8 ms·

It is interesting to me that they use years of education as a measure of intelligence. As an American I am more used to thinking of intelligence as an innate,

by dzdt 8y ago

It is interesting to me that they use years of education as a measure of intelligence. As an American I am more used to thinking of intelligence as an innate, almost fixed characteristic (IQ). In that view education increases knowledge and skills but isn't expected to much affect general intelligence. But to this article's authors, "intelligence" is increased by education, so harmful effects of pollution can be measured in years of education lost. Is there a general cultural difference in how intelligence is thought of in China as opposed to the US?

code_duck 8y ago
Are IQ tests truly generalized and accessible enough that education doesn’t affect one’s performance? Personally, I’ve been exposed to years of standardized testing in the educational system and developed skills specifically at taking tests.
- informatimago 8y ago
  The fact that you developed those skills shows that you've got a few IQ points... Some other may not have them.
  - lihaciudaniel 8y ago
    But the point isn't to develop skill but see your brain natural talent of resolving complex problems, mastery of one own psychology is advantageous also.
  - Filligree 8y ago
    Which is besides the point. Yes, having higher intelligence often means you'll benefit more from practice, but GP was asking of the tests were good enough that there's no practice benefit at all. Which is false.
- arethuza 8y ago
  Yes, as a young kid I had an older sibling who was studying educational psychology so I spent a lot of time doing "intelligence" tests - I just thought they were interesting puzzles and didn't realise I was being continually tested.
Tharkun 8y ago
What gave you the impression that IQ is fixed or innate? It's neither nature nor nurture, it's both.
- informatimago 8y ago
  It's both fixed and innate. Education can stretch it a little, but it benefits more high IQs than low IQs. (It's fixed, but stretchable, and you can squeeze it, with stress, hunger, poverty, etc).
  - sametmax 8y ago
    I'd like 20cc of study with that statement, given that brain plasticity can change radically the way your brain works all your life. Also, accidents can alter the brain and lower your IQ, so are you saying you can go down but not up ?
    - mockingbirdy 8y ago
      > so are you saying you can go down but not up You have a specific amount of neurons and a lot of them die every day. The body doesn't produce them like other cells after a certain age threshold (age 21 IIRC, also depends on the individual). - Although this theory is currently on the edge of being disproved, it's clear that adult brains are not producing many of them. Training and experience can compensate this loss, but the general cognitive capacity gets reduced each day. Pretty depressive to think about it, but maybe we'll be able to use stem cell research to change this in the future. edit: I don't want to state this as definitive facts. The field of neurogenesis is currently heavily researched and there are some hints that adult brains might be able to produce new neurons. See https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-the-adult-brain-really-grow-new-neurons/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-the-adult-br... for a discussion. What I think is most likely is that we lose 10x times the amount of neurons that we create each day, so even if it's producing new ones, the rate of death is higher.
    - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
      Heritability of IQ is the term you're looking for. Wiki has a page on it here [1]. The numbers have not been pinned down and it was previously thought to be as low as 57%, but recent studies tend to show heritability rates upwards of 80%. There are a lot of complex issues that make study difficult. For instance there's the paradoxical issue that childhood IQ can be somewhat meaningfully influenced by environment, yet that notwithstanding, as children approach adolescence and especially adulthood their IQ becomes ever more a product of genetics. That said environment obviously does play some role, but that role is already a minority player and seems to be getting smaller as we learn more about genetics. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ
informatimago 8y ago
