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It sounds like you and your brother are highly intelligent and maybe didn't really need school to absorb the stuff you needed. I wonder how that approach would

by joncp 6y ago

It sounds like you and your brother are highly intelligent and maybe didn't really need school to absorb the stuff you needed. I wonder how that approach would work with a more average child.

ramraj07 6y ago
Intelligence is not hereditary for the most part, and there's a huge environmental component to it. Clearly this household had the right mix of freedom and strictness to encourage development of creative intelligent thinking. Probably rubs off of adults with same attitudes. Of course it's not 100% I'm pretty sure if OP had more siblings one of them would be bound to be dumb as a rock.
- zepto 6y ago
  Your comment seems at odds with the current research: “the most recent studies showing heritability for IQ as high as 80%.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ
  - bawolff 6y ago
    But is IQ (beyond a minimum level) really correlated with the type of success being discussed here?
    - radu_floricica 6y ago
      Both brothers are software engineers, so I'd say IQ is relevant for this particular discussion thread. Whether it's relevant for the main topic... that's an interesting question. Very much so. But I don't dare speculate, and I don't have data.
  - TameAntelope 6y ago
    He might be of the opinion that IQ != intelligence, or that IQ is a bad measurement of intelligence.
    - zepto 6y ago
      It doesn’t really matter what he calls intelligence - it’s still mostly heritable: https://areomagazine.com/2020/09/02/the-nature-behind-human-potential-robert-plomins-blueprint/ https://areomagazine.com/2020/09/02/the-nature-behind-human-... Skills, accurate self-image, and cultural competence. etc, are of course a different matter. Maybe he’s talking about these things, but they aren’t the same as intelligence.
      - TameAntelope 6y ago
        "It's still mostly heritable" -- this statement is confusing to me. If we aren't sure what we're talking about in the first place, how are we sure "it" is heritable?
        waterhouse 6y ago
        If you've heard 5-10 plausible meanings for "intelligence", and every one of them is heritable, then you can be pretty sure that "intelligence" is heritable even if you're not sure which particular meaning someone is using. And the article says: "on average, psychological traits are extremely heritable, at around 50 per cent." It's hard to argue for a definition of "intelligence" that wouldn't be a psychological trait.
        chordalkeyboard 6y ago
        > If you've heard 5-10 plausible meanings for "intelligence", and every one of them is heritable, then you can be pretty sure that "intelligence" is heritable even if you're not sure which particular meaning someone is using. What if you’ve heard definitions for intelligence that aren’t measured by IQ test scores and then someone uses IQ test scores to argue for the heritability of intelligence? > And the article says: "on average, psychological traits are extremely heritable, at around 50 per cent." It's hard to argue for a definition of "intelligence" that wouldn't be a psychological trait. Its equally hard to argue for an average of things which are not faithfully represented by numbers.
- radu_floricica 6y ago
  Source? I'm pretty sure intelligence is well over half hereditary. AFAIK, most of what we can do to increase people's intelligence is make sure they get proper nutrition as kids. Over that, we can at most spend lots of money on educational programs for really small increases in IQ (though of course education is not just about IQ).
  - TrinaryWorksToo 6y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo
    - radu_floricica 6y ago
      I'm sorry, but I meant a source other than a 2 hour video criticising a book. And before you say it's a good video, I actually tried watching it once. I think I got through about 30 minutes of saying nothing of substance when I gave up. I actually recommend the exercise - try rewatching and make a note when he actually makes an argument or references a source. Right above my comment is another linking the wikipedia page on IQ heritability. That would be a good example of a source. Meta-studies are a good option. Longitudinal studies are a decent one. Single studies are usually useless, but they're at least a good starting point for a productive conversations.
  - tomjakubowski 6y ago
