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Improved environment actually exacerbates genetic differences. One obvious example is height. Back when malnourishment was common most everyone was rather short

by User23 5y ago

Improved environment actually exacerbates genetic differences. One obvious example is height. Back when malnourishment was common most everyone was rather short and nutrition was the best predictor of height. In an environment where adequate nutrition is widespread, genetics is the best predictor of height. I’m distrustful of analogies, but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that we’ll see a similar effect with improving education. Although solving that is going to be trickier than nutrition I expect.

Jensson 5y ago
Right, today everyone gets to go to a decent school for many years. Historically people didn't go to school. Take my case, I was neglected as a kid, my mom often didn't have a place to live so we moved between her friends places. I was raised on fast food and cookies, never did homework or studied. Yet I still did much better than average people in school and later got into Google as a software engineer. Most people who fail to get good grades in math had a much better home environment than I had, if they had my genes they would have gotten perfect grades in it like I did. So from my perspective, the only thing I can say is that they are stupid privileged rich kids (a kid whose parent has a stable place where they can live is privileged from my perspective) who didn't have any difficulties in life and still can't even do something as simple as calculus even after having listened to it in class for like 100 hours. "Outliers doesn't matter" They sure do in this kind of discussion. If you just ignore all the kids with good genes who came from bad environments then of course it is easy to say that good genes doesn't matter, but there are a lot of such kids. And the kids from poor environments who don't do well just didn't have good enough genes to make up for the environment. I can say that if every kid had my level of talent for math then basically every single kid would get straight A's on every math course given today that a typical software engineer takes without studying. I did that, and most people have better upbringings than me. Of course in that case the curriculum would adapt, but still. (Note that we shouldn't base education decisions on outliers however. I can't give people any advice on what to do, others can't do the same thing as me, I just understood everything in class from sitting there and listening, other kids obviously doesn't do the same so they need help. But still you can't say that genes don't matter) Edit: Also note that I have two brothers who will likely go through their entire lives without ever having a stable job. There wasn't some kind of hidden special thing in my upgringing.
- lordnacho 5y ago
  Couldn't it simply be that you actually did have the right environment to learn math? Being poor might mean you couldn't have a tutor, but it doesn't mean you couldn't concentrate. I always found distraction to be the real problem, and that can happen to rich kids as well.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    > but it doesn't mean you couldn't concentrate You mean sitting in a classroom and listening/talking to people? Because that is all it takes. Edit: It is really irritating to me how so many people thinks it is impossible to grasp math by just sitting there. Look, there are so extremely few concepts to learn and you have many hundreds of hours of class time to learn it, how can you not learn during that time? Nobody told me to do work during class, so I didn't. Nobody told me to do homework, so I didn't. I just sat there, when they gave me a test I did it, the tests was the first time I ever tried to solve a problem and I solved them because I had seen how to solve similar problems during class. This strategy worked up to a masters level in physics/maths, so not just high school.
    - lordnacho 5y ago
      Did people really explain things to you at university? Where I went you were expected to read a lot on your own, and then you had a few hours of tutorials where you could ask some questions. For high school, you're basically right, there isn't that much content. But it's not like you're in a math class particularly long either. Few hours a week for a few dozen weeks a year, for a few years, and a fair bit of each class is getting everyone seated, telling people the homework, and reviewing the previous lesson. If you look at a math/science high school curriculum, you tend to just follow some book that's a few hundred pages, and it takes the whole year to do it. An engaged kid could read it all over a few evenings, per class. > It is really irritating to me how so many people thinks it is impossible to grasp math by just sitting there It's very easy to think you really understand something when someone's explaining it to you. Kinda like watching a show on Discovery. Then when it comes to solving problems, there's a fair chance that you're exposed. I found this a lot at university, there'd only be 10 questions but they were good ones that necessitated looking at a variety of sources and getting a real understanding. Often nobody I knew would be confident on all the answers, and this is kids that got into a world famous university.

by User23 5y ago

Jensson 5y ago

Right, today everyone gets to go to a decent school for many years. Historically people didn't go to school. Take my case, I was neglected as a kid, my mom often didn't have a place to live so we moved between her friends places. I was raised on fast food and cookies, never did homework or studied. Yet I still did much better than average people in school and later got into Google as a software engineer. Most people who fail to get good grades in math had a much better home environment than I had, if they had my genes they would have gotten perfect grades in it like I did. So from my perspective, the only thing I can say is that they are stupid privileged rich kids (a kid whose parent has a stable place where they can live is privileged from my perspective) who didn't have any difficulties in life and still can't even do something as simple as calculus even after having listened to it in class for like 100 hours. "Outliers doesn't matter" They sure do in this kind of discussion. If you just ignore all the kids with good genes who came from bad environments then of course it is easy to say that good genes doesn't matter, but there are a lot of such kids. And the kids from poor environments who don't do well just didn't have good enough genes to make up for the environment. I can say that if every kid had my level of talent for math then basically every single kid would get straight A's on every math course given today that a typical software engineer takes without studying. I did that, and most people have better upbringings than me. Of course in that case the curriculum would adapt, but still. (Note that we shouldn't base education decisions on outliers however. I can't give people any advice on what to do, others can't do the same thing as me, I just understood everything in class from sitting there and listening, other kids obviously doesn't do the same so they need help. But still you can't say that genes don't matter) Edit: Also note that I have two brothers who will likely go through their entire lives without ever having a stable job. There wasn't some kind of hidden special thing in my upgringing.

lordnacho 5y ago
Couldn't it simply be that you actually did have the right environment to learn math? Being poor might mean you couldn't have a tutor, but it doesn't mean you couldn't concentrate. I always found distraction to be the real problem, and that can happen to rich kids as well.
- Jensson 5y ago
  > but it doesn't mean you couldn't concentrate You mean sitting in a classroom and listening/talking to people? Because that is all it takes. Edit: It is really irritating to me how so many people thinks it is impossible to grasp math by just sitting there. Look, there are so extremely few concepts to learn and you have many hundreds of hours of class time to learn it, how can you not learn during that time? Nobody told me to do work during class, so I didn't. Nobody told me to do homework, so I didn't. I just sat there, when they gave me a test I did it, the tests was the first time I ever tried to solve a problem and I solved them because I had seen how to solve similar problems during class. This strategy worked up to a masters level in physics/maths, so not just high school.
  - lordnacho 5y ago
    Did people really explain things to you at university? Where I went you were expected to read a lot on your own, and then you had a few hours of tutorials where you could ask some questions. For high school, you're basically right, there isn't that much content. But it's not like you're in a math class particularly long either. Few hours a week for a few dozen weeks a year, for a few years, and a fair bit of each class is getting everyone seated, telling people the homework, and reviewing the previous lesson. If you look at a math/science high school curriculum, you tend to just follow some book that's a few hundred pages, and it takes the whole year to do it. An engaged kid could read it all over a few evenings, per class. > It is really irritating to me how so many people thinks it is impossible to grasp math by just sitting there It's very easy to think you really understand something when someone's explaining it to you. Kinda like watching a show on Discovery. Then when it comes to solving problems, there's a fair chance that you're exposed. I found this a lot at university, there'd only be 10 questions but they were good ones that necessitated looking at a variety of sources and getting a real understanding. Often nobody I knew would be confident on all the answers, and this is kids that got into a world famous university.