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In these comments: people doing apologetics for a vision of the world where everyone is born with equal potential. I am a scientist, I work on these things, an

In these comments: people doing apologetics for a vision of the world where everyone is born with equal potential. I am a scientist, I work on these things, and I am here to tell you that: --Intelligence is largely (~70-80% of variance) inherited --Your personality is largely determined by genetics and is pretty much settled in to what it will always be by ~30 --If you don't learn to count right by ~4 you never will --There are, in fact, many people who could never learn calculus --Sex differences in behavior are driven by genetics and the effects are large The broad strokes here are not up for debate, and denying them makes you analogous to a flat-earther. The details will change. There are huge portions of the educated populace who will go to great lengths to spin stories about how it ain't so. They do this because it is comfortable to believe given the normative ethics we were all programmed with as children. Trying really, really hard to believe manifest falsehoods has a lot of practical drawbacks, though. Like the constant, expensive performance of searching for just the right way of teaching calculus to people who will never learn it--public policy that hasn't a chance in hell of ever working. If you've read this far, and you're feeling upset or angry or uncomfortable with the facts I've listed, I encourage you to reflect on which problems in the world are really important to you. Write them down. For each one ask, "Is continuing to believe in a broken model of how things actually are going to help me solve this problem? Or would I be better off facing an uncomfortable truth and doing what I can with it?" Thank you for reading my rant, I'll be here all day :-D

