4 ms·

What's the use about a study on _correlation_ between these two things? You could also have a study on correlation between IQ and poverty, IQ and access to educ

by dtoma 7y ago

What's the use about a study on _correlation_ between these two things? You could also have a study on correlation between IQ and poverty, IQ and access to education... Not to mention, what's the point of IQ anyway? Maybe no one is picking up the subject because it would be a waste of time?

traverseda 7y ago
Well IQ is an attempt to measure the mythical G (general intelligence, if there is such a thing), and more studies in that direction would allow you to better control for various factors relating to G, and figure out what interventions are best for increasing G. I'd personally consider those other studies to be more important than race and IQ, and certainly more palatable. I think it's possible that the race/IQ factor has made that whole field untenable though. I very much doubt it's because it's a waste of time, figuring out what interventions allow people to be smarter, to flourish, is pretty important. I'm pretty glad we got rid of lead paint, and leaded gasoline. That's a very visible and important intervention of the type that IQ research would help with. A lot of related research goes on, but it seems like it very rarely touches directly on the subject of IQ. That being said it's understandable when any IQ researcher's research would be immediately weaponized by racists, no matter how useful it could be. Most of the examples you cite (race, education, economic background) would not be useful in-and-of them-self (at least in a just world) but would be useful to help control for those factors in other research.
- threatofrain 7y ago
  General intelligence is as dubious as general AI in that performance in one domain can predict performance in other domains, and the degree to which that’s possible is attributed to general intelligence.
  - JamesBarney 7y ago
    General intelligence was a statistical artifact discovered from testing. It basically a theory that if you do well on a history test you'll probably do well on a math test.
barry-cotter 7y ago
If we’re not going to find research because it’s useless that’s the humanities gone. All of the topics you mentioned have been done and are being done. The point of IQ research is that it effects real life outcomes that we care about, like health, education, social status, criminal behavior, STI status, having children outside marriage, many others. If two groups are assumed to be identical but they have different outcomes one possible reason is discrimination. If they are not actually identical the difference can be real and not due to discrimination. East Africans are crushingly dominant in marathon running. This is not due to discrimination against non East Africans. If similar differences exist between different ancestry groups in intelligence you’ll see dramatic differences in outcomes. If they’re due to discrimination we can fix that. If not pretending they’re due to discrimination will just lead to a great deal of wasted effort.
- freepor 7y ago
  How much of East African marathon dominance is for similar reasons to the cricket dominance of former British colonies?
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    Not much though I’m sure there’s some cultural contribution. Cricket is really only played seriously in former British colonies whereas you can run a marathon with over a 1,000 competitors at least once a year in almost every city in OECD countries. For middle income countries the Mexico City Marathon was founded in 1983 and there appears to be at least 10 marathons annually in South Africa. I’ve run in the Shanghai Marathon and there must have been 10,000 competitors. Long distance running is a good candidate for second least culture bound sport, after sprinting. East African also overstates the relevant population group. Among East Africans the Kalenjin, an ethnolinguistic group are themselves dominant. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9b58/9a401e65cb8bbd1f3cacb633eac2d9fad7cc.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9b58/9a401e65cb8bbd1f3cacb6... The dominance of Kenyans in distance running Kenyan runners, and especially those originating from the Kalenjin tribe, have dominated international middle- and long-distance running for over 40 years, prompting significant interest in the factors contributing to their success. Proposed explanations have included environmental factors, psychological advantage and favourable physiological characteristics, which may be genetically conferred or environmentally determined. Running is inherent within local Kenyan tradition and culture, and the Kenyan way of life, which involves many outdoor activities and pastimes in addition to mostly unfavourable living conditions, is conducive to enhanced distance running performance. Despite economic deprivation, Kenya has produced world and international running cham- pions repeatedly over the past few decades; these champions have become role models for the younger gener- ations, who take up running in the hope of a better future for themselves. Favourable environmental conditions such as altitude, diet and anthropometry, in addition to the motivational and socio-economic factors mentioned above, have all been proposed as possible reasons for the unsurpassed achievements of Kenyan dis- tance runners. However, the fact that the majority of internationally successful runners originate from a small tribe that accounts for approximately 3% of the total Kenyan population also points to a possible genetic component. Whether this is subject to influence from other co-factors, such as altitude or training effects acquired during childhood, remains as yet unresolved.
roenxi 7y ago
> What's the use about [a study] It's academics. Whether or not there is a use isn't really an important factor. It is enough to be agglomerating facts.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > It's academics. Whether or not there is a use isn't really an important factor. It certainly is to many funding sources, and academic research isn't free.
rsj_hn 7y ago
Waste of time, huh? You have differences in IQ between black, hispanic, white, and asian americans leading to very big differences on, say, standardized math and verbal tests. Now, the teachers are accused of racism, because their black students are scoring much lower than their asian students. Then they are judged unfairly and put into the impossible situation where they are expected to graduate students with no test score differences between races, because no one is willing to admit that there are IQ differences between races, which means a series of weird evasions where schools have to stop administering objective tests, or hide the results of the tests from the public, or go through ritual handwringing about "systemic racism", "unconscious racism", "undetectable racism", because these racial differences remain across time, cultures, and even nations, and seem stubbornly resistant to any intervention other than one involving no longer collecting the data, or no longer reporting the data. Or, we can just accept that there are differences in IQ which should lead to differences in test scores and normalize correctly. That would be useful. It would not put teachers into impossible situations. We would not be tying teacher pay to impossible to achieve goals. But no, we can't honestly approach this subject and must constantly contort everything because honest baselines and metrics would be a "waste of time" over the unrealistic and impossible to obtain outcomes. Same with incarceration rates, and some other group differences. Oh, wouldn't you like to know which group differences are biological and which are due to the shared environment, so that we know which interventions have a chance of working and which don't? No, we can't know that, as obtaining this information would be a waste of time. Honesty would also stop enormous wastes of human capital being currently spent on simultaneously trying to cover up differences in outcomes as well as punishing people arbitrarily when they notice said differences.
- xyhopguy 7y ago
  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0147-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0147-3
  - ajross 7y ago
    tl;dr for those who didn't read: they looked at genes (SNP's really) instead of "race" and found... a 7-10% correlation with cognitive performance (that is, 7-10% of the difference in individuals scores is determined by the differences in the genome subset studied). Yet you look at "race" (a social construct that itself correlates at best with about 50% actual genetics) and see a much larger effect. That by itself should immediately put this "black people are dumb" notion to bed (i.e. even if it's measuring something, it's clearly not measuring heritable diferences!). But instead everyone just doubles down on the nonsense, because the science is "polluted by cancel culture" or whatever. And that's what this opinion piece is. It's an attempt by the political right (the Journal's editorial page is increasingly skewed these days -- most papers at least pretend to have a diversity of viewpoints) to explain away the science they don't want to be true by attacking "science" as a field.
Fishysoup 7y ago
The underlying ideology of these people crying wolf is coming out.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> What's the use about a study on _correlation_ between these two things? Understanding correlation is the first step to understanding causation, and a statistically significant correlation, by definition, implies that it is unlikely that there is not a causal relationship, though the cause may not be directly between the two studied variables. > You could also have a study on correlation between IQ and poverty, IQ and access to education... You could and you do. Or (to pick a real example that came up near the top, by recency, of a Google Scholar search for race and IQ) of the correlations between IQ, sex, and maternal obesity, controlling for (among other factors), race differences in IQ, which requires first having studied the correlation between race and IQ. > Maybe no one is picking up the subject because it would be a waste of time? Maybe the story that no one is picking up the subject is just a lie easily refuted by searching Google Scholar.

