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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 mak

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.
- tptacek 4y ago
  People say IQ is "heritable" all the time, but it's easy to say that without giving any evidence that one understands what heritability means. Lots of things are heritable and not genetically determined, and there are things that are absolutely genetically determined that aren't really heritable. If you're going to build a whole chain of logic, one that attempts to solve racism somewhere in the middle and ends with the "demon-haunted world of religion", it's useful to clearly define your terms first.
  - sfblah 4y ago
    I was using "heritable" as a synonym for "genetically determined." Thanks for the clarification. To be a bit more specific, it is obviously possible to environmentally lower someone's IQ from their genetic potential. Examples include lead poisoning and denial of basic nutrition. Similarly, you can environmentally prevent someone from being able to run as fast as they might genetically have been able to by injuring their legs in various ways in childhood. in both of those cases, as in all things genetic, expanding the ceiling is a far different matter. There is no known treatment I could have been given to enable me to run a 2 hour marathon. Similarly, there is no known way to cause a 100-IQ person to reliably test at a 140 IQ. That said, progress is being made on artificial intelligence and genetics, so that could all change.
    - runarberg 4y ago
      Now that we agree on what you mean by heritable, can you clarify what you mean by intelligence? In traditional psychometrics intelligence is usually operationally defined in terms of the tests them selves. These tests correlate broadly with SAT scores and we can probably agree that disabilities and environments exists which gives people obvious disadvantage when taking the SATs, and that those people should be accommodated accordingly. Given that you accept the operationally defined term for intelligence, how should we treat group difference in IQ any differently than how we treat (or aspire to treat) group difference in SATs? In other words, why should we care about IQ at all?
      - 4y ago
faeriechangling 4y ago
Twin studies are hard to explain through any means other than genetics I've seen an analysis of them as recently as 2015, not just in the 70s and 80s. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270739/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270739/ >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 No, I've seen people who grew up with low SES but had parents/grandparents who were consistently A students or were employed in prestigious intellectual jobs, and lo and behold, they ended up doing better in things like school than you would expect for somebody of their SES. >Bias, racism I'm just going to turn this around on you. Why should I not believe you're bias and racist and simply want to disprove IQ testing so as to undermine the social position and access to societal resources certain groups have as a result of IQ testing and things like it such as standardised testing? There's plenty of profit in painting certain groups as oppressors whose success is actually just robbery, and not an accident of genetic difference, since this consequently justifies racist measures to correct this inequity. People can benefit from such notions both directly and socially through association with a popular movement. I'm pretty sympathetic to the idea of IQ lacking validity because I can't make strongly convincing arguments that IQ predicts anything besides academic success and it's hard to then argue our measures of academic success aren't themselves arbitrary and disconnected from practical utility. It's arguably too hard and too arbitrary to distill "intelligence" down to a few standardised tests and prove those tests have cross-domain validity. I don't have much sympathy to the idea that IQ is not heritable based on nothing but ad hominem and the idea this position is anti-racist because it's not what I read from the evidence.
pkaye 4y ago
Have these heritability studies been done in other countries where some of these biases might not exist?
- sfblah 4y ago
  There aren't that many, but here's one: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289616300629 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602... It's a twin study. Here's a quote: "Mean IQ scores were modestly higher among those from higher SES backgrounds, but the magnitude of genetic influences on IQ was uniformly high across the range of SES." SES means "socio-economic status". Honestly, the evidence for heritability of IQ is very strong. Arguing against it, in my opinion, borders on arguing that vaccines don't work. I actually understand why people do it (there's a lot of very bad history in how IQ data has been used). But I just think it's more important in the long run to tell the truth and find solutions based on the truth.
  - runarberg 4y ago
