Comment by DabAsteroid | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DabAsteroid | Hacker News Reader

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I think most people would assume a man of his accomplishments would certainly be more than "not much smarter" than alot of people today are.

Einstein is commonly claimed to have had a +4 sigma g-strength (IQ of 160, on typical scales). Even assuming a normal curve, rather than the more-popularly-believed fat-tails curve, that would leave millions of people today with higher g-strengths than Einstein had.

Arthur Jensen writes:

Creativity and genius are unrelated to g except that a person's level of g acts as a threshold variable below which socially significant forms of creativity are highly improbable. This g threshold is probably at least one standard deviation above the mean level of g in the general population. Besides the traits that Galton though necessary for "eminence" (viz., high ability, zeal, and persistence), genius implies outstanding creativity as well. Thouhj such exceptional creativity is conspicuously lacking in the vast majority of people who have a high IQ, it is probably impossible to find any creative geniuses with low IQ's. In other words, high ability is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the emergence of socially siginificant creativity. Genius itself should not be confused with merely high IQ, which is what we generally mean by the term "gifted" (which also applies to special talents such as music and art). True creativity involves more than just high ability. It is still uncertain what this is, but the most interesting theory I have seen spelled out in detail is Eysenck's. He hypothesizes that the essential personality factor in creative genius is what he terms trait psychoticism, which has a genetic basis and is explainanble in part in terms of brain chemistry and physiology. (The g Factor. Ch14, The g Nexus. pp577-578.)

This is Eysenck's book:

http://www.google.com/search?q=eysenck+genius

Great comment! Can persistent effort increase intelligence?

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-to-raising-sm...

Great comment!

Thank you.

Can persistent effort increase intelligence?

No. Why do you ask?

Are you being sarcastic? Have a look at the link provided if you are not.

EDIT oh, I see: you thought I was asking you a question, but my question was an introduction to the linked article.

The article confuses work ethic and intelligence and ability. I think that although there's overlap, they're quite different things. And using grades as an intelligence indicator is horribly flawed.

Do you know of evidence that intelligence is not affected by effort?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=315938

Those references don't seem to address my question about effort having an effect on intelligence. My question isn't about the heritability of intelligence, but whether effort (that is, training) can enhance one's intelligence. Let me explain with an analogous question:

Does athletic training increase athletic ability? In terms of strength, flexibility, aerobic fitness, speed, perception, assessment, reaction times, specific skills, strategy?

Do believe that mental exercise has no effect whatsoever on mental ability?

That would be contrary to everyday experience, and studies showing that a lack of stimulation (i.e. mental exercise) retards cognitive development. e.g. that the visual system does not develop without stimulus; that the speech centers do not develop unless exposed to speech within the window (closes at around 7yo).

EDIT interesting: "Breast feeding makes a huge difference, about 7 IQ points." http://www.amazon.com/Factor-Science-Evolution-Behavior-Inte...

Those references don't seem to address my question about effort having an effect on intelligence.

To paraphrase Captain Malcolm Reynolds of the Firefly class ship Serenity: "Well -- they do." Try checking the subject index of The g Factor:

Abecedarian Project, 342-44, 500, 522

Head Start, 337-39

Milwaukee Project, 500

My question isn't about the heritability of intelligence

Why would you think that a book called "The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability" would only be about heritability?

Do believe that mental exercise has no effect whatsoever on mental ability?

Yes. Why do you ask?

studies [show] that a lack of stimulation ... retards cognitive development.

What studies are those? Would you consider being locked 24 hours, seven days a week, in a dark attic with a deaf-mute mother, and no toys, to be adequate stimulation for a developing child? The child rescued from that situation turned out to have mentally-developed normally, including having a normal IQ. Read all about it, and other cases of rescue from severe adversity, here: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Early+Experience+and+the+L...

Jensen discusses the case of Isabelle (reported by Clarke and Clarke) on page 113 of the g Factor:

From birth to age six, Isabel [sic] was totally confined to a dim attic room, where she lived alone with her deaf-mute mother who was her only social contact. Except for food, shelter, and the presence of her mother, Isabel was reared in what amounted to a totally deprived environment. There were no toys, picture books, or gadgets of any kind for her to play with. When found by the auothorities, at age six, Isabel was tested and found to have a mental age of one year and seven months and an IQ of about 30, which is barely at the imbecile level. In many ways she behaved like a very young child; she had no speech and made only croaking sounds. When handed toys or other unfamiliar objects, she would immediately put them in her mouth, as infants normally do. Yet as soon as she was exposed to educational experiences, she acquired speech, vocabulary, and syntax at an astonishing rate and gained six years of tested mental age within just two years. By the age of eight, she had come up to a mental age of eight, and her level of achievement in school was on a par with her age-mates. ... She graduated from high school as an average student.

