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Make sure you're reading the study and not just glancing at their charts. They try to present their data positively to the point that it can be quite misleading
by somenameforme 1y ago
Make sure you're reading the study and not just glancing at their charts. They try to present their data positively to the point that it can be quite misleading. For instance you might see things like 67% of the experiment group having an IQ of 90+ at age 5, contrasted against only 28% of the control group.
But read further down on the details and that difference disappeared almost immediately after the end of the intervention. It follows in line with a well known fact that childhood IQ is primarily driven by environmental factors whereas adolescent and especially adult IQ is primarily driven by the IQ of your parents - paradoxically, strengths or deficiencies in earlier life notwithstanding.
And their decision to set the baseline for arrests at 5+ is obviously doing something akin to p-hacking. It makes it clear that near 100% of the entire sample (males at least) ended up in prison, likely multiple times. The ROI from the program had nothing to do with increased productivity - it was driven almost entirely by less time spent in prison. It led to the interesting fact that 93% of the ROI came from males, precisely because the females had a much lower baseline criminality rate.
In a nutshell, the main benefit of the program was reducing the criminality rate of the experimental group to a level that is still orders of magnitude higher than for society at large. That is a good thing, but it also emphasizes that something like this would only be the beginning of special care needed to try to ensure these sort of people could live remotely decent lives.
- tptacek 1y agohttp://bactra.org/weblog/494.html http://bactra.org/weblog/494.html
- somenameforme 1y agoThe person who wrote that site spent quite a lot of time writing, yet unfortunately little reading. Heritability is, by definition, the degree of variation in a trait, within a population, due to genetic variation. The heritability of an accent is zero. One clever way this is measured is twin studies, which also are not what most people, particularly those who prefer to write more than read, think. You don't search for twins separated at birth, but instead compare the differences in a trait between identical and non-identical twins. If the variation is greater, then the trait is generally significantly heritable. So for example - height would be an obvious one. By contrast the variation in accent between identical and non-identical twins would be zero.
- tptacek 1y agoThe person who wrote that site is Cosma Shalizi, who very certainly knows what "heritability" is. Unfortunately, you appear not to. "Heritability" is simply the ratio of genetic variance to phenotypical variance. It's not genetic causality. Whether or not you wear lipstick: highly heritable. The number of fingers on your hands: not heritable.
- somenameforme 1y agoSo it's a blog from some guy with no background in genetics. Your definition is correct, as is your statement that it's not genetic causality. But to discuss heritability you need to understand the most typical, and reliable, way it's assessed. That would immediately clarify to you why lipstick wearing (or your accent) is not heritable, yet the number of digits you have (at least at birth) most certainly is. Here [1] is Wiki's take. You can also pick up any textbook on genetics. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_study
- tptacek 1y agoI don't think "Cosma Shalizi doesn't know what he's talking about" is a good hill to die on, and you've now expanded your portfolio of opponents to Ned Block, from who I shoplifted the heritability point. Direct genetic causality is not the only mechanism through which genes select for phenotypical traits. Genes also select and interact with the environment.
- somenameforme 1y agoA person you respect in one field is not necessarily all-knowing within that field and, most certainly, not outside of it. This is especially true on topics that become politicized. This is not just because of the 'our side' vs 'their side' stuff, but because these issues can and have destroyed the careers of high profile people who adopt the wrong opinion. Unlike the individuals you have cited, James Watson is a geneticist, spent his entire life studying and working on genetics, and in fact was even the person who discovered the structure of DNA. But because of his views on the genetic aspects of IQ (which inherently becomes intertwined into race, as race is just shared genetic ancestry), he was completely demonized, his career destroyed, and various honors revoked. Higher profile people speaking on these topics publicly know this all too well, so it mostly just turns into cheap virtue signaling as opposed to adding some genuine insight. In your case, the examples they've offered are simply wrong, as would be immediately apparent with the most typical method of measuring heritability!