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of course both can be true. i already mentioned that but you are drawing the wrong conclusion. how would telling them that the reason they are not a harvard pr

by em-bee 3y ago

of course both can be true. i already mentioned that but you are drawing the wrong conclusion. how would telling them that the reason they are not a harvard professor is because they don't have the talent for it be any better? what's cruel is that we tell them that they have no hope because their circumstances are beyond their control instead of supporting them with the resources they would need to develop the potential that they do have. all that statement is doing is looking down on them, quite regardless of what factors determine their potential. the problem is that people look for evidence of talent when we still don't know how to measure it. we simply have no idea whether the work in this competition is the result of talent or other factors. but we decide that these kid have talent and that other kids don't, when it's possible that others could create a similar work if they just had been given the opportunity. the discussion about talent gets in the way of helping people to develop. see also the discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38287294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38287294 btw: i am skeptical about twin studies being enough to give us the answer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_study#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_study#Criticism

tptacek 3y ago
The extent to which heritability "proves too much" seems like a particularly fertile source of objections.
strken 3y ago
I agree with the criticisms but don't agree that they invalidate twin studies to the extent that it's reasonable to believe cognitive traits are 100% nurture. Yes, some older studies used odd statistical modelling. Yes, the specific number they put on heritability might be biased by a few factors. Yes, people lie on self-report surveys. Yes, adoption studies are biased by who agrees to sign up. Yes, in utero conditions falsely appear as heritability in twin studies. These are all valid criticisms in that they affect the precision of the measurement, but they're not enough to fully write off heritability as a whole. We've identified SNPs that correlate with IQ and education attainment, too, so there's an obvious mechanism. I think it's better to tell people the truth: achievement is a murky blend of nature and nurture interacting together, the factors seem to be important in different proportions for different people, and we only understand it imprecisely and at a population level. Further complicating the matter, ability at birth can be broken down into heritability and environmental factors before birth. Our chicken processor probably tried his hardest and can feel good. His daughter can do better if she's lucky and works hard. There's no need to take an extreme view where "talent" (meaning something like potential at birth) must be 0% or 100% of achievement, or to tell that to people, because from what we know it's somewhere in the middle.

by em-bee 3y ago

tptacek 3y ago

The extent to which heritability "proves too much" seems like a particularly fertile source of objections.

strken 3y ago

I agree with the criticisms but don't agree that they invalidate twin studies to the extent that it's reasonable to believe cognitive traits are 100% nurture. Yes, some older studies used odd statistical modelling. Yes, the specific number they put on heritability might be biased by a few factors. Yes, people lie on self-report surveys. Yes, adoption studies are biased by who agrees to sign up. Yes, in utero conditions falsely appear as heritability in twin studies. These are all valid criticisms in that they affect the precision of the measurement, but they're not enough to fully write off heritability as a whole. We've identified SNPs that correlate with IQ and education attainment, too, so there's an obvious mechanism. I think it's better to tell people the truth: achievement is a murky blend of nature and nurture interacting together, the factors seem to be important in different proportions for different people, and we only understand it imprecisely and at a population level. Further complicating the matter, ability at birth can be broken down into heritability and environmental factors before birth. Our chicken processor probably tried his hardest and can feel good. His daughter can do better if she's lucky and works hard. There's no need to take an extreme view where "talent" (meaning something like potential at birth) must be 0% or 100% of achievement, or to tell that to people, because from what we know it's somewhere in the middle.