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The paper says: > The question is whether the bimodality is symptomatic of a poverty trap, namely whether poor people do casual jobs and hold nearly no product

by noch 6y ago

The paper says: > The question is whether the bimodality is symptomatic of a poverty trap, namely whether poor people do casual jobs and hold nearly no productive assets because they do not have the talent to do anything else or whether the fact that they are poor prevents them from acquiring the assets needed to climb the occupational ladder. The cause/effect inversion, of talent/ability => asset acquisition, is always worrying. We might benefit, as a society, if we confront the IQ problem honestly and head-on, in order to have a more complete/accurate policy picture especially because it seems reasonable that wealth transfers should be optimised to enable higher productivity. Consider: "The Bell Curve Review:IQ Best Indicates Poverty"(Benjamin, 2018), in which: > I find that IQ is more correlated with poverty than socio-economic-status in every regression, regardless of what is included in the regression, by a factor of 3. Also: Hsu(2015) https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2015/04/income-weath-and-iq.html https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2015/04/income-weath-and-iq.ht... > Income mobility is strongly affected by IQ. In fact, IQ is a much stronger predictor variable than race for escaping the bottom quintile of income.

jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
You really should read some criticisms of The Bell Curve style arguments. I'd start here: https://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/Heritability.html https://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/Her...
- noch 6y ago
  The article you linked to is helpful but makes several important claims/conclusions that have been convincingly disproved/challenged in the time since 1996. For instance, it claims: > In fact IQ is a great example of a trait that is highly heritable but not genetically determined [...] However, "On the genetic architecture of intelligence and other quantitative traits" (Hsu, 2014, https://arxiv.org/abs/1408.3421 https://arxiv.org/abs/1408.3421) which cites a substantial amount of supporting research, notes: "The largest component of genetic variance for both height and intelligence is additive(linear), leading to important simplifications in predictive modeling and statistical estimation. Due mainly to the rapidly decreasing cost of genotyping, it is possible that within the coming decade researchers will identify loci which account for a significant fraction of total g variation." Block(1996) also incorrectly asserts that: > IQ is enormously affected by normal environmental variation, and in ways that are not well understood. [...] IQ is very reactive to changes in environments in the normal range. From Hsu(2014): "[W]ithin a range of favourable environments (i.e., providing good nutrition, hygiene, and access to education) evidence strongly supports the claim that individual differences in cognitive ability are largely associated with genetic differences.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
    Hsu's research doesn't hold up under review. You're just doubling down on the exact same flawed reasoning. It's pretty clear where you're at and what argument you actually wanna make so I'm out.
    - noch 6y ago
      > Hsu's research doesn't hold up under review. I don't know what that statement means, but in good faith, I'll assume you can substantiate it. Instead, consider "Upward Intergenerational Mobility in the United States"(Mazumder, Pew Trust, 2012) https://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/pcs_assets/2012/EMPReportsUpward20Intergen20Mobility2008530pdf.pdf https://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/pcs_a... " Individuals, both black and white, with higher academic test scores are more likely to move up and out of the bottom quintile. Both black and white children born in the bottom quintile with median academic test scores are twice as likely to move up and out of the bottom quintile than if they had scores in the lowest percentile of the test score distribution. " > It's pretty clear where you're at and what argument you actually wanna make [...] I'm glad I was clear that we need a complete picture of the source of differential outcomes (that is, one that takes into account the tremendous amount that we know about human genetic evolution). A social welfare or wealth transfer system might have poor results depending on the correspondence between expectations and reality. It would be terrible, for instance, if wealth was transferred, yet recipients ended up eventually impoverished anyway. fwiw My preference would be if more human effort was expended in developing therapies, protocols, medications that enhance general human intelligence. But as long as we can't discuss it openly, perhaps no progress will be made and wealth gaps will be exacerbated.
jahaja 6y ago
This is just one hop away from resolving into racism, but somehow this kind of bullshit is consistently allowed on HN.
drbojingle 6y ago
Being intelligent certainly sounds helpful. I think that falls under my first point if intelligence is primarily situation (as the life you're born into is a situation and thus so is your genetics). It certainly does make sense that intelligence has an effect on social-economic status, since intelligence is valuable. How do you suppose we confront "the IQ problem"?
- noch 6y ago
  > How do you suppose we confront "the IQ problem"? - A "Manhattan project" to discover protocols, tools, medications, cybernetics, new modes of education, anything really, that can enhance general human intelligence.[0] - A rethinking of social welfare policies to take into account what we're learning about evolutionary biology and genetics. If certain heritable/genetic factors have a disproportionate impact on outcomes, we need to consider the hypothesis that certain well-meaning policies might not have a significant impact on permanently liberating people from poverty, given game theoretic constraints. We would need to find a way to make our economies positive sum, rather than zero sum games. [0]: https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection [1]: Converting Moloch from Sith to Jedi https://youtu.be/hKvVdGNzCQk https://youtu.be/hKvVdGNzCQk
deleted 6y ago
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by noch 6y ago

jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago

You really should read some criticisms of The Bell Curve style arguments. I'd start here: https://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/Heritability.html https://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/Her...

noch 6y ago
The article you linked to is helpful but makes several important claims/conclusions that have been convincingly disproved/challenged in the time since 1996. For instance, it claims: > In fact IQ is a great example of a trait that is highly heritable but not genetically determined [...] However, "On the genetic architecture of intelligence and other quantitative traits" (Hsu, 2014, https://arxiv.org/abs/1408.3421 https://arxiv.org/abs/1408.3421) which cites a substantial amount of supporting research, notes: "The largest component of genetic variance for both height and intelligence is additive(linear), leading to important simplifications in predictive modeling and statistical estimation. Due mainly to the rapidly decreasing cost of genotyping, it is possible that within the coming decade researchers will identify loci which account for a significant fraction of total g variation." Block(1996) also incorrectly asserts that: > IQ is enormously affected by normal environmental variation, and in ways that are not well understood. [...] IQ is very reactive to changes in environments in the normal range. From Hsu(2014): "[W]ithin a range of favourable environments (i.e., providing good nutrition, hygiene, and access to education) evidence strongly supports the claim that individual differences in cognitive ability are largely associated with genetic differences.
- jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
  Hsu's research doesn't hold up under review. You're just doubling down on the exact same flawed reasoning. It's pretty clear where you're at and what argument you actually wanna make so I'm out.
  - noch 6y ago
    > Hsu's research doesn't hold up under review. I don't know what that statement means, but in good faith, I'll assume you can substantiate it. Instead, consider "Upward Intergenerational Mobility in the United States"(Mazumder, Pew Trust, 2012) https://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/pcs_assets/2012/EMPReportsUpward20Intergen20Mobility2008530pdf.pdf https://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/pcs_a... " Individuals, both black and white, with higher academic test scores are more likely to move up and out of the bottom quintile. Both black and white children born in the bottom quintile with median academic test scores are twice as likely to move up and out of the bottom quintile than if they had scores in the lowest percentile of the test score distribution. " > It's pretty clear where you're at and what argument you actually wanna make [...] I'm glad I was clear that we need a complete picture of the source of differential outcomes (that is, one that takes into account the tremendous amount that we know about human genetic evolution). A social welfare or wealth transfer system might have poor results depending on the correspondence between expectations and reality. It would be terrible, for instance, if wealth was transferred, yet recipients ended up eventually impoverished anyway. fwiw My preference would be if more human effort was expended in developing therapies, protocols, medications that enhance general human intelligence. But as long as we can't discuss it openly, perhaps no progress will be made and wealth gaps will be exacerbated.

jahaja 6y ago

This is just one hop away from resolving into racism, but somehow this kind of bullshit is consistently allowed on HN.

drbojingle 6y ago

Being intelligent certainly sounds helpful. I think that falls under my first point if intelligence is primarily situation (as the life you're born into is a situation and thus so is your genetics). It certainly does make sense that intelligence has an effect on social-economic status, since intelligence is valuable. How do you suppose we confront "the IQ problem"?

noch 6y ago
> How do you suppose we confront "the IQ problem"? - A "Manhattan project" to discover protocols, tools, medications, cybernetics, new modes of education, anything really, that can enhance general human intelligence.[0] - A rethinking of social welfare policies to take into account what we're learning about evolutionary biology and genetics. If certain heritable/genetic factors have a disproportionate impact on outcomes, we need to consider the hypothesis that certain well-meaning policies might not have a significant impact on permanently liberating people from poverty, given game theoretic constraints. We would need to find a way to make our economies positive sum, rather than zero sum games. [0]: https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection [1]: Converting Moloch from Sith to Jedi https://youtu.be/hKvVdGNzCQk https://youtu.be/hKvVdGNzCQk

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]