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I think this line of thinking can take you dangerously close to the realm of eugenics and social darwinism. I recommend Taleb's take on IQ as some food for thou

I think this line of thinking can take you dangerously close to the realm of eugenics and social darwinism. I recommend Taleb's take on IQ as some food for thought: https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39 https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-...

toasterlovin 7y ago
A) facts don’t somehow become invalidated because a subgroup of people wants to use the facts to push an agenda. B) Taleb is the exact embodiment of the “intelligent, yet idiot” description that he so loves to level against others. He is ridiculed by pretty much every intelligence researcher and behavioral geneticist who is aware of his take on IQ. Recently I witnessed him arguing on Twitter that the Justinian plague was not the Black Death. They’re both caused by the same bacteria, yersinia pestis. Find a better intellectual hero.
- leto_ii 7y ago
  ...ok, Wikipedia it is: 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Criticism_and_views https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Criticis... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve#Criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve#Criticisms 3. You can also find various comments on ideas of intellectual superiority in Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel. My bottom line is that I see no reason to believe humans can diverge in terms of intelligence over the span of a few generations. Social darwinism is a ridiculous pseudo-scientific idea that gets traction only with people that think they fall on the right side of the IQ divide. Btw, could you give some examples of researchers that treat IQ seriously and consider it has a strong genetic component?
  - toasterlovin 7y ago
    "Twin studies of adult individuals have found a heritability of IQ between 57% and 73%[6] with the most recent studies showing heritability for IQ as high as 80%[7] and 86%.[8]. IQ goes from being weakly correlated with genetics, for children, to being strongly correlated with genetics for late teens and adults. The heritability of IQ increases with age and reaches an asymptote at 18–20 years of age and continues at that level well into adulthood. This phenomenon is known as the Wilson Effect.[9] Recent studies suggest that family and parenting characteristics are not significant contributors to variation in IQ scores;[10] however, poor prenatal environment, malnutrition and disease can have deleterious effects." From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ This is not "some researchers" who hold the opinion that IQ has a strong component, it is literally the entire field of behavioral genetics (basically the only field that seriously studies the genetic basis of human behavior and psychology). Regarding how long it takes for significant evolution to occur: human generations have historically been about 20 years long, which makes 1000 years about 50 generations. As a point of reference, humans have created entire new breeds of domesticated animals in as short as 50 years (a similar number of generations). Darwin has several examples in The Origin of Species and a Russian scientist bred tame foxes in about the same amount of time. The speed of evolution is dependent on a lot of factors, but on its face, the idea that groups of humans facing different selection pressures would not somehow differentiate is silly (and they clearly have; that's why you can look at someone and have a pretty good idea of what part of the world their ancestors come from). But for a more concrete example of a shorter time period, the Han Chinese have been rice farmers for several thousand years, whereas African pygmies have been foragers and hunter-gatherers during that same time. Both groups would face significantly different selection pressures. Hunting and foraging skills would be essentially useless to rice farmers and a propensity toward uncontrolled violence would likely get them killed by a local ruler trying to maintain peace among his tax base. Hunter-gatherers would have no use for the ability to keep accounting records or a class of women made economically unproductive via the practice of foot binding.
ralfd 7y ago
Taleb is wrong though on IQ: https://jsmp.dk/posts/2019-06-16-talebiq/ https://jsmp.dk/posts/2019-06-16-talebiq/ > Most of the document is just a rant, but he does make some quantitative claims, which is good. I investigate the veracity of these claims using real data. > All the claims from the article that I looked at, that can be interpreted as something specific and tested in a real data set, turned out not to be correct. If Taleb hadn’t blocked everyone who disagrees with him, perhaps he would have found out about this, and not published a post with all these incorrect claims.

toasterlovin 7y ago

A) facts don’t somehow become invalidated because a subgroup of people wants to use the facts to push an agenda. B) Taleb is the exact embodiment of the “intelligent, yet idiot” description that he so loves to level against others. He is ridiculed by pretty much every intelligence researcher and behavioral geneticist who is aware of his take on IQ. Recently I witnessed him arguing on Twitter that the Justinian plague was not the Black Death. They’re both caused by the same bacteria, yersinia pestis. Find a better intellectual hero.

leto_ii 7y ago
...ok, Wikipedia it is: 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Criticism_and_views https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Criticis... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve#Criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve#Criticisms 3. You can also find various comments on ideas of intellectual superiority in Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel. My bottom line is that I see no reason to believe humans can diverge in terms of intelligence over the span of a few generations. Social darwinism is a ridiculous pseudo-scientific idea that gets traction only with people that think they fall on the right side of the IQ divide. Btw, could you give some examples of researchers that treat IQ seriously and consider it has a strong genetic component?
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  "Twin studies of adult individuals have found a heritability of IQ between 57% and 73%[6] with the most recent studies showing heritability for IQ as high as 80%[7] and 86%.[8]. IQ goes from being weakly correlated with genetics, for children, to being strongly correlated with genetics for late teens and adults. The heritability of IQ increases with age and reaches an asymptote at 18–20 years of age and continues at that level well into adulthood. This phenomenon is known as the Wilson Effect.[9] Recent studies suggest that family and parenting characteristics are not significant contributors to variation in IQ scores;[10] however, poor prenatal environment, malnutrition and disease can have deleterious effects." From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ This is not "some researchers" who hold the opinion that IQ has a strong component, it is literally the entire field of behavioral genetics (basically the only field that seriously studies the genetic basis of human behavior and psychology). Regarding how long it takes for significant evolution to occur: human generations have historically been about 20 years long, which makes 1000 years about 50 generations. As a point of reference, humans have created entire new breeds of domesticated animals in as short as 50 years (a similar number of generations). Darwin has several examples in The Origin of Species and a Russian scientist bred tame foxes in about the same amount of time. The speed of evolution is dependent on a lot of factors, but on its face, the idea that groups of humans facing different selection pressures would not somehow differentiate is silly (and they clearly have; that's why you can look at someone and have a pretty good idea of what part of the world their ancestors come from). But for a more concrete example of a shorter time period, the Han Chinese have been rice farmers for several thousand years, whereas African pygmies have been foragers and hunter-gatherers during that same time. Both groups would face significantly different selection pressures. Hunting and foraging skills would be essentially useless to rice farmers and a propensity toward uncontrolled violence would likely get them killed by a local ruler trying to maintain peace among his tax base. Hunter-gatherers would have no use for the ability to keep accounting records or a class of women made economically unproductive via the practice of foot binding.

ralfd 7y ago

Taleb is wrong though on IQ: https://jsmp.dk/posts/2019-06-16-talebiq/ https://jsmp.dk/posts/2019-06-16-talebiq/ > Most of the document is just a rant, but he does make some quantitative claims, which is good. I investigate the veracity of these claims using real data. > All the claims from the article that I looked at, that can be interpreted as something specific and tested in a real data set, turned out not to be correct. If Taleb hadn’t blocked everyone who disagrees with him, perhaps he would have found out about this, and not published a post with all these incorrect claims.