No, not really: they're using genetic engineering to breed higher intelligence. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3721991/China-develop-genetically-enhanced-superhumans-experts-predict.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3721991/China... I guess it's more an expression of the point of view of the society, who doesn't care about persons, but about what they can bring to the enterprises. Education is formating workers, and if pollution makes you lose one year of education, that's a lot of money lost.
arethuza 8y ago
I must admit that from perspective of the someone from the UK I've never really understood the US obsession with the desire to represent intelligence as a single number.
- bloak 8y ago
  It's an interesting phenomenon, perhaps worthy of study by propagandists or advertisers. If you tried to claim that a person's physical strength could be measured with a single number people would think you're mad, and probably most people in the world would think the concept of "IQ" is mad, and yet, in some countries, so many people believe in it.
  - throwawaymath 8y ago
    Eh... > If you tried to claim that a person's physical strength could be measured with a single number people would think you're mad I wouldn’t think you’re mad. Many others wouldn’t either. Powerlifting competitions are already close to this. Take your performance across the four major lifts (benchpress, squat, shoulder press, deadlift) and devise a formula to combine it into a total number measuring the “general” strength of a person. You can compete on individual lifts, and if you break out that score some will be better than others at individual lifts, but the larger number remains indicative of well-rounded achievement in orthogonal areas. That being said, I don’t think physical strength is comparable in any case. > probably most people in the world would think the concept of "IQ" is mad, and yet, in some countries, so many people believe in it. I think most people either “believe” in IQ or don’t think about it often enough to have an opinion. In fact skepticism about IQ is, in my experience, a distinct phenomeon on message boards and not at all representative of society in general.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - madeuptempacct 8y ago
    "If you tried to claim that a person's physical strength could be measured with a single number" Its consistently measured as a single number by the US military - it's just a combination of your performance on several exercises - traditionally pull ups, distance run times, swim times, number of crunches, etc. So, again, fitness is consistently measured as a single number by one of the world's largest organizations. Don't postulate it's absurd. The same aggregation can be done for intelligence.
Double_Org 8y ago
Most psychologists wouldn't operationalize intelligence as years of schooling but its common practice in economics and some other fields. In social science research there is often a tradeoff between measurement quality and sampling quality. Do you want to measure your variables really well in a small sample, or measure them crudely in a large sample.
- taway_1212 8y ago
  > In social science research there is often a tradeoff between measurement quality and sampling quality. Do you want to measure your variables really well in a small sample, or measure them crudely in a large sample. Wouldn't it be honest to just accept the fact that both methods don't provide data that's relevant and trustworthy enough for the research at hand? It sound irresponsible to draw conclusions (that will be picked up by newspapers and eventually policy makers) based on data that does not merit them, only because no beter data is available.
jackpeterfletch 8y ago
IQ tests are not generalised measures of innate intelligence at all and your IQ absolutely increases with education. My girlfreind is currently doing a doctorate psychology study, of which a small part is a standardised IQ test (though I dont know which standard; there are several). She asked if she could practice the process on me. There are several sections, but to pick 2. For language acuity, I scored OK. This section basically asked you to define a series of given words. Your knowledge here absolutely would change depending on your environment, job and education. For pattern recognition, I scored fantastically. But I know this is because of years of studying geometry in math classes. I know exactly what my thought processes were, "Count the vertexs, count the edges, count the bisections, are some things odd, are some things even, do some things add together, do the shapes mirror once/twice, are they rotated". I know exactly where I picked those ideas up. In the UK you can drop Maths and English/Creative Writing at 17. If you finish a pHD at 26 you havent regularly explored those ideas in near on 10 years, but you absolutely could still achieve it, so I do think its a better measure.
