3 ms·

Mostly I just want to make the argument below to see how/if you'll respond. In general, I just don't think you're arguing in good faith. The reason IQ isn't stu

by sfblah 4y ago

Mostly I just want to make the argument below to see how/if you'll respond. In general, I just don't think you're arguing in good faith. The reason IQ isn't studied isn't because it's "not useful." It's because people who study it are systematically shunned by academia. But here's the main point I want to make: I find it sort of amazing that folks will twist themselves into pretzels to argue that IQ's genetic basis shouldn't be the prior. The majority of smart people I've talked to in life had a similar experience to me growing up. Namely, they remember very well just being "better" at school than other kids, even though their environments were similar and they didn't honestly try that hard. I specifically remember teachers lauding me in 2nd grade for how hard I worked, when honestly I was and am pretty lazy. I remember very well sitting in class in 7th grade, watching the same presentations by the teacher that all the other kids watched and then with zero studying getting 100% correct on the test while many of them struggled. And I remember going to many of their houses and seeing that their home environments were either equivalent or superior to mine. Athletic kids have a very similar experience, by the way, when it comes down to running or jumping or other sports. They're just "better". At base, the environmental argument boils down to something like this: "Anyone in the world could have beaten Magnus Carlsen to become world chess champion if they'd just had the proper environment." Such an argument is so obviously preposterous that the prior should absolutely be that it's false. Another point: We already know IQ is genetic. Witness that the housecat and humans have vastly different IQs, and no cat will ever perform better on an IQ test than the median human. Again, the prior obviously should be that IQ is genetic. And again, note that I'm simply pointing out what the PRIOR should be. Thus, it should be on YOU to provide evidence that the prior is wrong. It is insufficient to simply argue that not enough evidence exists to prove IQ is genetic, because that is the prior. The burden of proof is on YOU. Your arguments boil down to simply gaslighting smart people that their life experience is somehow completely inaccurate, unrepresentative, or misinterpreted. If you really are making it in good faith, it leaves me wondering what in your life experience leads you to believe the genetic explanation should not be the prior. Did you do poorly in school? Did you grow up in such a privileged environment that you can't believe that people like me exist?

tptacek 4y ago
You've gone from claiming that the scientific evidence is overwhelming that IQ is genetic (based on your confusion about the term "heritability") to a new claim that we should all just assume it's genetic because, like, common sense or something. You don't get to use the term "gaslighting".
- sfblah 4y ago
  You're advancing a theory that it's not genetic. I've offered a counterexample. I can offer others. For example, Kim Peek. Are you seriously going to argue that any person could be like him if they were just raised in the right environment? You're absolutely gaslighting.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    I'm in fact not doing that, and have said so repeatedly. My position in this thread is that you are wrong, and have produced faulty evidence for your arguments. It's not that I have a countervailing argument. I don't care about the rest of your theories.
    - sfblah 4y ago
      Fine. I think the prior should be it's genetic. You (I think) think it shouldn't. I think we can probably leave it there. Just to be crystal clear what I mean by "prior": I'm talking about the null hypothesis. So, if you were an ancient Greek studying physics, the prior should be that gravity is a force/acceleration pointing downward, not upward. Yes, someone could argue gravity points upward, but such a claim would require evidence. Arguing it points downward imposes no such requirement, because it's obvious to any casual observer. IQ is obviously genetic, because cats have lower IQs than humans and cats have significantly different genetics than humans.
runarberg 4y ago
> Your arguments boil down to simply gaslighting smart people that their life experience is somehow completely inaccurate, unrepresentative, or misinterpreted. So what if I am? Smart people aren’t owed any special place in the theory of cognition. High IQ does not need to be at the center of anything. You shouldn’t be treated as special, because you aren’t (or more accurately, what makes you special is not your intelligence, and certainly not your IQ). Magnus Carlsen intelligence is not what makes Magnus Carslon special, what makes him special is an extraordinary skill in a very specialized sport. He has spent decades perfecting this skill. Yes, he might have some preconditions which he inherited that makes it particularly easy for him to acquire these skills, skills like the ability to remember a large opening repertoire, to visualize a large number of available positions in a short time, to search among these positions and select which ones are more likely to lead to a favorable positions, etc. Cognitive scientists study these preconditions, and most assume there is a level of inheritance to many if not all of them. However most (but not all) cognitive scientists don’t group all of these skills together and call it intelligence, they simply study what they see. Also if you search on google scholar you may find somebody looking for the heritability factor of a particular visualization skill, however most of the field simply doesn’t care, because it doesn’t matter in most theories of behavior. Whatever you call intelligence is bound to be arbitrarily picked from a much larger set of cognitive skills. Now Spearman believed these all correlated in what he called general intelligence, but psychometricians have been trying to prove him right for now a hundred years. The scientific community at large remains unconvinced (although there was a period where his theory was more popular and more accepted). I think the simpler explanation is true that if there is a correlation, it is superficial, and more likely arises because practicing one skill has implication in others, just like practicing for a 100 m dash, makes you better at long jump, not because there exists this platonic ideal of general intelligence that you are born with and makes you superior to other humans. EDIT: I also want to prove you wrong in your believe that IQ isn’t studied because IQ research is shunned, it is studied plenty, has been for over a century, it is just that the research—like a b-plot in a bad movie—didn’t go anywhere. Entering the search term: “IQ Cognitive Psychology” yields over 700 000 results, the top one being a study from 2019 that has been cited 60 times so far. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211368119300658 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22113... IQ studies still get plenty of attention, in my opinion they get too much attention. I’m sure Sabrina Hofstetter feels the same way about string theory.

