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The heritability of IQ is very well established, usually estimated in the 50-80% range. You are fighting an uphill battle here because even if people haven’t s

The heritability of IQ is very well established, usually estimated in the 50-80% range. You are fighting an uphill battle here because even if people haven’t seen the scientific evidence this effect is so strong that virtually everybody has seen anecdotal evidence of high IQ parents having high IQ children, but just seem to assert a very heterodox and counter-intuitive position without further elaboration. It is incredibly arguable if during an obesity crisis if population wide health is actually improving and if population wide health isn’t improving that could certainly contribute to lower IQ. We’re also seeing population wide declines of health in other ways like sperm count. Food is becoming less nutritious as soil depletes. Our fish stocks being about to collapse is going to be another hit against brain health as omega 3s will become rarer in the diet.

Apocryphon 4y ago
Thoughts on this post on the accuracy of IQ? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29798887 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29798887
- faeriechangling 4y ago
  I find it interesting because I did REALLY badly on oral tests. On the WISC-III I was doing extremely badly on the test until the examiner allowed me to write down my answers instead of giving them verbally and my measured IQ shot up like two standard deviations. I've been as far as 3 standard deviations apart in psychiatrist administered IQ tests, and my best and worst results in any given IQ test have also been about 3 standard deviations apart. My biggest theory is that I'm bottlenecked by how I both take in and communicate the information, I'm not very good at listening orally nor am I very good at communicating with my voice nor can I write very fast with a pencil. Not shockingly I was diagnosed with multiple learning disabilities and it's my opinion and the opinion of one psychologist I had that IQ testing is neither a reliable nor valid means of testing my intelligence. I think the point being made more generally about IQ tests testing the wrong things is very valid and I do agree with it, but it extends beyond just IQ testing, it also raises questions about standardised academic testing. What I will point out though that any rebalancing of IQ tests or standardised tests at this point is likely to become an intensely political affair because these tests are used to justify gatekeeping access to status and societal resources, and any new tests would necessarily be far worse researched than existing tests, so I wouldn't expect current IQ testing methodology to be upended any time soon.
runarberg 4y ago
I’m not fighting an uphill battle. Ever since The Bell Curve came out, there has been a slow but steady distancing of both psychological research and policy makers from the whole field of IQ research. Modern psychology couldn’t care less about on the heritability factor of IQ, and most policy makers don’t want to touch it with a 10 foot pole. Heck the SAT has even been renamed as they don’t want to be affiliated with anything resembling IQ any more. The heritability of IQ is only well established within true believers of a pseudo-science tightly linked with the eugenics movement. Most psychologists today believe that the supposed heritability was observed because of bias within the research. And given the people who were doing these research in the 1970s and the 1980s, and their motivation for doing those, there is no question on what these biases were. Some of the researchers went so went quite far in bending the data such that it would fit their narrow—and racist—world view. They tried really hard to define intelligence such that it would make rich white people smarter, they were regrettably successful for far to long, but ultimately failed. Your anecdotal evidence of high IQ parents (ugh!) having high IQ children is the same anecdotal evidence that sociologists have been describing for decades that high SES parents have high SES children, and is the main reason for why parents with high SAT scores are likely to have children with high SAT scores. What IQ researchers discovered was basically the same thing that Marx described in 1867, class, however the eugenics were no communists, and instead of providing the simpler explanation, that society rewards the ruling elite, and wealth inherits, the eugenics went all conspiratorial and blamed other races for their perceived decline in society.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- sfblah 4y ago
  The following is my opinion, based on my research: * IQ is real, measurable and heritable. The evidence for this is overwhelming. * Nobody argues about the broad heritability of other human traits such as hair/eye color, height, athletic ability and the like. * The argument over IQ is a consequence of terrible historical experiences with eugenics and racial discrimination. Many have adopted the quasi-religious viewpoint that IQ is not heritable to sidestep the discussion. * As a consequence, social policy resembles the cycles and epicycles of Ptolemy's cosmology. Namely, all manner of social, economic and historical outcomes which are explained parsimoniously by understanding IQ as heritable are instead attributed to a Rube-Goldberg machine of racism, class warfare and the like. * Accepting IQ as heritable does not, in an enlightened society, require acceptance of racism or classism, any more than people are forced to discriminate against those who, say, are genetically weaker athletes due to low relative VO2 levels. * Social policy could be enhanced and better targeted by targeting those at the lower end of the IQ curve with subsidies such as basic income. * Accepting IQ as real, heritable and measurable represents one of the only paths out of the present morass of corrupt political patronage programs around specific groups, just as rejection of Ptolemy's worldview enabled turning away from the demon-haunted world of religion.
snowwrestler 4y ago
“Heritability” may or may not have anything to do with genetics or biology. For example socioeconomic status and proximity to zip code are also heritable.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > “Heritability” may or may not have anything to do with genetics or biology. For example socioeconomic status and proximity to zip code Twin studies [1]. Different parents, socioeconomic statuses, possibly countries. Sustained significant statistical effects. That’s the genetic component of intelligence. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/mp2014105 https://www.nature.com/articles/mp2014105 first four references
  - snowwrestler 4y ago
    Twin studies provide evidence that there is a biological component to intelligence. They do not tell us how much more biologically likely it is for high-IQ parents to produce high-IQ kids—which is usually what people mean by the “heritability” of IQ. In plain English: the twin studies show us how similar twins are, but they don’t tell us how true the movie Idiocracy is.
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > do not tell us how much more biologically likely it is for high-IQ parents to produce high-IQ kids "Individual differences in intelligence tend to cluster in families" [1]. There are studies which include "parents in a twin design." They found "no significant shared environmental influence [between the adoptive and non-adoptive children]: all variance could be explained by additive genetic factors and environmental factors that are not shared by children raised in the same family" with "significant genetic transmission for intelligence...found at all ages" (§ 1.3). [1] https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=b3f170a4f2e7699a40df303846d69774bbf6b5b1 https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&d...
      - 4y ago

