4 ms·

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

by 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.)
tokenadult 17y ago
IQ is a very good predictor of academic success and future income (.7 to .8 correlation). I'm joining the call of another participant here for references to back up that statement. There just isn't that much left to predict This seems to be mistaking a statement about what is currently observed with a statement about what might be possible under experimental interventions. No one has shown what the maximum possible influence of other independent variables might be. I'm going to bet that whatever he [Keith Stanovich] has defined as "critical reasoning" actually has a high correlation with IQ when measured. You will lose the bet. He and other authors on cognitive psychology and behavioral economics have already repeatedly replicated the result that many forms of rationality have meager or no correlation with IQ. He cites the references in his book.
jibiki 17y ago
> two uncorrelated variables can't both have a correlation coefficient of .8. Can you prove this? I think that the greatest possible correlation is sqrt(1/2) (around .7), but I have no idea how to prove it. (Formally, the conjecture is as follows: if X,Y, and Z are random variables, and k is a real constant, with: corr(X,Y) = 0 corr(X,Z) > k corr(Y,Z) > k then k < sqrt(1/2). It is indeed possible for corr(X,Z)=corr(Y,Z)=sqrt(1/2), here's an example. With sample space {a,b,c,d}, let X,Y, and Z be: a b c d X: 1, 0, 0, -1 Y: 0, 1, -1, 0 Z: 1, 1, -1, -1 But I ran a program looking for cases with k > .7 and couldn't find anything.)
- tokenadult 17y ago
  Thanks for doing the math. I appreciate the pursuit of curiosity here on HN. There is a different issue here to be curious about, and that is exactly what a calculation of broad heritability definitely predicts. It predicts a lot less than what many readers unfamiliar with genetics might guess. It happens that some of the leading authors on human behavioral genetics just wrote an article about what heritability does and does not mean Johnson, Wendy; Turkheimer, Eric; Gottesman, Irving I.; Bouchard Jr., Thomas (2009). Beyond Heritability: Twin Studies in Behavioral Research. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18, 4, 217-220. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/cdir/2009/00000018/00000004/art00006 http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/cdir/2009/00000018... (one online abstract) http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122587149/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0 http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122587149/abstrac... (the main link to the article) Alas, a peek behind the pay wall that was available the other day when I posted this article here on HN http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=838534 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=838534 is now dead. But I have the full text of the article at hand, as I am currently attending a weekly journal club with some of the authors, and one key paragraph from the article must be read by anyone who draws conclusions from heritablity figures: "Moreover, even highly heritable traits can be strongly manipulated by the environment, so heritability has little if anything to do with controllability. For example, height is on the order of 90% heritable, yet North and South Koreans, who come from the same genetic background, presently differ in average height by a full 6 inches (Pak, 2004; Schwekendiek, 2008)." This simply reemphasizes a point that is familiar to anyone who has studied genetics carefully, namely that the pre-Mendelian concept of heritability says nothing about malleability, the degree to which a trait can be influenced by environmental variables. Angoff, W. H. (1988). The nature-nurture debate, aptitudes, and group differences. American Psychologist, 43, 713-720. Mange, A. & Mange, E. J. (1990). Genetics: Human Aspects. Kaufman, Alan S. (1990). Assessing Adolescent and Adult Intelligence. So the statement above that heritability somehow constrains the expression of IQ or of consequences of IQ such as occupational success is actually conceptually incorrect. But I appreciate you going to the effort of doing the math. Another thought is that relating one correlation coefficient to another with linear algebra probably depends too heavily on applying linear tools to a not fully linear model. Increases of income are plainly linear and are on a ratio scale. (There is a zero point for income, and each dollar increase in income has the same magnitude anywhere along the scale.) But IQ test standard scores are at best ordinal scales, so it is already an abuse of mathematics to treat them as a linear variable, or to treat a figure derived from them as a linear variable.

by thras 17y ago

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.)

tokenadult 17y ago

IQ is a very good predictor of academic success and future income (.7 to .8 correlation). I'm joining the call of another participant here for references to back up that statement. There just isn't that much left to predict This seems to be mistaking a statement about what is currently observed with a statement about what might be possible under experimental interventions. No one has shown what the maximum possible influence of other independent variables might be. I'm going to bet that whatever he [Keith Stanovich] has defined as "critical reasoning" actually has a high correlation with IQ when measured. You will lose the bet. He and other authors on cognitive psychology and behavioral economics have already repeatedly replicated the result that many forms of rationality have meager or no correlation with IQ. He cites the references in his book.

jibiki 17y ago

> two uncorrelated variables can't both have a correlation coefficient of .8. Can you prove this? I think that the greatest possible correlation is sqrt(1/2) (around .7), but I have no idea how to prove it. (Formally, the conjecture is as follows: if X,Y, and Z are random variables, and k is a real constant, with: corr(X,Y) = 0 corr(X,Z) > k corr(Y,Z) > k then k < sqrt(1/2). It is indeed possible for corr(X,Z)=corr(Y,Z)=sqrt(1/2), here's an example. With sample space {a,b,c,d}, let X,Y, and Z be: a b c d X: 1, 0, 0, -1 Y: 0, 1, -1, 0 Z: 1, 1, -1, -1 But I ran a program looking for cases with k > .7 and couldn't find anything.)

tokenadult 17y ago
Thanks for doing the math. I appreciate the pursuit of curiosity here on HN. There is a different issue here to be curious about, and that is exactly what a calculation of broad heritability definitely predicts. It predicts a lot less than what many readers unfamiliar with genetics might guess. It happens that some of the leading authors on human behavioral genetics just wrote an article about what heritability does and does not mean Johnson, Wendy; Turkheimer, Eric; Gottesman, Irving I.; Bouchard Jr., Thomas (2009). Beyond Heritability: Twin Studies in Behavioral Research. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18, 4, 217-220. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/cdir/2009/00000018/00000004/art00006 http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/cdir/2009/00000018... (one online abstract) http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122587149/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0 http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122587149/abstrac... (the main link to the article) Alas, a peek behind the pay wall that was available the other day when I posted this article here on HN http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=838534 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=838534 is now dead. But I have the full text of the article at hand, as I am currently attending a weekly journal club with some of the authors, and one key paragraph from the article must be read by anyone who draws conclusions from heritablity figures: "Moreover, even highly heritable traits can be strongly manipulated by the environment, so heritability has little if anything to do with controllability. For example, height is on the order of 90% heritable, yet North and South Koreans, who come from the same genetic background, presently differ in average height by a full 6 inches (Pak, 2004; Schwekendiek, 2008)." This simply reemphasizes a point that is familiar to anyone who has studied genetics carefully, namely that the pre-Mendelian concept of heritability says nothing about malleability, the degree to which a trait can be influenced by environmental variables. Angoff, W. H. (1988). The nature-nurture debate, aptitudes, and group differences. American Psychologist, 43, 713-720. Mange, A. & Mange, E. J. (1990). Genetics: Human Aspects. Kaufman, Alan S. (1990). Assessing Adolescent and Adult Intelligence. So the statement above that heritability somehow constrains the expression of IQ or of consequences of IQ such as occupational success is actually conceptually incorrect. But I appreciate you going to the effort of doing the math. Another thought is that relating one correlation coefficient to another with linear algebra probably depends too heavily on applying linear tools to a not fully linear model. Increases of income are plainly linear and are on a ratio scale. (There is a zero point for income, and each dollar increase in income has the same magnitude anywhere along the scale.) But IQ test standard scores are at best ordinal scales, so it is already an abuse of mathematics to treat them as a linear variable, or to treat a figure derived from them as a linear variable.