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>The word we use in sociology is homophily—people like people who are like themselves. None of the studies I've seen have even considered whether a privileged

>The word we use in sociology is homophily—people like people who are like themselves. None of the studies I've seen have even considered whether a privileged background does translate to higher than average merit. And why wouldn't it? We already know household income is correlated with IQ, and growing up having access to better schools, better extracurriculars, less influence from crime, etc is likely, or at least possibly going to build a more competent child. This field is hopelessly biased. These soft "scientists" start with the premise, that we are all equally competent and set out to prove that cultural factors simply get in the way of perception of merit. The irony is that these same people harp about workplace culture, with claims that "good" [PC] culture has positive effect on business outcomes - doesn't it follow that different home cultures will similarly effect adult outcomes? Why won't anyone with academic clout admit that the culture of your childhood effects how much you're likely to learn, how disciplined you're likely to be and, ultimately, how well you're going to function in a professional environment? It's a conflation between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. Frankly, is bad for business and bad for society.

Pryde 8y ago
I've got to be honest, I initially reacted to this kind of emotionally, thinking that of course external circumstances don't have any bearing on intrinsic merit. I definitely have a bias toward thinking that everyone is more or less equal and that modern workplaces often enshrine a kind of cultural bias towards using inconsequential factors as proxies for merit. That being said, it's been my impression for a while that IQ scores at least are mostly irrelevant, and not well correlated with economic performance. Is that a mistaken impression? I fully agree with the rest of the factors you bring up as positive influences, it's just the connection to IQ that I have a concern with. I would argue, also, that the "equal competence" premise could be better stated as "that we all have an approximately equal potential for competence". I'm curious if you think this alternate premise would also be bad for business and society? Thanks for prompting me to challenge my own assumptions and biases, btw
- AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
  According to my observations, IQ correlates very well with the person being "smart" in a usual, common sense way. 100 would be an IQ of an average person. 130 is a rather smart person. Remember that guy in your class who could solve the problem in his head before it was written on the blackboard? That's probably him. IQ of 85 is the lower limits for getting into the US army. IQ of 70 is the official definition of being mentally retarded. Does being smart correlate with economic success? Yes, up to some extent. Being too smart? Well, there's a chance most people around simply won't understand you, which is rarely good for career advancement.
- organicdude 8y ago
  #1 strongest correlation with lifetime earnings is IQ #2 strongest correlation with lifetime earnings is conscientiousness (which is roughly half orderliness, and half industriousness --- also contains traits of dependability, my word is my bond) I can't find a reference right this moment. Jordan Peterson talks about this a lot so it should be in 1 of his videos on Youtube.
  - zepto 8y ago
    I’d be very interested to know who was studied for those results. It’s easy to imagine that people at the highest end simply weren’t available to be selected for the study.
    - AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
      I also don't have a reference right now, but I would assume they've taken a thousand of random people and ran some statistical analysis on that sample. Chances of someone from this thousand people being among the highest end are indeed pretty small.
    - Pryde 8y ago
      Likely not the research referenced by the GP, but this paper: http://web.econ.ku.dk/gensowski/research/Terman/Terman.pdf http://web.econ.ku.dk/gensowski/research/Terman/Terman.pdf finds that Conscientiousness, IQ, and Extraversion are correlated with increased income (for men at least) among the Terman survey. If I'm summarizing correctly, the Terman survey includes a group of 856 boys and 672 girls born around 1910 and selected in 1921-1922 who were followed until 1991.
coldtea 8y ago
