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As Alan S. Kaufman wrote in each edition of his textbook Assessing Adolescent and Adult Intelligence (I read the first edition in the early 1990s), what you and

As Alan S. Kaufman wrote in each edition of his textbook Assessing Adolescent and Adult Intelligence (I read the first edition in the early 1990s), what you and I don't know about effective environmental interventions to raise IQ does not at all imply that none existence. It's not valid to argue from ignorance that something that hasn't been tried cannot possibly work. Kaufman took care in the first edition of his textbook to point out that we were by no means sure in that era what was causing the Flynn effect (we still aren't completely sure about that). But he also noted that it is logically quite possible that we will discover environmental influences to boost IQ (or, more importantly, boost actual human achievement outside the testing room) that are well within our control as we engage in further research.

Rylinks 12y ago
We have, right now, short-term environmental influences that boost IQ, for example, nicotine.
- barry-cotter 12y ago
  Does nicotine boost IQ in the same way as Vyvanse, Adderall or speed? Because they don't raise IQ, they raise performance by increasing focus, which is approximately increasing conscientiousness. The effects on measured IQ are nugatory. Being able to work harder, for longer is not being smarter. If you have access to some research to the contrary please share.
barry-cotter 12y ago
>As Alan S. Kaufman wrote in each edition of his textbook Assessing Adolescent and Adult Intelligence (I read the first edition in the early 1990s), what you and I don't know about effective environmental interventions to raise IQ does not at all imply that none existence. It's not valid to argue from ignorance that something that hasn't been tried cannot possibly work. The Blank Slate, everyone has equal potential view has been the underlying education school dogma since at least the early seventies. People have been searching for ways to raise and equalise outcomes for (I think) longer than you have been alive. No one has found anything that does both. Absence of evidence is in fact evidence of absence, and the more effort, time and money has been expended in the search for evidence the stronger the evidence for absence is.
gwern 12y ago
> It's not valid to argue from ignorance that something that hasn't been tried cannot possibly work. Again, it's not deductively logically valid, but it is most certainly inductively and statistically valid, and those are the validities that concern us: absence of evidence is evidence of absence, and for few things is there a more glaring absence than for intelligence boosts. After a century of formal pursuit, what do we have to show for it? A few very early childhood interventions like iodine; some interventions one should trust as far as one can kick them like dual n-back; and some stimulants offering temporary boosts (but are they boosting actual peak intelligence or just affecting motivation?).
- barry-cotter 12y ago
  Why are you still operating on the principle of charity with tokenadult? He has refused to engage with a stable of similar arguments for years, from. He varies between arguing like he was trained for getting his J.D. (arguments as soldiers, argument from authority, argumentum ad hominem) and arguing as he would have during his math degree, by exclusion and contradiction, as convenient for his ideology. He's obviously well acquainted with the literature, witness his perennial work sample test bit but he places radically different burdens of proof on ideologically convenient and inconvenient arguments.

Rylinks 12y ago

We have, right now, short-term environmental influences that boost IQ, for example, nicotine.

barry-cotter 12y ago
Does nicotine boost IQ in the same way as Vyvanse, Adderall or speed? Because they don't raise IQ, they raise performance by increasing focus, which is approximately increasing conscientiousness. The effects on measured IQ are nugatory. Being able to work harder, for longer is not being smarter. If you have access to some research to the contrary please share.

barry-cotter 12y ago

>As Alan S. Kaufman wrote in each edition of his textbook Assessing Adolescent and Adult Intelligence (I read the first edition in the early 1990s), what you and I don't know about effective environmental interventions to raise IQ does not at all imply that none existence. It's not valid to argue from ignorance that something that hasn't been tried cannot possibly work. The Blank Slate, everyone has equal potential view has been the underlying education school dogma since at least the early seventies. People have been searching for ways to raise and equalise outcomes for (I think) longer than you have been alive. No one has found anything that does both. Absence of evidence is in fact evidence of absence, and the more effort, time and money has been expended in the search for evidence the stronger the evidence for absence is.

gwern 12y ago

> It's not valid to argue from ignorance that something that hasn't been tried cannot possibly work. Again, it's not deductively logically valid, but it is most certainly inductively and statistically valid, and those are the validities that concern us: absence of evidence is evidence of absence, and for few things is there a more glaring absence than for intelligence boosts. After a century of formal pursuit, what do we have to show for it? A few very early childhood interventions like iodine; some interventions one should trust as far as one can kick them like dual n-back; and some stimulants offering temporary boosts (but are they boosting actual peak intelligence or just affecting motivation?).

barry-cotter 12y ago
Why are you still operating on the principle of charity with tokenadult? He has refused to engage with a stable of similar arguments for years, from. He varies between arguing like he was trained for getting his J.D. (arguments as soldiers, argument from authority, argumentum ad hominem) and arguing as he would have during his math degree, by exclusion and contradiction, as convenient for his ideology. He's obviously well acquainted with the literature, witness his perennial work sample test bit but he places radically different burdens of proof on ideologically convenient and inconvenient arguments.