/r/MapPorn discusses a highly controversial map based on the book "IQ and the Wealth of Nations". Downvotes on both sides. (np.reddit.com)
SubredditDrama
78 ups - 21 downs = 57 votes
116 comments submitted at 05:07:20 on Nov 5, 2013 by Xenocidius
/r/MapPorn discusses a highly controversial map based on the book "IQ and the Wealth of Nations". Downvotes on both sides. (np.reddit.com)
SubredditDrama
78 ups - 21 downs = 57 votes
116 comments submitted at 05:07:20 on Nov 5, 2013 by Xenocidius
An objective analysis of inherited intelligence would be an interesting, but impossible study.
IQ tests are biased. And we haven't even nailed down a good definition for intelligence that everyone agrees on.
We know it's an heritable trait. So it's possible intelligence is not evenly distributed among every population (no one would argue that every ethnicity is equal in height, this is also a heritable trait).
However it's also highly influenced by environment. Particularly nutrition. So are poor nations poor because they're less intelligent or are they less intelligent because they're poor and can't afford proper food and vaccines? I'd guess the latter but it's hard to say either way.
> IQ tests are biased. And we haven't even nailed down a good definition for intelligence that everyone agrees on.
This is a great way to say you've never read any of the literature on this subject, despite using "we" like you're a contributor to the field or something. And then Vorpal_Hammer responds to you where the first thing out of his/her mouth is "yep", like this is some common understanding you both have when you've both not read anything on the subject except possibly the politicized literature talking about how racist certain IQ studies are. I have no idea where either of you are getting your information but it's not the typical psychometric literature.
"general intelligence" is by far the most widely accepted model of intelligence and the one with the most predictive value. I don't know who "we" is but psychometricists have established the most predictive value for this model; it eclipses by far any other model of intelligence on the grounds of what the model can be used for.
An "objective analysis of inherited intelligence" happens frequently with things like twin adoption studies. Every meta analysis I've read (APA or Bouchard 2004, pick one) put the heritability of adult intelligence no lower than .7.
The malnutrition point is a valid one, but that doesn't mean intelligence is "highly influenced by environment." Your phrasing (given the context it's usually used in) makes it sound like your typical parents in a typical middle-class environment have a huge amount of leeway to make their kids geniuses, but it's more like "if you are doing something that causes minor brain damage, that will harm your intelligence." Quite obviously intelligence would be "highly influenced by environment" if you had frontal lobe damage, but it's not like you can influence it in the other direction by preventing frontal lobe damage really hard.
It's way more accurate to say "intelligence is mostly inherited, with a little environmental leeway for improvement and potential for damage if your living conditions are horrendous."
Impressive. You rarely see someone this wrong while pretending to be an expert.
The definition of intelligence is hotly contested. Here's a wiki article to get you started on that.
Heritability estimates for IQ ranges but the consensus is that it's somewhere around half.
So genetics is a large factor. But to focus on that leaves out half the equation. Which would not be very intelligent by any measure or definition of the word.
>Your phrasing (given the context it's usually used in) makes it sound like your typical parents in a typical middle-class environment have a huge amount of leeway to make their kids geniuses,
Impressively wrong.
Environment is the sum total of everything you're exposed to. And the world (this may shock you) does not consist of solely middle class families in the US.
Nutrition is a huge limiting factor in most of the world.
As is disease.
And saying XYZ affects your intelligence doesn't mean you can maximize those to produce geniuses (where did I say anything like that?) Hitting you in the head with a brick affects your intelligence. Not doing so doesn't make you a genius however. Nutrition is like that: lack of good nutrition can strongly affect your intelligence but it isn't going to make you a genius if you get it.
>but it's not like you can influence it in the other direction by preventing frontal lobe damage really hard.
Who said otherwise? You realize that when I rightly pointed out that environment can effect intelligence I NEVER ONCE SAID AN IDEAL ENVIRONMENT WOULD MAKE ONE A GENIUS.
>It's way more accurate to say "intelligence is mostly inherited, with a little environmental leeway for improvement and potential for damage if your living conditions are horrendous."
I guess if you want to call 50% "a little".
