Poking the Sloth

Given that Megan is an economics blogger, isn’t she out of line commenting on another area of social science? That’s my understanding of how these things work.

Prof. Healy-

While your snark is no doubt amusing (to some), it’s worth pointing out that McArdle most certainly did not say that Shalizi’s post represented a “failure to understand the analytical methods” of IQ researchers, but rather a failure to engage what she sees (correctly, in my estimation, although I am not positive on this) as the more common evidence used by (for lack of a better term) “IQ determinists,” that is, twin and adoption studies, and the like.

Exactly what is it in the post that would lead you to believe that McArdle is asserting that Shalizi doesn’t understand statistical methods?

I don’t know much about the heritability of IQ, but I’m baffled by Shalizi’s claim that accent is fixed after adolescence. I speak with an accent that is quite different than that of my parents. It has changed over time, and I can track those changes by people’s reactions when I talk. It was some English variant in junior high school, an English/American blend in college, and a nondescript midwestern accent with no obvious geographic markers now. I anticipate that it will continue to change if I stay here in the southeastern U.S.

I’ll bet that your accent is very strongly influenced by your unrelated peers in the same generation, significantly less influenced by your parents, and hardly influenced at all by your grandparents. Isn’t that pretty much the opposite of heritable?

Mr. (or Ms.) Mkl,

I am a father of several children, and what I have observed leaves me little doubt that IQ is a heritable trait.

I am a father of several children

Awesome.

Mr. Alegria,

Maybe you and the other fathers can get together and nail down a number.

“May I assert that the belief that IQ is heritable is strongly correlated, nay, concentrated in high IQ types without children”

That’s crazy. High IQ types with children very much believe that IQ is heritable – they are smart, their kids are smart, instant validation/family feeling. Mrs. R.’s side of the family falls squarely on the nuture side of things, but they still say Rilkekind is likely to be smart because of his genetic heritage and his environment.

‘A: Sure. In a more cautious mood, instead of saying “there is” I’d say “there could be, for all we know at present, which seems to be squat”. But, sure.”‘

This isn’t reflective of current scientific thought, is it (and isn’t the reluctance kind of bizarre)? It’s not reasonable to say the heritability of intelligence is 0% or 100%, for example, is it?

Mr. Ogged, Mr. Walt,

Good work !

“Smart, accomplished parents tend to have smart kids”: quite so, but that could be caused by nature or nurture (or endless interactions of same). Hence the need for twin studies and whatnot.

It’s not reasonable to say the heritability of intelligence is 0% or 100%, for example, is it?

Oh no, it’s the Laffer curve again!

a) I wasn’t critiquing statistical method, or saying anything at all about statistics, except that they don’t seem quite pertinent (which is the provice, AFAIK, mostly of psychologists, not sociologists, but I might well be wrong). I was just saying that I didn’t see how the evidence that accent is both heritable and plastic, refutes the evidence the IQ people say they have from adoption and twin studies that IQ is both heritable, and not very plastic short of extreme material deprivation. But perhaps I am missing something that studying statistics under Professor Healy might teach me?

b) I have no particular opinions about the roles of genes vs. environment, except that both sides tend to overstate their evidence quite a bit, and the race nuts repulse me.

As we discussed here at length a while back, both height and IQ have shown themselves surprisingly plastic in environments that could scarcely be described as involving “extreme material deprivation”.

We should let the market settle this. We’ll take sperm from fathers of various IQ levels and eggs of women with various IQ levels and place them in homes of couples with various IQ levels.

Then people can but a future on the IQ at age 5, 10, 15 and 20 of the pool made up of the various combinations. For example, you have a biological father at 95, biological mother at 115 raised in a family of mother 100 and father of 105 and then we establish a market that pays say $10 times the IQ points of the child.

This will give us a measure of what people believe. Those that think IQ is less heritable can make big bucks shorting the high biological parental IQ pools and vice versa.

That’s one of the best discoveries of economics, the more money it costs people to hold false opinions(for example racism), the less likely they are to hold them.

I’m really pretty disinterested in debating the actual nuts and bolts of IQ heritibility, because as you say, the level of vitriol and bullshit from both sides just keeps increasing. My main point was that to the extent that IQ is interesting to people who are not simply looking to vindicate their preconceptions about race and gender–and I actually think the most interesting questions lie well outside those two minefields–that post doesn’t really seem to shine any light on the question. It just seems like refuting a straw man, the raving loon who thinks that IQ is 100% genetic. There are such people, but since they don’t seem to be pervious to reason there’s not really much point engaging them. But I wasn’t taking on that post because I wanted to argue that IQ isn’t plastic; I don’t know the answer to that, and haven’t examined the question closely enough to have an opinion.

Mr. Rilkefan,

I can only recommend the Gene Expression blog, where they are up on all the latest literature and know all about genetics, which is way beyond me. From all that I can tell there seems to be a consensus somewhere upwards of 50%.

So my question remains, is it reasonable for Shalizi to write about the non-null hypothesis, “for all we know at present, which seems to be squat” instead of, “the consensus view in the field is that h is 50%, but I’m skeptical about whether the required correlation matrix is right because blah” or whatever.

Yawn.

Steve Sailer to thread.

Smart, accomplished people are confident that their spawn will be smart and accomplished, until the missus squeezes out a Shrub dud or two.

At which point the parents become devoted believers in everyone being special and talented in their own way, even if they aren’t ‘smart’.

It’s like listening to the teachers’ pet at a third rate Catholic school arguing with the computer geek with Aspergers syndrome.
Jesus christ. Grow up the fuck up. If Shalizi is your idea of intelligence we’re all doomed.

“Jane Galt” doesn’t even fucking exist. Argue with someone who isn’t an absolute idiot, or ignore them.

Mr. Jon H,

Of course. Now how many parents will tend to have the experience you describe, vs the others ? There is such a thing as a statistical truth.

Miss Luis,

As a few people have pointed out already, “Mr Firstname” is not an appropriate form of address in most English-speaking societies, particularly when you have no idea whether the person concerned goes by some other title, or no title at all.

IMHO, resistance to anything that threatens the dogma of “no essential genetic differences” is a defense of meritocracy.

For those who believe that Western society IS meritocratic, anything that undermines the notion that the outcomes are FAIR is threatening. If we don’t all have an equal chance at winning the intelligence lottery, then a meritocracy becomes a caste-based society.

If you don’t believe that society is meritocratic, but that it should be, then you must postulate that changing social conditions could make the race FAIR. If some human populations (say, Ashkenazi Jews) are naturally more intelligent than others, then leveling the playing field is still going to produce a caste-based society. That is, if you believe that power and wealth should be handed out to the “winners”. But who but the philosopher-kings are going to warm to that idea?

There’s no compelling reason to believe that evolutionary pressures stopped operating on humans at some point in the distant past. It’s quite possible that there are differences in intelligence or intelligences between some populations. However, we can’t know for sure, since we don’t have a level playing field.

I suggest a grand experiment: let’s level the playing field. Make sure every human being has adequate nutrition and health care, top-notch schooling, and social encouragement to learn and excel. Let’s abolish hierarchy, so that no one comes from a denigrated class. Once we’re there, then we can check for variations in native intelligence :)

(A variation on Habermas.)

comment threads on IQs: where all the children and their parents are above average.

“Why don’t you try calming the fuck down.”

Heh, says the original Mr ‘Knickers in a Twist’.