11 ms·

Intelligence is not like height

64 points by Schiphol 2y ago

hawkice 2y ago
This article is very invested in constant mockery. As someone who just wanted to understand better, it made it a tedious read.
- deleted 2y ago
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- lnxg33k1 2y ago
  The real joke is quoting psychologist to counterpoint students of races? (I guess anthropologists?) Or quoting psychologists about anything, regardless
- someguydave 2y ago
  The author has a known ideological axe to grind, read his tweets
rowanG077 2y ago
I don't understand the point of this article. That IQ is different then height? Oke great and? I have never seen anyone claim they were the same.
- Kye 2y ago
  I have! We're all singular entities with a narrow lens into the experiences of others, so it's inevitable we'll never encounter things that others encounter way too much.
  - rowanG077 2y ago
    Where do you encounter something like this? Could you point it out to me? If it deserves such a ridiculous rebuttal I would expect to be able to easily find it online.
    - Kye 2y ago
      I don't keep a log of silly eugenics nonsense I encounter and, if nothing else, we probably have the common experience of Google getting worse at this kind of query. Some of it was on HN, at least. If you find it, good luck! I've never had much success rebutting this kind of thing.
  - randomdata 2y ago
    Interesting. How would one even go about expressing the idea that height and intelligence are literally the exact same thing in such a way that someone would want to talk about it?
    - Kye 2y ago
      People are weird. I gave up reasoning with them. "No amount of persistence and practice will let me dunk on Shaq, but high IQ people get dunked on all the time" should be a winner vs people who think genetics determine everything, but neo-eugenicists just don't want to hear it. They have an unreasonable faith in genes.
      - randomdata 2y ago
        > "No amount of persistence and practice will let me dunk on Shaq, but high IQ people get dunked on all the time" should be a winner How so? It seems you're not even speaking their language. Given that in their reality height and IQ are the same thing, your assertion contradicts itself. If no amount of persistence and practice will let you dunk on Shaq, why would tall people get dunked on all the time? Be honest: You haven't really heard anyone claim that height and IQ are the same thing, have you?
        deleted 2y ago
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        Kye 2y ago
        >> "Be honest: You haven't really heard anyone claim that height and IQ are the same thing, have you?" I cannot imagine what your motivation is for making such a bizarre and out of place accusation but I won't participate in whatever it is you're trying to do here.
        randomdata 2y ago
        > I cannot imagine what your motivation is for making such a bizarre and out of place accusation It is abundantly clear that you are not talking about the same thing as the original post. It was a friendly gesture to allow you to go back and clear up whatever misconception you picked up when you read it originally. But, as you have chosen to double down, ... > but I won't participate in whatever it is you're trying to do here. Thing is, you already have. On multiple occasions. Now you are blatantly lying. Is that what happened last time too?
- bumby 2y ago
  It's simply a claim about heritability of intelligence. In other words, "Intelligence isn't inheritable like height" according to the author. There are certainly plenty of people who claim that genetics explains a large part of intelligence.
  - rowanG077 2y ago
    It's very hard to look at heritability and make a genetics conclusion. That's because two people's genes fuse to make a new person. And this process could be chaotic for some traits. So even if trait x is genetic it may not be possible to predict that trait in the children based on the trait in the parents. So it's possible intelligence is genetic even if heritability suggests it isn't. What would be interesting is to look at monozygotic twins. If their IQ scores are more highly correlated then siblings or non-monozygotic twins it's a clear indication intelligence is genetic. But I imagine that the sample set is tiny.
- zzzeek 2y ago
  > I have never seen anyone claim they were the same. well read some of the other comments coming in here. I dare not upmod this article on a site like Hacker News.
- bitwize 2y ago
  It's to debunk the pseudoscientific nonsense -- rooted in racism and white supremacy -- that IQ is a largely genetically determined trait which is then often used to assert that certain ethnic groups are on average smarter or stupider than other ethnic groups.
  - poszlem 2y ago
    White supremacy that claims that asians have the highest IQs. Makes all the sense in the world.
    - rowanG077 2y ago
      Now I was curious and looked it up. They may have a point. Average IQ is highest in asian countries: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-i... and it's not even close.
  - rjsw 2y ago
    More that because IQ isn't genetically determined any data that makes it look like certain ethnic groups are smarter or stupider than other ethnic groups must be wrong. The argument on both sides misses out that the IQ data seen could be a result of other factors that are only indirectly associated with an ethnic group, such as that group being descended from people who were enslaved or who practiced polygamy or who don't prevent first cousins from marrying.
    - randomdata 2y ago
      > More that because IQ isn't genetically determined any data that makes it look like certain ethnic groups are smarter or stupider than other ethnic groups must be wrong. Why must it be wrong? The data is quite clear that a person of a given ethic group is most likely to associate with other people of the same ethnic group. If we are to assume that intelligence is determined by environmental factors, it is quite likely that intelligence will vary by ethnic group due to ethnic groups tending to group around different environments. > such as that group being descended from people who were enslaved or who practiced polygamy or who don't prevent first cousins from marrying. For those who believe that intelligence is heritable, isn't that exactly what they are talking about? I don't see how it is missed.
podgorniy 2y ago