>None of the studies I've seen have even considered whether a privileged background does translate to higher than average merit. And why wouldn't it? Because (on average) privilege kids eventually become soft, entitled, no-good jerks quite soon as generations pass. And even their education can (and often is) paid for. So much for merit. Many have had the "privilege" to witness the "intellectual capacity" of kids of the privileged classes in action... To quote an article I've read: The Chinese have a saying: “Wealth does not pass three generations.” But it’s not unique to China; the same sentiment is expressed across multiple cultures, from Japan (“rice paddies to rice paddies in three generations”), to Scotland (“the father buys, the son builds, the grandchild begs”) to even here in the U.S. (“shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations”).
- fromthestart 8y ago
  Growing up in a loving upper middle class home is not the same as the charicature of a snobby trust fund baby that you're envisioning.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    No, but it's not that "privileged" either.
- syedkarim 8y ago
  In the US I've mostly heard the three-generation sequence as, "built it, grew it, blew it".
DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
Regardless of whether or not your hypothesis holds up, I'm glad for your post. Challenging unstated assumptions often results in more-interesting discussions.
moosey 8y ago
> None of the studies I've seen have even considered whether a privileged background does translate to higher than average merit. And why wouldn't it? We already know household income is correlated with IQ, and growing up having access to better schools, better extracurriculars, less influence from crime, etc is likely, or at least possibly going to build a more competent child. We don't know where brilliance will come from. We do know that high stress levels early in life are detrimental to achieving it, though. By not offering high quality, low stress education to all children, we are probably leaving a lot of creativity and innovation on the table. A good example of such a phenomenon that succeeded would be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan, however, there are far more examples of brilliance rising from blue collar/impovershed beginnings. If we instead just leave education to the whims of wealth access, then it should be pretty obvious that while education would be better for people who are wealthy, it wouldn't guarantee that it would be effective for generating the most competent people possible, since the input was limited by wealth.
- fromthestart 8y ago
  You've totally missed my point. I'm not arguing that we shouldn't give people equal access to early education, or anything of the sort. This is a question of whether or not circumstances and culture in upbringing can have an effect on merit. If they do, and you are operating a business with the goal of maximizing success, then rationally it is valid to use culture as a proxy for merit.
tfehring 8y ago
> None of the studies I've seen have even considered whether a privileged background does translate to higher than average merit. And why wouldn't it? We already know household income is correlated with IQ, and growing up having access to better schools, better extracurriculars, less influence from crime, etc is likely, or at least possibly going to build a more competent child. A few counterpoints to this: * I don't dispute that markers of privilege are positively correlated with intelligence (as measured by IQ or whatever other metric). But there are other factors worth selecting for, like worth ethic, for which I could just as easily see the correlation going the opposite direction. * My impression is that elitist selection processes select for culture first and foremost, and intelligence only incidentally. I bet the dumbest student at an Ivy League school is more likely to get an elite job than the smartest student at an unselective state school, even though the latter is smarter. (To some extent, this is a marker of efficiency on those employers' part, since it doesn't make sense to send recruiters to schools where only a tiny fraction of students are qualified. But I bet this would still be true if, for example, both students applied online.) * Your claims are based on (and likely accurate for) averages within populations, but that's not the most relevant comparison for real-world selection processes. If you only consider people with bachelor's degrees, for example, you're comparing the top, say, 10% (based on some combination of intelligence and work ethic) of people from lower-class backgrounds to the top, say, 90% of people from privileged backgrounds. I don't think it's at all obvious that the latter population is more qualified than the former, but they're far more likely to get hired.
mcguire 8y ago
I assert, without a significant amount of evidence at my fingertips, that the single largest factor in the growth of the American economy and of American prosperity in the last 100 or possibly 150 years came from the introduction of women in large numbers into the "real", employment economy.

