9 ms·

Duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19991696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19991696 (two days ago). Keep in mind that the paper does clear

by ve55 7y ago

Duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19991696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19991696 (two days ago). Keep in mind that the paper does clearly state: >Furthermore, all three forms of social class were positively associated with actual rank, indicating that those with relatively high social class did objectively better on the flashcard game relative to their lower-class counterparts This is a poor title and article if you take even a brief moment to view the actual correlations presented in the paper.

mcguire 7y ago
So, the belief isn't exaggerated? Makes sense; IQ is heritable.
- ve55 7y ago
  At least in the first instance it looks like there's a minor overestimation, but it depends on what you're looking at. Quoting my comment from previous submission: The general effect still exists, yes. It's just reported on poorly in this instance. The 'relative overplacement' in the first table (the extent that participants over-estimated their own performance) is a correlation of 0.04, while the 'actual rank' is a correlation of 0.13, both in comparison to 'subjective social class'. There are a lot of correlations of higher magnitude than 0.04, so it's disappointing that the article attempts to focus on nothing else.
- BariumBlue 7y ago
  I'd be more inclined to think that richer people spend more time and money on their kids - a kid constantly left at home with working parents is going to be worse off than with parents that are home and read to and interact with them
  - MaxBarraclough 7y ago
    > I'd be more inclined to think that richer people spend more time and money on their kids This article [0] says your generalisation is correct: > Middle-class and higher-income parents see their children as projects in need of careful cultivation [...] Working-class parents, meanwhile, believe their children will naturally thrive, and give them far greater independence and time for free play. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/18/upshot/rich-children-and-poor-ones-are-raised-very-differently.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/18/upshot/rich-children-and-...
    - candiodari 7y ago
      And like any other learning algorithm free-play has "real-world" information, free exploration, creativity. The vast majority of which is very slowly learning what not to do. Most times, that's all that happens. Cultivation, when perfectly executed, provides about 50-50 what to do and not to do. Cultivation results in far faster progress. In deep learning, in reinforcement leearning, and in humans. (reinforcement algorithms are worse actually, they will simply barely make any progress at all until they see a positive example) The problem is that this is really, really not what people want to hear. Free play, freedom to explore, ... results supposedly in happier children, more fulfilling lives, creativity, ... Except ... no it doesn't. It's an empty meaningless long string of failures slowly sapping strength until you fail, with very rare example of great success. It's spending seed corn on a lottery ticket. This is made more difficult by the observation that, yes, eventually, if you do climb to the very top of society you'll be playing the exploration game, without any cultivation, regardless of whether you got there with exploration or cultivation.
  - deogeo 7y ago
    No need to speculate - a quick peek at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ provides the answer: "The heritability of IQ for adults is between 57% and 73%"
    - mcguire 7y ago
      This is why the better classes of people are so much superior to the rest of us.
- gerbilly 7y ago
  There is a parenting style described in the literature, i think it's called the 'deliberate cultivation style'¹, where parents train their kids in test taking almost from the time they are born. In this parenting style, many interactions go sort of like this: (Points at bird) "Do you see that, what is that?" "Bird!" "Yes but what kind of bird? That's a Robin... A robin" ... Repeat over and over all day. Note that what is being taught here isn't just taxonomy of birds, but also it's a kind of rehearsal for test taking. In a test you get asked questions, and then you have to provide the answer. It's a type of performance, a type of structured conversation. Other parenting styles are more hands off. In some cultures parent's don't even really talk to their kids until the kids start speaking on their own. Now which parenting style would you predict would better prepare a kid for getting a high score on an IQ test? 1: It's actually called:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concerted_cultivation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concerted_cultivation
