Social policy and genes

[barbos]

How is that not the case? The whole study says it is. there is a correlation between IQ of parents and children.

Studies don't say anything.

Humans make conclusions from data.

Yet another meaningless observation.

What was the data and what were the conclusions?

Geniuses are rare freaks of nature and circumstances.

If "intelligence" is inheritable geniuses should be able to pass on their "genius" to their offspring.

Only person with complete lack of understanding how genes work would say that.

 

[Tigers!]

Also they seem to be implying that parenting may have no effect on personalities. So working harder and be diligent may as well be genetic.
So parenting is bullshit

And bang goes 17 years of effort with my daughter.

Thank you very much.

 

[untermensche]

Studies don't say anything.

Humans make conclusions from data.

Yet another meaningless observation.

What was the data and what were the conclusions?

Geniuses are rare freaks of nature and circumstances.

If "intelligence" is inheritable geniuses should be able to pass on their "genius" to their offspring.

Only person with complete lack of understanding how genes work would say that.

Your response is devoid of content.

If you had any point you probably would have made it.

But inheritable is not just that the human will produce a human offspring.

It means the offspring will be similar to the parents, and in superficial ways, like eye color and hair color and size and appearance this is the case.

But it is not the case with "intelligence", whatever combination of genes that may entail.

 

[ronburgundy]

But inheritable is not just that the human will produce a human offspring.

It means the offspring will be similar to the parents, and in superficial ways, like eye color and hair color and size and appearance this is the case.

But it is not the case with "intelligence", whatever combination of genes that may entail.

That's just completely false. Offspring are similar to parents in IQ (and most other measures of various basic cognitive skills like spatial ability, linguistic ability, not to mention many/most dimensions of personality). Just as with eye color, height, skin color, etc.., the similarities are not perfect, but on average childrens' IQs are significantly more similar to the mean of the parents' IQs than to the mean of IQ of another kid's parents. That is what a correlation between parent and child IQ reflects.
There would be zero correlation if what you claim were true, yet the correlation shows up in study after study, with an average magnitude of about .40.

Also, there would be zero correlation in the IQ of identical twins reared apart, yet the correlation averages about .70 across many studies.

In fact, exactly as predicted by the inheritability hypothesis, the greater the genetic overlap between siblings (standard siblings, vs. DZ twins, vs. MZ twins) the stronger the correlation between them in IQ, regardless of whether they were raised together or apart.

That doesn't mean that there is a single gene that directly determines the brain features the impact IQ.

It means their are any number of aspects of the genetic code that together and possibly via many various mediating mechanisms wind up exerting an major influence on how people perform on IQ tests.

There are many specifics in there that are open to dispute, but the data supporting the above statement is overwhelming and requires pure religious faith to deny it.

 

[barbos]

Yet another meaningless observation.

What was the data and what were the conclusions?

Geniuses are rare freaks of nature and circumstances.

If "intelligence" is inheritable geniuses should be able to pass on their "genius" to their offspring.

Only person with complete lack of understanding how genes work would say that.

Your response is devoid of content.

If you had any point you probably would have made it.
...

My Irony meter is melting

 

[Trausti]

But inheritable is not just that the human will produce a human offspring.

It means the offspring will be similar to the parents, and in superficial ways, like eye color and hair color and size and appearance this is the case.

But it is not the case with "intelligence", whatever combination of genes that may entail.

This makes no sense. And looks like an example of what the Quartz article was indicating: that certain people on the Left will reject science if it doesn't fit their political narrative. If evolution and natural selection apply to animals, and humans are animals, then humans are just as subject to evolution and natural selection as all other life on the planet. Thus, intelligence and behavior have to be inheritable. That's how evolution and natural selection work. Humans have higher cognition than chimpanzees. Chimpanzees have higher cognition than monkeys. Yet, humans, chimpanzees, and monkeys share a common ancestor. How did this cognitive difference arise but for the parents of diverging primates passing on their separately inheritable traits? And why would we presume that this inheritance of parental intelligence ever stopped? Ditto behavior.

Amsterdam — A FRIEND recently invited me over to see the blackbird that had taken up residence in a potted plant on her balcony.Serenely incubating eggs in the inner city, this bird had little in common with its shy, reclusive ancestors that nested in Europe’s forests. Early in the 19th century, probably in Germany, blackbirds began settling in cities. By the mid-20th century, they were hopping around on stoops all over Europe.

