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I think that's a bad comparison, though I see the point you are making. Height is determined by your genes, yet its also affected by your environment during yo

I think that's a bad comparison, though I see the point you are making. Height is determined by your genes, yet its also affected by your environment during your development. Something similar could be said about Intelligence, though as far as I know, in reductionist terms, intelligence has a greater window for development (most of our life), and a lot more plastic than height (which is highly dependent upon your bone structure. Bones also being categorically different to our neural systems and its comprising elements). I don't think it'd be outragous to find that your economic situation affects your developmental goals. Given how it affects how much time you spend on, and opportunities for your personal (in this case intellectual) development.

m3t4man 3y ago
Not to mention the effects of chronic drug use on aforementioned neural systems.
EnigmaFlare 3y ago
> intelligence has a greater window for development Any sources for this? Last I heard, there's nothing that can improve intelligence besides removing temporary impediments. I think people do generally tend to attribute far to many disadvantages to poverty when really poverty is just one of the outcomes of underlying disadvantage like low intelligence and emotional and mental health problems.
- roenxi 3y ago
  Depends what we call 'intelligence'. As far as I know intelligence is remarkably difficult to adjust upwards in the technical sense. But, practically, we can train young people not to do stupid things so they will act more intelligently in the common sense of the word. One fun example might be the anti-usury stance of the Catholics back in the (I'm told) the 12th century. A society that can't charge interest on its debts is a society where people will behave stupidly compared to a society where people can lend money profitably - people will just walk by situations that they can identify as big win-win scenarios and rationally not pursue them. But it isn't linked to individual intelligence as much as how what people are raised to believe.
  - EnigmaFlare 3y ago
    I don't think you can say people were less intelligent because they didn't have access to loans. They could still do other things with it.
  - imtringued 3y ago
    When you were a farmer with a failed harvest, that loan wasn't a win-win, it was a debt trap, because economic growth was hard to come by. In today's fossil fuel powered society, growth is much easier to come by, so the advantages are downright obvious.
    - roenxi 3y ago
      > ... growth is much easier to come by... That doesn't seem like an easy position to defend. In the pre-modern era, the baselines are so small that a 5% growth rate was possible to achieve with even primitive tools. And a smart person could found entire fields of science with a decade of study of common phenomenon. The world was rich with growth opportunities. It'd have been much easier to grow if they'd had social structures that allowed it. The lawmakers at the time just didn't realise how much damage inefficient and poorly organised financial and property systems were doing to the general wellbeing. If nothing else, well developed structures around loans would make it easier for the early societies to discover that fossil fuel was a huge source of growth.
      - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
        "A decade of study" wasn't accessible to many people then, though.
        roenxi 3y ago
        In the context of loans, though? The point of a loan is to enable someone to do something they couldn't do under normal economic constraints. Crop failure could be a matter of literal life and death. I can imagine the most forward-thinking community in a country coming together and funding the smartest guy they've ever heard of to figure out how to stop that. Or any of a number of other growth areas.
- m3t4man 3y ago
  > source? Search up neuroplasticity. > there's nothing that can improve intelligence.. Maybe in other mamals and animals in general, lol. But with humans it's a slightly different story. Our brain stays plastic for quite a while, and said plasticity declines into our "elderhood". However, we can still retain plasticity as long as we maintain intensive learning throughout our lives. Intelligence in humans isn't static, much like ourselves. If it were static, there would be a hard cutoff point where you no longer can/would be extremely hard to learn new things (and it is indeed the case, but much, much later in life), similar to aforementioned non-human mamals and animals. Learning is a process that can be understood and improved upon through self-reflection. Including the process of understanding itself. The way we learn and hence understand can be improved and hence elevate intelligence (granted you fulfil the requirement for being able to reflect on and compress things, much like healthy human beings can). Also, what do YOU mean by intelligence?
  - EnigmaFlare 3y ago
    You're confusing skills with intelligence. Plasticity isn't the ability to increase your intelligence. It's the ability to learn new things. Learning how to learn doesn't make you more intelligent, it just increases your skill at that specific task (learning). I think intelligence is a general ability to solve problems. So improving your skill at solving one type of problem doesn't make you more intelligent because it doesn't increase your general ability to solve all types of problem.
- imtringued 3y ago
  That explains why our university and college students are so poor. They must have low intelligence and emotional and mental health problems. Only the dumbest people make it in educational institutions. Or maybe it's because they immigrated from turkey...
  - EnigmaFlare 3y ago
    That's obviously not what people mean by poverty. Students are only poor for a few years of their lives.

m3t4man 3y ago

Not to mention the effects of chronic drug use on aforementioned neural systems.

