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> We don't actually know which part of the “can barely count change” situation comes from the “brain” compared to the situation people were raises i I think th

> We don't actually know which part of the “can barely count change” situation comes from the “brain” compared to the situation people were raises i I think this too is misleading. We've quantified the heritability of intelligence to quite a significant degree. Twin studies of twins who have been raised apart even shows that outcomes are largely the same despite different environments. Nurture is very much oversold. Basically, as long as you don't traumatize one of two twins they will develop very similarly. > And it's also true in terms of performance: almost any human ought to be able to run a 100m in less than 14 seconds But it's literally not true of all humans, and it won't be true if you drop that below 13 or 12 seconds. Which shows that the specific biomechanics you're born with will influence your natural physical abilities. By extension, we also have natural cognitive abilities with similar consequences. > most people in the “nature” camp of the “nature vs nurture” debate are completely oblivious to the evidence for this I think you're way overselling this claim. "It's all nurture" is a far more common opinion, and far less evidence supports it.

littlestymaar 3y ago
> We've quantified the heritability of intelligence to quite a significant degree Not really. I can't find the link again but there was a survey of cognitive science experts, and the question of inheritability of intelligence is still an open question with lots of conflicting opinions in the academic community. Also, “heritability” doesn't mean what you think it means. > Twin studies of twins who have been raised apart even shows that outcomes are largely the same despite different environments. I'd love to know your source, because I doubt the number of “twins that have been raised apart ” is large enough to be a statically significant cohort even if you could have them all in your study. > But it's literally not true of all humans Yes, some people are born without legs. And some are born with Down syndrome, nobody disputes that. > and it won't be true if you drop that below 13 or 12 seconds. Which shows that the specific biomechanics you're born with will influence your natural physical abilities. By extension, we also have natural cognitive abilities with similar consequences. Nobody questions that either (although 13 secs is probably close to what's reachable by anyone, and 12 by any male), the question is about scale: if you take a random sample of 20 Americans of the right age, you'd have insane disparities, with a significant number not being able to run the distance at all and struggling to finish in less than a minute, despite their completely functional genome. > I think you're way overselling this claim. "It's all nurture" is a far more common opinion, and far less evidence supports it. That's a strawman, a very common one in the mouth of the folks of the ”nature” camp. Nobody argues that it's literally “all nurture”, everyone know that Down syndrome exist. The actual argument is that when in my previous 100m example you have genetics variation with an impact of at best 30%, and a observed variation of more than 500%, it's fair to say nurture is the dominant factor. Doesn't mean nature has no role at all, but it doesn't have an explanatory role: the reason for observed variation is essentially nurture. Stop taking The Bell Curve seriously, this book has been written in bad faith by people with a political agenda (which even stated with a straight face in the book). The reason why these people argue for the genetic impact trumping everything is because they don't like the idea of state intervention to reduce poverty. When you say “these people are poor because they are genetically dumb” then you can claim there's no point in helping them, and without surprise that's exactly what Herrnstein and Murray are advocating in their book…
- naasking 3y ago
  > I'd love to know your source, because I doubt the number of “twins that have been raised apart ” is large enough to be a statically significant cohort even if you could have them all in your study. This, among others: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2218526/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2218526/ > Yes, some people are born without legs. And some are born with Down syndrome, nobody disputes that. I see you haven't debated many blank slaters. The original post I responded to said, "What matters is not the brain but the education they get". That is literally false. > if you take a random sample of 20 Americans of the right age, you'd have insane disparities, with a significant number not being able to run the distance at all and struggling to finish in less than a minute, despite their completely functional genome. Yes, and you will find cases of people who ate basically the same diet and were just as active or sedentary who fall on both sides of that line of finishing/not finishing. Some people will just have a more efficient metabolism, or a more robust skeletal structure, or greater lung capacity, or more type II muscle fibers, and the positive confluence of all of these factors makes a great natural athlete, and a negative confluence on all of them makes for an unlucky individual who will likely never be athletic no matter how hard they try. Which doesn't reduce the importance of being fit, or reduce their human worth, but there's no point denying the obvious. All of these factors fall within natural human variability, and all of these factors are influenced by environment of course, because genetics and environment can't be trivially separated, but the point is that it seems like these factors have multiplicative effects. Such factors exist for cognition as well, and the same conclusions follow. This counts as architecture. > The actual argument is that when in my previous 100m example you have genetics variation with an impact of at best 30%, and a observed variation of more than 500%, it's fair to say nurture is the dominant factor. Nurture is probably the dominant factor in almost all cases throughout the world because of malnutrition. It remains the case that even if you eliminate all environmental disparities, humans will still exhibit considerable variability on all traits. Some will still be natural gifted athletes and naturally gifted mathematicians, and some significant fraction will simply be below average on many categories, and some unlucky few will be below average on all categories, and not due to any obvious deficiency like Down's. I'm not even going to bother addressing the irrelevant comments on Murray and his book, mostly because I haven't even read it. This is all standard statistics and genetics. The original matter I disputed was literally false, as I said above, but the spirit of the comment was that data matters more than architecture. I think that's a very premature conclusion. It would be more correct to say that a) you can equate outcomes by varying data despite the architecture, but b) some architectures scale better (do more with less data), and I would add c) no known architecture scales as well as human cognition yet, which suggests better architectures remain to be found, and this suggests d) that architecture does matter.