Add a perspective of IQ of separated monozygotic twins https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886924002113#:~:text=The%20first%20longitudinal%20study%20of,the%20effect%20was%20less%20pronounced https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019188692.... --- UPD and this one https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-011-6129-9_19 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-011-6129-9_...
- deleted 2y ago
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- feedforward 2y ago
  These studies are very flawed for several reasons, the main one being "separation" which is a very loose definition of separation. If identical twins grow up together but some time in childhood one is sent to live with a relative, before a later reunification, this is called "separated". It does little to separate nurture from nature. Which makes sense - how many identical twins are separated at birth? Even if they were, it is unlikely one would be sent to Cambridge and one to rural Nepal (one of the lowest places for these IQ studies).
gwervc 2y ago
I read a large part of this article. While it appears to be really serious notably by the vocabulary used, like other articles trying to "debunk" genetic intelligence it pushes too hard its narrative. In particular, two semantic tricks are used. First, the fact that current genetic markers aren't a good prediction for IQ heritability is used as an argument against it. The other likely explanation that our understanding of those markers is widely incomplete is not explored. Second, is the more common "IQ isn't intelligence" trick. Sure, the measure doesn't encompass everything that is making intelligence, but it is still a somewhat interesting proxy as there is a high correlation between intelligence and IQ.
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- bokoharambe 2y ago
  It just seems strange to me that, like in the case of mental illnesses such as depression or Schizophrenia, scientists insist on looking for genes or even GWAS correlations and just aren't finding anything. At a certain point, you have to wonder if something other than genetics accounts for the observed heritability.
  - sillysaurusx 2y ago
    Environmental factors are certainly a part of those. I heard a story of someone being stranded at a lighthouse alone for many months, and he had a break from reality which affected him the rest of his life. It's always seemed interesting that the brain can be damaged by stress rather than physical injury – or that perhaps stress causes physical injury.
  - practicemaths 2y ago
    Maybe it isn't entirely a hardware issue. Maybe it is a software issue. Where do persons get their software from? The environment. Observing how their parents/family/etc interact. I think it's fair to say that communication matters and that communication & experiences will have an affect on peoples perceptions.
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bena 2y ago
I mean, technically, height is not like height either. One's height is not fixed, even in a given day. But I get his point. Kind of. Intelligence is more like speed. Speed can be affected by multiple things. Once you run X fast, it doesn't mean you'll always be able to run that fast. One's top speed is more of a range than a fixed point. And we measure speed all day long. Intelligence is a thing. People have it to different degrees. People often mistake it for knowledge. And IQ is a way to measure at least a part of it.
AmericanChopper 2y ago
The thing that all the moralisation around IQ misses, is that IQ is a serious problem in a lot of places around the world, and turning it into a career-ending taboo topic basically ensures that it goes completely unaddressed. I’ve worked with governments and companies in quite a few developing countries around the world where the average IQs are between 1-2 standard deviations below 100, and that problem is right up there with corruption when it comes to what’s holding these countries back. It would be great if solutions to this problem were being studied, but idiots like this author basically guarantee that will never happen.
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- foobarian 2y ago
  > but idiots like this author basically guarantee that will never happen. Could also be intentional
- darby_nine 2y ago
  The use of IQ is a problem, or are you taking the metric seriously?
- zzzeek 2y ago
  I bet the solution is heavy on "access to clean water, food, security from war and violence, and education", amirite? sure let's fire up the "IQ science" machine to give us reasons to not have to do something so boring as to improve the lives of those living in developing nations.
  - marcuskane2 2y ago
    I think you've misunderstood the comment you're responding to. They're suggesting that to give the optimal assistance to those countries, the IQ of the current adult population needs to be considered as an important variable in the equation, but it's taboo and stigmatized to discuss or acknowledge, so the people get sub-optimal solutions instead. If you want to help some community in need, but you're not allowed to address certain taboo topics- IQ, substance abuse, STDs, domestic abuse, religious beliefs or cultural norms, whatever may be relevant for that group, then you're probably not going to design your programs for assistance in the best way.
A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
The heritability of IQ, from twin studies and via other traditional methods of measuring heritability, is way higher than the author of that article implies. It's as high as 0.8. (80% of variance down to genetics.) See, e.g.: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23919982/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23919982/ If you measure heritability only via SNP studies, it looks a lot smaller. This is what's called the "Missing Heritability Problem." See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_heritability_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_heritability_problem This problem is, as yet, unsolved. There's a lot we don't know about traits that are governed by "many genes of small effect." The author of the article probably knows better and is being disingenuous, but it's flat-out wrong to say that intelligence is only weakly heritable.
- darby_nine 2y ago
  Of course, IQ only weakly correlates to the intelligence that people actually refer to colloquially. It doesn't test for most behaviors that people do consider intelligent, and it tests a bunch of stuff completely unrelated to intelligence (e.g. cultural trivia).
  - jejeyyy77 2y ago
    this isn't accurate at all.
    - adamisom 2y ago
      Remarkable that it starts with "Of course"
      - darby_nine 2y ago
