Estimated IQ distribution of children given IQ of parents
milkyeggs.com
milkyeggs.com
I always find it interesting when people attack the genetic aspect of IQ as nonexistent. Given the heritability of almost literally everything else in our body, why is it such a stretch that intelligence, the most complicated of all, is also heridible?
If that were the case, I'd love to know EXACTLY what Bill Gates's parents did growing up differently than mine. I read all the time, had a normal childhood, good food available, etc, yet am nowhere near his level of intelligence. Was it the cereal he ate? The weather? The arguments break down immediately when a simple (and proven) solution makes much more sense... it's his genes!
Firstly comparing yourself to a top 1.43e-8% successful person is pointless.
But more importantly, IQ isn't everything, nowhere near, success is somewhat random, but also influence by so very much more - location, environment, economic background, personality, confidence, family, friends, a random person you meet or interaction you have...
You make success by making opportunities for these things to happen.
Doubtful (evidently)
Even on a small scale its freaky. I have two kids, raised in the same house, largely with the same style but 2 years apart. Yet they are still entirely different. My oldest is more like her mother in personality and the way she works through stuggles, deals with issues, people etc. Eseentially the lens she views the world on. She has academically struggled, and we have had to work with her (and my wife) on how we deal with things that arent "easy" or overcoming not being a natural talent at things.
My son on the other hand is so much more like me its freaky. He has to know how things work, or the why something works etc. Hes able to pick up more binary/finite tasks quite quickly for his age and even manipulating things/working on things in 3d or problem solving he is beyond his years. I can buy him, at age 5, pretty complex LEGO sets, like the 1000 piece ages 7+ or 9+ setups and he can pretty much do them solo. My wife is straight up intimidated doing them with him.
Frankly im more worried about him socially as a result long term and I am doing my best not to project that onto him now as its not a problem yet, but I can see some of the struggles I had with blending in or assimilating socially being a problem too (and I had a TOTALLY different upbringing).
Ultimately I cant think of it being much more than they are just wired differently. They approach things and the world differently (but still similarly to the differences between my wife and I).
The most important thing was his mother served on “United Way’s executive committee where she served most notably with IBM's CEO, John Opel” which played a major role in IBM choosing DOS from a tiny company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Maxwell_Gates
On top of this he grew up in a high income ultra competitive family. This meant he went to exclusive private schools with early access to computers. He also learned the basics of business much like how a child of farmers, lawyers, etc tends to learn a lot about their professions. Family game nights were extremely cutthroat which fostered the idea to keep pushing for #1.
Once there, simply click on Bill Gates' image for a comprehensive breakdown of our estimation process.
He scored a 1590 on the (pre-1995 recentering) SAT.
It may seem strange to test “test prep” not just intelligence, but the goal is to predict success in collage. Extremely motivated students have an advantage just like extremely intelligent ones. The test would be less accurate if preparation was less effective.
To be clear, I say this having gotten an extreme score not to denigrate the test.
What we know for sure from educational studies is that early intervention at the 2-6 years of age can completely negate any "inherited" learning issues, be they genetic or culturally acquired via parental neglect. So maybe that's where the focus should be.
You also have to ask how much sense does the premise hold. How do you exactly determine which allele relates to inheritable intelligence? It seems almost impossible to separate and control for social factors, i.e. to actually find the that the genetic markup of white upper-middle class people is the best predictor of "intelligence", because there is no definition of intelligence that this group is not better trained and better socially positioned to exhibit.
This fundamental difficulty in defining a culturally neutral measure of intelligence (and it's pervasive tendency to produce racist outcomes) has pushed the field into disrepute and makes people attack its conclusions.
You have your biological determinists - who believe that genetics (molecular mechanisms) are the mechanism of heritability; and you have blank slate people - who believe that the environment provided by the parents is that main mechanism of inheritance.
I personally find it to be kind of laughable because intelligence is not well defined. As I have gotten older and wiser I have realized that intelligence is multi dimensional, and the people who harp on IQ tend to be lacking along dimensions not related to analytic thinking - i.e. social, emotional, physical intelligence.
By twist of postmodern irony, it turns out the most impressive thing our brains could do is the stuff we feel is the most basic: walking and picking up cups.