What all this means ... is that the neurological basis of information processing continued developing autonomously throughout the six years of Isabel's environmental deprivation, so that as soon as she was exposed to a normal environment she was able to learn those things for which she was developmentally "ready" at an extraordinarily fast rate, far beyond the rate for typically reared children over the period of six years over which their mental age normally increases from two to eight years. But the fast rate of manifest mental development slowed down to an average rate at the point where the level of mental development caught up with the level of neurological development. Clearly, the rate of mental development during childhood ... is largely based on the maturation of neural structures.

Thanks for your considered reply. I'll check those references, when I have access to a copy of the book.

Why would you think that a book called "The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability" would only be about heritability?

Because I read all the reviews on the amazon page, and that is all they talked about. Not having a copy, that's the best I could do - and that is why I said it "doesn't seem to". You're putting words in my mouth.

Perhaps the greatest source of survival ability in human beings is the ability to co-operate. General capability, in the sense of "g", of course contributes not only to individual capability, but also to this ability to cooperate. It seems though, that a preoccupation with "g" itself can become an instrument of division between people (and peoples), and ironically this preoccupation therefore reduces its possessor's survival ability.

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Yes. Why do you ask?

Because I find that my life is better, and I make a better contribution to the people around me, when I am aware of the things that we do have influence over, instead of the things we don't. Some aspects of mental ability seem to fall into the first category. I asked you, because you seemed to know something about it.

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When found by the auothorities, at age six,

I said "that the speech centers do not develop unless exposed to speech within the window (closes at around 7yo )." There have been only few documented cases of severely neglected children. In those cases where child was rescued before age 7, they recover; but in those cases where the child was rescued after ago 7, they did not recover. With so few cases (thankfully), it's hard to be accurate - but the window seems to be about 7yo, from the data. This was from Psych 101, and sorry I don't have references on hand - it was almost 20 years ago - but any first year text should have it. Note that the opposite story of Isabelle ("neglected child/adult found with retarded mental abilities; never recovers") will be much less reported in the mainstream press and have a lower pagerank. Quite possibly, new data has been uncovered since then (though hopefully not), which could well invalidate the above hypothesis - but the particular case of Isabelle does not. Again, you have not taken into account what I have written - in this case "closes at around 7yo".

Incidentally, Isabelle demonstrates that before stimulus was available, the mental abilities were not present - only the potential for those abilities. Without appropriate mental stimulation, our potential is not realized.

.

You seem pretty arrogant in your rhetorical questions, so I'm going to leave you to it at this point. Thanks for the references, and good luck to you. :-)

I'll check those references, when I have access to a copy of the book.

You have access to The g Factor right now, if you have web access, since the entire text of The g Factor is online at Amazon.com (which allows viewing of any page, up to some predetermined page limit).

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0275961036/ref=sib_dp_ptu#re...

Searching for milwaukee, returns hits for pp340-43, 348, 490, 500, 552.

Searching for abecedarian, returns hits for pp335, 342-43, 349, 490, 500, 505, 552.

Seaching for head start, returns hits for pp335, 337-40, 407, 495, 500.

Seaching for stimulation, returns hits for pp155, 160, 251, 326, 340-42, 466, 487.

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The entire text of The g Factor is also available online (in a format that allows full text-select and copy) at Questia (http://www.questia.com), which requires a pay-subscription that starts at $10/month for single collections (for example, Psychology is one such collection option).

Do believe that mental exercise has no effect whatsoever on mental ability?

You can definitely increase your ability. I don't think that's necessarily the same as changing your intelligence. I think the derivative of ability may be intelligence though -- ie, the rate at which you can increase your mental ability, as opposed to the level of ability. I also think that the increase in ability is probably asymptotic, and intelligence could affect the point at which it becomes extremely difficult to increase your ability.

I don't know of strong evidence either way. The fact that I think the article has no bearing on reality doesn't mean that I know what the reality actually is. I'm not sure what the best estimator of intelligence is -- perhaps the amount of time taken to pick up a completely alien concept -- but I've never seen an article thats convinced me of the changeability of intelligence in one way or another.

IQ != EQ

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