IQs is that they’re going to really like board games. That’s about it.
- Anderkent 9y ago
  Not really, no? There's a lot of things that IQ predicts; we just take them for granted as just 'being smart'. You'll find a lot more high-iq than low-iq people at top jobs, for example. I'd be very surprised to meet a google/facebook/amazon/etc senior developer with IQ of 85 or less; and while those companies are big enough that maybe some such people exist, it's immediately obvious that iq correlates with success at such jobs.
  - analog31 9y ago
    What I wonder is, if genetics predicts IQ, and IQ predicts your occupation, then why not dispense with IQ and say that genetics predicts your occupation? Perhaps we are only keeping IQ as an idea because it's traditional, or because we like to form our own beliefs about what predicts IQ and what IQ predicts. Likewise, we stopped believing that certain families had "fate" when we learned about genetics.
    - krapp 9y ago
      >What I wonder is, if genetics predicts IQ, and IQ predicts your occupation, then why not dispense with IQ and say that genetics predicts your occupation? People tend not to understand weak or loose correlations, and they will assume that race, gender, ethnicity or other factors strongly predict IQ, and that, therefore, systems of prejudice built around those factors can be justified as an expression of the natural order.
      - Anderkent 9y ago
        > People tend not to understand weak or loose correlations, and they will assume that race, gender, ethnicity or other factors strongly predict IQ, and that, therefore, systems of prejudice built around those factors can be justified as an expression of the natural order. Whereas really if genetics strongly predicted IQ, it would be a great argument for a bigger support net. If we believe in equal opportunity, and some people were denied equal opportunity due to genetics, it makes sense to help them. You can no longer say that they're just 'lazy', or whatever.
nukeop 9y ago
Yes, the IQ is a great if not the best predictor of broadly understood intelligence and achievement. It's also correlated with reproductive failure. However, the article is extremely politically charged and filled with identity politics that should have no place on this website.
- weldertrap 9y ago
  > It's also correlated with reproductive failure. Only true in some cultures or over some very high range of IQ. Income correlates highly with IQ from a normal low to a normal high range and income correlates with reproductive success in male.
- AQuantized 9y ago
  Terming it reproductive failure betrays a one dimensional perspective on childlessness.
  - nukeop 9y ago
    "One dimensional" aka one you don't like. It is a failure to reproduce, whether you like it or not.
    - Firadeoclus 9y ago
      "Failure" implies an attempt.
  - toasterlovin 9y ago
    I’m guessing the OP is taking a genetic point of view. Natural selection doesn’t really care about the particulars of why reproduction failed to take place, just that it failed to take place.
- prepend 9y ago
  Would you please link to the study referencing correlation with reproductive failure?
iovrthoughtthis 9y ago
> All the same, Asbury avers that genetic assessment will only ever be an accessory to, and not a replacement for, existing methods of teaching and evaluation. Now it is easy to measure GPS and given that it will get easier in the future we'll probably see less standardized testing. I wonder if in optimizing for GPS we might fall afoul of Goodhart's Law. Someone things worries me is, if we tell children that 50% of the probability of their educational success is "determined" by their genes they will behave differently. Students who believe their intelligence could be developed (growth mindset) out performed students who believe their intelligence is fixed (fixed mindset). Will focus on heritable intelligence shift more people towards the fixed mind set? https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/09/23/carol-dweck-revisits-the-growth-mindset.html https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/09/23/carol-dweck-re...
- John_KZ 9y ago
  I disagree. I fully support using GPS to sterilize inferior people. Here's the full process: -Sequence the genome of everyone -Identify eugenics supporters -Select a set of GPS parameters such as the eugenics supporters score below the threshold -Eugenics supporters are now sterilized -Problem solved (after all it's just PC and a liberal deception to say eugenics support doesn't have a genetic origin, man isn't tabula rasa after all, eh?)
  - prepend 9y ago
    Would this make you and all participants in your plan supporters of Eugenics, thus sterilized? So the plan would die out after a year or two.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - dexen 9y ago
