4 ms·

You've seen precious little research? I assume you've actually looked? Read things like The Bell Curve, etc.?

by thras 17y ago

radu_floricica 17y ago
I'm not saying there is _no_ genetic component - I would be surprised if it wasn't. Just that compared to culture it's not important. I didn't read The Bell Curve, but as far as I know (and refreshed with a bit of googling) it states that IQ is partly hereditary - I don't think anybody doubts this - and makes it easy to go further and say some groups of people are smarter. This is most likely true, but still not so important. I just finished reading What Intelligence Tests Miss, by Keith Stanovich. Summary: critical reasoning skills are much much better predictor of academic and social success then IQ, and (that's the shocker) largely _not_ correlated with IQ. And this is just one of the factors which influence success. Even if a group is a few IQ points above or below average, the final effect is very unlikely to affect anything. edit: Oh, and yes, critical reasoning skills, even if they're not as well studied as IQ is (which is a shame, but it's being corrected) have a much much smaller genetic component and are easier to change during lifetime.
- thras 17y ago
  These books come out every so often. 5 years ago "emotional intelligence" sold copy. IQ has a heritability coefficient of between .5 and .8. The rest seems to be non-shared environment. IQ is a very good predictor of academic success and future income (.7 to .8 correlation). There's a hell of a lot of research out there that has shown this again and again. I'd like to see Stanovich's definition of "critical reasoning" and the studies that show it to be both uncorrelated with IQ and a good predictor of academic success and future income. There just isn't that much left to predict -- two uncorrelated variables can't both have a correlation coefficient of .8. I'm going to bet that whatever he has defined as "critical reasoning" actually has a high correlation with IQ when measured.
  - radu_floricica 17y ago
    This is where I originally found him (from HN actually): http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stanovich1 http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stanovich1 But you won't find much more in this, unfortunately. For the link (or lack thereof) between IQ and critical reasoning search for Stanovich, it's mostly his own research. For link between (parts of) critical reasoning and academic success look up Mischel's marshmallow experiment. Personally I never saw 0.8 correlations with IQ mentioned anywhere, so I'd be grateful for a pointer.
    - thras 17y ago
      Impulse control is strongly linked with IQ. Also, which 0.8 correlation were you asking about?
      - radu_floricica 17y ago
        Can you point me in a direction for source? Academic success and income, sorry.
        thras 17y ago
        Here's .8 for academic success: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W4M-4JDN6DP-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1019133181&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=d0b35c11d3cfc5adc9e36136d4b0f9f8 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi... I'm sorry about the number for income -- everyone has it at a correlation of .3 to .6. I believe that I was thinking of Lynn's numbers for national incomes, which is correlated at .7 or so to average IQ.
  - tokenadult 17y ago
    IQ has a heritability coefficient of between .5 and .8. Kindly explain why that is at all relevant to the issue at hand. (Since you have been carrying on a conversation with another participant here as the thread has deepened, it might be a good idea to make clear just what point of his you were responding to with that point.)
jbm 17y ago
I can't say with certainty now, but when I was a genetics student in a fairly decent University, I remember we laughed at "The Bell Curve". It wasn't considered classic scientific reading. There are a million places to start if you want to find a critique, but you can start with Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man".
- thras 17y ago
  There are a million critiques, many of which I've read. Some are better than others. By far the most ill-informed is The Mismeasure of Man. It's the worst of the bunch, written by an idiot. If you want a intelligent critique, I can point you to some. Now, Murray had problems in The Bell Curve -- he didn't properly understand regression to the mean, for example. But did you students actually read it before laughing? He was pretty solid on most of the genetic topics he covered (a small part of the book). Here's a good start to correcting your opinion about Gould: http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2009/01/a_week_with_gre.html http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2009/01/a_week_with_gre.h...
- billswift 17y ago
  "Mismeasure of Man" was propaganda written by a Communist paleontologist who knew next to nothing of psychometrics. EDIT: Yes I'm a bit bitter about it, I read it and believed it for years, before learning better. I don't like wasting my time and I HATE being lied to (and even more being taken in).
yardie 17y ago
You're whole scientific reasoning is based on....The Bell Curve?! I'd have a laugh too. And some of whatever you're drinking.
- thras 17y ago
  Earl Grey.