Oh my god. You have no idea the size and scope how wrong you are. You think you're knowledgeable on this subject. You think you've actually given this subject a fair shake because you read the wikipedia page on this.
You have not even the farthest idea from what the fuck you're talking about. You linked me to the fucking "definitions" page on Wikipedia like this is new to me. There are lots of alternative definitions of intelligence but there are no competing definitions of intelligence with even close to the same rigor, substantiation, and scientific support as the general intelligence model. That you would link these having no knowledge of how some of these alternative definitions are complete jokes (Gardner's, for example, which has no predictive value) demonstrates to me that you have not actually looked into how any of these models are evaluated by the existing psychometric literature. I don't know where you get your information from but I wouldn't be surprised if the entirety of your exposure to this subject matter was from debates on reddit and Wikipedia pages you've used to contradict other people who also haven't read the literature.
Your fucking melodramatic linebreak posting style is horrendous in how you expect it to make up for the complete lack of weight your claims hold and it's infuriating watching you hype up the very bad counterarguments you're about to lay down because you want to act like you're more familiar with this kind of information than you are. Everything after "impressively wrong" is linebreak salad and I'm not going to do you the courtesy of quoting you how you want to sound; I'm going to put this in one big paragraph because they're the same thought and that's how they should be organized intellectually:
> Environment is the sum total of everything you're exposed to. And the world (this may shock you) does not consist of solely middle class families in the US. Nutrition is a huge limiting factor in most of the world, as is disease. Saying XYZ affects your intelligence doesn't mean you can maximize those to produce geniuses (where did I say anything like that?). Hitting you in the head with a brick affects your intelligence. Not doing so doesn't make you a genius however. Nutrition is like that: lack of good nutrition can strongly affect your intelligence but it isn't going to make you a genius if you get it.
This is something I already said, which you can read by scrolling up:
"[The claim that intelligence may be influenced by environment is] more like "if you are doing something that causes minor brain damage, that will harm your intelligence." Quite obviously intelligence would be "highly influenced by environment" if you had frontal lobe damage, but it's not like you can influence it in the other direction by preventing frontal lobe damage really hard."
> You realize that when I rightly pointed out that environment can effect intelligence
> rightly pointed out that environment can effect intelligence
> rightly pointed out
> rightly
lol.
You were not "right" to point this out. You were "sort of right if you read your wording charitably." "Highly influenced by environment" screams out to the people who think that the difference between genius and mediocrity is some clever parenting tactic they exercised, which of course gives them a great deal of credit if their kids turn out brilliant. Intelligence is greatly influenced in one direction (downward) by nutrition, not in both directions. Adult intelligence is barely influenced upwardly by environment, which every meta-analysis shows.
> I NEVER ONCE SAID AN IDEAL ENVIRONMENT WOULD MAKE ONE A GENIUS.
IF YOU'RE GOING TO USE CAPS, THEN I WILL USE CAPS BACK AT YOU TO SHOW YOU HOW PISS-POOR OF AN ARGUMENTATION TACTIC THIS IS AND HOW GENERALLY IGNORANT YOU ARE OF ALL LITERATURE SURROUNDING THIS SUBJECT.
"HIGHLY INFLUENCED BY ENVIRONMENT" IS VAGUE, AND MOST PEOPLE WHO THINK ENVIRONMENT CONTRIBUTES A GREAT DEAL TO INTELLIGENCE (YOU, AS YOU PROVED YOURSELF TO BE BELOW WHILE COMPLETELY IGNORING THE META-ANALYSES I MENTIONED) WILL READ "HIGHLY INFLUENCED BY ENVIRONMENT" AS "THERE ARE LOTS OF THINGS I CAN CHANGE", SO I WAS PRE-EMPTING THIS VERY WRONG READING.
Let me make this very clear
If your nutrition is absolutely fucked, aka 3rd-world levels of nutrition, then yes, that can seriously lower your IQ
If your nutrition is anywhere from "poor" to "great", aka 1st-world levels of nutrition (even counting the McDonald's nutrition that people on reddit like to stigmatize), this will not seriously alter your intelligence into adulthood
The definition of intelligence is NOT "hotly contested", this is something people who are threatened by the consensus models of intelligence put up because it makes people feel better to believe that this isn't as supported as it is. By saying this you're ignoring the literature in the same way that someone who says "anthropogenic global warming is hotly contested" is ignoring the literature in that field. That is what you are doing.