by dtoma 7y ago

traverseda 7y ago

Well IQ is an attempt to measure the mythical G (general intelligence, if there is such a thing), and more studies in that direction would allow you to better control for various factors relating to G, and figure out what interventions are best for increasing G. I'd personally consider those other studies to be more important than race and IQ, and certainly more palatable. I think it's possible that the race/IQ factor has made that whole field untenable though. I very much doubt it's because it's a waste of time, figuring out what interventions allow people to be smarter, to flourish, is pretty important. I'm pretty glad we got rid of lead paint, and leaded gasoline. That's a very visible and important intervention of the type that IQ research would help with. A lot of related research goes on, but it seems like it very rarely touches directly on the subject of IQ. That being said it's understandable when any IQ researcher's research would be immediately weaponized by racists, no matter how useful it could be. Most of the examples you cite (race, education, economic background) would not be useful in-and-of them-self (at least in a just world) but would be useful to help control for those factors in other research.

threatofrain 7y ago
General intelligence is as dubious as general AI in that performance in one domain can predict performance in other domains, and the degree to which that’s possible is attributed to general intelligence.
- JamesBarney 7y ago
  General intelligence was a statistical artifact discovered from testing. It basically a theory that if you do well on a history test you'll probably do well on a math test.

barry-cotter 7y ago

If we’re not going to find research because it’s useless that’s the humanities gone. All of the topics you mentioned have been done and are being done. The point of IQ research is that it effects real life outcomes that we care about, like health, education, social status, criminal behavior, STI status, having children outside marriage, many others. If two groups are assumed to be identical but they have different outcomes one possible reason is discrimination. If they are not actually identical the difference can be real and not due to discrimination. East Africans are crushingly dominant in marathon running. This is not due to discrimination against non East Africans. If similar differences exist between different ancestry groups in intelligence you’ll see dramatic differences in outcomes. If they’re due to discrimination we can fix that. If not pretending they’re due to discrimination will just lead to a great deal of wasted effort.

