4 ms·

Agreed, the visualizations don't sell the story. If you actually take the percentage, it's like 30-50% more likely to have the worse outcome the worse your adv

Agreed, the visualizations don't sell the story. If you actually take the percentage, it's like 30-50% more likely to have the worse outcome the worse your adverse background gets. But on the chart, it's only like an extra line of kids. The absolute number increases don't look like much, but the percentage increase is very high. I think the authors could have done a much better job at highlighting that.

A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
> If you actually take the percentage, it's like 30-50% more likely to have the worse outcome the worse your adverse background gets. I realize that this is a taboo subject, but how much of that is nature and how much is nurture? Low IQ is associated with worse life outcomes, and it's not exactly a problem you can fix by throwing money and resources at it.
- eptcyka 3y ago
  Better environments produce a population with a higher IQ.
  - underlogic 3y ago
    Maybe but you can't teach a Labrador algebra no matter how many treats you feed it. These are aggregate effects of low IQ genetic traits as they play out over generations in our capitalist society. The trauma is a consequence of poverty and bad parenting which is because of low IQ. And don't call me racist. Ask why there was no IQ test line up amongst all that visualized data
    - danans 3y ago
      > The trauma is a consequence of poverty and bad parenting which is because of low IQ You have the primary direction of causality between trauma and IQ reversed. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=childhood+trauma+and+IQ&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=childhood+trauma+and+IQ... Population scale trauma exposure and bad parenting is a result of poverty, social structures, and sometimes wars and conflicts, not something predetermined by genetics.
      - A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
        The IQs of adopted children have next to nothing to do with their environments, and much more to do with the IQs of their birth parents. IQ in general is very strongly heritable. There are several adoption and twin studies that have demonstrated this effect, e.g.: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8513766/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8513766/
        danans 3y ago
        Trauma (physical and emotional) causing reduction in IQ is totally compatible with IQ being in part heritable. Regarding race/ethnicity correlations from the paper you posted: "(McGue et al., 2007; Miller et al., 2012). McGue et al. (2007) reported minimal ethnicity effects in the SIBS sample at intake, which we largely replicate in the current follow-up assessment. While rearing family socioeconomic status and polygenic scores were both moderately higher among Asian offspring (Cohen’s = d .36–.46; p < .01 ), no measure of cognitive ability differed significantly between offspring of different ethnicities. See SI Table S6 for these and other comparisons, along with a discussion of their relevance." Also, the children in that study have not been victims of trauma (or the study has not considered and controlled for it), so it says nothing about that factor in eventual IQ of the individuals studied.
        ToValueFunfetti 3y ago
        It's also compatible with low IQ causing poverty and bad parenting.
        danans 3y ago
        Low IQ doesn't "cause" poverty. Poverty is highly multivariate, and likely dominated by factors having nothing to do with IQ, like structural inequities in health/education access and historical lack of access to asset ownership, and exclusion from access to other vehicles of economic advancement.
        3y ago
- the_sleaze9 3y ago
  Do you have a source for the claim "Low IQ is associated with worse life outcomes"? I've never seen one. In fact it is EQ - emotional intelligence - and not IQ that predicts positive life outcomes most strongly.
  - A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
    For earnings: https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/36853322/Ben_Palmer_Ec_970.pdf https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/36853322/Ben_Pal... Among many others. Even in health and longevity: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.0963-7214.2004.01301001.x https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.0963-7214.2004.01... Besides, low IQ is associated with worse life outcomes even if, as you say, low EQ is most strongly associated with the same. They're not mutually exclusive.
- spyckie2 3y ago
  This is the exact question that this research tries to portray from a data perspective. The narrative is trying to make a claim that nurture is significant. The stats of this research essentially says "slicing the data in a way that highlights differing qualities of nurture shows that nurture has an impact". But it crucially doesn't isolate nurture from nature (which is admittedly very difficult). It doesn't show if the nature side (IQ in this instance) has significant overlaps with the nurture or not. So ultimately we are left guessing. I bet if you did, you would see that IQ indeed is also significant, and the narrative can tell a different story. That's the thing about stats and narratives. They tell a story and leave a bunch of stuff out, so you have to evaluate it yourself. My takeaway is that nurture may play a role, but is not the only thing that determines outcome. Eyeballing the end results, being in the worst category of nurture makes the odds worse for you, not 90/10 worse, but probably closer to 65/35.