    "Heritability" is a funny concept which is easy to misunderstand. http://bactra.org/weblog/520.html http://bactra.org/weblog/520.html > Heritability is a technical measure of how much of the variance in a quantitative trait (such as IQ) is associated with genetic differences, in a population with a certain distribution of genotypes and environments. Under some very strong simplifying assumptions, quantitative geneticists use it to calculate the changes to be expected from artificial or natural selection in a statistically steady environment. It says nothing about how much the over-all level of the trait is under genetic control, and it says nothing about how much the trait can change under environmental interventions.
- barry-cotter 6y ago
  > Intelligence is not hereditary for the most part, and there's a huge environmental component to it. This isn’t true. Every psychological trait has a large heritable component. The lowest value I’ve ever seen for heritability of intelligence is on the order of 0.6 and 0.8 is just as common. > Genetic Influence on Human Psychological Traits > There is now a large body of evidence that supports the conclusion that individual differences in most, if not all, reliably measured psychological traits, normal and abnormal, are substantively influenced by genetic factors. This fact has important implications for research and theory building in psychology, as evidence of genetic influence unleashes a cascade of questions regarding the sources of variance in such traits. A brief list of those questions is provided, and representative findings regarding genetic and environmental influences are presented for the domains of personality, intelligence, psycho- logical interests, psychiatric illnesses, and social attitudes. These findings are consistent with those reported for the traits of other species and for many human physical traits, suggesting that they may represent a general biological phenomenon. ... > own positive correlation between tests of mental ability, the evidentiary base for the general intelligence factor. This value is typically about .30. The genetic correlation be- tween such tests is, however, much higher, typically closer to .80. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.397.2910&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.397...
- PeterisP 6y ago
  Well, environmental components (such as the style of upbringing e.g. 'mix of freedom and strictness', and simply socioeconomic status, which affects quite a lot) are also quite heritable and shared between siblings, so we'd expect their intelligence to be even more correlated. However, intelligence is hereditary for the most part compared to that shared environment - for example, adoption studies show that the IQ scores of adopted children show higher correlations with the IQ scores of their biological parents than with those of their adopted parents.
  - ramraj07 6y ago
    Everyone seems to be quoting a lot but in the end it seems to converge to a handful (at least, I hope) studies with adopted children. I'll try to find the references before making judgements. Until then, whether this is really useful or not, I want to mention that time and again my experience in academia is that topics like these where we really depend on the judgement of the investigators a lot need to be carefully evaluated. Academics have a tendency to over exaggerate significant beliefs from highly questionable data points from very few studies. I'll revert back after going through the literature best I can.
    - PeterisP 6y ago
      In addition to adoption studies, a lot of analysis of heredity can be (and has been) done in twin studies, comparing and contrasting the variation between twins and "ordinary" siblings; and fraternal vs identical twins. You're right in that there is a limited number of studies, in part because you're looking at small populations and you don't get that many new adoption or twin cases each year. However, in that regard it's worth looking at equivalent studies worldwide who each have tested their local adopted or twin children; as far as I understand, these studies in different countries generally confirm the same or similar results, but I have not personally gone in detail to verify that.
gamechangr 6y ago
I was home schooled in grade school (1-6th) and went in Junior High. There was kind of like a large group of home schoolers, all of them tested very high. My test scores for a private Catholic School at the end 6th grade, they wanted to put me into Sophomore in High School. Thank god my parents understood socially it would have been hard. There were 80 kids in my home school group that were in my grade, maybe half skipped a year when they went to school. That's a small sample size, but not that surprising as most home school parents highly value education.