    I don't support eugenics. The sarcastic idea presented in GP gave me a good chuckle nonetheless. In similar vein: plan on having the morally handicapped as the admins of the project... that'll not only make it viable, but also will take them out of other projects that need moral leaders.
OscarCunningham 9y ago
What exactly can genetics determine that can't be determined by direct tests of ability? I can understand that genetic tests of intelligence are relevant to the debate about eugenics, since genetic tests could be done in advance and used to determine which children get born. But by the time the child comes to be educated, it seems that you could get the same information more accurately by directly testing the child's ability. You don't need to test the genetics, because you have access to the actual child. Genetic tests could give us a measure of how well a child will do in life, but in fact we already have this measure just by looking at their schoolwork. The genetics don't add anything.
- jasode 9y ago
  >What exactly can genetics determine that can't be determined by direct tests of ability? The article says[1] it can help determine an early intervention or optimal method of teaching before the ability is tested. By the time you test the child, it may be too late. I'm not agreeing/disagreeing with the article. I'm just trying to extract the part of the article that seems relevant to your question. [1] half way down the article: “At the moment we are detecting ‘problems’ only when they are visible, and at that point they can be detrimental for the child and hard to treat,” says Smith-Woolley. “Genetics offers the potential for predicting and preventing. For example, from birth we might be able to tell if a child has many genetic variants associated with having dyslexia. So why not intervene straight away, with proven strategies, before a problem emerges?” Whether such a scheme could work for more subtle aspects of intelligence and learning – whether we could realistically and reliably use genes alone to predict them, and then tailor learning strategies to have an impact – remains far from clear.
  - OscarCunningham 9y ago
    That seems reasonable. I imagine colour blindness would also be very useful to detect early. It sort of argues against the position that genetics determines intelligence though. If intelligence was determined by genetics then you wouldn't think that intervening in a dyslexic child's education a couple of years earlier could make a large difference.
kukx 9y ago
A good lecture that regards IQ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSo5v5t4OQM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSo5v5t4OQM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjs2gPa5sD0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjs2gPa5sD0
jimhefferon 9y ago
I'm a working (college) educator. I see every day that success depends on many things. For sure there are people who seem to take to subjects, to have a natural ability at it; for instance, I took to math. But hard work plays a very big role, a critical role, as well as things such as ability to focus, or whether you struggle with a problem such as an addiction or have bad luck and get in an accident or come down with a disease. Intelligence, whatever that is, is necessary but nowhere near sufficient to succeed. We do the best we can when we help people work on what they can change rather than telling them they have a certain amount of g and that's it.
- TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
  For most of the population, intelligence is hardly the limiting factor in their education or professional achievement. Blaming genetics for the results of collective political and economic underachievement is one stop short of blaming individuals for "poor breeding."
samirillian 9y ago
The elephant in the room here is ethnicity. Which is what eugenics usually equates to. Sure, I'm wary of the determinism, but I'm more wary of the prejudgement of a person based on their ethnicity, and the scientific pretense that could be stacked onto that prejudice. > They surveyed almost 2,000 primary school teachers and parents about their perceptions of genetic influence on a number of traits, including intelligence, and found that on the whole, both teachers and parents rated genetics as being just as important as the environment This is precisely the kind of "begging the question" that makes me doubt the whole enterprise. What do grade school teachers know of the scientific literature? Isn't it more likely that they just see a minority kid in the class underperforming and think, "well, that's minorities for you"? And isn't it possible that a more rarefied form of this commonsensical stupidity is getting fed into such purely statistical pursuits as genetic research?
- west725 9y ago