Focusing on genetics does not leave out "half" of the equation
the "consensus" is not somewhere around half
the "consensus" is not somewhere around half
finally, holy fucking shit, this thing:
> if you want to call 50% "a little".
THE CONSENSUS IS NOT HALF.
a 1996 meta analysis by the American Psychological Association put adult IQ heritability at .75 and Bouchard 2004 put adult IQ heritability at .85. The only way you'd get something like .5 heritability is if you made a composite of adult IQ and childhood IQ or IQ in other populations, but that is completely useless because adult IQ (the ultimate outcome of your intellect) is the factor most people are concerned about; IQ in childhood may be more variable, but in adulthood it is not.
Only if you ignore every other meta-analysis and literature review in favor of the most favorable-to-environmental way can you come out with a figure like .5 heritability.
Seriously, you are so unfamiliar with this debate it's ridiculous. Have you read any of the work by Jensen? Have you read the APA report on intelligence? Have you read any psychometric journals? Your opinion of the field is totally warped and no one should take you seriously if they're to get an idea of what the science actually says.
I am sure some dolt will focus on the fact that I have written this with intense wording. If you have ANY interest at all on appreciating the scientific consensus on intelligence, thinking it's something like 50% heritable will give you a bad time. Redditors generally like being in line with the scientific consensus on this issue and you're misleading people by telling them that this is some hot debate. Yeah, it's a "hot debate" all right: between people in a field and people who don't know anything about that field but hate the conclusions made by it for ideological reasons.
That is an impressive hyperbolic rant out of nowhere. At no point did you come close to addressing anything I wrote or backing up your claims. You ranted and insulted and generally made an ass out of yourself.
I have no clue where you're getting this rock solid 80% heritable figure. There are some studies that go that high, others that go lower. Hence why I said it was a range clustered around 50%, which it is. I linked to a pretty simple article to get you started. Basically it has been shown to range from 20 to 50 to 70 percent. Hardly the definitive 85 percent you keep claiming.
Also your dismissal of environment as only mattering in the third world kinda shows where you're coming from on this and the limitation of your experiences applied to this very real issue.
Your middle class first world neighborhood isn't the world. Most of the population lives in a third world setting. And has for all of our settled history. The natural state for the majority of mankind is malnourished.
So to dismiss that as not really mattering on a discussion of global IQs is uttterly absurd. You may as well argue that living without medicine and clean water and regular doctor visits can affect your health, but that's a trivial factor because everyone you know has all those things on a discussion of global health concerns.
Do you realize that the situation you wave away, poor childhood nutrition and lack of medical care, is a reality not only to a lot of people but the majority of our species? So ignoring that as a relevant factor is kinda insane. "Yeah XYZ matters, but only in like 99% of the cases, so ignore that and focus on the 1% where it matters a bit less".
You probably walk through old houses and wonder why people used to build doorways so uncomfortably low.
> That is an impressive hyperbolic rant out of nowhere. At no point did you come close to addressing anything I wrote or backing up your claims. You ranted and insulted and generally made an ass out of yourself.
> I have no clue where you're getting this rock solid 80% heritable figure.
You have no clue? It's right in my post:
"a 1996 meta analysis by the American Psychological Association put adult IQ heritability at .75 and Bouchard 2004 put adult IQ heritability at .85. "
I can see why you'd think it's an "impressive hyperbolic rant" and that "at no point I backed up my claims" if you read my post like presumably you read all of the IQ literature, which means poorly.
Since you obviously didn't google these, I will link you them and quote the relevant parts below:
Page 85 or 4 on the PDF of the 1996 APA report: "We now know that the heritabiity of IQ changes with age: h^2 goes up and c^2 goes down from infancy to adulthood ... by late adolescence h^2 is around .75 and c^2 is qute low (zero in some studies)"
Bouchard 2004, page 150 (page 3 of the PDF) gives .82 for heritability of IQ by age 18 and this peaks at .88 by 26 but goes back down to .85 by age 50.