- sixstringbudha 8y ago
  > your IQ absolutely increases with education. Then I am not sure if it is actually measuring intelligence.
  - yorwba 8y ago
    Only if you want "intelligence" to be a fixed characteristic of a person. Which would be a strange requirement, since other characteristics can and do change a lot, especially with a targeted effort to change them.
    - sixstringbudha 8y ago
      > since other characteristics can and do change a lot, especially with a targeted effort to change them. Some attributes can be changed, some, on the other hand, not so much.
emiliobumachar 8y ago
"The new work [...] analysed language and arithmetic tests conducted as part of the China Family Panel Studies on 20,000 people across the nation between 2010 and 2014. The scientists compared the test results with records of nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide pollution." While I admittedly did not read the science paper, the newspaper indicates that they used test scores as the actual number, and the "cognitive drop equivalent to one year of education" phrase is just a way to explain the results, presumably anchored by how people in different school grades score in those tests.
emiliobumachar 8y ago
> First, on a population level IQ is very stable with age. Over a study of 87,498 Scottish children, age 11 IQ and adult IQ correlated at 0.66 [1], about as strong and impressive a correlation as you’ll ever find in the social sciences. But “correlation of 0.66” is also known as “only predicts 44% of the variance”. On an individual level, it is totally possible and not even that surprising to have an IQ of 100 at age 11 but 120 at age 30, or vice versa. Any IQ score you got before high school should be considered a plausible prediction about your adult IQ and nothing more. Quoted from http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/27/against-individual-iq-worries/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/27/against-individual-iq-w... Ref [1] is https://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-barry-kaufman/intelligence-is-still-not_b_1078112.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-barry-kaufman/intellige...
- chrisweekly 8y ago
  34, not 44, right?
  - learnstats2 8y ago
    The parent is using the common definition of R^2, i.e. 0.66^2 = 0.44
  - umanwizard 8y ago
    Does a correlation of 1 mean it predicts none of the variance?
Scarblac 8y ago
I think the thinking is that getting many years of education is desirable for almost everybody (it generally leads to better careers later in life, etc), but that only those who possess sufficient intelligence get the chance to pursue higher education. So there's a high correlation, and it's much easier to measure than IQ.
sixstringbudha 8y ago
> It is interesting to me that they use years of education as a measure of intelligence. I had a similar reaction when I read that line. I mean how does one correlate number of years of education to intelligence, which is already a somewhat abstract concept. That is like saying "If you wear this makeup, your partner will love you as if they were married to you twice as long"..
sophistication 8y ago
According to this study, one year of education translates to 1 to 5 IQ points: https://psyarxiv.com/kymhp/ https://psyarxiv.com/kymhp/
- madeuptempacct 8y ago
  I read the abstract - supposedly they are aware of, and try to eliminate correlation, but I am unconvinced: We know that maintenance keeps intelligence from declining, could be what's happening here.
  - sophistication 8y ago
    It does not matter here whether it is correlation because whatever the pollution study is referring to, it will likely involve the same correlation.
another-cuppa 8y ago
Yeah that struck me as odd too (and I'm not American). I think a year of school makes me more educated, but not more intelligent.