  The elephant in the room is this: https://i.imgur.com/RvTi7gs.jpg https://i.imgur.com/RvTi7gs.jpg
- Symmetry 9y ago
  Because I think that the work being done on the genetic basis of IQ is good science and because I don't think that there are substantial genetic IQ differences I believe that research will serve to provide evidence against racism. Intelligence is pretty much always better unlike stuff like height or agreeableness. It's governed by a huge number of genes in complex ways. Humans went through a genetic choke-point not too long ago and we're very genetically homogeneous compared to most species. There are some important genetic racial difference but they all seem to be simple stuff involving single proteins, melanin production levels being a prime example.
  - iguy 9y ago
    I'm not so sure. For example, the Tibetan adaptations to altitude are much better than those in the Andes... and when last I checked it was thought that this might come from Neanderthal or Denisovan ancestors. Or last week's news about adaptations to diving -- one tiny niche which happens to be relatively easy to study: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16883566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16883566
Communitivity 9y ago
I don't think the problem of poor education is going to be solved through genetics. Other commenters noted that testing can determine anything needed to tailor education, and I agree. I think the root of the problem is cultural, and three fold. We have communities of many types that prioritize other things (money, hard work, toughness, etc.) above education. We need to educate people that a good education is the cornerstone of success, and should be prioritized perhaps second, after health. I think we shouldn't expect real results for 3 generations. This is a long term problem that will require major cultural shift, and thus a long term solution. Defining the concept of 'a good education' is a complex topic. I don't think it should have to include colleges though. My dad was a self-taught successful writer, who didn't go to college. I'm a successful software engineer with only two years of college (I'm defining successful in my case as job I like, working with good people, and a decent 6-figure salary). I am not an expert on education, but I have three ideas I think might work if done together. First, a massive investment in free basic computers in every house and free online education. Second, a resurrection of the master-apprentice system, not just for jobs like electricians but for all jobs. Third, an overhaul of colleges to make them state-run, not-profitable, and ideally free. If necessary you could charge a same cost fee for all colleges of something like 10% of your income for 10 years after college. Or, perhaps, colleges could make money off of research performed there, though that might be a rabbit hole not to go down. These changes though would require an immense shift in the way we perceive education and being educated, and that is going to be a steep uphill battle.
austincheney 9y ago
IQ is a weak measure of anything remotely important. For one reason IQ tests are typically convergent in that they typically test a central way of doing things against a single most correct answer that often excludes creativity. A divergent test, however, examines creativity by looking for the quantity and diversity of answers to questions by a participant. Secondly, IQ is mostly not an earned quality. Intelligence is generally an inherited quality, but it can be modified by practicing a specific skill that is directly tested for in IQ tests. The ability to improve IQ by practicing a skill is a measure of behavior rather than intelligence. A far more important quality is the behavior by which skills are learned. Qualities like persistence, determination, focus, criticality, objectivity, and so forth do more to influence perceptions of intelligence than there mere speed of learning, which is what intelligence actually is. That said measurements of speed of learning or raw information processing are weak indicators of potential to excel where those qualities are important.
tzm 9y ago
Reminded of Polgár.. "Psychologist László Polgár theorized that any child could become a genius in a chosen field with early training. As an experiment, he trained his daughters in chess from age 4. All three went on to become chess prodigies, and the youngest, Judit, is considered the best female player in history." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r
- OscarCunningham 9y ago
  This seems like evidence both ways. For nurture, because the training was successful, and for nature, because Polgár was himself good at chess.
  - nicolashahn 9y ago
    If he really wanted to prove his point, he'd raise someone else's kid to be good at chess, not his own. I don't think what he did is evidence for nurture > nature.