  - tathougies 7y ago
    > Now which parenting style would you predict would better prepare a kid for getting a high score on an IQ test? Which parenting style cultivates more curious, intellectually-minded children is probably a better question.
    - hannasanarion 7y ago
      A better question for figuring out the best parenting style, not a better question for addressing disparities in test performance
  - SamReidHughes 7y ago
    One or the other might squeeze out an extra point or three, depending on age; it's hard to predict which is better. We know this because of a whole ton of social science research trying to measure the effect of childhood environment.
- scarface74 7y ago
  So my stepson (so definitely not inherited IQ) didn’t have the standardized test scores to get into the school he wanted. But after 10 sessions at $100 a session with a tutor who was a college professor he more than made the score. Did he get smarter in 10 weeks or did he have the privilege of having parents that could drop $1100 on tutoring? Another data point. I had the highest SAT score in my school the year I graduated and the second highest in the county - not bragging it is consistently listed as one of the ten poorest cities in the US. Do you think it was because I was so smart only or because my mom was not only a high school math teacher and whose best friend was an English teacher, they also taught SAT classes for years and I didn’t have to go get help before school from an overworked teacher who volunteered to help kids, but I could get all the help I needed at home?
  - SamReidHughes 7y ago
    For starters, he did get smarter in ten weeks. That's a fifth of a year. Kids get materially cleverer and more intelligent as they grow. I've seen this in kids taking math contests and standardized tests without any special preparation. FWIW I think test prep can help -- if you don't know the material. You could have had him do that test prep for free, without paying a tutor. Or gotten a cheaper tutor, a college undergrad, instead of some fancypants professor.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      He didn’t get that much smarter to improve his test scores by as much as he did. I know plenty of people who took the test more than once, got help by going to “SAT prep” classes before school etc. and didn’t get any better. The entire point is that money and connections opens doors. I didn’t grow up poor but I did grow up in a relatively poor city. I saw the lack of opportunity when I was growing up. When I go back home now, it’s even worse. All of the “smart kids” who just so happened to be the teachers, doctors, lawyers kids moved away.
      - SamReidHughes 7y ago
        Tell that to the parents who tried to bribe their kids' way into college. The fact is, SAT prep costs $0. You'll notice that kids growing up in trailer parks magically don't have these hurdles when their parents are recent immigrants. Edit: To add some clarity about what I am saying: Preparation can certainly improve test scores. For example, I did poorly on the SAT verbal because I didn't even have the vocabulary for many questions. I was even, I dare say, unpracticed at reading. Actually preparing would have improved my score. Also, some "professor" doesn't have access to special mind altering techniques that other tutors don't have. Teaching and test prep is not rocket science.
- akhilcacharya 7y ago
  It’s always interesting to see contempt for people like me to come out into the open.
- dahart 7y ago
  IQ is partially heritable, and also correlates separately with socioeconomic status. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ I feel like it doesn’t matter if the belief is exaggerated or not, either way it’s a symptom of inequality.
povertyworld 7y ago
I find this the worst insult of being poor: to be assumed stupid. But I mean, hey, if they did better on a flashcard game, then an unequal caste system is justified after all!
- 14 7y ago
  Don’t worry not everyone thinks poor people are stupid. I am poor and know poor people are not stupid. In fact I am so poor I had to learn how to change so many broken things on my car it is now called Theseus Grand Voyager. I am so poor I had to learn to bake bread and feed my family from scratch. I am so poor that instead of buying the wooden building planks they have at Science World that my kids loved to play with I had my dad teach me how to use his table and chop saw and I made my own blocks out of scrap wood. I am rich in knowledge and feel rich to have my necessities for me and my family met. Most of all I am happy with my life. I just feel that I would not have learned nearly as much having money and the ability to pay someone else to do things for me.