Tade0 5y ago
> --Intelligence is largely (~70-80% of variance) inherited Citation needed, especially given that there are enormous differences in intelligence between people who acquired speech and those who didn't.
- tgv 5y ago
  I think the number of people that haven't acquired overt communication is so low, it can hardly affect the average.
  - Tade0 5y ago
    My point is that if you can produce twins, one of which will be taught how to speak, read and write and the other not and the difference in intelligence between them will be so significant, then the genetic component can't possibly amount for most of intelligence. Yes, it's the nature vs nurture argument all over again, but I think that regarding intelligence it's far from settled.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - tgv 5y ago
      Well, that's why I wanted to know how intelligence was operationalized. But even in your Gedankenexperiment, there are ways to estimate heritability of intelligence: you'd need 100s similar cases, and, e.g., test them on puzzle solving and learning skills. Edit: sorry, I asked that question in another thread...
- NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
  Yeah, as the other child comment says I'm not sure what you're getting at with speech acquisition. Here's a study I plucked: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270739/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270739/
  - bjourne 5y ago
    Here is a quote from the study: > However, for intelligence, heritability increases linearly, from (approximately) 20% in infancy to 40% in adolescence, and to 60% in adulthood. Some evidence suggests that heritability might increase to as much as 80% in later adulthood but then decline to about 60% after age 80. It does not corroborate the claim "Intelligence is largely (~70-80% of variance) inherited".
    - NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
      That sounds right on the money to me? Variance in all traits is higher in childhood. The idea is that you grow into your mostly pre-determined self.
      - bjourne 5y ago
        No, it's not on the money. Do you really not see the numerical discrepancy?
- deltasixeight 5y ago
  I hope this need for a citation comes from genuine curiosity and not some misguided ideological want to uphold the notion of equality in intelligence. It just doesn't make sense given a more macroscopic view of things. If inheritance obviously controls the difference in intelligence between the human brain and the dog brain, or the cat brain, or the monkey brain, what black magic makes it so that among humans themselves inheritance controls very little of intelligence? The 70% - 80% statistic seems like a ballpark estimate he pulled out of a anecdotal conclusion based off of a broad spectrum knowledge of the related scientific research. You likely aren't going to find a citation that proves this claim definitively. It does not mean that his point is incredulous nor does it mean that his point isn't part of common sense. His point makes sense. It makes a lot of sense. The same sense as the fact that the covid vaccine protects against the virus even though for the longest time it was NEVER FDA approved (aka no strong citations). The conclusion was obvious despite not meeting the stringent verification of the FDA and many people were able to arrive at this conclusion without the science. Yet many people refused to believe the efficacy of the vaccine due to their political ideology. I believe there's a similar biased attitude coming from the far left side of thinking. The unwillingness to see that the science and common sense points to an inescapable conclusion. There is no unseen magical force that makes all races, all genders and all peoples equal. There are differences, and the differences are biological and obvious. Like literally genes control how ugly and how tall you are but not intelligence at all? By some crazy magic intelligence is the one thing that isn't at all influenced that much by genetics? Seriously, which viewpoint is more realistic here? Seriously the same ultra left people who were calling out the anti-vacc people as stupid and unintelligent for refusing the vaccine are unable to see the exact same kind of ideological stupidity within themselves.
  - NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
    Yep, I agree with basically all of this. A reasonable rhetorical move when speaking to science-deniers about inheritance is, "Do you have a principled way of telling people from rocks on the basis of intelligence, then?"
ludston 5y ago
How does your science control for differences between parenting, access to education and nutrition though? I would expect doing so to be unethical and therefore not allowed.
- NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
  Twin studies is the oldest, best answer. People have fancy statistical trickery these days too.
  - EllieEffingMae 5y ago
    Would you mind elaborating on exactly how many studies you think are engaging in "statistical trickery"?
    - NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
      "exactly how many"--I have no idea. I didn't mean to put those studies down, the statistical trickery can be quite cool! Hard to do right, though.
- ZephyrBlu 5y ago
  I think at least some of those statements are independent of parenting, access to education and nutrition. Give everyone perfect parenting, a great education and lots of nutritious food and some of them still won't be able to learn calculus.
  - mewpmewp2 5y ago
    Give everyone the perfect genes and lack of environment can also cause them not to learn calculus.
    - ZephyrBlu 5y ago
      You are misunderstanding. Calculus is just a placeholder for something that requires a particular level of intelligence. It's about whether it's possible or not, not whether you actually do learn the thing. Someone with an IQ of 120 may not ever learn calculus, but they probably have the ability to do so. You cannot say the same of someone with an IQ of 80.
tgv 5y ago
I've never heard a number as high as 70%. Where does that come from? Otherwise: any idea how intelligence was operationalized? I also think we can only accept that we're born different, but human. If we should aspire to anything, it should be to make life good for every individual, taking their capacities into account, not to give everyone an academic degree.
- NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
  Here's a relatively recent study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270739/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270739/ I agree with your sentiment in the second paragraph. Human gets a little fuzzy, though...I think you really mean to point at personhood. There are humans who definitely aren't people, like those born without brains. And with the computers our grandkids will install--oh my! I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.