You've seen precious little research? I assume you've actually looked? Read things like The Bell Curve, etc.?

by thras 17y ago

You've seen precious little research? I assume you've actually looked? Read things like The Bell Curve, etc.?

I'm not saying there is _no_ genetic component - I would be surprised if it wasn't. Just that compared to culture it's not important. I didn't read The Bell Curve, but as far as I know (and refreshed with a bit of googling) it states that IQ is partly hereditary - I don't think anybody doubts this - and makes it easy to go further and say some groups of people are smarter. This is most likely true, but still not so important. I just finished reading What Intelligence Tests Miss, by Keith Stanovich. Summary: critical reasoning skills are much much better predictor of academic and social success then IQ, and (that's the shocker) largely _not_ correlated with IQ. And this is just one of the factors which influence success. Even if a group is a few IQ points above or below average, the final effect is very unlikely to affect anything. edit: Oh, and yes, critical reasoning skills, even if they're not as well studied as IQ is (which is a shame, but it's being corrected) have a much much smaller genetic component and are easier to change during lifetime.

thras 17y ago
These books come out every so often. 5 years ago "emotional intelligence" sold copy. IQ has a heritability coefficient of between .5 and .8. The rest seems to be non-shared environment. IQ is a very good predictor of academic success and future income (.7 to .8 correlation). There's a hell of a lot of research out there that has shown this again and again. I'd like to see Stanovich's definition of "critical reasoning" and the studies that show it to be both uncorrelated with IQ and a good predictor of academic success and future income. There just isn't that much left to predict -- two uncorrelated variables can't both have a correlation coefficient of .8. I'm going to bet that whatever he has defined as "critical reasoning" actually has a high correlation with IQ when measured.
- radu_floricica 17y ago
  This is where I originally found him (from HN actually): http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stanovich1 http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stanovich1 But you won't find much more in this, unfortunately. For the link (or lack thereof) between IQ and critical reasoning search for Stanovich, it's mostly his own research. For link between (parts of) critical reasoning and academic success look up Mischel's marshmallow experiment. Personally I never saw 0.8 correlations with IQ mentioned anywhere, so I'd be grateful for a pointer.
  - thras 17y ago
    Impulse control is strongly linked with IQ. Also, which 0.8 correlation were you asking about?
    - radu_floricica 17y ago
      Can you point me in a direction for source? Academic success and income, sorry.
      - thras 17y ago
        Here's .8 for academic success: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W4M-4JDN6DP-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1019133181&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=d0b35c11d3cfc5adc9e36136d4b0f9f8 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi... I'm sorry about the number for income -- everyone has it at a correlation of .3 to .6. I believe that I was thinking of Lynn's numbers for national incomes, which is correlated at .7 or so to average IQ.
- tokenadult 17y ago
  IQ has a heritability coefficient of between .5 and .8. Kindly explain why that is at all relevant to the issue at hand. (Since you have been carrying on a conversation with another participant here as the thread has deepened, it might be a good idea to make clear just what point of his you were responding to with that point.)

jbm 17y ago

I can't say with certainty now, but when I was a genetics student in a fairly decent University, I remember we laughed at "The Bell Curve". It wasn't considered classic scientific reading. There are a million places to start if you want to find a critique, but you can start with Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man".

thras 17y ago
There are a million critiques, many of which I've read. Some are better than others. By far the most ill-informed is The Mismeasure of Man. It's the worst of the bunch, written by an idiot. If you want a intelligent critique, I can point you to some. Now, Murray had problems in The Bell Curve -- he didn't properly understand regression to the mean, for example. But did you students actually read it before laughing? He was pretty solid on most of the genetic topics he covered (a small part of the book). Here's a good start to correcting your opinion about Gould: http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2009/01/a_week_with_gre.html http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2009/01/a_week_with_gre.h...
billswift 17y ago
"Mismeasure of Man" was propaganda written by a Communist paleontologist who knew next to nothing of psychometrics. EDIT: Yes I'm a bit bitter about it, I read it and believed it for years, before learning better. I don't like wasting my time and I HATE being lied to (and even more being taken in).

yardie 17y ago

You're whole scientific reasoning is based on....The Bell Curve?! I'd have a laugh too. And some of whatever you're drinking.

thras 17y ago
Earl Grey.