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Schooling improves intelligence, but not the impact of socioeconomics, genetics
- ummonk 4y agoIQ in children is a lot more reflective of environment / happenstance than IQ in adults. This statistical analysis seems to be looking at IQ in children.
- largepeepee 4y agoIt's also a self-reinforcing cycle. Children that told they are smart from tests tend to have higher confidence and that has positive effects during a time where most children are unsure about themselves and their role in their world. Confidence also has secondary effects in other aspects of life from dating to seeking out quality mentors and opportunities.
- blitzar 4y ago> Children that told they are smart from tests tend to have higher confidence ... Confidence also has secondary effects in other aspects of life from dating My experience, annecdata at best - kids who do good in tests have 0 confidence when it comes to dating. If there is a correlation there it is negative, at absolute best 0.
- em-bee 4y agoi would be very hesitant to even make a correlation here. the problem with dating is that it creates an environment that is completely isolated from every other activity. there is no place where you can learn about dating (ignoring movies). the lack of confidence from dating comes from a lack of opportunity to learn how to date. dating is being treated like such a special activity that require a lot of cultural knowledge. the very fact that a date can go bad and that this has a strong influence on the relationship is a problem. the conclusion for me is that dating itself is the wrong approach to find a partner. it would be better to pick your partner from among your friends, and then spending time with that friend is more easy and more natural. and if a "date" goes bad, it has less of an aftereffect, because not everything is perfect among friends
- jozvolskyef 4y agoI remember reading about this idea over a decade ago, and it comes to mind whenever I observe that I am becoming more like my father, despite living in a different country and culture, and less like other people who had an impact on me. The effects of education slowly give way to genetics in the absence of continued training.
- ImaCake 4y ago>IQ in children is a lot more reflective of environment / happenstance Yes, this study goes about measuring it instead of just shrugging their shoulders like your statement is. It is correlating three variables (predictors) against IQ (the outcome variable). That is, they find that genetics, schooling, and SES all independently influence a child's IQ test score. But that school does not make the gap caused by genetics or SES better or worse.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y agoI hope it will not sound overly dismissive, because it is not intended as such. Does anyone find socioeconomic status ( SES ) so broad a label that it is almost useless catch all category for whatever data you actually want to capture? Even the abstract basically makes very generic: "Much of a child’s environment is captured by socioeconomic status (SES), a summary measure usually comprised of household income, parental education, and neighborhood quality" Am I completely misunderstanding how it is used?
- 082349872349872 4y ago(a) considering maps out, it's obviously not "almost useless" because it generally has high predictive ability for various outcomes. (b) considering maps in, it's not "catch all" because in the US context, Zip+4 generally suffices to predict household income, parental education, and (obviously) neighbourhood quality. (I suspect it's spelled SES because the US is unwilling to admit that they are not all middle-class)
- europeanguy 4y agoYou can see what wikipedia says about it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_status https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_status Personally, whenever I read "socioeconomic status" I mentally replace with "how much money they got". (Yes, I know, socioeconomic status includes assets other than money, But money can easily be converted to a lot of things. That's why people like it.)
- mattnewton 4y agoI think in other countries it would be called “class” which encompasses those other advantages like family names or titles, but in the US “money” is probably good enough most of the time, and we tend to even convert those other assets to approximate dollar values for a nice tidy “net worth” figure.
- dragonwriter 4y ago> Does anyone find socioeconomic status ( SES ) so broad a label that it is almost useless catch all category for whatever data you actually want to capture? Its true that SES is operationalized somewhat differently in different studies, so that conclusions about it one study may not transfer directly to what is studied under that name in another study. The operationalization here (and this is not uncommon) is, additionally, using summary measure is itself somewhat obfuscatory unless the summary measure captures a complex relationship distinct from the individual contributions of the components, which does not clearly seem to be the case here. I wouldn’t say that SES is useless, but I would say that it seems to have no utility here separate from studying the individual components of that are used in operationalizing it.
- europeanguy 4y agoTo me this is symptomatic of a poorly functioning capitalist system. In contrast, a well functioning capitalist system would rewards the smartest, most capable, hardest working people. So if school makes you more intelligent but the system doesn't reward you, something is off.
- kome 4y agothat the reward system is broken is clear to everybody. but i am not sure you can build a "well functioning capitalist system" given the previous 400 years of experiments with it.
- swader999 4y agoExperiments with the other systems have killed millions. What we have now is a well functioning oligarchy.