Many “wild” bird species — like the peregrine falcons, red-tailed hawks and laughing gulls of New York — have set up camp in cities. But the thing about Europe’s urban blackbirds (a relative of the American robin, not to be confused with North American blackbirds, which belong to a different family) is that they are very different from their forest-dwelling relatives. They have stockier bills, sing at a higher pitch (high enough to be heard over the din of traffic), are less likely to migrate (in cities there’s food and warmth year-round), and have less nervous personalities.

For many of these differences, genes are responsible. The birds’ DNA, after 200 years or less of adaptation, has diverged from that of their rural ancestors.

For a long time, biologists thought evolution was a very, very slow process, too tardy to be observed in a human lifetime. But recently, we have come to understand that evolution can happen very quickly, as long as natural selection — the relative benefit that a particular characteristic bestows on its bearer — is strong.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/24/opinion/sunday/evolution-is-happening-faster-than-we-thought.html?_r=0

 

[ronburgundy]

While there obviously is some type of net genetic influence on IQ, the OP is wrong in two related assumptions: 1) That such influence is direct and not environmentally mediated; 2) the the relative degree of factors that are and are not genetically linked is fixed and unchangable.

First, nothing in the data suggest that all the variance in IQ that is tied to genes results from any kind of direct effect of genes on brain development that in turns determines IQ test performance. Literally any aspect of the genetic code could wind up having effects that interact with a person's experiences to then indirectly influence IQ test performance.
This includes even things like physical attractiveness. We know from many other studies that attractiveness impacts how people are treated with more attractive people getting countless benefits from it, even including being presumed by others to be smarter (and thus treated by others including teachers as though they are smarter).
IOW, genes could impact attractiveness which leads affects how the kid is treated in countless ways every day, from added development hindering stress of being picked on to getting a bit less encouragement from teachers who assume he's not that bright. The impact can be very tiny on any particular person, but add up countless such socially mediated impacts across the population and you get a sizable % of the "genetic" effect that is actually mediated by controllable social environment and can be countered by other social efforts.

This relates to a more general problem with the OP, which makes the assumption that the % of non-genetic contributors to IQ is fixed at whatever it's current level is. That assumption underlies the OP claim that
This is completely nonsensical. If you take two kids and give them the identical diet, then almost all the difference in their height will be due to genetic differences. However, take those same kids and starve the one with "tall" genes while giving optimal nutrition to the "short" one and you will greatly reduce the % of the difference in height due to genes while increasing the % due to environment. That is the extreme example. You can alter the relative % of genetic and non-genetic contributors to total variance without hindering the people genetically disposed to be higher, but merely by introducing new environmental factors or just impacting the existing environmental factors.

In sum, the degree to which malleable factors can be manipulated to impact IQ lies not only in the % of variance not linked to genes, but likely some portion of the genetically linked variance that is actually mediated by environmental and even social factors. Plus the % that is or is not genetically linked is not fixed but merely what is currently the case, given the current environment we create. It represents only the minimal % of non-genetically linked influence, not the maximum.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I've never ever met a left-winger who held this view. Why does it feel like, in the US, all the criticisms that the conservatives have about liberals are straw-men?

Nobody thinks everybody is the same.

The real question though is how much do people really differ?

IMO most people lie very close to the mean and there are only a few true outliers.

What makes the difference is experience and "inner" intangibles like "drive" or "motivation" which a person has through no effort of their own, sheer luck and probably related more to experience than genetics.

It depends on how you define "close". There are few Einsteins, although more on the other end because there are various maladies that can cause low intelligence.

However, the difference between even 90 IQ vs 110 IQ (both close to the mean by normal statistical criteria) is profound.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yet another meaningless observation.

What was the data and what were the conclusions?

Geniuses are rare freaks of nature and circumstances.

If "intelligence" is inheritable geniuses should be able to pass on their "genius" to their offspring.

Only person with complete lack of understanding how genes work would say that.

Your response is devoid of content.

If you had any point you probably would have made it.

But inheritable is not just that the human will produce a human offspring.

It means the offspring will be similar to the parents, and in superficial ways, like eye color and hair color and size and appearance this is the case.

But it is not the case with "intelligence", whatever combination of genes that may entail.

Just because you don't want to believe that intelligence is inherited doesn't make it so.

 

[iolo]

Nobody believes that people are born the same, but sensible people ask why rewards are given to some rather than others. What are human beings FOR? Until you've answered that one, the question of equality and inequality and the rewards therefor has not been answered and you have no reason to let some humans steal everything.

 

[barbos]

Nobody believes that people are born the same, but sensible people ask why rewards are given to some rather than others. What are human beings FOR? Until you've answered that one, the question of equality and inequality and the rewards therefor has not been answered and you have no reason to let some humans steal everything.