- mewpmewp2 5y ago
  The percentage without context does not give any actual information. E.g. one could argue that environment affects 99 percent of intelligence as for example if someone dies due to environment there's no intelligence at all. So there must be some poor environment A and good environment B, and some poor genes A and good genes B that a comparison must be made between to understand exactly what this percentage means and of course there must be a definition of intelligence and a way to measure it.
  - NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
    Thanks for asking, I should've explained. The percentage here is percent of variance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variance). What it means, basically, is the extent to which you can predict a child's intelligence just knowing the parents' intelligence--not assuming the child was raised by those parents. In your second paragraph, you've actually hit on one of the apologetic clichés that's popular now. People will say, "Yes, 70-80% of variance...GIVEN OUR CURRENT ENVIRONMENT". And they will act as if they've said something profound. Yes, that's true, and we don't know about the heritability of intelligence in environments that don't exist...but we can make really good guesses. Further, from a public policy perspective, we've got to work in the environment that we've got. And in that environment, the number is 70-80%.
EllieEffingMae 5y ago
Regardless of your credentials, as far as I am aware the scientific consensus on this topic is that genetics is nearly impossible to separate from other causal factors. Mainly other causal factors that we have clearer and more direct evidence of having an influence on cognitive ability. So, quite frankly, I don't care if you spend a lot of time thinking about it, it's irrelevant. The consensus is clear.
- NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
  Yes, exactly like that!
  - EllieEffingMae 5y ago
    If you would be so kind to explain to me why I should believe you, a random person on the internet claiming to be a "scientist" who "spends a lot of time thinking" about this subject, over thousands of peer reviewed research articles and case studies stating that even if genetics is a factor in intelligence then it is so closely tied to other causal factors that it is effectively impossible to control for, then I am happy to listen. So please, I am begging you, tell me why I should believe you over everyone else.
    - NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
      That is not, in fact, what "thousands of peer reviewed research articles" state. You might be confusing the % of variance we can predict from genetics (e.g., knowing your ATGCATAGCCGTAG code), which at present is maybe 4%(?), with what we can show is due to heritability (70-80%). We didn't even know about DNA when people started measuring this kind of stuff with twin studies in the early 20th century. So, to reiterate because I'm realizing that para wasn't so clear: guessing how smart you are based on your genetic code is something we're only just learning how to do. We're getting better at it though. Estimating how smart you are based on how smart your parents are is a totally different game that we've been playing for a century.
    - kukx 5y ago
vagrantJin 5y ago
> Intelligence is largely (~70-80% of variance) inherited I'd like your definition of intelligence.
- NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
  "g" is the way contemporary scientists think about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) I haven't read the wiki article and so can't vouch for it
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lrem 5y ago
You've made four claims and thus far provided a source for the first one. Any chance for the other four?
- NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
  It's a very reasonable ask. I'm not on my work computer, and anyway I don't have the classic papers at the tip of my tongue, so I'd have to look them up. So I guess I've got nothing for you but an apology. Perhaps when the sun rises.
anothernewdude 5y ago
Cool, so malnourishment throughout life will only account for at most a 30% decline. Or is that "inherited" because it's environmental, but determined by parents?
- NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
  The assumption is your environment is pretty similar to everyone else's environment, which means you don't die of hunger or get boiled in acid. But you raise a very important point, and you're right: as far as I'm aware, latest evidence says that being malnourished as a child does significantly impact intelligence as it does height (stunting). Though I believe the last piece of work I read on it claimed the effect was smaller than previously believed. That was ~2 years ago.
- Mordisquitos 5y ago
  Yes and no, and yes again. And no. For any given trait X, the question about how much it is "inherited/genetic" or "environmental" is a commonly used shorthand, even amongst professionals, but it can be subtly misleading. All traits are 100% inherited, and all traits are 100% environmental. What do I mean by this? How is the ability to speak Russian genetic? How is the colour of your hair environmental? Well, put it this way: is the difference between a human child brought up in a Russian family and their pet dog who has lived with them for the same time genetic or environmental? And what is the difference between a pair of identical twins, one of whom bleached their hair with peroxide–genetic or environmental? The above are of course exaggerations, but they're just obvious examples. The correct way of phrasing the question is this: given a population A, what percentage of the variability of trait X is inherited and what percentage is environmental? Given the population of mammals, is the ability to speak Russian mainly genetic? Yes. Given a pair of identical twins, is any difference in their hair colour environmental? Also yes. So, to the question as to how much of a decline in intelligence can be accounted to malnourishment throughout life (and how much to other environmental factors, genetics, etc.) we need to specify what population we're talking about. I'd be willing to bet that: 1- the variability in intelligence due to malnourishment in the population of middle-to-upper class children is negligible, 2- the variability in intelligence due to malnourishment in the entire child population of a developed country is detectable, 3- ...and the variability in intelligence in the due to malnourishment in the worldwide child population is significantly higher.
aritmo 5y ago
In this day and age, it is easy to get the actual degree and be called a 'scientist'. In these Internet days, it is even easier to claim you are a scientist when you are anonymous online, and make all sort of claims.
