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I think it should be renamed "The Dubious Science Behind Trying To Make Smarter Adults" I recently read Blueprint by Robert Plomin. Here is a pretty good summa

I think it should be renamed "The Dubious Science Behind Trying To Make Smarter Adults" I recently read Blueprint by Robert Plomin. Here is a pretty good summary: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/24/blueprint-by-robert-plomin-review https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/24/blueprint-by-r... Plomin makes a pretty solid case in Blueprint that it's pretty much down to genetics and yes, there are environmental differences, but no you cannot manufacture them. They are random and unpredictable. After having read that book as I was reading through this article I was thinking back to a lot of the points laid out by Plomin. Namely the "Nature of Nurture" finding that we our genetic predisposition drive our choices over the long term which basically washes out the vast majority of things our parents and school try to do for us. We basically stabilize our own IQs over time.

hugh4life 8y ago
IQ is a significant measurement that should not be ignored but I think it's important to see intelligence as a social process. There are a lot of people that I know I would score much higher on an IQ test but they are way better in expressing their thoughts. That matters a lot. And often what makes people "smart" is being able to juggle different perspectives which takes time to expose yourself to those perspectives. You can get smarter by reading and people should be told that.
- mdesq 8y ago
  >You can get smarter by reading and people should be told that. I'm really interested in this because I have someone who keeps telling me this isn't possible. Do you have a source by any chance?
  - alan_wade 8y ago
    Do you really need a source telling you that you can learn stuff from books?
    - sokoloff 8y ago
      That you can learn facts from books is fairly self-evident. That doesn’t obviously extend into gaining raw intelligence from reading, IMO.
- bartkappenburg 8y ago
  Don’t confuse knowledge and experience with intellect.
  - ankka 8y ago
    Wisdom and intellect should not be confused either
  - james_s_tayler 8y ago
    Would it be a better claim to say you can get more knowledgeable by reading rather than smarter or more intelligent?
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      It's certainly more obviously true (assuming you apply a good filter to what you read, and read critically; you can, equally well, become more fixed in false beliefs by reading otherwise.)
- james_s_tayler 8y ago
  You're referring to verbal acuity and divergent thinking coupled with a propensity to collect information. Intelligence as an aggregate term refers to a number of things which include but aren't limited to verbal acuity, spatial reasoning, abstract reasoning etc and the individual components differ from person to person. So you might be amazing at abstract reasoning and your friend might have above average verbal acuity. I agree with the notion of intelligence being a social process. I think IQ isn't able to capture that all. Though that is not individual intelligence, it is collective intelligence but individual intelligence is a function of genetics+non-shared environment+collective intelligence is what I want to say. You can see collective intelligence at work if you examine language. Certain concepts have a high power:weight ratio and can help you make better decisions than you otherwise would and those concepts first have to be discovered and then they have to diffuse throughout the general population and that happens via language. I think the '80/20' or Pareto Principle is a fantastic example of this. It's very widely known and it helps you reason better about the world in a useful way. Before that was ever discovered, nobody could leverage it. As time ticks by our models of the world are slowly getting higher and higher resolution (if that makes sense as a metaphor) and that is filtering down into the general population. Reading is fantastic. You can acquire in 4 days what it took someone 40 years to come to. I think regardless of your IQ the more data and the higher quality you can assimilate you can increase the resolution of your models of the world and that helps you reason about things more clearly. I'm always really fascinated by people with learning disabilities who really buck the trend and go on to do amazing things academically. Sometimes the strategies they come up with for learning are unbelievable either in terms of