        I mean, who takes IQ seriously? It's a business metric.
    - darby_nine 2y ago
      How do you figure?
rosmax_1337 2y ago
>It turns out molecular genetics has (for lack of a better word) thoroughly debunked [the view that Intelligence is significantly heritable]. There is also a replication crisis in post-modern science. Not to mention, is it even legal, let alone reasonably possible for a study to publish in a real journal the view that Intelligence is heritable, in particular when it concerns race? This topic is arguably the in the top 3 forbidden taboos of western society. In European countries you can face charges of hate speech for even suggesting this, let alone dedicating a life of study regarding a certain conclusion. That an article like this amounts to semantic evasion of the matter, like the post by gwervc here describes, does not give credibility to the side which continues to maintain that evolution has [by all significant measures] stopped at the neck.
- brookst 2y ago
  > In European countries you can face charges of hate speech for even suggesting this Source?
  - randomdata 2y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41368174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41368174
  - rosmax_1337 2y ago
    https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/sormland/hd-tar-upp-fallet-med-tidigare-regionpolitikerns-iq-uttalande https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/sormland/hd-tar-upp-fallet... SVT is the Swedish government news agency. The article describes a politician facing charges for suggesting that South Sudanese people have a lower IQ.
    - DiscourseFan 2y ago
      There's no empirical evidence that South Sudanese people, as a population, have lower IQ, therefore this cannot be interpreted as anything but an attempt to denigrate an entire people
stonethrowaway 2y ago
HN is going to have to address bait topics (and bait “science”) more than bait clicks. The author has an axe to grind with a certain subset of the population and this board is caught in the cross fire.
passion__desire 2y ago
Annecdata : Our primate brains has random number generators to keep our head moving and scanning the environment for threats (there a possible veritasium video on this topic). But my friend in university had a possible (gene?) modification which allowed him to focus on a particular task intently. He could ignore distractions very easily and unsurprisingly he could grok biology and physics textbooks like crazy. The fact a spider with salt sized brain can weave a web without seen examples is a proof that genes do have effects on brains and capabilities.
- passion__desire 2y ago
  This is the video. https://youtu.be/RY7hjt5Gi-E?t=564 https://youtu.be/RY7hjt5Gi-E?t=564
- DiscourseFan 2y ago
  Of course, but not anything that we can use an IQ test to measure, especially at a population wide level.
- CFLAddLoader 2y ago
  Straightforward intelligence boosting genes are valuable enough that unless they are very recent, they should already have spread everywhere. It's more likely that developing brains have a huge number of potential tradeoffs to make for what tasks they are good at and how much energy they use. Genetics and epigenetics are merely one of the tools a brain uses to decide what shape it takes, and aren't even close to the whole picture.
  - graham127851 2y ago
    You could say the same about genes in tons of other areas, and you'd be completely wrong. That's now how evolution works. "Beneficial" genes don't just get to spread everywhere quickly, otherwise parapatric speciation could never occur. Read the wikipedia article for Parapatric Speciation. What does "incomplete geographical barriers" remind you of? Evolutionarily our intelligence IS very recent.
Workaccount2 2y ago
The first line of the first study the author references as "the largest genetic analysis of IQ scores": >Intelligence is highly heritable The author then writes this whole piece without once mentioning twin studies. Which is kind like writing about climate change and not mentioning CO2. Also the author works for Harvard, which has been speed running their credibility into the ground as of late, for exactly the kind of highly politicized topics like this one.
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Zpalmtree 2y ago
what a garbage article, he spent so much time being mad he forgot to be convincing
blackbrokkoli 2y ago
The section Unlike height, no one knows what IQ is actually measuring, buried deep in the article, is really all that's needed. "Height" is a well-behaved non-changing property that is meaningful, "IQ" is none of these things. Some fun facts: - The variation between IQ tests done by the same individual is significantly higher than almost any reasonable cross-group variation (men vs. woman, country A vs. country B, doctors vs. craftsmen, ...) - The original IQ-test had to use a mathematical trick to cut off "growth of intelligence" at exactly 16 years old, which totally incidentally was the age where mandatory schooling ended for the relevant population. - The famous "Termites" study which attempted to use IQ to predict the future upper crust of society by testing a large number of children failed to predict any Nobel price winners, but excluded two future Nobel winners (they were too dumb) - IQ is totally unchangeable and static — nonetheless, you are forbidden from studying or practicing for IQ tests. So to me, it's not particularly surprising that genetics disappoint in predicting IQ — given that they also fail at predicting other nonsensical and ever-chaning values such as whether I liked today's dinner..
- busyant 2y ago
  > - The variation between IQ tests done by the same individual is significantly higher than almost any reasonable cross-group variation (men vs. woman, country A vs. country B, doctors vs. craftsmen, ...) I don't know about your other points, but this doesn't seem believable. Is there a reference for this?
  - teshier-A 2y ago
    Well it does sound reasonable but I don't think it is as convincing as OP thinks. If you take two IQ tests in your life and get 130 and 138, I imagine the variation to be higher than the group vs group comparisons he mentioned (maybe not doctor vs craftsmen? it is after all very correlated to education level) but it doesn't mean the measure is "nonsensical and ever-chaning values such as whether I liked today's dinner.."
    - blackbrokkoli 2y ago
bendigedig 2y ago