- Nicksil 5y ago
  >In this day and age, it is easy to get the actual degree and be called a 'scientist'. > >In these Internet days, it is even easier to claim you are a scientist when you are anonymous online, and make all sort of claims. OK, but what about their comment do you disagree with or find in error?
torstenvl 5y ago
Forgive me, but my understanding is that the heritability of IQ at ~70% is limited to those of higher socioeconomic status, and that it's closer to ~10% for those of lower socioeconomic status. http://ibg.colorado.edu/cdrom2016/franic/Moderation/Lit/Turkheimer_2003.pdf http://ibg.colorado.edu/cdrom2016/franic/Moderation/Lit/Turk... https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203838013-9/scarr%E2%80%93rowe-interaction-measured-socioeconomic-status-heritability-cognitive-ability-eric-turkheimer-paige-harden-brian-onofrio-irving-gottesman https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/97802038... https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797613488394 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/095679761348839... (I should note that beyond an undergraduate degree in linguistics I have essentially no professional qualifications in anything related to neuroscience. Most of my understanding comes from having read some Sapolsky and Steinberg cover to cover a few times, with a limited deep dive into late adolescent risk calculation and risk-taking related to a homicide case I was on.) Is my understanding mistaken? Why?
- esyir 5y ago
  Not OP, but have genetics background in other fields (not intelligence). The following is a bit of a mix A way you could look at this would be to think as heritability here as the cap of your intelligence. No matter how hard you try, barring some sort of magical medical intervention, your maximal intelligence is limited by your genetics. However, that's the maximum. There are many ways to reduce IQ (lead a famous example here, nutrition another). I think it's not an unreasonable hypothesis that those in lower socioeconomic brackets might increasingly encounter the damaging effects which might have an outsized effect on IQ. More factors than just heritability might create that effect you've mentioned.
bjourne 5y ago
People like me would be more convinced by your rant/flamebait if you provided sources for your claims. You claimed that the "broad strokes here are not up for debate" so it should be trivial for you to provide sources. Since you don't, it's hard to take your arguments seriously. Everyone can make unsubstantiated claims, providing evidence is the difficult part. I'm sure you understand that the "trust me, I'm a scientist" argument doesn't fly around here. :)
- luckylion 5y ago
  > People like me would be more convinced by your flamebait if you provided sources for your claims. To be honest, from what I've read in these comments: I doubt it. There's a lot of goal-post moving and deflection ("but what even is intelligence", "but what if we never taught people to speak", "but why should it even matter") that I believe Betteridge's law of headlines still holds.
  - bjourne 5y ago
    I don't think denigrating others contributes to a healthy debate.
    - NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
      I didn't read it as denigration, it was a legit point. We make inferences based on the type of discussion.
- NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
  Yeah, as I said elsewhere this is a reasonable request. I was writing in a moment of passion very late at night. I am supposed to do a variety of "real work" today but I'll see what I can gin up. The things I listed are "the sky is blue"-type claims to people who do evolution stuff.
pcrh 5y ago
>Intelligence is largely (~70-80% of variance) inherited Also a scientist here.... Intelligence, however measured, is largely inherited. However, that inheritance is not genetic, but social. It's now been rigorously demonstrated that common variation in genetics has very little to do with intelligence as generally conceived. Just for some examples of well-powered studies: >A genome-wide polygenic score constructed from the GWA results accounted for 1.6% of the variance of intelligence in the normal range in an unselected sample of 3414 individuals, which is comparable to the variance explained by GWA studies of intelligence with substantially larger sample sizes. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29731509 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29731509 >in 2016, a second meta-analytic GWAS analysis with a sample size of 294,000 identified 74 significant loci. This analysis produced a GPS, EA2, that predicted 3% of the variance in years of education [a proxy for intelligence] on average in independent samples. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5985927/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5985927/
- sfblah 5y ago
  Our inability to identify the genes responsible for intelligence doesn’t equate to them not existing. Our understanding of genetics is still extremely nascent.
  - Kim_Bruning 5y ago
    I'll tell you what genes are responsible for intelligence if you can tell me which machine code instructions are responsible for Mario. ;-) ( I might need to expand on that a little: I predict that "the genes responsible for intelligence" are not a thing. I think that genes tend to work together to make a living organism similar to how machine code instructions work together to make a program run. So for example: I'm pretty sure that looking at the design of eg. a 6502 can't directly predict the existence of Mario: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/055624v2.full https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/055624v2.full If you can't easily predict what neurons will do based on their layout, what chance do you have to predict the exact outcome of the genes which specify that layout? You're going to need more data than just the genes alone. )
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syops 5y ago
Thanks for your rant! It was wells stated. I did not know anything of these things in the sense of having any academic knowledge about this stuff. I didn't know about the counting one and am not surprised by this. In a thread on another post I wrote that there is a lot of brain washing that occurs in the teaching of low level mathematics. It's easier to brain wash children in this sense than it is for adults.
dennis_jeeves 5y ago
Thanks for coming here and mentioning some hard facts like the ability to count, and ability to do calculus. I had in my own amateur way came up with the fact that compound interest would be something that some people will never be able to grasp fully. (Infact I had to to come up with a whole way of screening people people based on traits that I had to to define, which roughly tend to model themselves along conventional IQ)

