Not when it comes to pure improvisation and ingenuity to get by, solve or problem and make life easier.
It's astounding what people in that situation can come up with.
It's astounding what people in that situation can come up with.
https://news.stanford.edu/2016/04/11/geography-income-play-r...
"Being richer was associated with living longer at every level of the income distribution. And the gap between the richest 1 percent and the bottom 1 percent in the nation was vast. At 40, the richest men could expect to live to 87 while the bottom 1 percent had a life expectancy of just above 72 – equal to the average in a developing country like Sudan"
https://healthinequality.org/documents/paper/healthineq_summ...
> At the same time, the researchers are quick to point out that the findings cannot immediately be reduced to simple cause-and-effect explanations. For instance, as social scientists have long observed, it is very hard to say whether having wealth leads to better health — or if health, on aggregate, is a prerequisite for accumulating wealth. Most likely, the two interact in complex ways, something the study cannot resolve. - https://news.mit.edu/2016/study-rich-poor-huge-mortality-gap...
In other words, this is a chicken-and-egg problem.
I think there is a definite policy question of how exactly is it that wealth helps grant better health, and can we effectively increase our society's health by knowing in more detail... but to me the fundamental link doesn't have much more to prove with that data.
But it would be invalid to use that observation to extrapolate that all (or most) poor people possess this kind of ingenuity. No: it was only the ones that were very smart to begin with. This faulty generalisation would indeed be an instance of survivorship bias.
See The Neuroscience of Intelligence by Richard Haier for an overview of the current consensus in intelligence research.
70-80% comes from where? Nobody knows exactly what the "smart genes" are, and studies in twins show that variance between individuals in IQ is about 50%-60% genetic...or 40-50% environmental factors2A/2B
Even Haier has said that the fact that intelligence is in some way genetic just means that the factors that might influence those aspects of it would also need to be genetic. This can include things like nutrition and mental illness/stress, which are more prevalent among poorer communities.
TL;dr- Just because it's genetic, doesn't mean that it's determined at birth. Your biochemistry is constantly changing based on your environment. 1- http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2013/09/intelligence-testi... 2A- http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/10/genes-dont-just-influ... 2B*- https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/traits/intelligence
Mostly from twin studies. This number (at least the ballpark figure) is essentially uncontested amongst researchers at this point (see e.g. [1]). However, this is the heritability of the variability of intelligence in adults. In children, that number is close to the one you cited. The rest of what you’ve said is essentially true: heritability is extremely complex and we’re only now getting the first few association studies in to ascertain which genomic loci are associated with changes [2].
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25985137 [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-018-0040-6
But it is well established that parents’ wealth is an extremely good predictor of children’s wealth (see e.g. [1]). And I don’t think OP is matte_black is denying the role of intelligence. They’re merely noting that poverty, in itself, doesn’t necessarily correlate with ingenuity.
[1] https://paperpile.com/app/p/5f560e7d-74f8-0316-879a-70c0cf60...
But it’s not the relative importance of one thing vs the other which is most important.
What is most important in the context of this conversation, imho, is the case for the profound negative effects of poverty, United-States style, on an individuals growth and the (sometimes insurmountable) challenges it creates for that person.
And the reason that this matters is that poverty in a country such as the U.S. (and also many, if not most other countries) is the result of a series of political choices by people (social policy, etc) over time.
In over words, it’s a phenomenon which is, if not created entirely by, is definitely affected (increased or decreases) by human behavior.
Meaning it’s something we can change.
So just because parent's wealth predicts children's wealth doesn't in any way make it impossible that intelligence predicts wealth too or that they'd necessarily be in conflict.
I think there are different kinds of poverty being assumed here.
On one had you have the innovation coming from the poverty of Cuba where they have adapted in amazing ways. But that's a society where poverty is the norm and things like family structure isn't much affected by it (I'm guessing).
On the other hand you have the poverty of the US where it's not the norm. The gulf between poor and rich (or just middle class) is overwhelming. The poor in the US are marginalized -- living in the least desirable areas, terrible access to education, jobs, grocery stores. High crime, broken families. Kids grow up with constant police sirens, sounds of domestic disputes, drugs, crumbling houses. That stress takes a toll. Focus on education is secondary to just surviving another day. Long term stress has been shown to cause a constellation of effects that are ruinous for our health -- mentally and physically.
Remember: it's not the absolute value that matters in poverty, it's the income inequality.
On the other hand, there is very little crime or drugs, and consequently few sirens.
So even though Cuba does have slums, there are elements that are better than a poor person in the US would experience. You also don't need a car or need expensive shelter, so there's less chance that everything will crumble if you hit a financial snag. My understanding is that is a major source of stress for US poor.
I don't have enough firsthand experience to know whether family structure is affected. But there are definite class differences you can note when talking to people.
Only a couple really made it out and thrived, of the ones that remain many are broken and on barbiturates or meth, still just trying to make it through the day somehow.
I work with a lot of people now who grew up wealthy on the east coast or in Orange County, and they often just don't believe me that people starved to death a couple states over while they were summering at the Hamptons. These venn diagrams just don't mix, ever.
The ability of a population to sometimes come up with incredible solutions does not negate the theory that growing up poor harms brain development.
You have structured your post as a criticism or denial of the point in the article, but your post is just a logical fallacy that makes no sense. Additionally, your post suggests that you think poverty is almost a desirable situation, you show no compassion or concern for the 40 million Americans living in poverty or how the system of American capitalism has left so many of them with likely brain development problems.
You dismiss leading science and modern culture for an attitude that certaintly doesn't belong in reasonable conversation online or anywhere. Your post is effectively 'F the poor, nothing is wrong with the situation, they are smart enough to get out of the whole we put them in, who cares about trying to help them or even understand what poverty is like'.