    > Arguing against it, in my opinion, borders on arguing that vaccines don't work. This is an interesting opinion. So vaccine research has produced a number of successful trials, the research is keeps furthering more knowledge, we develop new techniques, new models, new successful predictions, and new products which yield more successful trials. I consider this a healthy field of science and engineering. Now how does IQ research fair next to vaccine research. The first IQ test was authored in 1908, not to measure intelligence among populations, but to assess learning disability. Since then IQ researchers have been trying to prove that IQ differences exists among populations. They have created and standardized new types of IQ tests that are supposed to show this difference exists. They have spent the past 100 years doing this, using fancy statistical methods, but have so far failed to convince the other fields of science (especially other fields within psychology), nor have they convinced policy makers (though they were pretty close during the eugenics craze). They have no theory of behavior other then this hypothetical general intelligence. They have no models that predict behavior, they have no products other then their intelligence tests, the tests are constantly criticized, have no successful double blind trials to show for them selves. The techniques are the same as in the 1970s, just plain old pen and paper tests with some factor analysis to spot the correlation they were hoping to spot (some would say, preconditioned or biased to spot). If I were to be generous I would categorize IQ research among string theory as a scientific dead end. They had a theory, it didn’t go anywhere, and now the rest of the field has moved on. However given the history of IQ research and their ties to the eugenics movement, I’m not gonna give them this benefits. I believe IQ research, with the exception of Alfred Binet him self, was always about putting people in racial categories to show that one group was superior to another, with a made up construct they call intelligence.
walkhour 4y ago
> Most psychologists today believe that the supposed heritability was observed because of bias within the research. This is the crux of your comment and its a huge statement. Do you have evidence supporting this claim?
- runarberg 4y ago
  From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ): Although IQ differences between individuals have been shown to have a large hereditary component, it does not follow that disparities in IQ between groups have a genetic basis.[11][12][13][14] The scientific consensus is that genetics does not explain average differences in IQ test performance between racial groups.[15][16][17][18][19][20] And a quick search on Google Scholar: https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0033-295X.108.2.346 https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0033-295X.1... https://web-archive.southampton.ac.uk/cogprints.org/230/1/199712003.html https://web-archive.southampton.ac.uk/cogprints.org/230/1/19...
  - walkhour 4y ago
    > Although IQ differences between individuals have been shown to have a large hereditary component, it does not follow that disparities in IQ between groups have a genetic basis Sure, but this is not the claim I originally quoted. I was taking about heritability, and you're taking now about disparities between groups. Nevertheless it seems you agree the heritability of IQ is well established, which you were denying originally.
    - runarberg 4y ago
      No I don’t agree that heritability of IQ is well established. First of all I do not believe that IQ is a good metric for intelligence, nor that intelligence is a useful scientific construct. Secondly, there are whole subthreads here that go into the nuances of what heritability means for measured IQ. From what I’ve gathered is that findings which assign 50-80% of the variance to inheritance neglect to account for covariance, or use very biased assumptions about G×E correlations or G×E interactions which skewes the results in favor of genetic explanations, i.e. they are biased.
int_19h 4y ago
Do you believe that it is just IQ specifically that's flawed, or the notion of some kind of measurement linked to intelligence in general? If you see the latter as problematic, and any research that incorporates it as flawed, then how do you provide scientific basis for the assertion that intelligence is not at all inheritable? Marx certainly isn't one.
- runarberg 4y ago
  The latter: I believe that any kind of measurement (or theory for that matter) linked to some construct of a general intelligence is fundamentally flawed. I don’t think we can construct a philosophical understanding on what intelligence is, as we are always bound to select an arbitrary set of traits which describes the bias of the researcher more than a useful model of behavior. How do I provide scientific basis for the assertion that intelligence is not at all inheritable? I don’t, but others do. If you believe you can select a set of traits which constitute an intelligent personality, which some researchers do (or rather assume for the sake of argument that it exists), then what you get is a large environmental effect on the supposed intelligence, a large cofactor of environment and inheritance, some genetical factor, but a close to 0 genetic bases for any group differences. This is really a double tier rebuttal which states: Even if you are right (and you are not) that general intelligence exists, and that IQ is a useful measure of general intelligence (which is also false), you are still wrong that there is a genetic basis for any perceived inheritance of this supposed intelligence.