creativity or sheer determination. There are some pretty extreme examples of this in Dr Norman Doige's The Brain That Changes Itself and a favorite recent example I encountered was David Goggins' talking about how it would take him 18 months to get through the textbook for his diving training, so he started memorizing it 18 months ahead of time by writing out every sentence in the book by hand 10 times each. I swear there is a tonne of unutilized headroom in the general intelligence of all populations. I'm pretty optimistic about the general trend overall and I don't think having a low IQ in a general population or even as an individual necessarily consigns you to a life of mediocrity or that you will be unproductive as a society.
p1esk 8y ago
it's pretty much down to genetics and yes, there are environmental differences, but no you cannot manufacture them I'm not so sure. If you look at genius level people (Mozart, Einstein, Perelman, etc) pretty much all of them had supportive, smart, educated, and usually wealthy parents. Of course genetics plays a major role, but it's not clear that genetics would overcome indifferent development environment.
- james_s_tayler 8y ago
  Unless you're one of the leading behavioral genetics researchers who has personally conducted multiple famous longitudinal studies (adoption studies, monozygotic and dizygotic twin studies) since the mid 70s trying to nail down exactly what the environment is responsible for and you have done a thorough analysis of the literature and summarized it in a book. Then it's clear. How much more rigorous of an analysis could you get? The conclusion isn't that environment doesn't play a role. It does. The conclusion is that shared environment (family, school etc) doesn't contribute in any predictable way to the heritability of psychological traits (I think he says it's less than 1% ~ 2%). All psychological traits are on average 50% heritable (he says it ranges from 30% ~ 60% but it's on avg. 50%). The rest of the variance is from so called "non-shared" environmental differences. If you live in the same home with the siblings and go to the same school and are even in the same class, you still don't have exactly the same experience. A lot of your experiences are unique to and it's those things that shape you in combination with your genetics. He concludes that after all the research that has been done that non-shared environmental differences are unsystematic and unstable which means they are essentially random and you can make no predictions based on them and that implies you cannot systematically engineer outcomes for people.
  - AlexCoventry 8y ago
    > The conclusion is that shared environment doesn't contribute in any predictable way to the heritability of psychological traits What a shock it would be, if such a complex object developed through interactions with its environment which are still largely illegible to current experimental methodology.
dotancohen 8y ago
Anecdote. My oldest is turning 12, she has been doing calculus since second grade. Not "calculus" like taught in school to work through formulae, but rather she understands the concept of "infinite addition of infinitesimally small things". This is because she asks questions, and I give her full answers. The calculus thing started when on a train with me she asked if we can know the position of the train, given only its rate of acceleration. Yes, she did ask that in second grade. And we had an entire 1-hour train ride to determine that yes, it is possible and this is how. Younger daughter has absolutely no interest in maths or science. She'll listen to daddy babble on about Arduino or Falcon rockets landing, and she'll even write some Python with me to solve a problem, but she has no real internal interest. Her grades show it. From my experience with my girls, I would say "genetics and nature" are most important in bringing up curious people with good problem-solving skills (or however else you define "smart"). And now we get to the boy who proves otherwise. The woman I live with has a son in first grade, who when I met him a year ago knew not to put on his socks or soap himself in the shower. Why would he, when he could cry and his grandmothers and mother would do everything he sobs for? When he is with them, he cannot do simple addition or figure out how to open a door with an unusual handle. But with me, and only when he is alone with me, he multiplies, makes puns, eats more varied food, and solves puzzles. The conclusion? I have none. Every child is different. Nurture them, answer their questions, but accept that some just won't be interested or able.