I find it hard to understand why we think it is possible to assume that the influence of genes and influence of environment are independent in this manner. Given that we know that the environment affects how genes are expressed; and given that it's the genes that happen to be expressed which have more of an impact on intelligence than the genes one happens to 'have', then surely all research in this area which fails to account for interaction between (various) environmental impacts and genetics is bound to be futile?
hirvi74 2y ago
I am surprised so many cling to the idea that intelligence is highly genetic when we have demonstrated before that so many things can be done to completely nullify any genetic advantage. I am not saying there are no genetic contributions, but clearly any genetic benefit is highly contingent on many external factors. For example, I doubt Terrance Tao would have become the genius he is today if he were raised in conditions like many children in the Romanian orphanages in the 1980s and 1990s.
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  I think a chronic problem is people and studies starting with a false premise without even realizing it. "Affluence is strongly correlated with higher IQ, therefore IQ is a socioeconomic problem" You have the classic example of the smart person saying "I grew up in a house with a lot of books" And then everyone reflexively takes away "Having lots of books around when you are young leads to more success!" But virtually no one goes to "Smart people tend to have lots of books in their home, and they also tend to give birth to smart children, who are unsurprisingly drawn to reading books" You see this everywhere.
- randomdata 2y ago
  > we have demonstrated before that so many things can be done to completely nullify any genetic advantage. If the genetic advantage is nullifiable, how can it exist? When people compare intelligence to height, they are speaking with respect to maximum potential. As far as we know, genetics do dictate how tall you can potentially become. Environmental factors may leave you shorter than your potential, but if we were able to expose all people to a perfect growing environment, they would not all end up being the exact same height. They would only grow to the limit dictated by their individual genetics. If a supposed genetic advantage with respect to maximum intelligence potential is nullifiable, that surely implies that all humans have the capability of reaching equal intelligence? But then what genetic advantage is there to speak of?
  - hirvi74 2y ago
    > If the genetic advantage is nullifiable, how can it exist? "Nullify" was a bad word to use, so thank you bringing that to my attention. The genetic advantage is environmentally dependent. In other words, having the right genes may be necessary, but the right genes alone are not sufficient. > they are speaking with respect to maximum potential. And how is the maximum potential determined? Maximum potential seems to me like some kind of ethereal value based on comparative associations to others with the same/similar genes. "Feynman has these genes and was a genius. If you have these genes you should be a genius too." We both know genetics and intelligence do not work like this. > Environmental factors may leave you shorter than your potential Human Growth Hormones can also leave you taller than your "potential" if administered prior to your growth plates forming. So, the "potential" value is apparently not static because environmental values can increase/decrease the potential. > people to a perfect growing environment, they would not all end up being the exact same height. We can assume this, but we cannot possibly confirm this. Albeit, I do agree with you on this, rationally speaking. > But then what genetic advantage is there to speak of? The genetic advantage would be having the appropriate genes in the appropriate environment.
throwaway9917 2y ago
Many of these studies don't account for test/retest reliability of IQ tests. Height is pretty easy and reliable to measure, and it doesn't change based on how much sleep you had the night before, or whether you ate breakfast, what the conditions of the test were, the time of day, etc. The test-retest correlation on most IQ tests is around 0.7-0.8, whereas for height, it's almost 1.0. That means if you're measuring intelligence by a single IQ test, the correlation with genetics has a maximum of 0.7-0.8 due to noise in the test. Studies that either explicitly correct for this, or look at averages of multiple tests taken over time show higher correlations between genetics and intelligence.
- bumby 2y ago
  Not to make a nitpick in your point because it's a good one, but it made me wonder: How different would the height measure be if it were standardized like IQ? E.g., how likely would someone who is in the 90% percentile in 6th grade be in the 90% percentile as an adult? From that perspective, I imagine the standardized height "re-test" correlation is a lot less than 1.0 (although it would certainly be close to that with two measures of height as an adult).
  - dmurray 2y ago
    0.8 correlation with adult height for boys aged 4, according to [0]. The real study [1] is paywalled but looks legit. I'm guessing it's even higher at age 12, though it might be confounded by puberty soon after. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/can-you-predict-your-kids-height/607018/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/can-you-pr... [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21767107/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21767107/
- Jensson 2y ago
  > whereas for height, it's almost 1.0 You grow and shrink about 1% per day, as you get compressed when you stand up and decompress when you sleep. That is about 1.5 cm, and with a human height standard deviation is about 6cm you get around 0.25 standard deviation variation when measuring the height of a single human at different times of day, or about 4 point difference if we have 15 points per standard deviation.
brachyrhynchos7 2y ago
Heritability doesn't provide much information about anything. Researchers working in genetics and development have moved beyond it as more sophisticated, accurate approaches have become more widely available. This paper is a good basic introduction to the concept's limitations. Moore, D. S., & Shenk, D. (2017). The heritability fallacy. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 8(1-2), e1400. https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/wcs.1400?casa_token=hXxDIFbl_aUAAAAA%3A2Uq2pbrgSgOj76QWLRaSGd3FcbhSXeOBtP7_bb0fMYDBPQk4_ooD28mHp-tUcyb9ByoZWYkUS_Zj_g https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/wcs.1...