freepor 7y ago
How much of East African marathon dominance is for similar reasons to the cricket dominance of former British colonies?
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  Not much though I’m sure there’s some cultural contribution. Cricket is really only played seriously in former British colonies whereas you can run a marathon with over a 1,000 competitors at least once a year in almost every city in OECD countries. For middle income countries the Mexico City Marathon was founded in 1983 and there appears to be at least 10 marathons annually in South Africa. I’ve run in the Shanghai Marathon and there must have been 10,000 competitors. Long distance running is a good candidate for second least culture bound sport, after sprinting. East African also overstates the relevant population group. Among East Africans the Kalenjin, an ethnolinguistic group are themselves dominant. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9b58/9a401e65cb8bbd1f3cacb633eac2d9fad7cc.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9b58/9a401e65cb8bbd1f3cacb6... The dominance of Kenyans in distance running Kenyan runners, and especially those originating from the Kalenjin tribe, have dominated international middle- and long-distance running for over 40 years, prompting significant interest in the factors contributing to their success. Proposed explanations have included environmental factors, psychological advantage and favourable physiological characteristics, which may be genetically conferred or environmentally determined. Running is inherent within local Kenyan tradition and culture, and the Kenyan way of life, which involves many outdoor activities and pastimes in addition to mostly unfavourable living conditions, is conducive to enhanced distance running performance. Despite economic deprivation, Kenya has produced world and international running cham- pions repeatedly over the past few decades; these champions have become role models for the younger gener- ations, who take up running in the hope of a better future for themselves. Favourable environmental conditions such as altitude, diet and anthropometry, in addition to the motivational and socio-economic factors mentioned above, have all been proposed as possible reasons for the unsurpassed achievements of Kenyan dis- tance runners. However, the fact that the majority of internationally successful runners originate from a small tribe that accounts for approximately 3% of the total Kenyan population also points to a possible genetic component. Whether this is subject to influence from other co-factors, such as altitude or training effects acquired during childhood, remains as yet unresolved.

roenxi 7y ago

> What's the use about [a study] It's academics. Whether or not there is a use isn't really an important factor. It is enough to be agglomerating facts.

dragonwriter 7y ago
> It's academics. Whether or not there is a use isn't really an important factor. It certainly is to many funding sources, and academic research isn't free.

rsj_hn 7y ago

Waste of time, huh? You have differences in IQ between black, hispanic, white, and asian americans leading to very big differences on, say, standardized math and verbal tests. Now, the teachers are accused of racism, because their black students are scoring much lower than their asian students. Then they are judged unfairly and put into the impossible situation where they are expected to graduate students with no test score differences between races, because no one is willing to admit that there are IQ differences between races, which means a series of weird evasions where schools have to stop administering objective tests, or hide the results of the tests from the public, or go through ritual handwringing about "systemic racism", "unconscious racism", "undetectable racism", because these racial differences remain across time, cultures, and even nations, and seem stubbornly resistant to any intervention other than one involving no longer collecting the data, or no longer reporting the data. Or, we can just accept that there are differences in IQ which should lead to differences in test scores and normalize correctly. That would be useful. It would not put teachers into impossible situations. We would not be tying teacher pay to impossible to achieve goals. But no, we can't honestly approach this subject and must constantly contort everything because honest baselines and metrics would be a "waste of time" over the unrealistic and impossible to obtain outcomes. Same with incarceration rates, and some other group differences. Oh, wouldn't you like to know which group differences are biological and which are due to the shared environment, so that we know which interventions have a chance of working and which don't? No, we can't know that, as obtaining this information would be a waste of time. Honesty would also stop enormous wastes of human capital being currently spent on simultaneously trying to cover up differences in outcomes as well as punishing people arbitrarily when they notice said differences.

xyhopguy 7y ago
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0147-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0147-3
- ajross 7y ago
  tl;dr for those who didn't read: they looked at genes (SNP's really) instead of "race" and found... a 7-10% correlation with cognitive performance (that is, 7-10% of the difference in individuals scores is determined by the differences in the genome subset studied). Yet you look at "race" (a social construct that itself correlates at best with about 50% actual genetics) and see a much larger effect. That by itself should immediately put this "black people are dumb" notion to bed (i.e. even if it's measuring something, it's clearly not measuring heritable diferences!). But instead everyone just doubles down on the nonsense, because the science is "polluted by cancel culture" or whatever. And that's what this opinion piece is. It's an attempt by the political right (the Journal's editorial page is increasingly skewed these days -- most papers at least pretend to have a diversity of viewpoints) to explain away the science they don't want to be true by attacking "science" as a field.

Fishysoup 7y ago

The underlying ideology of these people crying wolf is coming out.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> What's the use about a study on _correlation_ between these two things? Understanding correlation is the first step to understanding causation, and a statistically significant correlation, by definition, implies that it is unlikely that there is not a causal relationship, though the cause may not be directly between the two studied variables. > You could also have a study on correlation between IQ and poverty, IQ and access to education... You could and you do. Or (to pick a real example that came up near the top, by recency, of a Google Scholar search for race and IQ) of the correlations between IQ, sex, and maternal obesity, controlling for (among other factors), race differences in IQ, which requires first having studied the correlation between race and IQ. > Maybe no one is picking up the subject because it would be a waste of time? Maybe the story that no one is picking up the subject is just a lie easily refuted by searching Google Scholar.