by joncp 6y ago

It sounds like you and your brother are highly intelligent and maybe didn't really need school to absorb the stuff you needed. I wonder how that approach would work with a more average child.

ramraj07 6y ago

Intelligence is not hereditary for the most part, and there's a huge environmental component to it. Clearly this household had the right mix of freedom and strictness to encourage development of creative intelligent thinking. Probably rubs off of adults with same attitudes. Of course it's not 100% I'm pretty sure if OP had more siblings one of them would be bound to be dumb as a rock.

zepto 6y ago
Your comment seems at odds with the current research: “the most recent studies showing heritability for IQ as high as 80%.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ
- bawolff 6y ago
  But is IQ (beyond a minimum level) really correlated with the type of success being discussed here?
  - radu_floricica 6y ago
    Both brothers are software engineers, so I'd say IQ is relevant for this particular discussion thread. Whether it's relevant for the main topic... that's an interesting question. Very much so. But I don't dare speculate, and I don't have data.
- TameAntelope 6y ago
  He might be of the opinion that IQ != intelligence, or that IQ is a bad measurement of intelligence.
  - zepto 6y ago
    It doesn’t really matter what he calls intelligence - it’s still mostly heritable: https://areomagazine.com/2020/09/02/the-nature-behind-human-potential-robert-plomins-blueprint/ https://areomagazine.com/2020/09/02/the-nature-behind-human-... Skills, accurate self-image, and cultural competence. etc, are of course a different matter. Maybe he’s talking about these things, but they aren’t the same as intelligence.
    - TameAntelope 6y ago
      "It's still mostly heritable" -- this statement is confusing to me. If we aren't sure what we're talking about in the first place, how are we sure "it" is heritable?
      - waterhouse 6y ago
        If you've heard 5-10 plausible meanings for "intelligence", and every one of them is heritable, then you can be pretty sure that "intelligence" is heritable even if you're not sure which particular meaning someone is using. And the article says: "on average, psychological traits are extremely heritable, at around 50 per cent." It's hard to argue for a definition of "intelligence" that wouldn't be a psychological trait.
        chordalkeyboard 6y ago
        > If you've heard 5-10 plausible meanings for "intelligence", and every one of them is heritable, then you can be pretty sure that "intelligence" is heritable even if you're not sure which particular meaning someone is using. What if you’ve heard definitions for intelligence that aren’t measured by IQ test scores and then someone uses IQ test scores to argue for the heritability of intelligence? > And the article says: "on average, psychological traits are extremely heritable, at around 50 per cent." It's hard to argue for a definition of "intelligence" that wouldn't be a psychological trait. Its equally hard to argue for an average of things which are not faithfully represented by numbers.
radu_floricica 6y ago
Source? I'm pretty sure intelligence is well over half hereditary. AFAIK, most of what we can do to increase people's intelligence is make sure they get proper nutrition as kids. Over that, we can at most spend lots of money on educational programs for really small increases in IQ (though of course education is not just about IQ).
- TrinaryWorksToo 6y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo
  - radu_floricica 6y ago
    I'm sorry, but I meant a source other than a 2 hour video criticising a book. And before you say it's a good video, I actually tried watching it once. I think I got through about 30 minutes of saying nothing of substance when I gave up. I actually recommend the exercise - try rewatching and make a note when he actually makes an argument or references a source. Right above my comment is another linking the wikipedia page on IQ heritability. That would be a good example of a source. Meta-studies are a good option. Longitudinal studies are a decent one. Single studies are usually useless, but they're at least a good starting point for a productive conversations.
- tomjakubowski 6y ago
  "Heritability" is a funny concept which is easy to misunderstand. http://bactra.org/weblog/520.html http://bactra.org/weblog/520.html > Heritability is a technical measure of how much of the variance in a quantitative trait (such as IQ) is associated with genetic differences, in a population with a certain distribution of genotypes and environments. Under some very strong simplifying assumptions, quantitative geneticists use it to calculate the changes to be expected from artificial or natural selection in a statistically steady environment. It says nothing about how much the over-all level of the trait is under genetic control, and it says nothing about how much the trait can change under environmental interventions.
barry-cotter 6y ago
> Intelligence is not hereditary for the most part, and there's a huge environmental component to it. This isn’t true. Every psychological trait has a large heritable component. The lowest value I’ve ever seen for heritability of intelligence is on the order of 0.6 and 0.8 is just as common. > Genetic Influence on Human Psychological Traits > There is now a large body of evidence that supports the conclusion that individual differences in most, if not all, reliably measured psychological traits, normal and abnormal, are substantively influenced by genetic factors. This fact has important implications for research and theory building in psychology, as evidence of genetic influence unleashes a cascade of questions regarding the sources of variance in such traits. A brief list of those questions is provided, and representative findings regarding genetic and environmental influences are presented for the domains of personality, intelligence, psycho- logical interests, psychiatric illnesses, and social attitudes. These findings are consistent with those reported for the traits of other species and for many human physical traits, suggesting that they may represent a general biological phenomenon. ... > own positive correlation between tests of mental ability, the evidentiary base for the general intelligence factor. This value is typically about .30. The genetic correlation be- tween such tests is, however, much higher, typically closer to .80. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.397.2910&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.397...
PeterisP 6y ago
Well, environmental components (such as the style of upbringing e.g. 'mix of freedom and strictness', and simply socioeconomic status, which affects quite a lot) are also quite heritable and shared between siblings, so we'd expect their intelligence to be even more correlated. However, intelligence is hereditary for the most part compared to that shared environment - for example, adoption studies show that the IQ scores of adopted children show higher correlations with the IQ scores of their biological parents than with those of their adopted parents.
- ramraj07 6y ago
  Everyone seems to be quoting a lot but in the end it seems to converge to a handful (at least, I hope) studies with adopted children. I'll try to find the references before making judgements. Until then, whether this is really useful or not, I want to mention that time and again my experience in academia is that topics like these where we really depend on the judgement of the investigators a lot need to be carefully evaluated. Academics have a tendency to over exaggerate significant beliefs from highly questionable data points from very few studies. I'll revert back after going through the literature best I can.
  - PeterisP 6y ago
    In addition to adoption studies, a lot of analysis of heredity can be (and has been) done in twin studies, comparing and contrasting the variation between twins and "ordinary" siblings; and fraternal vs identical twins. You're right in that there is a limited number of studies, in part because you're looking at small populations and you don't get that many new adoption or twin cases each year. However, in that regard it's worth looking at equivalent studies worldwide who each have tested their local adopted or twin children; as far as I understand, these studies in different countries generally confirm the same or similar results, but I have not personally gone in detail to verify that.

gamechangr 6y ago

I was home schooled in grade school (1-6th) and went in Junior High. There was kind of like a large group of home schoolers, all of them tested very high. My test scores for a private Catholic School at the end 6th grade, they wanted to put me into Sophomore in High School. Thank god my parents understood socially it would have been hard. There were 80 kids in my home school group that were in my grade, maybe half skipped a year when they went to school. That's a small sample size, but not that surprising as most home school parents highly value education.