If you have "no idea" where I originally got these figures then it's clear your eyes completely sailed over these references and you responded without even reading the rest of my reply. Did your eyes just scan for blue text? Whatever the case, consider me not surprised at all. And I'm not even sure if you read the paper you mentioned, since it mentions that the heritability ratings that have been cited in the article are between 50 and 70 percent and that's how the debate has shifted (to increasing acknowledgement of the large hereditary influence in the development of intelligence), not that "it has been shown to range from 20 to 50 to 70 percent"*, which is an enormous misreading of the very article you cited.
> Also your dismissal of environment as only mattering in the third world kinda shows where you're coming from on this and the limitation of your experiences applied to this very real issue. Your middle class first world neighborhood isn't the world. Most of the population lives in a third world setting. And has for all of our settled history. The natural state for the majority of mankind is malnourished. So to dismiss that as not really mattering on a discussion of global IQs is utterly absurd.
It doesn't matter when you make the claim that IQ is "highly environmental." If you said that "nutrition strongly affects global IQ" this would be an uncontroversial claim but you worded your statement in terms of someone who purposely ignores the literature (which you've shown me no reason to believe you don't, especially given your misreadings of the own article you cited and your failure to acknowledge the articles I cited) in favor of an "IQ is heavily environmental" perspective, which you reinforced by arguing in favor of uncommonly low levels of hereditary percentages in the development of adult IQ.
Whether this comes from a "limited experience" or not is irrelevant to the conclusions people are going to take away from your claims of IQ being "highly environmental". From a first-world perspective (which most readers of your comment will be) IQ is not "highly environmental" in the least.
You have not only claimed yourself to be part of a field you're not ("we don't even know...") but you've demonstrated huge ignorance of the literature in that field and an inability to critically read the very literature you provide in citation of a claim you feel is representative of the current state of the field. It's incredible how much posturing you're doing right now to mask how entirely and utterly wrong you are -- your argument right now is the epitome of rhetoric over scientific consensus, a la climate deniers.
No one who wants to get an accurate depiction of the scientific consensus on the development of adult intelligence as they're likely to encounter it should listen to you. You are correct in saying that malnutrition (not poor nutrition by US standards) can severely affect IQ, but the other claims you've made (that there is a debate about the definition of intelligence, that it's "highly environmental", that it's "50% heritable") are in no way representative of consensus and the people who read you should trust you in the same way they'd trust a person claiming that the consensus on anthropogenic global warming isn't as strong as scientists would claim.
>If you have "no idea" where I originally got these figures then it's clear your eyes completely sailed over these references and you responded without even reading the rest of my reply.
Oh dear. No I know where you got those two numbers. I just have no idea why you've chosen to fixate on those two studies as the end-all and be-all of intelligence research when they are among thousands of different articles with different conclusions, many of which are newer and have access to more data than those. You realize that the two articles you've chosen as gospel are two among a great many right?
>It doesn't matter when you make the claim that IQ is "highly environmental."
Er, it is. That's like saying cancer is 100% genetic because if you remove all possible carcinogens the environment doesn't matter. People aren't cultured in a lab. Your intellect is the result of a variety of factors.
But yes, I will concede that once you remove all environmental factors, and error, then what is left is 100% genetic.
Likewise all your fingers are thumbs if you remove all non-thumbs from the mix.
>Whether this comes from a "limited experience" or not is irrelevant to the conclusions people are going to take away from your claims of IQ being "highly environmental". From a first-world perspective (which most readers of your comment will be) IQ is not "highly environmental" in the least.
Actually yeah it is. If it weren't for the environment their IQs would be very different. How is the presence or absence of a thing making a huge difference proof that this thing makes no difference? You may as well say vaccines have no effect on disease in the first world since most people have them. A problem not existing due to some causative agent = it having an effect.
>You are correct in saying that malnutrition (not poor nutrition by US standards) can severely affect IQ
A minor win for Team Rationality!
>but the other claims you've made (that there is a debate about the definition of intelligence
Perhaps not amongst very angry ideologues on the internet but among people studying it yes the way intelligence is defined and measured is a subject for constant debate. I think that's something you don't get about science. It's not screaming at people online. It's constantly testing and measuring and collecting data and retesting and assuming that anything you currently believe could be wrong if the data shows otherwise.