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.

tptacek 4y ago
People say IQ is "heritable" all the time, but it's easy to say that without giving any evidence that one understands what heritability means. Lots of things are heritable and not genetically determined, and there are things that are absolutely genetically determined that aren't really heritable. If you're going to build a whole chain of logic, one that attempts to solve racism somewhere in the middle and ends with the "demon-haunted world of religion", it's useful to clearly define your terms first.
- sfblah 4y ago
  I was using "heritable" as a synonym for "genetically determined." Thanks for the clarification. To be a bit more specific, it is obviously possible to environmentally lower someone's IQ from their genetic potential. Examples include lead poisoning and denial of basic nutrition. Similarly, you can environmentally prevent someone from being able to run as fast as they might genetically have been able to by injuring their legs in various ways in childhood. in both of those cases, as in all things genetic, expanding the ceiling is a far different matter. There is no known treatment I could have been given to enable me to run a 2 hour marathon. Similarly, there is no known way to cause a 100-IQ person to reliably test at a 140 IQ. That said, progress is being made on artificial intelligence and genetics, so that could all change.
  - runarberg 4y ago
    Now that we agree on what you mean by heritable, can you clarify what you mean by intelligence? In traditional psychometrics intelligence is usually operationally defined in terms of the tests them selves. These tests correlate broadly with SAT scores and we can probably agree that disabilities and environments exists which gives people obvious disadvantage when taking the SATs, and that those people should be accommodated accordingly. Given that you accept the operationally defined term for intelligence, how should we treat group difference in IQ any differently than how we treat (or aspire to treat) group difference in SATs? In other words, why should we care about IQ at all?
    - 4y ago

faeriechangling 4y ago

Twin studies are hard to explain through any means other than genetics I've seen an analysis of them as recently as 2015, not just in the 70s and 80s. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270739/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270739/ >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 No, I've seen people who grew up with low SES but had parents/grandparents who were consistently A students or were employed in prestigious intellectual jobs, and lo and behold, they ended up doing better in things like school than you would expect for somebody of their SES. >Bias, racism I'm just going to turn this around on you. Why should I not believe you're bias and racist and simply want to disprove IQ testing so as to undermine the social position and access to societal resources certain groups have as a result of IQ testing and things like it such as standardised testing? There's plenty of profit in painting certain groups as oppressors whose success is actually just robbery, and not an accident of genetic difference, since this consequently justifies racist measures to correct this inequity. People can benefit from such notions both directly and socially through association with a popular movement. I'm pretty sympathetic to the idea of IQ lacking validity because I can't make strongly convincing arguments that IQ predicts anything besides academic success and it's hard to then argue our measures of academic success aren't themselves arbitrary and disconnected from practical utility. It's arguably too hard and too arbitrary to distill "intelligence" down to a few standardised tests and prove those tests have cross-domain validity. I don't have much sympathy to the idea that IQ is not heritable based on nothing but ad hominem and the idea this position is anti-racist because it's not what I read from the evidence.

pkaye 4y ago

Have these heritability studies been done in other countries where some of these biases might not exist?

