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There is an amazing amount of fixed mindset thinking amongst the armchair geneticists on hacker news. Two hundred years ago, the median person could not read.

There is an amazing amount of fixed mindset thinking amongst the armchair geneticists on hacker news. Two hundred years ago, the median person could not read. They could not do algebra. There is no doubt that some people are born smarter than others. There is no doubt in my mind that simultaneously we waste much of the potential of many people in our society and that the median human is capable of much more learning and output than they produce today.

wycs 8y ago
I agree humans are capable of learning, but the growth mindset set claim people are capable of learning how to learn, for which there is little evidence. The rate and extent of knowledge acquisition is limited by one’s general intelligence. You can not learn your way around a less effective learning apparatus. I would also say that we have plucked all the environmental low hanging fruit. Lack of education may have explained much of the variance in outcomes 200 years ago. It does not today. We are educated to the gills. Dweck’s claims that we can squeeze more out of this desiccated rag do not ring true, even before you account for how poorly ideologically-pleasing findings have held up in the replication crisis. I don’t think growth mindset interventions are going to do much of anything. Programs like Head Start have been spectacular failures, which does not seem to be what growth mindset would predict. Ultimately we are too focused on environment and have no focus on genomics. Embryo selection will be far more effective than propagandizing our children with growth mindset memes, whose workbooks read to me like modern copybook headings. 1-10 embryo selection gives you 3 to 8 points per generation. This is basically possible right now. If we had a million genomes tagged with the donor’s IQ this would for sure be possible right now. Iterated embryo selection and direct genetic engineering allow get you to many standard deviations. Growth mindset is sneezing into a hurricane. And I am not even sure the sneeze is real.
- monetus 8y ago
  Have you ever seen the movie gattacca? What are your thoughts on the moral behind it, if you don't mind my asking?
  - wycs 8y ago
    I thought it was a good movie but morally backwards. Once we have the ability to select against alleles that decrease happiness, intelligence, health, sanity, and longevity we are are morally obliged to do so. His mother’s choice was as monstrous as refusing to let your child learn to read. Would you subject your child to a 1 in 1000 chance of being brutally disfigured? Well genetic defects that cause much the same thing are more common than that. The use of genetic measures over measures of the phenotype in that movie was silly. Cognitive genomics will never be as accurate as an IQ test. It would be a mistake to, for example, replace the SAT with a spit swab, even in a society with genetic engineering.
    - forapurpose 8y ago
      More important is basic human self-determination and freedom. I understand these comments are your opinions, but who are you to decide for me? Why should I be subject to your opinions, any more than you should be subject to mine if we disagree (and we do)?
      - radiantswirl 8y ago
        Whoever is higher on the dominance hierarchy gets to subject others to their opinions. On HN it's a non issue And for the record GATTACA is the story of a misguided insufferable asshole violating regulations and probably getting his entire team killed 5 minutes after the movie ends due to his heart condition.
        forapurpose 8y ago
        > Whoever is higher on the dominance hierarchy gets to subject others to their opinions. That's a bizarre statement in the modern world. In the modern world, we vote on whose opinion carries the day, and that is only in the unusual cases where government has power in the matter (because we have freedom and civil rights).
        radiantswirl 8y ago
- gdudeman 8y ago
  I agree on your critique of the growth mindset. It's hard to teach. I meant more that we're looking at small differences in innate ability and deciding that we've accomplished as much as we can. I strongly disagree with that. We do not have a research-and outcome-backed educational system. Teachers wildly vary in quality and approach and get very little feedback in order to improve. I firmly believe a person born of average intellect should be able to master calculus. Most don't. From Patrick Collison's Questions: > Is Bloom's "Two Sigma" phenomenon real? If so, what do we do about it? > Educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom found that one-on-one tutoring using mastery learning led to a two sigma(!) improvement in student performance. The results were replicated. He asks in his paper that identified the "2 Sigma Problem": how do we achieve these results in conditions more practical (i.e., more scalable) than one-to-one tutoring?
IdiocyInAction 8y ago
What makes you think that we squander that potential? If anything, we seem to try to extract as much potential out of people as possible, given sky-high college attendance rates and that we aren't really getting much out of it, given that most of that education is really just used for signalling. I personally don't see any evidence that we could get that much more out of the population and I think we even overemphasize education, leading to debt and underemployment.
getpost 8y ago
Agreed. Moreover, smart people do stupid things every day; intelligence is not an absolute.