64 points by Schiphol 2y ago

This article is very invested in constant mockery. As someone who just wanted to understand better, it made it a tedious read.

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lnxg33k1 2y ago
The real joke is quoting psychologist to counterpoint students of races? (I guess anthropologists?) Or quoting psychologists about anything, regardless
someguydave 2y ago
The author has a known ideological axe to grind, read his tweets

rowanG077 2y ago

I don't understand the point of this article. That IQ is different then height? Oke great and? I have never seen anyone claim they were the same.

Kye 2y ago
I have! We're all singular entities with a narrow lens into the experiences of others, so it's inevitable we'll never encounter things that others encounter way too much.
- rowanG077 2y ago
  Where do you encounter something like this? Could you point it out to me? If it deserves such a ridiculous rebuttal I would expect to be able to easily find it online.
  - Kye 2y ago
    I don't keep a log of silly eugenics nonsense I encounter and, if nothing else, we probably have the common experience of Google getting worse at this kind of query. Some of it was on HN, at least. If you find it, good luck! I've never had much success rebutting this kind of thing.
- randomdata 2y ago
  Interesting. How would one even go about expressing the idea that height and intelligence are literally the exact same thing in such a way that someone would want to talk about it?
  - Kye 2y ago
    People are weird. I gave up reasoning with them. "No amount of persistence and practice will let me dunk on Shaq, but high IQ people get dunked on all the time" should be a winner vs people who think genetics determine everything, but neo-eugenicists just don't want to hear it. They have an unreasonable faith in genes.
    - randomdata 2y ago
      > "No amount of persistence and practice will let me dunk on Shaq, but high IQ people get dunked on all the time" should be a winner How so? It seems you're not even speaking their language. Given that in their reality height and IQ are the same thing, your assertion contradicts itself. If no amount of persistence and practice will let you dunk on Shaq, why would tall people get dunked on all the time? Be honest: You haven't really heard anyone claim that height and IQ are the same thing, have you?
      - deleted 2y ago
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      - Kye 2y ago
        >> "Be honest: You haven't really heard anyone claim that height and IQ are the same thing, have you?" I cannot imagine what your motivation is for making such a bizarre and out of place accusation but I won't participate in whatever it is you're trying to do here.
        randomdata 2y ago
        > I cannot imagine what your motivation is for making such a bizarre and out of place accusation It is abundantly clear that you are not talking about the same thing as the original post. It was a friendly gesture to allow you to go back and clear up whatever misconception you picked up when you read it originally. But, as you have chosen to double down, ... > but I won't participate in whatever it is you're trying to do here. Thing is, you already have. On multiple occasions. Now you are blatantly lying. Is that what happened last time too?
bumby 2y ago
It's simply a claim about heritability of intelligence. In other words, "Intelligence isn't inheritable like height" according to the author. There are certainly plenty of people who claim that genetics explains a large part of intelligence.
- rowanG077 2y ago
  It's very hard to look at heritability and make a genetics conclusion. That's because two people's genes fuse to make a new person. And this process could be chaotic for some traits. So even if trait x is genetic it may not be possible to predict that trait in the children based on the trait in the parents. So it's possible intelligence is genetic even if heritability suggests it isn't. What would be interesting is to look at monozygotic twins. If their IQ scores are more highly correlated then siblings or non-monozygotic twins it's a clear indication intelligence is genetic. But I imagine that the sample set is tiny.
zzzeek 2y ago
> I have never seen anyone claim they were the same. well read some of the other comments coming in here. I dare not upmod this article on a site like Hacker News.
bitwize 2y ago
It's to debunk the pseudoscientific nonsense -- rooted in racism and white supremacy -- that IQ is a largely genetically determined trait which is then often used to assert that certain ethnic groups are on average smarter or stupider than other ethnic groups.
- poszlem 2y ago
  White supremacy that claims that asians have the highest IQs. Makes all the sense in the world.
  - rowanG077 2y ago
    Now I was curious and looked it up. They may have a point. Average IQ is highest in asian countries: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-i... and it's not even close.
- rjsw 2y ago
  More that because IQ isn't genetically determined any data that makes it look like certain ethnic groups are smarter or stupider than other ethnic groups must be wrong. The argument on both sides misses out that the IQ data seen could be a result of other factors that are only indirectly associated with an ethnic group, such as that group being descended from people who were enslaved or who practiced polygamy or who don't prevent first cousins from marrying.
  - randomdata 2y ago
    > More that because IQ isn't genetically determined any data that makes it look like certain ethnic groups are smarter or stupider than other ethnic groups must be wrong. Why must it be wrong? The data is quite clear that a person of a given ethic group is most likely to associate with other people of the same ethnic group. If we are to assume that intelligence is determined by environmental factors, it is quite likely that intelligence will vary by ethnic group due to ethnic groups tending to group around different environments. > such as that group being descended from people who were enslaved or who practiced polygamy or who don't prevent first cousins from marrying. For those who believe that intelligence is heritable, isn't that exactly what they are talking about? I don't see how it is missed.

podgorniy 2y ago

Add a perspective of IQ of separated monozygotic twins https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886924002113#:~:text=The%20first%20longitudinal%20study%20of,the%20effect%20was%20less%20pronounced https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019188692.... --- UPD and this one https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-011-6129-9_19 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-011-6129-9_...