hugh4life 8y ago

IQ is a significant measurement that should not be ignored but I think it's important to see intelligence as a social process. There are a lot of people that I know I would score much higher on an IQ test but they are way better in expressing their thoughts. That matters a lot. And often what makes people "smart" is being able to juggle different perspectives which takes time to expose yourself to those perspectives. You can get smarter by reading and people should be told that.

mdesq 8y ago
>You can get smarter by reading and people should be told that. I'm really interested in this because I have someone who keeps telling me this isn't possible. Do you have a source by any chance?
- alan_wade 8y ago
  Do you really need a source telling you that you can learn stuff from books?
  - sokoloff 8y ago
    That you can learn facts from books is fairly self-evident. That doesn’t obviously extend into gaining raw intelligence from reading, IMO.
bartkappenburg 8y ago
Don’t confuse knowledge and experience with intellect.
- ankka 8y ago
  Wisdom and intellect should not be confused either
- james_s_tayler 8y ago
  Would it be a better claim to say you can get more knowledgeable by reading rather than smarter or more intelligent?
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    It's certainly more obviously true (assuming you apply a good filter to what you read, and read critically; you can, equally well, become more fixed in false beliefs by reading otherwise.)
james_s_tayler 8y ago
You're referring to verbal acuity and divergent thinking coupled with a propensity to collect information. Intelligence as an aggregate term refers to a number of things which include but aren't limited to verbal acuity, spatial reasoning, abstract reasoning etc and the individual components differ from person to person. So you might be amazing at abstract reasoning and your friend might have above average verbal acuity. I agree with the notion of intelligence being a social process. I think IQ isn't able to capture that all. Though that is not individual intelligence, it is collective intelligence but individual intelligence is a function of genetics+non-shared environment+collective intelligence is what I want to say. You can see collective intelligence at work if you examine language. Certain concepts have a high power:weight ratio and can help you make better decisions than you otherwise would and those concepts first have to be discovered and then they have to diffuse throughout the general population and that happens via language. I think the '80/20' or Pareto Principle is a fantastic example of this. It's very widely known and it helps you reason better about the world in a useful way. Before that was ever discovered, nobody could leverage it. As time ticks by our models of the world are slowly getting higher and higher resolution (if that makes sense as a metaphor) and that is filtering down into the general population. Reading is fantastic. You can acquire in 4 days what it took someone 40 years to come to. I think regardless of your IQ the more data and the higher quality you can assimilate you can increase the resolution of your models of the world and that helps you reason about things more clearly. I'm always really fascinated by people with learning disabilities who really buck the trend and go on to do amazing things academically. Sometimes the strategies they come up with for learning are unbelievable either in terms of creativity or sheer determination. There are some pretty extreme examples of this in Dr Norman Doige's The Brain That Changes Itself and a favorite recent example I encountered was David Goggins' talking about how it would take him 18 months to get through the textbook for his diving training, so he started memorizing it 18 months ahead of time by writing out every sentence in the book by hand 10 times each. I swear there is a tonne of unutilized headroom in the general intelligence of all populations. I'm pretty optimistic about the general trend overall and I don't think having a low IQ in a general population or even as an individual necessarily consigns you to a life of mediocrity or that you will be unproductive as a society.

p1esk 8y ago

it's pretty much down to genetics and yes, there are environmental differences, but no you cannot manufacture them I'm not so sure. If you look at genius level people (Mozart, Einstein, Perelman, etc) pretty much all of them had supportive, smart, educated, and usually wealthy parents. Of course genetics plays a major role, but it's not clear that genetics would overcome indifferent development environment.

james_s_tayler 8y ago
Unless you're one of the leading behavioral genetics researchers who has personally conducted multiple famous longitudinal studies (adoption studies, monozygotic and dizygotic twin studies) since the mid 70s trying to nail down exactly what the environment is responsible for and you have done a thorough analysis of the literature and summarized it in a book. Then it's clear. How much more rigorous of an analysis could you get? The conclusion isn't that environment doesn't play a role. It does. The conclusion is that shared environment (family, school etc) doesn't contribute in any predictable way to the heritability of psychological traits (I think he says it's less than 1% ~ 2%). All psychological traits are on average 50% heritable (he says it ranges from 30% ~ 60% but it's on avg. 50%). The rest of the variance is from so called "non-shared" environmental differences. If you live in the same home with the siblings and go to the same school and are even in the same class, you still don't have exactly the same experience. A lot of your experiences are unique to and it's those things that shape you in combination with your genetics. He concludes that after all the research that has been done that non-shared environmental differences are unsystematic and unstable which means they are essentially random and you can make no predictions based on them and that implies you cannot systematically engineer outcomes for people.
- AlexCoventry 8y ago
  > The conclusion is that shared environment doesn't contribute in any predictable way to the heritability of psychological traits What a shock it would be, if such a complex object developed through interactions with its environment which are still largely illegible to current experimental methodology.

dotancohen 8y ago

Anecdote. My oldest is turning 12, she has been doing calculus since second grade. Not "calculus" like taught in school to work through formulae, but rather she understands the concept of "infinite addition of infinitesimally small things". This is because she asks questions, and I give her full answers. The calculus thing started when on a train with me she asked if we can know the position of the train, given only its rate of acceleration. Yes, she did ask that in second grade. And we had an entire 1-hour train ride to determine that yes, it is possible and this is how. Younger daughter has absolutely no interest in maths or science. She'll listen to daddy babble on about Arduino or Falcon rockets landing, and she'll even write some Python with me to solve a problem, but she has no real internal interest. Her grades show it. From my experience with my girls, I would say "genetics and nature" are most important in bringing up curious people with good problem-solving skills (or however else you define "smart"). And now we get to the boy who proves otherwise. The woman I live with has a son in first grade, who when I met him a year ago knew not to put on his socks or soap himself in the shower. Why would he, when he could cry and his grandmothers and mother would do everything he sobs for? When he is with them, he cannot do simple addition or figure out how to open a door with an unusual handle. But with me, and only when he is alone with me, he multiplies, makes puns, eats more varied food, and solves puzzles. The conclusion? I have none. Every child is different. Nurture them, answer their questions, but accept that some just won't be interested or able.