We know what are humans for, they are for increase of entropy.

 

[Trausti]

Nobody believes that people are born the same, but sensible people ask why rewards are given to some rather than others.

Nature. Blame Nature. Why are only a small subset of men rewarded with the height to play and make $$$ in the NBA? Nature. Blame Nature.

What are human beings FOR?

Is this a religious question? Meaning of life? 42.

Until you've answered that one, the question of equality and inequality and the rewards therefor has not been answered and you have no reason to let some humans steal everything.

Tall men who make $$$ in the NBA are stealing from the short guys who never had a chance. Damn, Nature is cruel.

 

[EricK]

Yet another meaningless observation.

What was the data and what were the conclusions?

Geniuses are rare freaks of nature and circumstances.

If "intelligence" is inheritable geniuses should be able to pass on their "genius" to their offspring.

Only person with complete lack of understanding how genes work would say that.

Your response is devoid of content.

If you had any point you probably would have made it.

But inheritable is not just that the human will produce a human offspring.

It means the offspring will be similar to the parents, and in superficial ways, like eye color and hair color and size and appearance this is the case.

But it is not the case with "intelligence", whatever combination of genes that may entail.

Are you claiming that two parents with IQ 160 are just as likely to produce a child with IQ 150 as two parents with IQ 100? Or they are just as likely to produce a child of IQ 150 as one of 100?

Because in either case, I don't think there is any evidence (scientific or anecdotal) to back you up.

I would accept a claim that they are more likely to produce a child with IQ 150 than one with IQ 160 because there will generally be "regression towards the mean" to some extent.

All the evidence (and common sense, and everyday obersavtion) seems to be that it is similar to height - two tall parents are likely to produce tall children. But the heights of those children will tend to be skewed closer to the average population height.

 

[Canard DuJour]

“The left-wing view is that everyone’s born the same and you can make everyone achieve the same way."

I really shoulda stopped reading there, but..

..watch the video from ~3 mins. Plomin specifies that the adoptive parents were selected by ability to nurture, then says their IQs were unrelated to their adopted childrens' IQs - allegedly "the real killer fact" supporting the idea that nurture makes little to no difference. The interviewer goes on "so it doesn't matter whether they read to them, tried to stimulate them intellectually (etc)," to which Plomin (non)responds "Well, the brighter adoptive parents didn't have brighter adopted children"

IOW, if you eliminate the conditions in which nurture is likely to make a difference, you're left with innate differences. This isn't telling anyone, left or right, anything that wasn't screaming obvious.

I am sorry but you are not making any sense.

To you.

They found that IQ of adopted children correlates with IQ of their biological parents and does not correlate at all with IQ of adopted parents.

From which it does not follow that nurture makes little to no difference, especially given the stated selection criteria for adoptive parents.

 

[ronburgundy]

“The left-wing view is that everyone’s born the same and you can make everyone achieve the same way."

I really shoulda stopped reading there, but..

..watch the video from ~3 mins. Plomin specifies that the adoptive parents were selected by ability to nurture, then says their IQs were unrelated to their adopted childrens' IQs - allegedly "the real killer fact" supporting the idea that nurture makes little to no difference. The interviewer goes on "so it doesn't matter whether they read to them, tried to stimulate them intellectually (etc)," to which Plomin (non)responds "Well, the brighter adoptive parents didn't have brighter adopted children"

IOW, if you eliminate the conditions in which nurture is likely to make a difference, you're left with innate differences. This isn't telling anyone, left or right, anything that wasn't screaming obvious.

I am sorry but you are not making any sense.

To you.

They found that IQ of adopted children correlates with IQ of their biological parents and does not correlate at all with IQ of adopted parents.

From which it does not follow that nurture makes little to no difference, especially given the stated selection criteria for adoptive parents.

Ah, I see. You are saying that because adoptive parents tend to be high in nurturing, there is not sufficient variability in how nurturing adoptive parents are for it to covary with anything else, such as the child's future IQ.

Good point. If that is the main basis for his argument that parental nurture has "zero" impact, then your right that it is not valid evidence for that extreme claim.

Though the evidence on whole strongly suggests that the genes parents pass on wind up having a larger net effect than whatever parental nurturing does (which is only a fraction of the total "environmental impact")

I have a big problem with the very assumption that parental nurture effect would show up as a parent-child IQ correlation anyway.
Some critics of genetic influence have tried to argue that part of the parent-child IQ correlation is due to parental nurture. The OP is trying to then say that the lack of such a correlation among adopted parents is evidence of the lack of nurture effects on IQ. Not only does that not follow for the lack of variance reason you pointed out, but the starting assumption is wrong. There is no reason to think high IQ parents are better at nurturing their kids IQ. A high IQ is neither neccessary nor sufficient for engaging in parenting that might aid cognitive development. By nurturing their kids development, a parent can just as easily make their kid less similar to themselves in IQ.