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feedforward 2y ago
These studies are very flawed for several reasons, the main one being "separation" which is a very loose definition of separation. If identical twins grow up together but some time in childhood one is sent to live with a relative, before a later reunification, this is called "separated". It does little to separate nurture from nature. Which makes sense - how many identical twins are separated at birth? Even if they were, it is unlikely one would be sent to Cambridge and one to rural Nepal (one of the lowest places for these IQ studies).

gwervc 2y ago

I read a large part of this article. While it appears to be really serious notably by the vocabulary used, like other articles trying to "debunk" genetic intelligence it pushes too hard its narrative. In particular, two semantic tricks are used. First, the fact that current genetic markers aren't a good prediction for IQ heritability is used as an argument against it. The other likely explanation that our understanding of those markers is widely incomplete is not explored. Second, is the more common "IQ isn't intelligence" trick. Sure, the measure doesn't encompass everything that is making intelligence, but it is still a somewhat interesting proxy as there is a high correlation between intelligence and IQ.

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bokoharambe 2y ago
It just seems strange to me that, like in the case of mental illnesses such as depression or Schizophrenia, scientists insist on looking for genes or even GWAS correlations and just aren't finding anything. At a certain point, you have to wonder if something other than genetics accounts for the observed heritability.
- sillysaurusx 2y ago
  Environmental factors are certainly a part of those. I heard a story of someone being stranded at a lighthouse alone for many months, and he had a break from reality which affected him the rest of his life. It's always seemed interesting that the brain can be damaged by stress rather than physical injury – or that perhaps stress causes physical injury.
- practicemaths 2y ago
  Maybe it isn't entirely a hardware issue. Maybe it is a software issue. Where do persons get their software from? The environment. Observing how their parents/family/etc interact. I think it's fair to say that communication matters and that communication & experiences will have an affect on peoples perceptions.

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bena 2y ago

I mean, technically, height is not like height either. One's height is not fixed, even in a given day. But I get his point. Kind of. Intelligence is more like speed. Speed can be affected by multiple things. Once you run X fast, it doesn't mean you'll always be able to run that fast. One's top speed is more of a range than a fixed point. And we measure speed all day long. Intelligence is a thing. People have it to different degrees. People often mistake it for knowledge. And IQ is a way to measure at least a part of it.

AmericanChopper 2y ago

The thing that all the moralisation around IQ misses, is that IQ is a serious problem in a lot of places around the world, and turning it into a career-ending taboo topic basically ensures that it goes completely unaddressed. I’ve worked with governments and companies in quite a few developing countries around the world where the average IQs are between 1-2 standard deviations below 100, and that problem is right up there with corruption when it comes to what’s holding these countries back. It would be great if solutions to this problem were being studied, but idiots like this author basically guarantee that will never happen.

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foobarian 2y ago
> but idiots like this author basically guarantee that will never happen. Could also be intentional
darby_nine 2y ago
The use of IQ is a problem, or are you taking the metric seriously?
zzzeek 2y ago
I bet the solution is heavy on "access to clean water, food, security from war and violence, and education", amirite? sure let's fire up the "IQ science" machine to give us reasons to not have to do something so boring as to improve the lives of those living in developing nations.
- marcuskane2 2y ago
  I think you've misunderstood the comment you're responding to. They're suggesting that to give the optimal assistance to those countries, the IQ of the current adult population needs to be considered as an important variable in the equation, but it's taboo and stigmatized to discuss or acknowledge, so the people get sub-optimal solutions instead. If you want to help some community in need, but you're not allowed to address certain taboo topics- IQ, substance abuse, STDs, domestic abuse, religious beliefs or cultural norms, whatever may be relevant for that group, then you're probably not going to design your programs for assistance in the best way.

A_D_E_P_T 2y ago

The heritability of IQ, from twin studies and via other traditional methods of measuring heritability, is way higher than the author of that article implies. It's as high as 0.8. (80% of variance down to genetics.) See, e.g.: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23919982/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23919982/ If you measure heritability only via SNP studies, it looks a lot smaller. This is what's called the "Missing Heritability Problem." See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_heritability_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_heritability_problem This problem is, as yet, unsolved. There's a lot we don't know about traits that are governed by "many genes of small effect." The author of the article probably knows better and is being disingenuous, but it's flat-out wrong to say that intelligence is only weakly heritable.

darby_nine 2y ago
Of course, IQ only weakly correlates to the intelligence that people actually refer to colloquially. It doesn't test for most behaviors that people do consider intelligent, and it tests a bunch of stuff completely unrelated to intelligence (e.g. cultural trivia).
- jejeyyy77 2y ago
  this isn't accurate at all.
  - adamisom 2y ago
    Remarkable that it starts with "Of course"
    - darby_nine 2y ago
      I mean, who takes IQ seriously? It's a business metric.
  - darby_nine 2y ago
    How do you figure?

