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whitemary

The better predictor would be the parents' wealth.

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It'd be interesting to see citations for this.

Parental wealth is a superior predicator of success than intelligence.

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.

That sounds pretty obvious but it has nothing to do with IQ.

"Success is basically how educated you are" - A group of people who have spent decades of time and hundreds of thousands of dollars on education

They have to call it success, otherwise it would be a useless study telling you that people with more money go to school for more years.

We were talking about predicting IQ. Now you're talking about predicting 'success' (which you assumed equates to wealth/education - funny, that).

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 I can't speak to this specifically but I think it's well known reading to children when they're young improves their IQ. And that sounds pretty believable to me. In the formative years if you give the brain good info it's going to learn how to operate well. I know this is hand wavy, but I think wealth can be a proxy measure for a good home life in the formative years. So sorry I have no citations, but I find it pretty believable.

what is considered good readings for children? genuinely curious

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings come to mind.

So not too long ago I think I figured out why people read fiction. I couldn't understand it, why would you want to know stories that weren't true? I think it's all about the social intelligence. True stories are what they are whether they're good or not. Fiction stories can be whatever the author wants them to be, so they can craft them for maximum drama. Hence why they might be good for diving into social and emotional intelligence.

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.

I think that you're significantly over-analyzing this. People read fiction because it's enjoyable, they like to have their imagination tickled, and it doesn't have to be tuned for maximum drama. This is like saying that you now understand why people would watch a movie which wasn't a documentary.

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.

> what is considered good readings for children?

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".

I think they're asking what would be good things to read to a child.

yes, i understood that, and the answer i gave was "pretty much anything" - there is no canon for what kids will enjoy.

Anything that is engaging for THEM, and captures their imagination - although a lot of that rests with the person reading to them to bring it to life...

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.

One-on-one tutoring by an expert is well known to be almost embarrassingly effective compared to classroom education[1]. It's also extremely expensive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem

Elementary school teachers would read to their classes in the 80s. They always picked books like that Shel Silvertein shit whose message appealed more to adults than children. I remember being bored into fits of rage and thinking "This is making me dumber. I want to go outside."

Would IQ be a confounding variable with wealth?

Maybe I'm using the wrong term, but: a smarter person would (in many cases) make more money.

I understand work ethic to be a better predictor of wealth than intelligence. You can imagine a lots of smart slacker not living up to their potential.

I'm sure there is a combination of factors. Work ethic without intelligence probably limits your earning potential. Intelligence without work ethic also does.

An interesting study would be: is work ethic inherited (either genetically or culturally). It would be another confounder here, I think.

To work ethic without intelligence: yes I agree. The way I look at it is: Your intelligence puts a ceiling on what types of success you can have, your work ethic determines how far you will go with your chosen path.

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.

https://youtu.be/bJWmJo3w_0Y

It's gotta be a mix of several factors. You can also imagine a bunch of idiots with grit.

That's certainly a possibility and worthy of testing as a hypothesis. Income and IQ hold a positive correlation for the vast majority of the population. (I think the same is true of wealth, given the highly positive correlation for most of the population between income and wealth.)

Everything plays a role but genetics is the most defining factor.

This is wrong

I'll cut straight to the chase:

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.

But Ashkenazi Jews are undoubtedly more intelligent than both. They also end up with a disproportionate amount of over-performers across the arts, sciences, finance, media, and entrepreneurship.

Can't their success be more attributed to a culture that favors learning and education, as well as the relative financial prosperity of Ashkenazi Jews compared to other groups? That the children of successful artists, scientists, or financiers become successful artists, scientists and financiers themselves is least surprising.

It's also least surprising that a group of abnormally intelligent people finds themselves perpetually ending up in positions of wealth and power.

I highly doubt it. For example in New York City there were historically immigrants from lots of different backgrounds all living in the same place working in the same industries. Is it just a coincidence that the most intelligent of them also became the most successful across every metric (on average)?

I love how straight forward you are, seriously, let's not beat around the bush this is basically what the conversation is gonna come down to. IQ might be a completely useless number (as it has been pointed out, it doesn't predict success or anything like that), but denying that it's related to genetics is absurd too.

Agreed, if genetics didn’t have a factor then it’s like saying you can’t prove a human is smarter than a dog (the difference of course between species stems from genetics - similarly as between humans).

This is the paradox of IQ.

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.

Makes sense. If you're a genius in a country of people who make worse decisions (IQ/culture/other), you may ne worse off than an average person in a country with an average average decision making level

To me it doesn't make sense. Why doesn't this exact same logic apply to individual success?

IQ is a much better predictor, controlling for other known contributors, of success for individuals within, say, the United States, than it is for countries.

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.

There is a paradox.

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.

What a fun logical jump you made.

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.

You might want to look at the GP's name. Yes, they didn't mention it explicitly. In the context of being named "theclansman" though, it's very likely to be the line of thinking the user had.

He cut to the chase. Which is what he said.

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.

Hair and eye color are simple epigenetical traits, and very easily measurable. As for size, I don't know if you've traveled to East Asia recently, but the young generations are just as tall as we Westerners. I follow a number of Asian bodybuilders and they aren't any smaller than your average white bodybuilder. The stereotype is likely the product of a historically poor nutrition, but that has changed, and Asians born in the last 30-40 years are proof.

Intelligence, on the other hand, is far more complex to define, measure and test than eye color or height.

Average size is still smaller according to data. Google the stats according to age range. The results still point to the generality that Asians are smaller.

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.

I think lots of posters are more concerned about their families and future children than racebait crap like this.

Even if ethnicities correlate with IQ, clumping them together into "white" and "black" buckets would just average out any differences because both "white" and especially "black" people are so genetically diverse.

Of course. This is obvious. Anyone who disagrees is wrong. Just look at animal IQ.

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.

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