Apocryphon 4y ago

Thoughts on this post on the accuracy of IQ? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29798887 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29798887

faeriechangling 4y ago
I find it interesting because I did REALLY badly on oral tests. On the WISC-III I was doing extremely badly on the test until the examiner allowed me to write down my answers instead of giving them verbally and my measured IQ shot up like two standard deviations. I've been as far as 3 standard deviations apart in psychiatrist administered IQ tests, and my best and worst results in any given IQ test have also been about 3 standard deviations apart. My biggest theory is that I'm bottlenecked by how I both take in and communicate the information, I'm not very good at listening orally nor am I very good at communicating with my voice nor can I write very fast with a pencil. Not shockingly I was diagnosed with multiple learning disabilities and it's my opinion and the opinion of one psychologist I had that IQ testing is neither a reliable nor valid means of testing my intelligence. I think the point being made more generally about IQ tests testing the wrong things is very valid and I do agree with it, but it extends beyond just IQ testing, it also raises questions about standardised academic testing. What I will point out though that any rebalancing of IQ tests or standardised tests at this point is likely to become an intensely political affair because these tests are used to justify gatekeeping access to status and societal resources, and any new tests would necessarily be far worse researched than existing tests, so I wouldn't expect current IQ testing methodology to be upended any time soon.

runarberg 4y ago

I’m not fighting an uphill battle. Ever since The Bell Curve came out, there has been a slow but steady distancing of both psychological research and policy makers from the whole field of IQ research. Modern psychology couldn’t care less about on the heritability factor of IQ, and most policy makers don’t want to touch it with a 10 foot pole. Heck the SAT has even been renamed as they don’t want to be affiliated with anything resembling IQ any more. The heritability of IQ is only well established within true believers of a pseudo-science tightly linked with the eugenics movement. Most psychologists today believe that the supposed heritability was observed because of bias within the research. And given the people who were doing these research in the 1970s and the 1980s, and their motivation for doing those, there is no question on what these biases were. Some of the researchers went so went quite far in bending the data such that it would fit their narrow—and racist—world view. They tried really hard to define intelligence such that it would make rich white people smarter, they were regrettably successful for far to long, but ultimately failed. Your anecdotal evidence of high IQ parents (ugh!) having high IQ children is the same anecdotal evidence that sociologists have been describing for decades that high SES parents have high SES children, and is the main reason for why parents with high SAT scores are likely to have children with high SAT scores. What IQ researchers discovered was basically the same thing that Marx described in 1867, class, however the eugenics were no communists, and instead of providing the simpler explanation, that society rewards the ruling elite, and wealth inherits, the eugenics went all conspiratorial and blamed other races for their perceived decline in society.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sfblah 4y ago
The following is my opinion, based on my research: * IQ is real, measurable and heritable. The evidence for this is overwhelming. * Nobody argues about the broad heritability of other human traits such as hair/eye color, height, athletic ability and the like. * The argument over IQ is a consequence of terrible historical experiences with eugenics and racial discrimination. Many have adopted the quasi-religious viewpoint that IQ is not heritable to sidestep the discussion. * As a consequence, social policy resembles the cycles and epicycles of Ptolemy's cosmology. Namely, all manner of social, economic and historical outcomes which are explained parsimoniously by understanding IQ as heritable are instead attributed to a Rube-Goldberg machine of racism, class warfare and the like. * Accepting IQ as heritable does not, in an enlightened society, require acceptance of racism or classism, any more than people are forced to discriminate against those who, say, are genetically weaker athletes due to low relative VO2 levels. * Social policy could be enhanced and better targeted by targeting those at the lower end of the IQ curve with subsidies such as basic income. * Accepting IQ as real, heritable and measurable represents one of the only paths out of the present morass of corrupt political patronage programs around specific groups, just as rejection of Ptolemy's worldview enabled turning away from the demon-haunted world of religion.

snowwrestler 4y ago

“Heritability” may or may not have anything to do with genetics or biology. For example socioeconomic status and proximity to zip code are also heritable.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> “Heritability” may or may not have anything to do with genetics or biology. For example socioeconomic status and proximity to zip code Twin studies [1]. Different parents, socioeconomic statuses, possibly countries. Sustained significant statistical effects. That’s the genetic component of intelligence. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/mp2014105 https://www.nature.com/articles/mp2014105 first four references
- snowwrestler 4y ago
  Twin studies provide evidence that there is a biological component to intelligence. They do not tell us how much more biologically likely it is for high-IQ parents to produce high-IQ kids—which is usually what people mean by the “heritability” of IQ. In plain English: the twin studies show us how similar twins are, but they don’t tell us how true the movie Idiocracy is.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > do not tell us how much more biologically likely it is for high-IQ parents to produce high-IQ kids "Individual differences in intelligence tend to cluster in families" [1]. There are studies which include "parents in a twin design." They found "no significant shared environmental influence [between the adoptive and non-adoptive children]: all variance could be explained by additive genetic factors and environmental factors that are not shared by children raised in the same family" with "significant genetic transmission for intelligence...found at all ages" (§ 1.3). [1] https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=b3f170a4f2e7699a40df303846d69774bbf6b5b1 https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&d...
    - 4y ago