49 points by gadders 9y ago

kome 9y ago

I want to share this as well: The Globalization of the IQ Wars https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/04/race-iq-charles-murray-global-bell-curve https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/04/race-iq-charles-murray-gl... Please don't believe that IQ related studies are mainstream in social and psychological literature: they are very contested. That said, citizens and policy makers should decide if trusting them or not.

gwilkes 9y ago
Contested yes, it seems they are downright detested. No one wants to talk about this. In the west because of how political anything related to IQ is, I doubt much will happen here. It's more likely China will take the lead in the area of research.
- pasabagi 9y ago
  I think the problem is, you can't really quantify something that isn't clearly defined. Intelligence is very badly defined. So IQ is the kind of fundamentally flawed science that lends itself very easily to politicization - just like eugenics before it. Leading this area of research is really just a waste of everybody's time - just like leading the 'area' of phrenology. There's lots of interesting scientific work about definable attributes of thinking beings - like problem-solving ability, or memory, or spatial sense. These don't suffer the same 'politics' problem, since their topics are clear and possible to concisely express.
  - arethuza 9y ago
    I've always thought the idea of trying to represent "intelligence" in all of its multi faceted glory with a single number is just plain silly.
    - SmellyGeekBoy 9y ago
      I've always felt uneasy about the whole concept of IQ but never really been able to put it into words. I think you've hit the nail square on the head here wrt my thoughts on the subject. Thanks!
    - iguy 9y ago
      all of its multi faceted glory with a single number Think of this number as the first principal component, generated from all these different things. Talking about it doesn't imply that other directions don't exist. But it's not so strange to work on the leading effect before worrying about sub-leading ones.
      - pasabagi 9y ago
        As a sort of reductio-ad-absurdum, imagine if somebody came up with 'GQ', or 'goodness quotient'. It's absolutely the case you could use a battery of tests to check how likely somebody is to do anti-social behaviour. 'Goodness' is about as conceptually well-defined as intelligence.
        iguy 9y ago
        Isn't the chinese government working on that? :) But more seriously, yes, to figure out how useful the first component is, you want to know something about how much bigger the first eigenvalue is than the second. For the case of IQ, my understanding is that the answer is "quite a lot". The best studies are from the army testing people and assigning them to roles (and seeing how they do). And it seems pretty hard to come up with tests which are better predictors than IQ. I think the one perpendicular component worth measuring for some jobs is manual dexterity? And eyesight, which is a rare thing anti-correlated with IQ, because of teenage bookworms we think. (That said, note that this isn't the whole population, they set a floor by only accepting reasonably healthy young men etc.)
        pasabagi 9y ago
        The chinese government is working on it - but they are, at the very least, not convinced it is science. Not to mention, most people are horrified. I don't doubt that IQ, like Social Credit, is a useful administrative tool. However, something being useful from an administrative standpoint does not make it scientific. It also doesn't make it desirable. There are very many things that are absolute inconveniences from an administrative standpoint, that are absolutely necessary from a human one. Rights, basic freedoms, and so on.
- Quarrelsome 9y ago
  Go to Stormfront. They discuss IQ to death. If we wanna talk about education we should talk about stuff we CAN change like fast-tracking talent, project based education and smashing the absurd social structures we allow to fester due to age-segregation. There's tons we can do as opposed to wasting time on stuff we cant like change genetics.
  - toasterlovin 9y ago
    But one day, in the not too distant future, we will be able to change genetics. And when that day comes, if we have taken the time to understand the relationship between intelligence and genetics, then we can finally take permanent measures to equalize humanity by giving everybody as much intelligence as possible.
toasterlovin 9y ago
Actually, the measurement of IQ and it’s predictive ability for things like job performance and life outcomes are some of the best replicated research in all of psychology and the social sciences.

nabla9 9y ago

>In Plomin’s study, the young person with the second-highest GPS for intelligence achieved results only slightly above average. That’s not surprising, though: environmental factors still play an important role. The effect can also be nonlinear. As far as I know correlation between wide polygenic score (GPS) and intelligence is linear (r ≈ 0.30) only because linear correlation is measured? It would be interesting to see the effect of wide polygenic score to different extremes, very high and low g. I would hypothesize that genes are more important factor in low intelligence scores than they are in high IQ. Environmental factors seem to work the same way. There is some evidence that there is a right skew to the IQ distribution and it's not perfectly normal.