This kind of deterministic attitude is a problem that's been fooling people for thousands of years, where they equate things like wealth with merit. I don't know what the solution is. Maybe Taleb should be required reading in schools. Maybe there is no solution and these people will continue to be exploited, as they always have been, for fun and profit.
I think I could use some fun. And some profit.
Obviously genetics are an important part of determining intelligence. That does not mean smart people who are attracted to smart people will produce smart kids.
That seems to be a common belief that arises when people think about genetics and intelligence, despite the numerous counter examples in other heritable traits with a genetic component (e.g. kids are not always taller or even as tall as their parents).
Are they questioning the genetic aspect of intelligence or of IQ test results?
If the former the question to ask them is how do they think intelligence evolved if it has no genetic aspect.
> we can calculate that approximately 10,000 alleles control IQ
> Assume that the genotypes of parents 1 and 2 are completely independent, and that at each allele, the child has a 50/50 chance of inheriting each parent’s copy of that allele.
I’m not an expert, but I’m fairly confident that genetics don’t work like that. (IIRC they do in middle school, but they stop almost immediately in college…) Humans (mostly) have 26 pairs of chromosomes, and those chromosomes are full of bases, genes, alleles, etc. And they are not even close to independently inherited: gametes inherit long stretches of consecutive bases from a single parental chromosome. It’s a fascinating process and you can read about it here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_recombination
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosomal_crossover
This has a large effect on the statistics of what one inherits from whom. I imagine it explains much of why people are likely to retain complex traits from their grandparents than one might expect, especially in cases where one or both parents are first-generation mixes of genetically rather distinct parents.
In any event, there are nowhere near 10k SNPs that can be independently inherited from a given pair of parents.
I have no particular comment on the overall model or conclusions of the OP, but it should at least acknowledge that its toy model is really quite implausible. (But I will note that my college class on genetics backed up its discussion of intrachromosomal recombination with math that was, if anything, even worse!)
“IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle”
https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-...
And why should we believe his/your assertion that capitalistic value is the only objective measure of intelligence? No surprise an options trader wants to equate financial success to greater intelligence.
* Iodine supplementation during early life (a few weeks) increases IQ * Organophosphate exposure increases autism (also why people who live near airports have higher incidence of cancer) * Phalates and non-sticks reduce male reproductive organ size * Music lessons in children increases IQ. * L-arginine during childhood increases height and free growth hormone
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11154-022-09760-7 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237236129_The_Plane...
EDIT: now it's marked as flagged
Bad Blood: The Story of Eugenics (6 Episodes) https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001fd39/episodes/player
Episode 1: You've Got Good Genes https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001fd36
Lots of factors impact IQ besides genetics. Education, nutrition, and environment are huge factors.
If you take two newborns and lock one in a dark cage, and raise the other with everything the world has to offer, you will see differences on IQ tests.
This isn't evidence that IQ doesn't exist. IQ is just one measure of applied thought and reasoning so you would expect it to track anything that affects those attributes.
> Are they abnormalities?
Yes.
> the average IQ of the world is increasing, how is that explained?
There are many different explanations. The biggest is that environmental factors that lower IQ such as malnourishment are decreasing. Another is that IQ is now more highly valued making high IQ individuals more fit to reproduce.
Nassim Taleb thinks it’s BS.
The parents were from China too so you can imagine the intensity of this of this pressure.
Then one day the father realized that his child did not inherit the high IQ of both him and his wife. It wasn't a matter of not working hard or being lazy.
He realized the error of his ways... that the intense pressure he put on his daughter was wrong.
I can't seem to find that article anymore. But being Asian myself it really got me thinking and curious whether their are other parents out their who experienced something similar and what's it like for the parent or the child?
Like how does Micheal Jordan react to the fact that his son will never have the abilities he had no matter how much his son tries or how much pressure he puts on him?
They may not be gifted but they can see through this lie.
https://news.yahoo.com/chinese-professor-rants-daughter-lowe...
https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/schooled2lose/
EDIT: Genetics do play a part though!
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191218153459.h...
> The study, led by the University of York, found that parents' socioeconomic status and children's inherited DNA differences are powerful predictors of educational achievement.
> However, the research suggests that having the genes for school success is not as beneficial as having parents who are highly educated and wealthy. Only 47% of children in the study sample with a high genetic propensity for education but a poorer background made it to university, compared with 62% with a low genetic propensity but parents that are more affluent.