Tade0 5y ago

> --Intelligence is largely (~70-80% of variance) inherited Citation needed, especially given that there are enormous differences in intelligence between people who acquired speech and those who didn't.

tgv 5y ago
I think the number of people that haven't acquired overt communication is so low, it can hardly affect the average.
- Tade0 5y ago
  My point is that if you can produce twins, one of which will be taught how to speak, read and write and the other not and the difference in intelligence between them will be so significant, then the genetic component can't possibly amount for most of intelligence. Yes, it's the nature vs nurture argument all over again, but I think that regarding intelligence it's far from settled.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - tgv 5y ago
    Well, that's why I wanted to know how intelligence was operationalized. But even in your Gedankenexperiment, there are ways to estimate heritability of intelligence: you'd need 100s similar cases, and, e.g., test them on puzzle solving and learning skills. Edit: sorry, I asked that question in another thread...
NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
Yeah, as the other child comment says I'm not sure what you're getting at with speech acquisition. Here's a study I plucked: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270739/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270739/
- bjourne 5y ago
  Here is a quote from the study: > However, for intelligence, heritability increases linearly, from (approximately) 20% in infancy to 40% in adolescence, and to 60% in adulthood. Some evidence suggests that heritability might increase to as much as 80% in later adulthood but then decline to about 60% after age 80. It does not corroborate the claim "Intelligence is largely (~70-80% of variance) inherited".
  - NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
    That sounds right on the money to me? Variance in all traits is higher in childhood. The idea is that you grow into your mostly pre-determined self.
    - bjourne 5y ago
      No, it's not on the money. Do you really not see the numerical discrepancy?
deltasixeight 5y ago
I hope this need for a citation comes from genuine curiosity and not some misguided ideological want to uphold the notion of equality in intelligence. It just doesn't make sense given a more macroscopic view of things. If inheritance obviously controls the difference in intelligence between the human brain and the dog brain, or the cat brain, or the monkey brain, what black magic makes it so that among humans themselves inheritance controls very little of intelligence? The 70% - 80% statistic seems like a ballpark estimate he pulled out of a anecdotal conclusion based off of a broad spectrum knowledge of the related scientific research. You likely aren't going to find a citation that proves this claim definitively. It does not mean that his point is incredulous nor does it mean that his point isn't part of common sense. His point makes sense. It makes a lot of sense. The same sense as the fact that the covid vaccine protects against the virus even though for the longest time it was NEVER FDA approved (aka no strong citations). The conclusion was obvious despite not meeting the stringent verification of the FDA and many people were able to arrive at this conclusion without the science. Yet many people refused to believe the efficacy of the vaccine due to their political ideology. I believe there's a similar biased attitude coming from the far left side of thinking. The unwillingness to see that the science and common sense points to an inescapable conclusion. There is no unseen magical force that makes all races, all genders and all peoples equal. There are differences, and the differences are biological and obvious. Like literally genes control how ugly and how tall you are but not intelligence at all? By some crazy magic intelligence is the one thing that isn't at all influenced that much by genetics? Seriously, which viewpoint is more realistic here? Seriously the same ultra left people who were calling out the anti-vacc people as stupid and unintelligent for refusing the vaccine are unable to see the exact same kind of ideological stupidity within themselves.
- NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
  Yep, I agree with basically all of this. A reasonable rhetorical move when speaking to science-deniers about inheritance is, "Do you have a principled way of telling people from rocks on the basis of intelligence, then?"

ludston 5y ago

How does your science control for differences between parenting, access to education and nutrition though? I would expect doing so to be unethical and therefore not allowed.

NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
Twin studies is the oldest, best answer. People have fancy statistical trickery these days too.
- EllieEffingMae 5y ago
  Would you mind elaborating on exactly how many studies you think are engaging in "statistical trickery"?
  - NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
    "exactly how many"--I have no idea. I didn't mean to put those studies down, the statistical trickery can be quite cool! Hard to do right, though.
ZephyrBlu 5y ago
I think at least some of those statements are independent of parenting, access to education and nutrition. Give everyone perfect parenting, a great education and lots of nutritious food and some of them still won't be able to learn calculus.
- mewpmewp2 5y ago
  Give everyone the perfect genes and lack of environment can also cause them not to learn calculus.
  - ZephyrBlu 5y ago
    You are misunderstanding. Calculus is just a placeholder for something that requires a particular level of intelligence. It's about whether it's possible or not, not whether you actually do learn the thing. Someone with an IQ of 120 may not ever learn calculus, but they probably have the ability to do so. You cannot say the same of someone with an IQ of 80.

tgv 5y ago

I've never heard a number as high as 70%. Where does that come from? Otherwise: any idea how intelligence was operationalized? I also think we can only accept that we're born different, but human. If we should aspire to anything, it should be to make life good for every individual, taking their capacities into account, not to give everyone an academic degree.

NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
Here's a relatively recent study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270739/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270739/ I agree with your sentiment in the second paragraph. Human gets a little fuzzy, though...I think you really mean to point at personhood. There are humans who definitely aren't people, like those born without brains. And with the computers our grandkids will install--oh my! I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.
mewpmewp2 5y ago
The percentage without context does not give any actual information. E.g. one could argue that environment affects 99 percent of intelligence as for example if someone dies due to environment there's no intelligence at all. So there must be some poor environment A and good environment B, and some poor genes A and good genes B that a comparison must be made between to understand exactly what this percentage means and of course there must be a definition of intelligence and a way to measure it.
- NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
  Thanks for asking, I should've explained. The percentage here is percent of variance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variance). What it means, basically, is the extent to which you can predict a child's intelligence just knowing the parents' intelligence--not assuming the child was raised by those parents. In your second paragraph, you've actually hit on one of the apologetic clichés that's popular now. People will say, "Yes, 70-80% of variance...GIVEN OUR CURRENT ENVIRONMENT". And they will act as if they've said something profound. Yes, that's true, and we don't know about the heritability of intelligence in environments that don't exist...but we can make really good guesses. Further, from a public policy perspective, we've got to work in the environment that we've got. And in that environment, the number is 70-80%.

EllieEffingMae 5y ago

Regardless of your credentials, as far as I am aware the scientific consensus on this topic is that genetics is nearly impossible to separate from other causal factors. Mainly other causal factors that we have clearer and more direct evidence of having an influence on cognitive ability. So, quite frankly, I don't care if you spend a lot of time thinking about it, it's irrelevant. The consensus is clear.

NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
Yes, exactly like that!
- EllieEffingMae 5y ago
  If you would be so kind to explain to me why I should believe you, a random person on the internet claiming to be a "scientist" who "spends a lot of time thinking" about this subject, over thousands of peer reviewed research articles and case studies stating that even if genetics is a factor in intelligence then it is so closely tied to other causal factors that it is effectively impossible to control for, then I am happy to listen. So please, I am begging you, tell me why I should believe you over everyone else.
  - NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
    That is not, in fact, what "thousands of peer reviewed research articles" state. You might be confusing the % of variance we can predict from genetics (e.g., knowing your ATGCATAGCCGTAG code), which at present is maybe 4%(?), with what we can show is due to heritability (70-80%). We didn't even know about DNA when people started measuring this kind of stuff with twin studies in the early 20th century. So, to reiterate because I'm realizing that para wasn't so clear: guessing how smart you are based on your genetic code is something we're only just learning how to do. We're getting better at it though. Estimating how smart you are based on how smart your parents are is a totally different game that we've been playing for a century.
  - kukx 5y ago

vagrantJin 5y ago

> Intelligence is largely (~70-80% of variance) inherited I'd like your definition of intelligence.

NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
"g" is the way contemporary scientists think about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) I haven't read the wiki article and so can't vouch for it

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lrem 5y ago

You've made four claims and thus far provided a source for the first one. Any chance for the other four?

NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
It's a very reasonable ask. I'm not on my work computer, and anyway I don't have the classic papers at the tip of my tongue, so I'd have to look them up. So I guess I've got nothing for you but an apology. Perhaps when the sun rises.

anothernewdude 5y ago

Cool, so malnourishment throughout life will only account for at most a 30% decline. Or is that "inherited" because it's environmental, but determined by parents?

NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
The assumption is your environment is pretty similar to everyone else's environment, which means you don't die of hunger or get boiled in acid. But you raise a very important point, and you're right: as far as I'm aware, latest evidence says that being malnourished as a child does significantly impact intelligence as it does height (stunting). Though I believe the last piece of work I read on it claimed the effect was smaller than previously believed. That was ~2 years ago.
Mordisquitos 5y ago
Yes and no, and yes again. And no. For any given trait X, the question about how much it is "inherited/genetic" or "environmental" is a commonly used shorthand, even amongst professionals, but it can be subtly misleading. All traits are 100% inherited, and all traits are 100% environmental. What do I mean by this? How is the ability to speak Russian genetic? How is the colour of your hair environmental? Well, put it this way: is the difference between a human child brought up in a Russian family and their pet dog who has lived with them for the same time genetic or environmental? And what is the difference between a pair of identical twins, one of whom bleached their hair with peroxide–genetic or environmental? The above are of course exaggerations, but they're just obvious examples. The correct way of phrasing the question is this: given a population A, what percentage of the variability of trait X is inherited and what percentage is environmental? Given the population of mammals, is the ability to speak Russian mainly genetic? Yes. Given a pair of identical twins, is any difference in their hair colour environmental? Also yes. So, to the question as to how much of a decline in intelligence can be accounted to malnourishment throughout life (and how much to other environmental factors, genetics, etc.) we need to specify what population we're talking about. I'd be willing to bet that: 1- the variability in intelligence due to malnourishment in the population of middle-to-upper class children is negligible, 2- the variability in intelligence due to malnourishment in the entire child population of a developed country is detectable, 3- ...and the variability in intelligence in the due to malnourishment in the worldwide child population is significantly higher.

aritmo 5y ago

In this day and age, it is easy to get the actual degree and be called a 'scientist'. In these Internet days, it is even easier to claim you are a scientist when you are anonymous online, and make all sort of claims.

Nicksil 5y ago
>In this day and age, it is easy to get the actual degree and be called a 'scientist'. > >In these Internet days, it is even easier to claim you are a scientist when you are anonymous online, and make all sort of claims. OK, but what about their comment do you disagree with or find in error?

torstenvl 5y ago

Forgive me, but my understanding is that the heritability of IQ at ~70% is limited to those of higher socioeconomic status, and that it's closer to ~10% for those of lower socioeconomic status. http://ibg.colorado.edu/cdrom2016/franic/Moderation/Lit/Turkheimer_2003.pdf http://ibg.colorado.edu/cdrom2016/franic/Moderation/Lit/Turk... https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203838013-9/scarr%E2%80%93rowe-interaction-measured-socioeconomic-status-heritability-cognitive-ability-eric-turkheimer-paige-harden-brian-onofrio-irving-gottesman https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/97802038... https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797613488394 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/095679761348839... (I should note that beyond an undergraduate degree in linguistics I have essentially no professional qualifications in anything related to neuroscience. Most of my understanding comes from having read some Sapolsky and Steinberg cover to cover a few times, with a limited deep dive into late adolescent risk calculation and risk-taking related to a homicide case I was on.) Is my understanding mistaken? Why?