littlestymaar 3y ago

> We've quantified the heritability of intelligence to quite a significant degree Not really. I can't find the link again but there was a survey of cognitive science experts, and the question of inheritability of intelligence is still an open question with lots of conflicting opinions in the academic community. Also, “heritability” doesn't mean what you think it means. > Twin studies of twins who have been raised apart even shows that outcomes are largely the same despite different environments. I'd love to know your source, because I doubt the number of “twins that have been raised apart ” is large enough to be a statically significant cohort even if you could have them all in your study. > But it's literally not true of all humans Yes, some people are born without legs. And some are born with Down syndrome, nobody disputes that. > and it won't be true if you drop that below 13 or 12 seconds. Which shows that the specific biomechanics you're born with will influence your natural physical abilities. By extension, we also have natural cognitive abilities with similar consequences. Nobody questions that either (although 13 secs is probably close to what's reachable by anyone, and 12 by any male), the question is about scale: if you take a random sample of 20 Americans of the right age, you'd have insane disparities, with a significant number not being able to run the distance at all and struggling to finish in less than a minute, despite their completely functional genome. > I think you're way overselling this claim. "It's all nurture" is a far more common opinion, and far less evidence supports it. That's a strawman, a very common one in the mouth of the folks of the ”nature” camp. Nobody argues that it's literally “all nurture”, everyone know that Down syndrome exist. The actual argument is that when in my previous 100m example you have genetics variation with an impact of at best 30%, and a observed variation of more than 500%, it's fair to say nurture is the dominant factor. Doesn't mean nature has no role at all, but it doesn't have an explanatory role: the reason for observed variation is essentially nurture. Stop taking The Bell Curve seriously, this book has been written in bad faith by people with a political agenda (which even stated with a straight face in the book). The reason why these people argue for the genetic impact trumping everything is because they don't like the idea of state intervention to reduce poverty. When you say “these people are poor because they are genetically dumb” then you can claim there's no point in helping them, and without surprise that's exactly what Herrnstein and Murray are advocating in their book…

naasking 3y ago
> I'd love to know your source, because I doubt the number of “twins that have been raised apart ” is large enough to be a statically significant cohort even if you could have them all in your study. This, among others: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2218526/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2218526/ > Yes, some people are born without legs. And some are born with Down syndrome, nobody disputes that. I see you haven't debated many blank slaters. The original post I responded to said, "What matters is not the brain but the education they get". That is literally false. > if you take a random sample of 20 Americans of the right age, you'd have insane disparities, with a significant number not being able to run the distance at all and struggling to finish in less than a minute, despite their completely functional genome. Yes, and you will find cases of people who ate basically the same diet and were just as active or sedentary who fall on both sides of that line of finishing/not finishing. Some people will just have a more efficient metabolism, or a more robust skeletal structure, or greater lung capacity, or more type II muscle fibers, and the positive confluence of all of these factors makes a great natural athlete, and a negative confluence on all of them makes for an unlucky individual who will likely never be athletic no matter how hard they try. Which doesn't reduce the importance of being fit, or reduce their human worth, but there's no point denying the obvious. All of these factors fall within natural human variability, and all of these factors are influenced by environment of course, because genetics and environment can't be trivially separated, but the point is that it seems like these factors have multiplicative effects. Such factors exist for cognition as well, and the same conclusions follow. This counts as architecture. > The actual argument is that when in my previous 100m example you have genetics variation with an impact of at best 30%, and a observed variation of more than 500%, it's fair to say nurture is the dominant factor. Nurture is probably the dominant factor in almost all cases throughout the world because of malnutrition. It remains the case that even if you eliminate all environmental disparities, humans will still exhibit considerable variability on all traits. Some will still be natural gifted athletes and naturally gifted mathematicians, and some significant fraction will simply be below average on many categories, and some unlucky few will be below average on all categories, and not due to any obvious deficiency like Down's. I'm not even going to bother addressing the irrelevant comments on Murray and his book, mostly because I haven't even read it. This is all standard statistics and genetics. The original matter I disputed was literally false, as I said above, but the spirit of the comment was that data matters more than architecture. I think that's a very premature conclusion. It would be more correct to say that a) you can equate outcomes by varying data despite the architecture, but b) some architectures scale better (do more with less data), and I would add c) no known architecture scales as well as human cognition yet, which suggests better architectures remain to be found, and this suggests d) that architecture does matter.