EnigmaFlare 3y ago

> intelligence has a greater window for development Any sources for this? Last I heard, there's nothing that can improve intelligence besides removing temporary impediments. I think people do generally tend to attribute far to many disadvantages to poverty when really poverty is just one of the outcomes of underlying disadvantage like low intelligence and emotional and mental health problems.

roenxi 3y ago
Depends what we call 'intelligence'. As far as I know intelligence is remarkably difficult to adjust upwards in the technical sense. But, practically, we can train young people not to do stupid things so they will act more intelligently in the common sense of the word. One fun example might be the anti-usury stance of the Catholics back in the (I'm told) the 12th century. A society that can't charge interest on its debts is a society where people will behave stupidly compared to a society where people can lend money profitably - people will just walk by situations that they can identify as big win-win scenarios and rationally not pursue them. But it isn't linked to individual intelligence as much as how what people are raised to believe.
- EnigmaFlare 3y ago
  I don't think you can say people were less intelligent because they didn't have access to loans. They could still do other things with it.
- imtringued 3y ago
  When you were a farmer with a failed harvest, that loan wasn't a win-win, it was a debt trap, because economic growth was hard to come by. In today's fossil fuel powered society, growth is much easier to come by, so the advantages are downright obvious.
  - roenxi 3y ago
    > ... growth is much easier to come by... That doesn't seem like an easy position to defend. In the pre-modern era, the baselines are so small that a 5% growth rate was possible to achieve with even primitive tools. And a smart person could found entire fields of science with a decade of study of common phenomenon. The world was rich with growth opportunities. It'd have been much easier to grow if they'd had social structures that allowed it. The lawmakers at the time just didn't realise how much damage inefficient and poorly organised financial and property systems were doing to the general wellbeing. If nothing else, well developed structures around loans would make it easier for the early societies to discover that fossil fuel was a huge source of growth.
    - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
      "A decade of study" wasn't accessible to many people then, though.
      - roenxi 3y ago
        In the context of loans, though? The point of a loan is to enable someone to do something they couldn't do under normal economic constraints. Crop failure could be a matter of literal life and death. I can imagine the most forward-thinking community in a country coming together and funding the smartest guy they've ever heard of to figure out how to stop that. Or any of a number of other growth areas.
m3t4man 3y ago
> source? Search up neuroplasticity. > there's nothing that can improve intelligence.. Maybe in other mamals and animals in general, lol. But with humans it's a slightly different story. Our brain stays plastic for quite a while, and said plasticity declines into our "elderhood". However, we can still retain plasticity as long as we maintain intensive learning throughout our lives. Intelligence in humans isn't static, much like ourselves. If it were static, there would be a hard cutoff point where you no longer can/would be extremely hard to learn new things (and it is indeed the case, but much, much later in life), similar to aforementioned non-human mamals and animals. Learning is a process that can be understood and improved upon through self-reflection. Including the process of understanding itself. The way we learn and hence understand can be improved and hence elevate intelligence (granted you fulfil the requirement for being able to reflect on and compress things, much like healthy human beings can). Also, what do YOU mean by intelligence?
- EnigmaFlare 3y ago
  You're confusing skills with intelligence. Plasticity isn't the ability to increase your intelligence. It's the ability to learn new things. Learning how to learn doesn't make you more intelligent, it just increases your skill at that specific task (learning). I think intelligence is a general ability to solve problems. So improving your skill at solving one type of problem doesn't make you more intelligent because it doesn't increase your general ability to solve all types of problem.
imtringued 3y ago
That explains why our university and college students are so poor. They must have low intelligence and emotional and mental health problems. Only the dumbest people make it in educational institutions. Or maybe it's because they immigrated from turkey...
- EnigmaFlare 3y ago
  That's obviously not what people mean by poverty. Students are only poor for a few years of their lives.