esyir 5y ago
Not OP, but have genetics background in other fields (not intelligence). The following is a bit of a mix A way you could look at this would be to think as heritability here as the cap of your intelligence. No matter how hard you try, barring some sort of magical medical intervention, your maximal intelligence is limited by your genetics. However, that's the maximum. There are many ways to reduce IQ (lead a famous example here, nutrition another). I think it's not an unreasonable hypothesis that those in lower socioeconomic brackets might increasingly encounter the damaging effects which might have an outsized effect on IQ. More factors than just heritability might create that effect you've mentioned.

bjourne 5y ago

People like me would be more convinced by your rant/flamebait if you provided sources for your claims. You claimed that the "broad strokes here are not up for debate" so it should be trivial for you to provide sources. Since you don't, it's hard to take your arguments seriously. Everyone can make unsubstantiated claims, providing evidence is the difficult part. I'm sure you understand that the "trust me, I'm a scientist" argument doesn't fly around here. :)

luckylion 5y ago
> People like me would be more convinced by your flamebait if you provided sources for your claims. To be honest, from what I've read in these comments: I doubt it. There's a lot of goal-post moving and deflection ("but what even is intelligence", "but what if we never taught people to speak", "but why should it even matter") that I believe Betteridge's law of headlines still holds.
- bjourne 5y ago
  I don't think denigrating others contributes to a healthy debate.
  - NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
    I didn't read it as denigration, it was a legit point. We make inferences based on the type of discussion.
NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
Yeah, as I said elsewhere this is a reasonable request. I was writing in a moment of passion very late at night. I am supposed to do a variety of "real work" today but I'll see what I can gin up. The things I listed are "the sky is blue"-type claims to people who do evolution stuff.

pcrh 5y ago

>Intelligence is largely (~70-80% of variance) inherited Also a scientist here.... Intelligence, however measured, is largely inherited. However, that inheritance is not genetic, but social. It's now been rigorously demonstrated that common variation in genetics has very little to do with intelligence as generally conceived. Just for some examples of well-powered studies: >A genome-wide polygenic score constructed from the GWA results accounted for 1.6% of the variance of intelligence in the normal range in an unselected sample of 3414 individuals, which is comparable to the variance explained by GWA studies of intelligence with substantially larger sample sizes. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29731509 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29731509 >in 2016, a second meta-analytic GWAS analysis with a sample size of 294,000 identified 74 significant loci. This analysis produced a GPS, EA2, that predicted 3% of the variance in years of education [a proxy for intelligence] on average in independent samples. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5985927/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5985927/

sfblah 5y ago
Our inability to identify the genes responsible for intelligence doesn’t equate to them not existing. Our understanding of genetics is still extremely nascent.
- Kim_Bruning 5y ago
  I'll tell you what genes are responsible for intelligence if you can tell me which machine code instructions are responsible for Mario. ;-) ( I might need to expand on that a little: I predict that "the genes responsible for intelligence" are not a thing. I think that genes tend to work together to make a living organism similar to how machine code instructions work together to make a program run. So for example: I'm pretty sure that looking at the design of eg. a 6502 can't directly predict the existence of Mario: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/055624v2.full https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/055624v2.full If you can't easily predict what neurons will do based on their layout, what chance do you have to predict the exact outcome of the genes which specify that layout? You're going to need more data than just the genes alone. )

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syops 5y ago

Thanks for your rant! It was wells stated. I did not know anything of these things in the sense of having any academic knowledge about this stuff. I didn't know about the counting one and am not surprised by this. In a thread on another post I wrote that there is a lot of brain washing that occurs in the teaching of low level mathematics. It's easier to brain wash children in this sense than it is for adults.

dennis_jeeves 5y ago

Thanks for coming here and mentioning some hard facts like the ability to count, and ability to do calculus. I had in my own amateur way came up with the fact that compound interest would be something that some people will never be able to grasp fully. (Infact I had to to come up with a whole way of screening people people based on traits that I had to to define, which roughly tend to model themselves along conventional IQ)