> The researchers found that children with a high genetic propensity for education who were also from wealthy and well-educated family backgrounds had the greatest advantage with 77% going to University. Meanwhile, only 21% of children from families with low socioeconomic status and low genetic propensity carried on into higher education.
It's not surprising that wealth/education predicts wealth/education, but that's not what we're talking about.
Also it may be intelligence predicting education even better than wealth:
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/11/in...
So if you read fiction stories to a child you might have a lot to work with to teach them how to read people and how to interpret their emotions.
People, in general, implicitly learn how to read people and their emotions without coaching -- it's a natural part of being human for most. Autistic people, of course, are the exception here.
Just observe what makes them glow with excitement or intrigue and give them more of that...
Then perhaps steer them in the direction of their strengths - not yours.
Remember, it's their life and future not yours. Nurture them for in the direction of their own development...
Regardless of whether they stick with it, support them even when they switch to something else, the objective is the same.
what does that question even mean? anyone who has read almost anything (i except stuff like the marquis de sade) to kids must know that it is good for them, without worrying about whether the source is "considered good".
Maybe I'm using the wrong term, but: a smarter person would (in many cases) make more money.
An interesting study would be: is work ethic inherited (either genetically or culturally). It would be another confounder here, I think.
Probably not everything, but I believe it could be correlated with testosterone. I'm sure that has a genetic, diet, and environmental component to it. So right away I can say: yes.
White people are _not_ more intelligent than black people. And it is both factually incorrect and racist to believe so.
- "I never said white people were mo--" Sure, but that is nevertheless the belief held by 99% of the people who think that some ethnicities are inherently more intelligent than others. It's a reasonable assumption that that is what you think.
At no point did they say anything remotely related to race. You choose to make it about that.
If you take two people of the same race and one of them happens to have better genetics that lead to them being smarter, they are more likely to grasp the information provided to them and succeed in life.
I’m not going to pretend that there aren’t racist people in the world who believe what you were saying. I won’t pretend that there aren’t massive systematic issues in the western world that lead to non-white people having a harder lot in life.
I won’t pretend that you aren‘t trying to pour gasoline on the fire when it wasn’t even necessary. They made a polite comment and you just raged at them for no good reason. Calm down.
The logical implications of genetics determining IQ is obvious.
If genetics can determine physical appearance and genetics groups many certain physical aspects into a collection of common features for a race then if genetics determines intelligence, by what black magic does this grouping suddenly stop at intelligence?
Are we saying genetics can make Asians all have black hair, brown eyes, a tendency of a smaller size and suddenly zero effect on intelligence? Doesn't seem logical.
Thus when someone brings up intelligence and genetics it is by inescapable logic that they are also saying something about race.
Intelligence, on the other hand, is far more complex to define, measure and test than eye color or height.
One metric for intelligence is IQ. If you don't think IQ is a good measure of intelligence then let's not talk about things with vague definitions. Replace every usage of the word "intelligence" in my post with "IQ". Now we can talk on more exact terms.
IQ is only a slight predictor of individual of individual success there are many other factors that are superior to IQ for predicting individual success.
However the paradox is that while IQ is not a good predictor of individual success, the economic success of a country correlates heavily with the average IQ of the people in that country.
It is a paradox. One cannot simply say that IQ doesn't "predict" success. From the data, the answer seems much more complicated.
Sure, IQ “correlates strongly” with national economic success, but that’s because of other causal relationships, like that economic success predicts environmental conditions which are known contributors to IQ.
There’s no paradox here.
First off IQ only has a slight correlation with individual success past a certain point (someone with below 60 IQ is obviously going to have a hard time succeeding). The data shows that for high IQ and average IQ there is only a slight correlation with success.
Second what you said is patently false. We do not know if there is a causal relationship because a casual experiment is nearly impossible to conduct. This is very different from saying there is "no causal relationship." A correlation points to a possibility of causative relationships. Literally. You make a statement as if it was true, tell me the exact causal experiment you used to determine your statement about "no causal relationship".
Third. The correlation between economic success and IQ is much much stronger then the correlation between individual success and IQ.
Again there is a paradox. You are wrong.
Clearly human intelligence is determined genetically.
However, although human intelligence is clearly genetic and superior to most other animal intelligences there could be enough variability within the boundaries of human level intelligence such that variation in intelligence between humans could be influenced more heavily by other factors.