OscarCunningham 9y ago
The IQ distribution is normal by definition. Test scores are normalised to put them exactly on that curve. In order to say that the distribution is skewed you have to choose some other way of normalizing it that you think is "objective". (If you actually did this though, I think you would be correct. The best scientists and mathematicians aren't just twice as good as everyone else, they're hundreds of times as good. So the high intelligence tail is heavy, in some sense.)
- nabla9 9y ago
  Intelligence researchers don't use normalized IQ for anything serious (they are not comparable across countries, for example). They use raw test data to generate the real distribution. I tried to avoid using the 'IQ' and use g-factor or intelligence, but I slipped at the end. I'm sorry about that. >. So the high intelligence tail is heavy Yes. Intelligence seems to have fat tails on both directions and it's also right skewed.
iguy 9y ago
second-highest GPS for intelligence achieved results only slightly above average This doesn't need much explaining, the correlation between the score and test results just isn't that high. That's all. Saying "environmental factors" here is, I think, nothing more than a polite way of saying "noise". People think about nonlinearities too. My understanding is that we're a long way from having such good data that it would help our predictions to include them. Steve Hsu writes about this, I can't find the perfect link but here's a start: http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2014/11/additivity-and-complex-traits-in-mice.html http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2014/11/additivity-and-complex-...

jonnybgood 9y ago

The only predictive thing of people with high IQs is that they’re going to really like board games. That’s about it.

Anderkent 9y ago
Not really, no? There's a lot of things that IQ predicts; we just take them for granted as just 'being smart'. You'll find a lot more high-iq than low-iq people at top jobs, for example. I'd be very surprised to meet a google/facebook/amazon/etc senior developer with IQ of 85 or less; and while those companies are big enough that maybe some such people exist, it's immediately obvious that iq correlates with success at such jobs.
- analog31 9y ago
  What I wonder is, if genetics predicts IQ, and IQ predicts your occupation, then why not dispense with IQ and say that genetics predicts your occupation? Perhaps we are only keeping IQ as an idea because it's traditional, or because we like to form our own beliefs about what predicts IQ and what IQ predicts. Likewise, we stopped believing that certain families had "fate" when we learned about genetics.
  - krapp 9y ago
    >What I wonder is, if genetics predicts IQ, and IQ predicts your occupation, then why not dispense with IQ and say that genetics predicts your occupation? People tend not to understand weak or loose correlations, and they will assume that race, gender, ethnicity or other factors strongly predict IQ, and that, therefore, systems of prejudice built around those factors can be justified as an expression of the natural order.
    - Anderkent 9y ago
      > People tend not to understand weak or loose correlations, and they will assume that race, gender, ethnicity or other factors strongly predict IQ, and that, therefore, systems of prejudice built around those factors can be justified as an expression of the natural order. Whereas really if genetics strongly predicted IQ, it would be a great argument for a bigger support net. If we believe in equal opportunity, and some people were denied equal opportunity due to genetics, it makes sense to help them. You can no longer say that they're just 'lazy', or whatever.

nukeop 9y ago

Yes, the IQ is a great if not the best predictor of broadly understood intelligence and achievement. It's also correlated with reproductive failure. However, the article is extremely politically charged and filled with identity politics that should have no place on this website.

weldertrap 9y ago
> It's also correlated with reproductive failure. Only true in some cultures or over some very high range of IQ. Income correlates highly with IQ from a normal low to a normal high range and income correlates with reproductive success in male.
AQuantized 9y ago
Terming it reproductive failure betrays a one dimensional perspective on childlessness.
- nukeop 9y ago
  "One dimensional" aka one you don't like. It is a failure to reproduce, whether you like it or not.
  - Firadeoclus 9y ago
    "Failure" implies an attempt.
- toasterlovin 9y ago
  I’m guessing the OP is taking a genetic point of view. Natural selection doesn’t really care about the particulars of why reproduction failed to take place, just that it failed to take place.
prepend 9y ago
Would you please link to the study referencing correlation with reproductive failure?

iovrthoughtthis 9y ago

> All the same, Asbury avers that genetic assessment will only ever be an accessory to, and not a replacement for, existing methods of teaching and evaluation. Now it is easy to measure GPS and given that it will get easier in the future we'll probably see less standardized testing. I wonder if in optimizing for GPS we might fall afoul of Goodhart's Law. Someone things worries me is, if we tell children that 50% of the probability of their educational success is "determined" by their genes they will behave differently. Students who believe their intelligence could be developed (growth mindset) out performed students who believe their intelligence is fixed (fixed mindset). Will focus on heritable intelligence shift more people towards the fixed mind set? https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/09/23/carol-dweck-revisits-the-growth-mindset.html https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/09/23/carol-dweck-re...