rosmax_1337 2y ago

>It turns out molecular genetics has (for lack of a better word) thoroughly debunked [the view that Intelligence is significantly heritable]. There is also a replication crisis in post-modern science. Not to mention, is it even legal, let alone reasonably possible for a study to publish in a real journal the view that Intelligence is heritable, in particular when it concerns race? This topic is arguably the in the top 3 forbidden taboos of western society. In European countries you can face charges of hate speech for even suggesting this, let alone dedicating a life of study regarding a certain conclusion. That an article like this amounts to semantic evasion of the matter, like the post by gwervc here describes, does not give credibility to the side which continues to maintain that evolution has [by all significant measures] stopped at the neck.

brookst 2y ago
> In European countries you can face charges of hate speech for even suggesting this Source?
- randomdata 2y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41368174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41368174
- rosmax_1337 2y ago
  https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/sormland/hd-tar-upp-fallet-med-tidigare-regionpolitikerns-iq-uttalande https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/sormland/hd-tar-upp-fallet... SVT is the Swedish government news agency. The article describes a politician facing charges for suggesting that South Sudanese people have a lower IQ.
  - DiscourseFan 2y ago
    There's no empirical evidence that South Sudanese people, as a population, have lower IQ, therefore this cannot be interpreted as anything but an attempt to denigrate an entire people

stonethrowaway 2y ago

HN is going to have to address bait topics (and bait “science”) more than bait clicks. The author has an axe to grind with a certain subset of the population and this board is caught in the cross fire.

passion__desire 2y ago

Annecdata : Our primate brains has random number generators to keep our head moving and scanning the environment for threats (there a possible veritasium video on this topic). But my friend in university had a possible (gene?) modification which allowed him to focus on a particular task intently. He could ignore distractions very easily and unsurprisingly he could grok biology and physics textbooks like crazy. The fact a spider with salt sized brain can weave a web without seen examples is a proof that genes do have effects on brains and capabilities.

passion__desire 2y ago
This is the video. https://youtu.be/RY7hjt5Gi-E?t=564 https://youtu.be/RY7hjt5Gi-E?t=564
DiscourseFan 2y ago
Of course, but not anything that we can use an IQ test to measure, especially at a population wide level.
CFLAddLoader 2y ago
Straightforward intelligence boosting genes are valuable enough that unless they are very recent, they should already have spread everywhere. It's more likely that developing brains have a huge number of potential tradeoffs to make for what tasks they are good at and how much energy they use. Genetics and epigenetics are merely one of the tools a brain uses to decide what shape it takes, and aren't even close to the whole picture.
- graham127851 2y ago
  You could say the same about genes in tons of other areas, and you'd be completely wrong. That's now how evolution works. "Beneficial" genes don't just get to spread everywhere quickly, otherwise parapatric speciation could never occur. Read the wikipedia article for Parapatric Speciation. What does "incomplete geographical barriers" remind you of? Evolutionarily our intelligence IS very recent.

Workaccount2 2y ago

The first line of the first study the author references as "the largest genetic analysis of IQ scores": >Intelligence is highly heritable The author then writes this whole piece without once mentioning twin studies. Which is kind like writing about climate change and not mentioning CO2. Also the author works for Harvard, which has been speed running their credibility into the ground as of late, for exactly the kind of highly politicized topics like this one.

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Zpalmtree 2y ago

what a garbage article, he spent so much time being mad he forgot to be convincing

blackbrokkoli 2y ago

The section Unlike height, no one knows what IQ is actually measuring, buried deep in the article, is really all that's needed. "Height" is a well-behaved non-changing property that is meaningful, "IQ" is none of these things. Some fun facts: - The variation between IQ tests done by the same individual is significantly higher than almost any reasonable cross-group variation (men vs. woman, country A vs. country B, doctors vs. craftsmen, ...) - The original IQ-test had to use a mathematical trick to cut off "growth of intelligence" at exactly 16 years old, which totally incidentally was the age where mandatory schooling ended for the relevant population. - The famous "Termites" study which attempted to use IQ to predict the future upper crust of society by testing a large number of children failed to predict any Nobel price winners, but excluded two future Nobel winners (they were too dumb) - IQ is totally unchangeable and static — nonetheless, you are forbidden from studying or practicing for IQ tests. So to me, it's not particularly surprising that genetics disappoint in predicting IQ — given that they also fail at predicting other nonsensical and ever-chaning values such as whether I liked today's dinner..

busyant 2y ago
> - The variation between IQ tests done by the same individual is significantly higher than almost any reasonable cross-group variation (men vs. woman, country A vs. country B, doctors vs. craftsmen, ...) I don't know about your other points, but this doesn't seem believable. Is there a reference for this?
- teshier-A 2y ago
  Well it does sound reasonable but I don't think it is as convincing as OP thinks. If you take two IQ tests in your life and get 130 and 138, I imagine the variation to be higher than the group vs group comparisons he mentioned (maybe not doctor vs craftsmen? it is after all very correlated to education level) but it doesn't mean the measure is "nonsensical and ever-chaning values such as whether I liked today's dinner.."
  - blackbrokkoli 2y ago

bendigedig 2y ago

I find it hard to understand why we think it is possible to assume that the influence of genes and influence of environment are independent in this manner. Given that we know that the environment affects how genes are expressed; and given that it's the genes that happen to be expressed which have more of an impact on intelligence than the genes one happens to 'have', then surely all research in this area which fails to account for interaction between (various) environmental impacts and genetics is bound to be futile?

hirvi74 2y ago

I am surprised so many cling to the idea that intelligence is highly genetic when we have demonstrated before that so many things can be done to completely nullify any genetic advantage. I am not saying there are no genetic contributions, but clearly any genetic benefit is highly contingent on many external factors. For example, I doubt Terrance Tao would have become the genius he is today if he were raised in conditions like many children in the Romanian orphanages in the 1980s and 1990s.