Pryde 8y ago

I've got to be honest, I initially reacted to this kind of emotionally, thinking that of course external circumstances don't have any bearing on intrinsic merit. I definitely have a bias toward thinking that everyone is more or less equal and that modern workplaces often enshrine a kind of cultural bias towards using inconsequential factors as proxies for merit. That being said, it's been my impression for a while that IQ scores at least are mostly irrelevant, and not well correlated with economic performance. Is that a mistaken impression? I fully agree with the rest of the factors you bring up as positive influences, it's just the connection to IQ that I have a concern with. I would argue, also, that the "equal competence" premise could be better stated as "that we all have an approximately equal potential for competence". I'm curious if you think this alternate premise would also be bad for business and society? Thanks for prompting me to challenge my own assumptions and biases, btw

AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
According to my observations, IQ correlates very well with the person being "smart" in a usual, common sense way. 100 would be an IQ of an average person. 130 is a rather smart person. Remember that guy in your class who could solve the problem in his head before it was written on the blackboard? That's probably him. IQ of 85 is the lower limits for getting into the US army. IQ of 70 is the official definition of being mentally retarded. Does being smart correlate with economic success? Yes, up to some extent. Being too smart? Well, there's a chance most people around simply won't understand you, which is rarely good for career advancement.
organicdude 8y ago
#1 strongest correlation with lifetime earnings is IQ #2 strongest correlation with lifetime earnings is conscientiousness (which is roughly half orderliness, and half industriousness --- also contains traits of dependability, my word is my bond) I can't find a reference right this moment. Jordan Peterson talks about this a lot so it should be in 1 of his videos on Youtube.
- zepto 8y ago
  I’d be very interested to know who was studied for those results. It’s easy to imagine that people at the highest end simply weren’t available to be selected for the study.
  - AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
    I also don't have a reference right now, but I would assume they've taken a thousand of random people and ran some statistical analysis on that sample. Chances of someone from this thousand people being among the highest end are indeed pretty small.
  - Pryde 8y ago
    Likely not the research referenced by the GP, but this paper: http://web.econ.ku.dk/gensowski/research/Terman/Terman.pdf http://web.econ.ku.dk/gensowski/research/Terman/Terman.pdf finds that Conscientiousness, IQ, and Extraversion are correlated with increased income (for men at least) among the Terman survey. If I'm summarizing correctly, the Terman survey includes a group of 856 boys and 672 girls born around 1910 and selected in 1921-1922 who were followed until 1991.

coldtea 8y ago

>None of the studies I've seen have even considered whether a privileged background does translate to higher than average merit. And why wouldn't it? Because (on average) privilege kids eventually become soft, entitled, no-good jerks quite soon as generations pass. And even their education can (and often is) paid for. So much for merit. Many have had the "privilege" to witness the "intellectual capacity" of kids of the privileged classes in action... To quote an article I've read: The Chinese have a saying: “Wealth does not pass three generations.” But it’s not unique to China; the same sentiment is expressed across multiple cultures, from Japan (“rice paddies to rice paddies in three generations”), to Scotland (“the father buys, the son builds, the grandchild begs”) to even here in the U.S. (“shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations”).

fromthestart 8y ago
Growing up in a loving upper middle class home is not the same as the charicature of a snobby trust fund baby that you're envisioning.
- coldtea 8y ago
  No, but it's not that "privileged" either.
syedkarim 8y ago
In the US I've mostly heard the three-generation sequence as, "built it, grew it, blew it".

DoofusOfDeath 8y ago

Regardless of whether or not your hypothesis holds up, I'm glad for your post. Challenging unstated assumptions often results in more-interesting discussions.

moosey 8y ago

fromthestart 8y ago
You've totally missed my point. I'm not arguing that we shouldn't give people equal access to early education, or anything of the sort. This is a question of whether or not circumstances and culture in upbringing can have an effect on merit. If they do, and you are operating a business with the goal of maximizing success, then rationally it is valid to use culture as a proxy for merit.

tfehring 8y ago

> None of the studies I've seen have even considered whether a privileged background does translate to higher than average merit. And why wouldn't it? We already know household income is correlated with IQ, and growing up having access to better schools, better extracurriculars, less influence from crime, etc is likely, or at least possibly going to build a more competent child. A few counterpoints to this: * I don't dispute that markers of privilege are positively correlated with intelligence (as measured by IQ or whatever other metric). But there are other factors worth selecting for, like worth ethic, for which I could just as easily see the correlation going the opposite direction. * My impression is that elitist selection processes select for culture first and foremost, and intelligence only incidentally. I bet the dumbest student at an Ivy League school is more likely to get an elite job than the smartest student at an unselective state school, even though the latter is smarter. (To some extent, this is a marker of efficiency on those employers' part, since it doesn't make sense to send recruiters to schools where only a tiny fraction of students are qualified. But I bet this would still be true if, for example, both students applied online.) * Your claims are based on (and likely accurate for) averages within populations, but that's not the most relevant comparison for real-world selection processes. If you only consider people with bachelor's degrees, for example, you're comparing the top, say, 10% (based on some combination of intelligence and work ethic) of people from lower-class backgrounds to the top, say, 90% of people from privileged backgrounds. I don't think it's at all obvious that the latter population is more qualified than the former, but they're far more likely to get hired.

mcguire 8y ago

I assert, without a significant amount of evidence at my fingertips, that the single largest factor in the growth of the American economy and of American prosperity in the last 100 or possibly 150 years came from the introduction of women in large numbers into the "real", employment economy.