- Muromec 4y agoInstilling communism through means of genocide and oppression killed people. So maybe someone will find a nicer way to dispossess people that everyone will like. Whi knows
- 082349872349872 4y ago1984 is interesting: to read Goldstein, the oligarchy ("inner party") is relatively benign (it is definitely not based on ethnicity, and is merit based, hence —in principle— not hereditary either) yet to believe Winston (a narrator who admitted his willingness to commit domestic terrorism!), it is still dysfunctional, because apparently the oligarchs believe enjoying their own good fortune doesn't suffice: others must suffer misfortune. (to understand this book properly I think it helps to recall that Orwell was on scholarship ["outer party"] to bring up the exam scores at a boarding school that otherwise catered to the rich and thick [cream of society — "inner party" sprogs]; many scenes in 1984 can be traced back to the posthumously-published Such Such Were the Joys)
- godelski 4y ago
- Idiot_in_Vain 4y agoRead the title as "Scrolling improves intelligence" and thought a new generation is rising where every second will be an Einstein. I seem to remember another study showing inteligence in only dependant on genetics, and in long term not affected by schooling and other socioeconomic factors - think they studied twins raised by different families.
- lynx23 4y agoThis study seems like wishful thinking science. Personal experience is very much to the contrary. I actually dont know anyone who was made particularily intelligent by their school. All the intelligent examples I know already came with a head start.
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- godelski 4y agoYou knew all the smart people you now know since they were kids? And you yourself was a smart kid that could accurately judge intelligence even at a young age? That's all quite impressive especially since most humans have memories that are not at all accurate and we can remember things that never happened.
- lynx23 4y ago[flagged]
- AussieWog93 4y agoSpeak to some older immigrants who grew up in a rural area of some poor country where schooling just wasn't a thing. There's so many basic concepts they just don't grasp, and even when explained they still don't seem to understand. That's not to say they're incapable of anything (if anything, their well-honed gut instincts outperform some modern disembodied intellectuals), there's just huge holes in the types of formal thinking that show up on IQ tests.
- lynx23 4y agoI dont have to speak to "imigrants who grew up in poor countries", we have enough simple people in rural areas who never developed any kind of critical thinking, still, they all went through the same school system. After all, we have mandatory schooling since roughly 150 years.
- zeristor 4y agoI was listening to an interesting podcast about Alzheimer’s. https://theconversation.com/how-a-study-which-began-just-after-the-end-of-the-second-world-war-is-discovering-clues-to-alzheimers-uncharted-brain-podcast-part-1-194201 https://theconversation.com/how-a-study-which-began-just-aft... Seemingly more schooling, healthy blood pressure in one’s 40s, and healthy BMI seemed to correlate with reduced chance of Alzheimer’s in 70s
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- olivermarks 4y agoChildren are sponges for knowledge, but while still very impressionable pre puberty they are also vulnerable to programming/brainwashing....whether dogmatic religion, nationalism/globalization, racialization of everything etc etc. The whole home schooling trend of children has grown in leaps and bounds by parents who don't want their children to be exposed 'learning' they deem to be unhealthy for their kids. ' In an ideal world schooling could improve 'intelligence' by helping children to think for themselves objectively but it's a common trope that school is just programming wrapped up as 'learning'.
- phreeza 4y agoIs it really true that children are so easily indoctrinated? In my experience there is a decent probability that they rebel against whatever the dominant ideology is when they are growing up once they enter puberty.
- kupopuffs 4y agoThe rebellion itself can be learned I'd say kids are both malleable and at the same time grow to be incredibly resilient. I personally do not have kids.
- AnonCoward42 4y ago> Is it really true that children are so easily indoctrinated? It certainly is. You can easily single out rebellious children under a certain doctrine. You can reduce the numbers just by punishment. They might still be rebellious afterwards, but they are also isolated in society as a result also adding to the spiral. It is hard to deconstruct the frame you are living in.
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- kbelder 4y agoAmong teenagers and 20-somethings, there's a weird culture where they feel they are rebelling by accepting wholeheartedly the ideology they're being taught. It feels very different than earlier decades.
- dnissley 4y agoIIRC (from reading Caplan's case against education) this outcome in itself is not terribly controversial. What may be is the idea that educational IQ gains are sticky beyond the period of schooling. E.g. school raises IQ while you're in it, but over time you lose those gains and at some point they disappear completely.
- ImaCake 4y agoThe key trick here is that they do a statistical test for interaction [0] which basically asks "does one variable influence the effect a second variable has on the outcome?". This doesn't immediately trip my BS sensor, but I haven't read past the abstract. This could easily be tripped up by poor data or bad modelling. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interaction_(statistics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interaction_(statistics)
- retskrad 4y agoGenius authors, filmmakers, musicians and other talented people are really interesting me. Can scientists take a 20-40 year old person with an average upbringing and create the next Picasso or Stanley Kubrick by showing and training them on a ton of art? Almost like the data that was used to train ChatGPT in a way. Or do human brains only soak up information like a sponge when we’re 0-5 year old and it’s impossible for an adult to go from average to genius?