by dzdt 8y ago

code_duck 8y ago

Are IQ tests truly generalized and accessible enough that education doesn’t affect one’s performance? Personally, I’ve been exposed to years of standardized testing in the educational system and developed skills specifically at taking tests.

informatimago 8y ago
The fact that you developed those skills shows that you've got a few IQ points... Some other may not have them.
- lihaciudaniel 8y ago
  But the point isn't to develop skill but see your brain natural talent of resolving complex problems, mastery of one own psychology is advantageous also.
- Filligree 8y ago
  Which is besides the point. Yes, having higher intelligence often means you'll benefit more from practice, but GP was asking of the tests were good enough that there's no practice benefit at all. Which is false.
arethuza 8y ago
Yes, as a young kid I had an older sibling who was studying educational psychology so I spent a lot of time doing "intelligence" tests - I just thought they were interesting puzzles and didn't realise I was being continually tested.

Tharkun 8y ago

What gave you the impression that IQ is fixed or innate? It's neither nature nor nurture, it's both.

informatimago 8y ago
It's both fixed and innate. Education can stretch it a little, but it benefits more high IQs than low IQs. (It's fixed, but stretchable, and you can squeeze it, with stress, hunger, poverty, etc).
- sametmax 8y ago
  I'd like 20cc of study with that statement, given that brain plasticity can change radically the way your brain works all your life. Also, accidents can alter the brain and lower your IQ, so are you saying you can go down but not up ?
  - mockingbirdy 8y ago
    > so are you saying you can go down but not up You have a specific amount of neurons and a lot of them die every day. The body doesn't produce them like other cells after a certain age threshold (age 21 IIRC, also depends on the individual). - Although this theory is currently on the edge of being disproved, it's clear that adult brains are not producing many of them. Training and experience can compensate this loss, but the general cognitive capacity gets reduced each day. Pretty depressive to think about it, but maybe we'll be able to use stem cell research to change this in the future. edit: I don't want to state this as definitive facts. The field of neurogenesis is currently heavily researched and there are some hints that adult brains might be able to produce new neurons. See https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-the-adult-brain-really-grow-new-neurons/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-the-adult-br... for a discussion. What I think is most likely is that we lose 10x times the amount of neurons that we create each day, so even if it's producing new ones, the rate of death is higher.
  - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
    Heritability of IQ is the term you're looking for. Wiki has a page on it here [1]. The numbers have not been pinned down and it was previously thought to be as low as 57%, but recent studies tend to show heritability rates upwards of 80%. There are a lot of complex issues that make study difficult. For instance there's the paradoxical issue that childhood IQ can be somewhat meaningfully influenced by environment, yet that notwithstanding, as children approach adolescence and especially adulthood their IQ becomes ever more a product of genetics. That said environment obviously does play some role, but that role is already a minority player and seems to be getting smaller as we learn more about genetics. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

informatimago 8y ago

No, not really: they're using genetic engineering to breed higher intelligence. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3721991/China-develop-genetically-enhanced-superhumans-experts-predict.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3721991/China... I guess it's more an expression of the point of view of the society, who doesn't care about persons, but about what they can bring to the enterprises. Education is formating workers, and if pollution makes you lose one year of education, that's a lot of money lost.

arethuza 8y ago

I must admit that from perspective of the someone from the UK I've never really understood the US obsession with the desire to represent intelligence as a single number.

bloak 8y ago
It's an interesting phenomenon, perhaps worthy of study by propagandists or advertisers. If you tried to claim that a person's physical strength could be measured with a single number people would think you're mad, and probably most people in the world would think the concept of "IQ" is mad, and yet, in some countries, so many people believe in it.
- throwawaymath 8y ago
  Eh... > If you tried to claim that a person's physical strength could be measured with a single number people would think you're mad I wouldn’t think you’re mad. Many others wouldn’t either. Powerlifting competitions are already close to this. Take your performance across the four major lifts (benchpress, squat, shoulder press, deadlift) and devise a formula to combine it into a total number measuring the “general” strength of a person. You can compete on individual lifts, and if you break out that score some will be better than others at individual lifts, but the larger number remains indicative of well-rounded achievement in orthogonal areas. That being said, I don’t think physical strength is comparable in any case. > probably most people in the world would think the concept of "IQ" is mad, and yet, in some countries, so many people believe in it. I think most people either “believe” in IQ or don’t think about it often enough to have an opinion. In fact skepticism about IQ is, in my experience, a distinct phenomeon on message boards and not at all representative of society in general.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- madeuptempacct 8y ago
  "If you tried to claim that a person's physical strength could be measured with a single number" Its consistently measured as a single number by the US military - it's just a combination of your performance on several exercises - traditionally pull ups, distance run times, swim times, number of crunches, etc. So, again, fitness is consistently measured as a single number by one of the world's largest organizations. Don't postulate it's absurd. The same aggregation can be done for intelligence.

Double_Org 8y ago

Most psychologists wouldn't operationalize intelligence as years of schooling but its common practice in economics and some other fields. In social science research there is often a tradeoff between measurement quality and sampling quality. Do you want to measure your variables really well in a small sample, or measure them crudely in a large sample.

taway_1212 8y ago
> In social science research there is often a tradeoff between measurement quality and sampling quality. Do you want to measure your variables really well in a small sample, or measure them crudely in a large sample. Wouldn't it be honest to just accept the fact that both methods don't provide data that's relevant and trustworthy enough for the research at hand? It sound irresponsible to draw conclusions (that will be picked up by newspapers and eventually policy makers) based on data that does not merit them, only because no beter data is available.