There is a double-edged sword to rejecting the (seemingly baseless) assumption that parental nurture effects on IQ would impact the correlation between the IQs of parents and their children. On the one hand, it means the OPs claimed lack of such a correlation for adopted parents is meaningless and says nothing about nurture effects on IQ.
OTOH, it means there is no reason to think that parental nurture has anything to do with the .40 correlation that does exist between the IQs of biological parents and their kids.

 

[SimpleDon]

<snip>​

So how might government social policy change to accord with nature? Or will continuing the course, lest we have to face uncomfortable truths, prevail?

Which social policies are you talking about? It would be helpful if you could give an example of social policies that are based on the idea that all people have the same intellectual capacity (at birth?)

I have to admit that I am skeptical that there are any.

 

[Bomb#20]

Nobody believes that people are born the same, but sensible people ask why rewards are given to some rather than others. What are human beings FOR? Until you've answered that one, the question of equality and inequality and the rewards therefor has not been answered and you have no reason to let some humans steal everything.

We know what are humans for, they are for increase of entropy.

Not me. I'm against it -- I'm a sucker for lost causes.

 

[blastula]

Social policy and genes

Yeah, this will end well.

 

[untermensche]

Yet another meaningless observation.

What was the data and what were the conclusions?

Geniuses are rare freaks of nature and circumstances.

If "intelligence" is inheritable geniuses should be able to pass on their "genius" to their offspring.

Only person with complete lack of understanding how genes work would say that.

Your response is devoid of content.

If you had any point you probably would have made it.

But inheritable is not just that the human will produce a human offspring.

It means the offspring will be similar to the parents, and in superficial ways, like eye color and hair color and size and appearance this is the case.

But it is not the case with "intelligence", whatever combination of genes that may entail.

Are you claiming that two parents with IQ 160 are just as likely to produce a child with IQ 150 as two parents with IQ 100? Or they are just as likely to produce a child of IQ 150 as one of 100?

Because in either case, I don't think there is any evidence (scientific or anecdotal) to back you up.

I would accept a claim that they are more likely to produce a child with IQ 150 than one with IQ 160 because there will generally be "regression towards the mean" to some extent.

All the evidence (and common sense, and everyday obersavtion) seems to be that it is similar to height - two tall parents are likely to produce tall children. But the heights of those children will tend to be skewed closer to the average population height.

Height is a superficial trait, like eye color.

But systems, like the visual system are not superficial traits.

I contend whatever "intelligence" is, it is not a superficial trait, it is a system. It involves memory and language and incorporates the sensory motor system with speech. It is a hugely complex system.

So the transference of "intelligence" is not like the transference of height or skin color or eye color.

It is like the transference of the visual system or the immune system. A much more complicated affair than the transference of superficial traits.

If you want to see superficial traits, look at dogs. The differences are the superficial traits.

But things like their visual systems and digestive systems and skeletal systems are not superficial traits and are similar for all breeds.

 

[barbos]

“The left-wing view is that everyone’s born the same and you can make everyone achieve the same way."

I really shoulda stopped reading there, but..

..watch the video from ~3 mins. Plomin specifies that the adoptive parents were selected by ability to nurture, then says their IQs were unrelated to their adopted childrens' IQs - allegedly "the real killer fact" supporting the idea that nurture makes little to no difference. The interviewer goes on "so it doesn't matter whether they read to them, tried to stimulate them intellectually (etc)," to which Plomin (non)responds "Well, the brighter adoptive parents didn't have brighter adopted children"

IOW, if you eliminate the conditions in which nurture is likely to make a difference, you're left with innate differences. This isn't telling anyone, left or right, anything that wasn't screaming obvious.

I am sorry but you are not making any sense.

To you.

They found that IQ of adopted children correlates with IQ of their biological parents and does not correlate at all with IQ of adopted parents.

From which it does not follow that nurture makes little to no difference, especially given the stated selection criteria for adoptive parents.

selection criteria for adoptive parents is irrelevant because whatever it is it was determined to have no effect on anything. IQ of children correlates with IQ of their biological parents regardless of anything.

For your theory to be correct you need to have loss of correlation between children and their biological parents but it's not there. And even then it would suggest weird correlations which mathematically impossible.