John_KZ 9y ago
I disagree. I fully support using GPS to sterilize inferior people. Here's the full process: -Sequence the genome of everyone -Identify eugenics supporters -Select a set of GPS parameters such as the eugenics supporters score below the threshold -Eugenics supporters are now sterilized -Problem solved (after all it's just PC and a liberal deception to say eugenics support doesn't have a genetic origin, man isn't tabula rasa after all, eh?)
- prepend 9y ago
  Would this make you and all participants in your plan supporters of Eugenics, thus sterilized? So the plan would die out after a year or two.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- dexen 9y ago
  I don't support eugenics. The sarcastic idea presented in GP gave me a good chuckle nonetheless. In similar vein: plan on having the morally handicapped as the admins of the project... that'll not only make it viable, but also will take them out of other projects that need moral leaders.

OscarCunningham 9y ago

What exactly can genetics determine that can't be determined by direct tests of ability? I can understand that genetic tests of intelligence are relevant to the debate about eugenics, since genetic tests could be done in advance and used to determine which children get born. But by the time the child comes to be educated, it seems that you could get the same information more accurately by directly testing the child's ability. You don't need to test the genetics, because you have access to the actual child. Genetic tests could give us a measure of how well a child will do in life, but in fact we already have this measure just by looking at their schoolwork. The genetics don't add anything.

jasode 9y ago
>What exactly can genetics determine that can't be determined by direct tests of ability? The article says[1] it can help determine an early intervention or optimal method of teaching before the ability is tested. By the time you test the child, it may be too late. I'm not agreeing/disagreeing with the article. I'm just trying to extract the part of the article that seems relevant to your question. [1] half way down the article: “At the moment we are detecting ‘problems’ only when they are visible, and at that point they can be detrimental for the child and hard to treat,” says Smith-Woolley. “Genetics offers the potential for predicting and preventing. For example, from birth we might be able to tell if a child has many genetic variants associated with having dyslexia. So why not intervene straight away, with proven strategies, before a problem emerges?” Whether such a scheme could work for more subtle aspects of intelligence and learning – whether we could realistically and reliably use genes alone to predict them, and then tailor learning strategies to have an impact – remains far from clear.
- OscarCunningham 9y ago
  That seems reasonable. I imagine colour blindness would also be very useful to detect early. It sort of argues against the position that genetics determines intelligence though. If intelligence was determined by genetics then you wouldn't think that intervening in a dyslexic child's education a couple of years earlier could make a large difference.

kukx 9y ago

A good lecture that regards IQ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSo5v5t4OQM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSo5v5t4OQM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjs2gPa5sD0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjs2gPa5sD0

jimhefferon 9y ago

I'm a working (college) educator. I see every day that success depends on many things. For sure there are people who seem to take to subjects, to have a natural ability at it; for instance, I took to math. But hard work plays a very big role, a critical role, as well as things such as ability to focus, or whether you struggle with a problem such as an addiction or have bad luck and get in an accident or come down with a disease. Intelligence, whatever that is, is necessary but nowhere near sufficient to succeed. We do the best we can when we help people work on what they can change rather than telling them they have a certain amount of g and that's it.

TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
For most of the population, intelligence is hardly the limiting factor in their education or professional achievement. Blaming genetics for the results of collective political and economic underachievement is one stop short of blaming individuals for "poor breeding."

samirillian 9y ago

The elephant in the room here is ethnicity. Which is what eugenics usually equates to. Sure, I'm wary of the determinism, but I'm more wary of the prejudgement of a person based on their ethnicity, and the scientific pretense that could be stacked onto that prejudice. > They surveyed almost 2,000 primary school teachers and parents about their perceptions of genetic influence on a number of traits, including intelligence, and found that on the whole, both teachers and parents rated genetics as being just as important as the environment This is precisely the kind of "begging the question" that makes me doubt the whole enterprise. What do grade school teachers know of the scientific literature? Isn't it more likely that they just see a minority kid in the class underperforming and think, "well, that's minorities for you"? And isn't it possible that a more rarefied form of this commonsensical stupidity is getting fed into such purely statistical pursuits as genetic research?