jackpeterfletch 8y ago

IQ tests are not generalised measures of innate intelligence at all and your IQ absolutely increases with education. My girlfreind is currently doing a doctorate psychology study, of which a small part is a standardised IQ test (though I dont know which standard; there are several). She asked if she could practice the process on me. There are several sections, but to pick 2. For language acuity, I scored OK. This section basically asked you to define a series of given words. Your knowledge here absolutely would change depending on your environment, job and education. For pattern recognition, I scored fantastically. But I know this is because of years of studying geometry in math classes. I know exactly what my thought processes were, "Count the vertexs, count the edges, count the bisections, are some things odd, are some things even, do some things add together, do the shapes mirror once/twice, are they rotated". I know exactly where I picked those ideas up. In the UK you can drop Maths and English/Creative Writing at 17. If you finish a pHD at 26 you havent regularly explored those ideas in near on 10 years, but you absolutely could still achieve it, so I do think its a better measure.

sixstringbudha 8y ago
> your IQ absolutely increases with education. Then I am not sure if it is actually measuring intelligence.
- yorwba 8y ago
  Only if you want "intelligence" to be a fixed characteristic of a person. Which would be a strange requirement, since other characteristics can and do change a lot, especially with a targeted effort to change them.
  - sixstringbudha 8y ago
    > since other characteristics can and do change a lot, especially with a targeted effort to change them. Some attributes can be changed, some, on the other hand, not so much.

emiliobumachar 8y ago

"The new work [...] analysed language and arithmetic tests conducted as part of the China Family Panel Studies on 20,000 people across the nation between 2010 and 2014. The scientists compared the test results with records of nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide pollution." While I admittedly did not read the science paper, the newspaper indicates that they used test scores as the actual number, and the "cognitive drop equivalent to one year of education" phrase is just a way to explain the results, presumably anchored by how people in different school grades score in those tests.

emiliobumachar 8y ago

> First, on a population level IQ is very stable with age. Over a study of 87,498 Scottish children, age 11 IQ and adult IQ correlated at 0.66 [1], about as strong and impressive a correlation as you’ll ever find in the social sciences. But “correlation of 0.66” is also known as “only predicts 44% of the variance”. On an individual level, it is totally possible and not even that surprising to have an IQ of 100 at age 11 but 120 at age 30, or vice versa. Any IQ score you got before high school should be considered a plausible prediction about your adult IQ and nothing more. Quoted from http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/27/against-individual-iq-worries/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/27/against-individual-iq-w... Ref [1] is https://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-barry-kaufman/intelligence-is-still-not_b_1078112.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-barry-kaufman/intellige...

chrisweekly 8y ago
34, not 44, right?
- learnstats2 8y ago
  The parent is using the common definition of R^2, i.e. 0.66^2 = 0.44
- umanwizard 8y ago
  Does a correlation of 1 mean it predicts none of the variance?

Scarblac 8y ago

I think the thinking is that getting many years of education is desirable for almost everybody (it generally leads to better careers later in life, etc), but that only those who possess sufficient intelligence get the chance to pursue higher education. So there's a high correlation, and it's much easier to measure than IQ.

sixstringbudha 8y ago

> It is interesting to me that they use years of education as a measure of intelligence. I had a similar reaction when I read that line. I mean how does one correlate number of years of education to intelligence, which is already a somewhat abstract concept. That is like saying "If you wear this makeup, your partner will love you as if they were married to you twice as long"..

sophistication 8y ago

According to this study, one year of education translates to 1 to 5 IQ points: https://psyarxiv.com/kymhp/ https://psyarxiv.com/kymhp/

madeuptempacct 8y ago
I read the abstract - supposedly they are aware of, and try to eliminate correlation, but I am unconvinced: We know that maintenance keeps intelligence from declining, could be what's happening here.
- sophistication 8y ago
  It does not matter here whether it is correlation because whatever the pollution study is referring to, it will likely involve the same correlation.

another-cuppa 8y ago

Yeah that struck me as odd too (and I'm not American). I think a year of school makes me more educated, but not more intelligent.