>that it's "highly environmental"
50%, give or take. More if the environment is particularly terrible.
>are in no way representative of consensus and the people who read you should trust you in the same way they'd trust a person claiming that the consensus on anthropogenic global warming isn't as strong as scientists would claim.
If you eliminate the environment from global warming the problem disappears. Since most of us don't live in the atmosphere that is a reasonable thing to do.
Just testing out your logic.
Holy fucking shit, the two reports I gave you are meta analyses. They are not "studies" in the sense that they come out with a single result. Do you know the difference? They evaluated the hereditary figures from the "great many articles with different conclusions." No, you don't know the difference. Which is why you're some guy who hasn't read any of this literature trying to act like you have, and you're passing yourself off like you have any idea what the field of psychometrics thinks of the hereditary components of IQ by saying "we're not even sure" like you're some participant in the field.
Yeah, saying "your intellect is the result of a variety of factors" is true for people who might fall victim to malnutrition, aka people who live in 3rd-world countries. It is not true for people who live in any 1st-world country. Nearly everyone who reads this will be in a 1st-world country and it's essential that they don't come out with the idea that this is way more environmental than it is, which they would if they listened to your and your horrendously incorrect conclusions.
> but among people studying it yes the way intelligence is defined and measured is a subject for constant debate
Oh my god, no. No it isn't. "Intelligence" as measured by the general intelligence model has been the standard for decades. Ideologues are the one who are disputing that this is the consensus, they are not the ones saying there is a consensus. The people who agree that there is a consensus point to the general intelligence model which has BY FAR the most literature supporting it, which you have demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are unfamiliar with.
How dare you say something like "I think that's something you don't get about science" when you haven't shown even the most rudimentary familiarity with psychometrics as a field or even what a fucking meta-analysis is. You 'get science' in the way that people who circlejerk about Neil deGrasse Tyson and say "YEAH SCIENCE BITCH" 'get science'. You get science as fashion, not as a way of testing models.
It is not fucking 50%. It is not 50% "give or take". Even the paper you cited mentions that the heritability ratings that have been cited in the article are between 50 and 70 percent and that's how the debate has shifted (to increasing acknowledgement of the large hereditary influence in the development of intelligence), not that "it has been shown to range from 20 to 50 to 70 percent", which is an enormous misreading of the very article you cited. This paragraph may be new to you -- it's because I said it before in response to your claim that the article you cited validates the "50%" claim and you didn't read it.
Your comparison to global warming would hold if your claim was that humans alter the environment changed in the event of nuclear reactors disasters and nothing else, since this is essentially saying all you need to do is protect this very disastrous thing from happening and you'll be okay. But in reality, very minor things humans do every day affect the climate. In intelligence terms, malnutrition is some disastrous thing you need to prevent but after that the things you do have little affect on your intelligence.
Seriously, you are revoked of your claim to speak for "science" since you have demonstrated (A) such a poor understanding of the literature and (B) such a poor ability to read the existing literature you have been presented with. No one reading this should be taking you or your claims seriously right now, and they will walk away with an inaccurate picture of psychometrics or the study of intelligence if they do.
You're not handling this well. Tell me, why is it so important to you that I adhere to your notion that for all people IQ is nearly entirely genetic despite mountains of evidence contradicting this? You're coming across as a theist here.
> despite mountains of evidence contradicting [the degree to which intelligence is hereditary]
Shit like this.
Because you say shit like this right here.
Are you OK?
Let me guess: you don't have the slightest guess how someone could care about the misrepresentation of scientific consensus for ideological gain.
What ideology might you be referring to?
You can say "Anti-racist is anti-white" now. You know you want to.
I don't know what you're getting at but the hereditary basis of intelligence is the consensus of a field, and you sound like the kind of person who would find any reason to believe this isn't true because it holds uncomfortable implications for certain outcome-based egalitarian ideals if true. Race is a minor concern since even if a race held lower scores on average due to hereditary factors that wouldn't make that race inferior; the implications of this information impinge most on education reform, where reformers assume a great deal of malleability on part of students.