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Whilst there is very little evidence on how to increase intelligence, we know a lot of things drastically reduce intelligence. Generally, once that happens, it

Whilst there is very little evidence on how to increase intelligence, we know a lot of things drastically reduce intelligence. Generally, once that happens, it cannot be undone: 1) malnutrition at a young age. Meaning under 3 years old or so. Malnutricion during breast feeding or pregnancy is the most damaging. After a few years it mostly stops mattering. 2) some chemical contaminants, most notably (and commonly) lead. There are others (and worse ones), like Cadmium, but they're not very common at all. 3) genetic predisposition. Most pronounced, but far from the only effect, is Down syndrome. Of course there are genetic problems, like epilepsy, that are bad enough to make you an idiot. 4) any contact whatsoever with child services has a strong negative effect. If the child is removed from their parents, the effect magnifies dramatically. But children treated do far worse than untreated children in the same situation (and if you look at what happens in practice in such treatment, such as removing the children from school for years, this cannot come as a great surprise) One almost-exception: voluntary treatment involving the mother (mostly by the mother) has only a slight negative effect. Father does not seem to matter if they're part of treatment. Still does not have a positive effect though. (Absense of a father has a strong negative effect though. I would love to see studies on if you see the same with mothers where the father is the primary caregiver) I would say that attempting to fix children, in whatever way, other than advising the mother without any other option, is the negative. Children do best when following through on whatever way they develop. Attempting to change things is really bad. 5) drugs, and psychoactive medication are a strong negative, if taken over longer periods (obviously for strong drugs, longer period can be months. For most psychiatric drugs the period is something like a year) 6) lack of attention is a strong negative. Less so than attention by youth services, but it is decisively not good. That can mean by parents, by peers, by teachers, by ... At this point though we're talking about things that will definitely leave your IQ at over 90. It won't be catastrophic, whereas child services sometimes produce from normal children that people that have problems like not being able to count at age 17. And then there are things that don't matter, but are widely perceived to matter. (All of these have the same caveat. Make them bad enough and of course it will matter. If abuse means you don't survive, of course it will affect you. It essentially never does) 1) getting abused does not influence intelligence (Concrete example: getting scolded daily from age 3 by your mother for not cleaning your room because she's drunk will not make you an idiot) 2) quality of life does not matter. If anything it has a slight negative correlation: worse living conditions will actually make you (a little bit) smarter. (again, there is a level where is most definitely does matter, but that level is very low)

johnwyles 8y ago
> One almost-exception: voluntary treatment involving the mother (mostly by the mother) has only a slight negative effect. Father does not seem to matter if they're part of treatment. Still does not have a positive effect though. (Absense of a father has a strong negative effect though. I would love to see studies on if you see the same with mothers where the father is the primary caregiver) Can you clarify #4? What "treatment" are you referring to? Chemical dependency? Treatment in child services?
- candiodari 8y ago
  Any psychiatric treatment. The exact name and even mechanism varies a lot depending on location. For children, there's almost always legal threats behind them though, especially where child services is involved. The dirty secret of psychiatry is that it almost never works. By the standard of placebo, "will this treatment work better than giving people a tictac 'that should help'" 90% of psychiatric treatments are ineffective. Better in the study means "reducing the chance of a future treatment being necessary" (doesn't include one other option that probably should be tracked: suicide) On children, the stats are worse, and there you generally see a worsening of symptoms given treatment. Right now psychologists are trying to build a case that child psychiatric treatments at least do not make things worse (because there is a famous study showing that it does). When it comes to forced treatment, there is no real doubt: it makes things much worse. The outcome everyone wants to see is that treatment helps, but it just isn't what the data shows. And of course, there are plenty of examples of forced treatment causing complete disasters, for example the famous French case of Solenn Poivre d'Arvor. TLDR: Girl gets anorexia, gets admitted to youth services. Girl jumps under metro after escaping what is effectively a prison, part of youth services. She committed suicide so "she could be saved in a little bottle, to be kept by her father, not thrown in the sea" (roughly translated, it was in French of course). The reason it's so famous is what happened next. Her dad was a news anchor, who convinced then-president Chirac (and a lot of other rich French people, Chirac's wife organizing a lot with the mother of this kid) to build a new youth care facility with the following rules: 1) everybody, under any circumstances, is free to leave. They will not inform the police or youth services unless asked. 2) under no circumstances will ever anyone's name or dossier be discussed or passed to any other part of youth services (one wonders just what French youth services pulled to make the mother of that kid demand such rules and convince a LOT of people, including the wife of the president, to make them official rules of the institution) It is a pretty building called "Maison de Solenn" that tries to improve treatment of anorexia disorders in France. It is also an incredible and very, very public total failure of youth services, but the truth is this (youth services forced treatment) happens in something like 70% of the cases of suicide in France. https://histoire.inserm.fr/les-lieux/la-maison-de-solenn https://histoire.inserm.fr/les-lieux/la-maison-de-solenn

johnwyles 8y ago

> One almost-exception: voluntary treatment involving the mother (mostly by the mother) has only a slight negative effect. Father does not seem to matter if they're part of treatment. Still does not have a positive effect though. (Absense of a father has a strong negative effect though. I would love to see studies on if you see the same with mothers where the father is the primary caregiver) Can you clarify #4? What "treatment" are you referring to? Chemical dependency? Treatment in child services?

candiodari 8y ago
Any psychiatric treatment. The exact name and even mechanism varies a lot depending on location. For children, there's almost always legal threats behind them though, especially where child services is involved. The dirty secret of psychiatry is that it almost never works. By the standard of placebo, "will this treatment work better than giving people a tictac 'that should help'" 90% of psychiatric treatments are ineffective. Better in the study means "reducing the chance of a future treatment being necessary" (doesn't include one other option that probably should be tracked: suicide) On children, the stats are worse, and there you generally see a worsening of symptoms given treatment. Right now psychologists are trying to build a case that child psychiatric treatments at least do not make things worse (because there is a famous study showing that it does). When it comes to forced treatment, there is no real doubt: it makes things much worse. The outcome everyone wants to see is that treatment helps, but it just isn't what the data shows. And of course, there are plenty of examples of forced treatment causing complete disasters, for example the famous French case of Solenn Poivre d'Arvor. TLDR: Girl gets anorexia, gets admitted to youth services. Girl jumps under metro after escaping what is effectively a prison, part of youth services. She committed suicide so "she could be saved in a little bottle, to be kept by her father, not thrown in the sea" (roughly translated, it was in French of course). The reason it's so famous is what happened next. Her dad was a news anchor, who convinced then-president Chirac (and a lot of other rich French people, Chirac's wife organizing a lot with the mother of this kid) to build a new youth care facility with the following rules: 1) everybody, under any circumstances, is free to leave. They will not inform the police or youth services unless asked. 2) under no circumstances will ever anyone's name or dossier be discussed or passed to any other part of youth services (one wonders just what French youth services pulled to make the mother of that kid demand such rules and convince a LOT of people, including the wife of the president, to make them official rules of the institution) It is a pretty building called "Maison de Solenn" that tries to improve treatment of anorexia disorders in France. It is also an incredible and very, very public total failure of youth services, but the truth is this (youth services forced treatment) happens in something like 70% of the cases of suicide in France. https://histoire.inserm.fr/les-lieux/la-maison-de-solenn https://histoire.inserm.fr/les-lieux/la-maison-de-solenn