wycs 8y ago

I agree humans are capable of learning, but the growth mindset set claim people are capable of learning how to learn, for which there is little evidence. The rate and extent of knowledge acquisition is limited by one’s general intelligence. You can not learn your way around a less effective learning apparatus. I would also say that we have plucked all the environmental low hanging fruit. Lack of education may have explained much of the variance in outcomes 200 years ago. It does not today. We are educated to the gills. Dweck’s claims that we can squeeze more out of this desiccated rag do not ring true, even before you account for how poorly ideologically-pleasing findings have held up in the replication crisis. I don’t think growth mindset interventions are going to do much of anything. Programs like Head Start have been spectacular failures, which does not seem to be what growth mindset would predict. Ultimately we are too focused on environment and have no focus on genomics. Embryo selection will be far more effective than propagandizing our children with growth mindset memes, whose workbooks read to me like modern copybook headings. 1-10 embryo selection gives you 3 to 8 points per generation. This is basically possible right now. If we had a million genomes tagged with the donor’s IQ this would for sure be possible right now. Iterated embryo selection and direct genetic engineering allow get you to many standard deviations. Growth mindset is sneezing into a hurricane. And I am not even sure the sneeze is real.

monetus 8y ago
Have you ever seen the movie gattacca? What are your thoughts on the moral behind it, if you don't mind my asking?
- wycs 8y ago
  I thought it was a good movie but morally backwards. Once we have the ability to select against alleles that decrease happiness, intelligence, health, sanity, and longevity we are are morally obliged to do so. His mother’s choice was as monstrous as refusing to let your child learn to read. Would you subject your child to a 1 in 1000 chance of being brutally disfigured? Well genetic defects that cause much the same thing are more common than that. The use of genetic measures over measures of the phenotype in that movie was silly. Cognitive genomics will never be as accurate as an IQ test. It would be a mistake to, for example, replace the SAT with a spit swab, even in a society with genetic engineering.
  - forapurpose 8y ago
    More important is basic human self-determination and freedom. I understand these comments are your opinions, but who are you to decide for me? Why should I be subject to your opinions, any more than you should be subject to mine if we disagree (and we do)?
    - radiantswirl 8y ago
      Whoever is higher on the dominance hierarchy gets to subject others to their opinions. On HN it's a non issue And for the record GATTACA is the story of a misguided insufferable asshole violating regulations and probably getting his entire team killed 5 minutes after the movie ends due to his heart condition.
      - forapurpose 8y ago
        > Whoever is higher on the dominance hierarchy gets to subject others to their opinions. That's a bizarre statement in the modern world. In the modern world, we vote on whose opinion carries the day, and that is only in the unusual cases where government has power in the matter (because we have freedom and civil rights).
        radiantswirl 8y ago
gdudeman 8y ago
I agree on your critique of the growth mindset. It's hard to teach. I meant more that we're looking at small differences in innate ability and deciding that we've accomplished as much as we can. I strongly disagree with that. We do not have a research-and outcome-backed educational system. Teachers wildly vary in quality and approach and get very little feedback in order to improve. I firmly believe a person born of average intellect should be able to master calculus. Most don't. From Patrick Collison's Questions: > Is Bloom's "Two Sigma" phenomenon real? If so, what do we do about it? > Educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom found that one-on-one tutoring using mastery learning led to a two sigma(!) improvement in student performance. The results were replicated. He asks in his paper that identified the "2 Sigma Problem": how do we achieve these results in conditions more practical (i.e., more scalable) than one-to-one tutoring?

IdiocyInAction 8y ago

What makes you think that we squander that potential? If anything, we seem to try to extract as much potential out of people as possible, given sky-high college attendance rates and that we aren't really getting much out of it, given that most of that education is really just used for signalling. I personally don't see any evidence that we could get that much more out of the population and I think we even overemphasize education, leading to debt and underemployment.

getpost 8y ago

Agreed. Moreover, smart people do stupid things every day; intelligence is not an absolute.