Workaccount2 2y ago
I think a chronic problem is people and studies starting with a false premise without even realizing it. "Affluence is strongly correlated with higher IQ, therefore IQ is a socioeconomic problem" You have the classic example of the smart person saying "I grew up in a house with a lot of books" And then everyone reflexively takes away "Having lots of books around when you are young leads to more success!" But virtually no one goes to "Smart people tend to have lots of books in their home, and they also tend to give birth to smart children, who are unsurprisingly drawn to reading books" You see this everywhere.
randomdata 2y ago
> we have demonstrated before that so many things can be done to completely nullify any genetic advantage. If the genetic advantage is nullifiable, how can it exist? When people compare intelligence to height, they are speaking with respect to maximum potential. As far as we know, genetics do dictate how tall you can potentially become. Environmental factors may leave you shorter than your potential, but if we were able to expose all people to a perfect growing environment, they would not all end up being the exact same height. They would only grow to the limit dictated by their individual genetics. If a supposed genetic advantage with respect to maximum intelligence potential is nullifiable, that surely implies that all humans have the capability of reaching equal intelligence? But then what genetic advantage is there to speak of?
- hirvi74 2y ago
  > If the genetic advantage is nullifiable, how can it exist? "Nullify" was a bad word to use, so thank you bringing that to my attention. The genetic advantage is environmentally dependent. In other words, having the right genes may be necessary, but the right genes alone are not sufficient. > they are speaking with respect to maximum potential. And how is the maximum potential determined? Maximum potential seems to me like some kind of ethereal value based on comparative associations to others with the same/similar genes. "Feynman has these genes and was a genius. If you have these genes you should be a genius too." We both know genetics and intelligence do not work like this. > Environmental factors may leave you shorter than your potential Human Growth Hormones can also leave you taller than your "potential" if administered prior to your growth plates forming. So, the "potential" value is apparently not static because environmental values can increase/decrease the potential. > people to a perfect growing environment, they would not all end up being the exact same height. We can assume this, but we cannot possibly confirm this. Albeit, I do agree with you on this, rationally speaking. > But then what genetic advantage is there to speak of? The genetic advantage would be having the appropriate genes in the appropriate environment.

throwaway9917 2y ago

Many of these studies don't account for test/retest reliability of IQ tests. Height is pretty easy and reliable to measure, and it doesn't change based on how much sleep you had the night before, or whether you ate breakfast, what the conditions of the test were, the time of day, etc. The test-retest correlation on most IQ tests is around 0.7-0.8, whereas for height, it's almost 1.0. That means if you're measuring intelligence by a single IQ test, the correlation with genetics has a maximum of 0.7-0.8 due to noise in the test. Studies that either explicitly correct for this, or look at averages of multiple tests taken over time show higher correlations between genetics and intelligence.

bumby 2y ago
Not to make a nitpick in your point because it's a good one, but it made me wonder: How different would the height measure be if it were standardized like IQ? E.g., how likely would someone who is in the 90% percentile in 6th grade be in the 90% percentile as an adult? From that perspective, I imagine the standardized height "re-test" correlation is a lot less than 1.0 (although it would certainly be close to that with two measures of height as an adult).
- dmurray 2y ago
  0.8 correlation with adult height for boys aged 4, according to [0]. The real study [1] is paywalled but looks legit. I'm guessing it's even higher at age 12, though it might be confounded by puberty soon after. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/can-you-predict-your-kids-height/607018/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/can-you-pr... [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21767107/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21767107/
Jensson 2y ago
> whereas for height, it's almost 1.0 You grow and shrink about 1% per day, as you get compressed when you stand up and decompress when you sleep. That is about 1.5 cm, and with a human height standard deviation is about 6cm you get around 0.25 standard deviation variation when measuring the height of a single human at different times of day, or about 4 point difference if we have 15 points per standard deviation.

brachyrhynchos7 2y ago

Heritability doesn't provide much information about anything. Researchers working in genetics and development have moved beyond it as more sophisticated, accurate approaches have become more widely available. This paper is a good basic introduction to the concept's limitations. Moore, D. S., & Shenk, D. (2017). The heritability fallacy. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 8(1-2), e1400. https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/wcs.1400?casa_token=hXxDIFbl_aUAAAAA%3A2Uq2pbrgSgOj76QWLRaSGd3FcbhSXeOBtP7_bb0fMYDBPQk4_ooD28mHp-tUcyb9ByoZWYkUS_Zj_g https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/wcs.1...