west725 9y ago
The elephant in the room is this: https://i.imgur.com/RvTi7gs.jpg https://i.imgur.com/RvTi7gs.jpg
Symmetry 9y ago
Because I think that the work being done on the genetic basis of IQ is good science and because I don't think that there are substantial genetic IQ differences I believe that research will serve to provide evidence against racism. Intelligence is pretty much always better unlike stuff like height or agreeableness. It's governed by a huge number of genes in complex ways. Humans went through a genetic choke-point not too long ago and we're very genetically homogeneous compared to most species. There are some important genetic racial difference but they all seem to be simple stuff involving single proteins, melanin production levels being a prime example.
- iguy 9y ago
  I'm not so sure. For example, the Tibetan adaptations to altitude are much better than those in the Andes... and when last I checked it was thought that this might come from Neanderthal or Denisovan ancestors. Or last week's news about adaptations to diving -- one tiny niche which happens to be relatively easy to study: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16883566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16883566

Communitivity 9y ago

I don't think the problem of poor education is going to be solved through genetics. Other commenters noted that testing can determine anything needed to tailor education, and I agree. I think the root of the problem is cultural, and three fold. We have communities of many types that prioritize other things (money, hard work, toughness, etc.) above education. We need to educate people that a good education is the cornerstone of success, and should be prioritized perhaps second, after health. I think we shouldn't expect real results for 3 generations. This is a long term problem that will require major cultural shift, and thus a long term solution. Defining the concept of 'a good education' is a complex topic. I don't think it should have to include colleges though. My dad was a self-taught successful writer, who didn't go to college. I'm a successful software engineer with only two years of college (I'm defining successful in my case as job I like, working with good people, and a decent 6-figure salary). I am not an expert on education, but I have three ideas I think might work if done together. First, a massive investment in free basic computers in every house and free online education. Second, a resurrection of the master-apprentice system, not just for jobs like electricians but for all jobs. Third, an overhaul of colleges to make them state-run, not-profitable, and ideally free. If necessary you could charge a same cost fee for all colleges of something like 10% of your income for 10 years after college. Or, perhaps, colleges could make money off of research performed there, though that might be a rabbit hole not to go down. These changes though would require an immense shift in the way we perceive education and being educated, and that is going to be a steep uphill battle.

austincheney 9y ago

IQ is a weak measure of anything remotely important. For one reason IQ tests are typically convergent in that they typically test a central way of doing things against a single most correct answer that often excludes creativity. A divergent test, however, examines creativity by looking for the quantity and diversity of answers to questions by a participant. Secondly, IQ is mostly not an earned quality. Intelligence is generally an inherited quality, but it can be modified by practicing a specific skill that is directly tested for in IQ tests. The ability to improve IQ by practicing a skill is a measure of behavior rather than intelligence. A far more important quality is the behavior by which skills are learned. Qualities like persistence, determination, focus, criticality, objectivity, and so forth do more to influence perceptions of intelligence than there mere speed of learning, which is what intelligence actually is. That said measurements of speed of learning or raw information processing are weak indicators of potential to excel where those qualities are important.

tzm 9y ago

Reminded of Polgár.. "Psychologist László Polgár theorized that any child could become a genius in a chosen field with early training. As an experiment, he trained his daughters in chess from age 4. All three went on to become chess prodigies, and the youngest, Judit, is considered the best female player in history." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r

OscarCunningham 9y ago
This seems like evidence both ways. For nurture, because the training was successful, and for nature, because Polgár was himself good at chess.
- nicolashahn 9y ago
  If he really wanted to prove his point, he'd raise someone else's kid to be good at chess, not his own. I don't think what he did is evidence for nurture > nature.