by ve55 7y ago

mcguire 7y ago

So, the belief isn't exaggerated? Makes sense; IQ is heritable.

ve55 7y ago
At least in the first instance it looks like there's a minor overestimation, but it depends on what you're looking at. Quoting my comment from previous submission: The general effect still exists, yes. It's just reported on poorly in this instance. The 'relative overplacement' in the first table (the extent that participants over-estimated their own performance) is a correlation of 0.04, while the 'actual rank' is a correlation of 0.13, both in comparison to 'subjective social class'. There are a lot of correlations of higher magnitude than 0.04, so it's disappointing that the article attempts to focus on nothing else.
BariumBlue 7y ago
I'd be more inclined to think that richer people spend more time and money on their kids - a kid constantly left at home with working parents is going to be worse off than with parents that are home and read to and interact with them
- MaxBarraclough 7y ago
  > I'd be more inclined to think that richer people spend more time and money on their kids This article [0] says your generalisation is correct: > Middle-class and higher-income parents see their children as projects in need of careful cultivation [...] Working-class parents, meanwhile, believe their children will naturally thrive, and give them far greater independence and time for free play. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/18/upshot/rich-children-and-poor-ones-are-raised-very-differently.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/18/upshot/rich-children-and-...
  - candiodari 7y ago
    And like any other learning algorithm free-play has "real-world" information, free exploration, creativity. The vast majority of which is very slowly learning what not to do. Most times, that's all that happens. Cultivation, when perfectly executed, provides about 50-50 what to do and not to do. Cultivation results in far faster progress. In deep learning, in reinforcement leearning, and in humans. (reinforcement algorithms are worse actually, they will simply barely make any progress at all until they see a positive example) The problem is that this is really, really not what people want to hear. Free play, freedom to explore, ... results supposedly in happier children, more fulfilling lives, creativity, ... Except ... no it doesn't. It's an empty meaningless long string of failures slowly sapping strength until you fail, with very rare example of great success. It's spending seed corn on a lottery ticket. This is made more difficult by the observation that, yes, eventually, if you do climb to the very top of society you'll be playing the exploration game, without any cultivation, regardless of whether you got there with exploration or cultivation.
- deogeo 7y ago
  No need to speculate - a quick peek at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ provides the answer: "The heritability of IQ for adults is between 57% and 73%"
  - mcguire 7y ago
    This is why the better classes of people are so much superior to the rest of us.
gerbilly 7y ago
There is a parenting style described in the literature, i think it's called the 'deliberate cultivation style'¹, where parents train their kids in test taking almost from the time they are born. In this parenting style, many interactions go sort of like this: (Points at bird) "Do you see that, what is that?" "Bird!" "Yes but what kind of bird? That's a Robin... A robin" ... Repeat over and over all day. Note that what is being taught here isn't just taxonomy of birds, but also it's a kind of rehearsal for test taking. In a test you get asked questions, and then you have to provide the answer. It's a type of performance, a type of structured conversation. Other parenting styles are more hands off. In some cultures parent's don't even really talk to their kids until the kids start speaking on their own. Now which parenting style would you predict would better prepare a kid for getting a high score on an IQ test? 1: It's actually called:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concerted_cultivation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concerted_cultivation
- tathougies 7y ago
  > Now which parenting style would you predict would better prepare a kid for getting a high score on an IQ test? Which parenting style cultivates more curious, intellectually-minded children is probably a better question.
  - hannasanarion 7y ago
    A better question for figuring out the best parenting style, not a better question for addressing disparities in test performance
- SamReidHughes 7y ago
  One or the other might squeeze out an extra point or three, depending on age; it's hard to predict which is better. We know this because of a whole ton of social science research trying to measure the effect of childhood environment.
scarface74 7y ago
So my stepson (so definitely not inherited IQ) didn’t have the standardized test scores to get into the school he wanted. But after 10 sessions at $100 a session with a tutor who was a college professor he more than made the score. Did he get smarter in 10 weeks or did he have the privilege of having parents that could drop $1100 on tutoring? Another data point. I had the highest SAT score in my school the year I graduated and the second highest in the county - not bragging it is consistently listed as one of the ten poorest cities in the US. Do you think it was because I was so smart only or because my mom was not only a high school math teacher and whose best friend was an English teacher, they also taught SAT classes for years and I didn’t have to go get help before school from an overworked teacher who volunteered to help kids, but I could get all the help I needed at home?
- SamReidHughes 7y ago
  For starters, he did get smarter in ten weeks. That's a fifth of a year. Kids get materially cleverer and more intelligent as they grow. I've seen this in kids taking math contests and standardized tests without any special preparation. FWIW I think test prep can help -- if you don't know the material. You could have had him do that test prep for free, without paying a tutor. Or gotten a cheaper tutor, a college undergrad, instead of some fancypants professor.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    He didn’t get that much smarter to improve his test scores by as much as he did. I know plenty of people who took the test more than once, got help by going to “SAT prep” classes before school etc. and didn’t get any better. The entire point is that money and connections opens doors. I didn’t grow up poor but I did grow up in a relatively poor city. I saw the lack of opportunity when I was growing up. When I go back home now, it’s even worse. All of the “smart kids” who just so happened to be the teachers, doctors, lawyers kids moved away.
    - SamReidHughes 7y ago
      Tell that to the parents who tried to bribe their kids' way into college. The fact is, SAT prep costs $0. You'll notice that kids growing up in trailer parks magically don't have these hurdles when their parents are recent immigrants. Edit: To add some clarity about what I am saying: Preparation can certainly improve test scores. For example, I did poorly on the SAT verbal because I didn't even have the vocabulary for many questions. I was even, I dare say, unpracticed at reading. Actually preparing would have improved my score. Also, some "professor" doesn't have access to special mind altering techniques that other tutors don't have. Teaching and test prep is not rocket science.
akhilcacharya 7y ago
It’s always interesting to see contempt for people like me to come out into the open.
dahart 7y ago
IQ is partially heritable, and also correlates separately with socioeconomic status. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ I feel like it doesn’t matter if the belief is exaggerated or not, either way it’s a symptom of inequality.

povertyworld 7y ago

I find this the worst insult of being poor: to be assumed stupid. But I mean, hey, if they did better on a flashcard game, then an unequal caste system is justified after all!

14 7y ago
Don’t worry not everyone thinks poor people are stupid. I am poor and know poor people are not stupid. In fact I am so poor I had to learn how to change so many broken things on my car it is now called Theseus Grand Voyager. I am so poor I had to learn to bake bread and feed my family from scratch. I am so poor that instead of buying the wooden building planks they have at Science World that my kids loved to play with I had my dad teach me how to use his table and chop saw and I made my own blocks out of scrap wood. I am rich in knowledge and feel rich to have my necessities for me and my family met. Most of all I am happy with my life. I just feel that I would not have learned nearly as much having money and the ability to pay someone else to do things for me.