by sfblah 4y ago

tptacek 4y ago

You've gone from claiming that the scientific evidence is overwhelming that IQ is genetic (based on your confusion about the term "heritability") to a new claim that we should all just assume it's genetic because, like, common sense or something. You don't get to use the term "gaslighting".

sfblah 4y ago
You're advancing a theory that it's not genetic. I've offered a counterexample. I can offer others. For example, Kim Peek. Are you seriously going to argue that any person could be like him if they were just raised in the right environment? You're absolutely gaslighting.
- tptacek 4y ago
  I'm in fact not doing that, and have said so repeatedly. My position in this thread is that you are wrong, and have produced faulty evidence for your arguments. It's not that I have a countervailing argument. I don't care about the rest of your theories.
  - sfblah 4y ago
    Fine. I think the prior should be it's genetic. You (I think) think it shouldn't. I think we can probably leave it there. Just to be crystal clear what I mean by "prior": I'm talking about the null hypothesis. So, if you were an ancient Greek studying physics, the prior should be that gravity is a force/acceleration pointing downward, not upward. Yes, someone could argue gravity points upward, but such a claim would require evidence. Arguing it points downward imposes no such requirement, because it's obvious to any casual observer. IQ is obviously genetic, because cats have lower IQs than humans and cats have significantly different genetics than humans.

runarberg 4y ago

> Your arguments boil down to simply gaslighting smart people that their life experience is somehow completely inaccurate, unrepresentative, or misinterpreted. So what if I am? Smart people aren’t owed any special place in the theory of cognition. High IQ does not need to be at the center of anything. You shouldn’t be treated as special, because you aren’t (or more accurately, what makes you special is not your intelligence, and certainly not your IQ). Magnus Carlsen intelligence is not what makes Magnus Carslon special, what makes him special is an extraordinary skill in a very specialized sport. He has spent decades perfecting this skill. Yes, he might have some preconditions which he inherited that makes it particularly easy for him to acquire these skills, skills like the ability to remember a large opening repertoire, to visualize a large number of available positions in a short time, to search among these positions and select which ones are more likely to lead to a favorable positions, etc. Cognitive scientists study these preconditions, and most assume there is a level of inheritance to many if not all of them. However most (but not all) cognitive scientists don’t group all of these skills together and call it intelligence, they simply study what they see. Also if you search on google scholar you may find somebody looking for the heritability factor of a particular visualization skill, however most of the field simply doesn’t care, because it doesn’t matter in most theories of behavior. Whatever you call intelligence is bound to be arbitrarily picked from a much larger set of cognitive skills. Now Spearman believed these all correlated in what he called general intelligence, but psychometricians have been trying to prove him right for now a hundred years. The scientific community at large remains unconvinced (although there was a period where his theory was more popular and more accepted). I think the simpler explanation is true that if there is a correlation, it is superficial, and more likely arises because practicing one skill has implication in others, just like practicing for a 100 m dash, makes you better at long jump, not because there exists this platonic ideal of general intelligence that you are born with and makes you superior to other humans. EDIT: I also want to prove you wrong in your believe that IQ isn’t studied because IQ research is shunned, it is studied plenty, has been for over a century, it is just that the research—like a b-plot in a bad movie—didn’t go anywhere. Entering the search term: “IQ Cognitive Psychology” yields over 700 000 results, the top one being a study from 2019 that has been cited 60 times so far. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211368119300658 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22113... IQ studies still get plenty of attention, in my opinion they get too much attention. I’m sure Sabrina Hofstetter feels the same way about string theory.