- escapedmoose 4y agoI’m not sure how you define genius, but there are some damn brilliant painters who didn’t start until they had reached retirement age. So many that it’s practically a cliche.
- nullsense 4y ago>it’s impossible for an adult to go from average to genius? Pretty much.
- 331c8c71 4y ago> Can scientists take a 20-40 year old person with an average upbringing and create the next Picasso or Stanley Kubrick by showing and training them on a ton of art? Don't you think "showing and training" sounds very passive? No one can train a dispassionate person to become a proficient artist let alone genius. And scientists are unlikely to be particularly good at teaching art.
- comfypotato 4y agoMy education was engineering, but I took plenty of science classes as accessories to some neuroscience research I did. Also, the art school was next to the engineering department, and I took advantage of this by taking art classes all along as an outlet for stress. I had multiple memorable conversations (anecdotal evidence, and potentially b.s. at that) with very successful folks in both pure art and pure science that suggested they are actually very similar at a fundamental level. I say pure in that these folks had spent lifetimes producing public art projects or research from grants. They only taught as a byproduct of their passions. The idea-generation phase of both industries essentially runs along the same tracts/fascicles/etc. in the brain. I even had a more eccentric professor suggest that the cutting edge of the art world actually mirrors that of science in that the same discoveries are conceptualized in tandem.
- mortehu 4y agoThis is not a randomized trial. They cite work based on arbitrary school year cutoff dates, but parents do take action based on those dates, e.g. by holding their kids back one year or choosing a different school with different cutoff dates. The result is that due to parent intervention, more intelligent kids are in higher grades (i.e. have more schooling) relative to their age.
- MrPatan 4y agoAnd the study was produced by overschooled people
- amadeuspagel 4y agoDoing one kind of test improves your performance on other kinds of tests like playing one ego shooter improves your performance in other ego shooters. Different tests like different ego shooters have similar mechanics, similar UIs.
- bigDinosaur 4y agoI assume you meant 'first person shooter' but are using a literal translation which is amusing :)
- amadeuspagel 4y agoEgo shooter is a common word in german, and I did not know that it wasn't used in english. I recently saw a post on HN about using stylometry to find users with alternate accounts[1], with some comments saying that it didn't work for them, because english wasn't their native language, and it was simply finding other people who probably also had the same native language. I've been wondering how exactly that worked, and I guess this kind of thing is an example. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33755016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33755016
- nullsense 4y agoMy understanding is this: The greater the amount of working memory you have, the more efficient your cognition is. You can reach more conclusions / insights, and connect more dots per unit time than those with poorer working memory. Hence fluid intelligence mediates the rate at which crystalized intelligence can be acquired. The more crystalized intelligence you acquire, the more efficiently you can make use of the working memory you have as you have concepts that effectively compress a tonne of information you would otherwise have to load in and out of working memory if you didn't have them. Regardless of other factors, that particular feedback loop is going to operate the same for everyone, right?
- bloqs 4y ago100% correct
- comfypotato 4y agoI hope both of you are appropriately accurate here. This comment has influenced me! I appreciate the summary of this concept of intelligence. I say this with no ill will, just purely out of interest: can you provide a source or relevant further reading? Obviously I can start the search myself, but I ask because your targeting will be much better.
- nullsense 4y ago"How Intelligence Happens" was a pretty good read.
- karp773 4y agoGenerally, yes. But there's also a factor of speed. Some people are naturally faster than others.
- nullsense 4y agoI've not dug into the primary research on this particular aspect, but I seem to recall reading in a second source at least something to the effect that physical size of the neurons is also a factor!
- LatteLazy 4y agoNot trying to be edgy but... The older I get the less important intelligence seems to me. If I ever have kids, I would rather they were emotionally/psychologically stable (something that seems mildly inversely proportional to intelligence). Charisma, Prettiness (for guys and girls and anyone else), Sociability and Confidence all seem much more useful both for work and life in general.
- zug_zug 4y agoCan somebody explain how they determined it was schooling itself, and not just aging, that improved intelligence each year? I tried to read this but I found it denser than the average paper.
- vannevar 4y agoI think what this is saying is that education does not disproportionately benefit people of high intelligence nor people of low intelligence, regardless of the pre-existing genetic or socioeconomic factors that determined their intelligence. Is that a correct interpretation?