A_D_E_P_T 3y ago

> If you actually take the percentage, it's like 30-50% more likely to have the worse outcome the worse your adverse background gets. I realize that this is a taboo subject, but how much of that is nature and how much is nurture? Low IQ is associated with worse life outcomes, and it's not exactly a problem you can fix by throwing money and resources at it.

eptcyka 3y ago
Better environments produce a population with a higher IQ.
- underlogic 3y ago
  Maybe but you can't teach a Labrador algebra no matter how many treats you feed it. These are aggregate effects of low IQ genetic traits as they play out over generations in our capitalist society. The trauma is a consequence of poverty and bad parenting which is because of low IQ. And don't call me racist. Ask why there was no IQ test line up amongst all that visualized data
  - danans 3y ago
    > The trauma is a consequence of poverty and bad parenting which is because of low IQ You have the primary direction of causality between trauma and IQ reversed. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=childhood+trauma+and+IQ&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=childhood+trauma+and+IQ... Population scale trauma exposure and bad parenting is a result of poverty, social structures, and sometimes wars and conflicts, not something predetermined by genetics.
    - A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
      The IQs of adopted children have next to nothing to do with their environments, and much more to do with the IQs of their birth parents. IQ in general is very strongly heritable. There are several adoption and twin studies that have demonstrated this effect, e.g.: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8513766/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8513766/
      - danans 3y ago
        Trauma (physical and emotional) causing reduction in IQ is totally compatible with IQ being in part heritable. Regarding race/ethnicity correlations from the paper you posted: "(McGue et al., 2007; Miller et al., 2012). McGue et al. (2007) reported minimal ethnicity effects in the SIBS sample at intake, which we largely replicate in the current follow-up assessment. While rearing family socioeconomic status and polygenic scores were both moderately higher among Asian offspring (Cohen’s = d .36–.46; p < .01 ), no measure of cognitive ability differed significantly between offspring of different ethnicities. See SI Table S6 for these and other comparisons, along with a discussion of their relevance." Also, the children in that study have not been victims of trauma (or the study has not considered and controlled for it), so it says nothing about that factor in eventual IQ of the individuals studied.
        ToValueFunfetti 3y ago
        It's also compatible with low IQ causing poverty and bad parenting.
        danans 3y ago
        Low IQ doesn't "cause" poverty. Poverty is highly multivariate, and likely dominated by factors having nothing to do with IQ, like structural inequities in health/education access and historical lack of access to asset ownership, and exclusion from access to other vehicles of economic advancement.
        3y ago
the_sleaze9 3y ago
Do you have a source for the claim "Low IQ is associated with worse life outcomes"? I've never seen one. In fact it is EQ - emotional intelligence - and not IQ that predicts positive life outcomes most strongly.
- A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
  For earnings: https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/36853322/Ben_Palmer_Ec_970.pdf https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/36853322/Ben_Pal... Among many others. Even in health and longevity: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.0963-7214.2004.01301001.x https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.0963-7214.2004.01... Besides, low IQ is associated with worse life outcomes even if, as you say, low EQ is most strongly associated with the same. They're not mutually exclusive.
spyckie2 3y ago
This is the exact question that this research tries to portray from a data perspective. The narrative is trying to make a claim that nurture is significant. The stats of this research essentially says "slicing the data in a way that highlights differing qualities of nurture shows that nurture has an impact". But it crucially doesn't isolate nurture from nature (which is admittedly very difficult). It doesn't show if the nature side (IQ in this instance) has significant overlaps with the nurture or not. So ultimately we are left guessing. I bet if you did, you would see that IQ indeed is also significant, and the narrative can tell a different story. That's the thing about stats and narratives. They tell a story and leave a bunch of stuff out, so you have to evaluate it yourself. My takeaway is that nurture may play a role, but is not the only thing that determines outcome. Eyeballing the end results, being in the worst category of nurture makes the odds worse for you, not 90/10 worse, but probably closer to 65/35.