sfblah 4y ago
There aren't that many, but here's one: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289616300629 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602... It's a twin study. Here's a quote: "Mean IQ scores were modestly higher among those from higher SES backgrounds, but the magnitude of genetic influences on IQ was uniformly high across the range of SES." SES means "socio-economic status". Honestly, the evidence for heritability of IQ is very strong. Arguing against it, in my opinion, borders on arguing that vaccines don't work. I actually understand why people do it (there's a lot of very bad history in how IQ data has been used). But I just think it's more important in the long run to tell the truth and find solutions based on the truth.
- runarberg 4y ago
  > Arguing against it, in my opinion, borders on arguing that vaccines don't work. This is an interesting opinion. So vaccine research has produced a number of successful trials, the research is keeps furthering more knowledge, we develop new techniques, new models, new successful predictions, and new products which yield more successful trials. I consider this a healthy field of science and engineering. Now how does IQ research fair next to vaccine research. The first IQ test was authored in 1908, not to measure intelligence among populations, but to assess learning disability. Since then IQ researchers have been trying to prove that IQ differences exists among populations. They have created and standardized new types of IQ tests that are supposed to show this difference exists. They have spent the past 100 years doing this, using fancy statistical methods, but have so far failed to convince the other fields of science (especially other fields within psychology), nor have they convinced policy makers (though they were pretty close during the eugenics craze). They have no theory of behavior other then this hypothetical general intelligence. They have no models that predict behavior, they have no products other then their intelligence tests, the tests are constantly criticized, have no successful double blind trials to show for them selves. The techniques are the same as in the 1970s, just plain old pen and paper tests with some factor analysis to spot the correlation they were hoping to spot (some would say, preconditioned or biased to spot). If I were to be generous I would categorize IQ research among string theory as a scientific dead end. They had a theory, it didn’t go anywhere, and now the rest of the field has moved on. However given the history of IQ research and their ties to the eugenics movement, I’m not gonna give them this benefits. I believe IQ research, with the exception of Alfred Binet him self, was always about putting people in racial categories to show that one group was superior to another, with a made up construct they call intelligence.

walkhour 4y ago

> Most psychologists today believe that the supposed heritability was observed because of bias within the research. This is the crux of your comment and its a huge statement. Do you have evidence supporting this claim?

runarberg 4y ago
From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ): Although IQ differences between individuals have been shown to have a large hereditary component, it does not follow that disparities in IQ between groups have a genetic basis.[11][12][13][14] The scientific consensus is that genetics does not explain average differences in IQ test performance between racial groups.[15][16][17][18][19][20] And a quick search on Google Scholar: https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0033-295X.108.2.346 https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0033-295X.1... https://web-archive.southampton.ac.uk/cogprints.org/230/1/199712003.html https://web-archive.southampton.ac.uk/cogprints.org/230/1/19...
- walkhour 4y ago
  > Although IQ differences between individuals have been shown to have a large hereditary component, it does not follow that disparities in IQ between groups have a genetic basis Sure, but this is not the claim I originally quoted. I was taking about heritability, and you're taking now about disparities between groups. Nevertheless it seems you agree the heritability of IQ is well established, which you were denying originally.
  - runarberg 4y ago
    No I don’t agree that heritability of IQ is well established. First of all I do not believe that IQ is a good metric for intelligence, nor that intelligence is a useful scientific construct. Secondly, there are whole subthreads here that go into the nuances of what heritability means for measured IQ. From what I’ve gathered is that findings which assign 50-80% of the variance to inheritance neglect to account for covariance, or use very biased assumptions about G×E correlations or G×E interactions which skewes the results in favor of genetic explanations, i.e. they are biased.

int_19h 4y ago

Do you believe that it is just IQ specifically that's flawed, or the notion of some kind of measurement linked to intelligence in general? If you see the latter as problematic, and any research that incorporates it as flawed, then how do you provide scientific basis for the assertion that intelligence is not at all inheritable? Marx certainly isn't one.

runarberg 4y ago
The latter: I believe that any kind of measurement (or theory for that matter) linked to some construct of a general intelligence is fundamentally flawed. I don’t think we can construct a philosophical understanding on what intelligence is, as we are always bound to select an arbitrary set of traits which describes the bias of the researcher more than a useful model of behavior. How do I provide scientific basis for the assertion that intelligence is not at all inheritable? I don’t, but others do. If you believe you can select a set of traits which constitute an intelligent personality, which some researchers do (or rather assume for the sake of argument that it exists), then what you get is a large environmental effect on the supposed intelligence, a large cofactor of environment and inheritance, some genetical factor, but a close to 0 genetic bases for any group differences. This is really a double tier rebuttal which states: Even if you are right (and you are not) that general intelligence exists, and that IQ is a useful measure of general intelligence (which is also false), you are still wrong that there is a genetic basis for any perceived inheritance of this supposed intelligence.