Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by Workaccount2 | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

Workaccount2

1.) Intelligent people befriend other intelligent people.

2.) Intelligent people get higher paying jobs.

3.) Intelligent people live in wealthier areas.

4.) Intelligent people marry other intelligent people.

5.) Intelligent people birth intelligent children.

6.) Intelligent people use their intelligence to augment their kid's intelligence.

7.) Intelligent kids go to step 1.)

The emperor is walking around naked, and virtually all of academia is terrified to acknowledge it (namely step 5). Right there is the solution to 50 years of sociological fumbling to avoid saying "Intelligence has a strong genetic component, and we are not all born with equal mental capabilities"

Once academia can acknowledge this, then they can finally work on real solutions to close the disproportionate economic gaps it creates.

(Yes, I am aware of your anecdote that counters this. It's a broad generalization to counter the mainstream broad generalization.)

View on HN

Are standardized tests an accurate measure of intelligence? IMO, they're more a measure of knowledge and perseverance. Having said that, I don't know what is the best measure of intelligence.

There is certainly a genetic component to intelligence, but environmental factors have a big role to play as well.

> Are standardized tests an accurate measure of intelligence? IMO, they're more a measure of knowledge and perseverance.

Depends on the standardized test. Some are designed to test knowledge, others are designed to test more fundamental attributes.

ACT is more knowledge, SAT is more fundamental attributes. SAT is still a significant amount of knowledge, but not as focused on it as ACT.

I think the issue is that number 5 is not true, at least not in a direct way.

Look at any family of 3+ siblings. Intelligence tends to vary significantly despite having the same parents.

Anecdata, but yes, I am not the smartest sibling in my family, but one of the wealthier ones.

The "dumbest" one is potentially the wealthiest. The smartest one (hands down) is the least wealthy.

This is besides the point though. Anecdata doesn't get at what happens on average, and that's what his post is about.

> Anecdata doesn't get at what happens on average, and that's what his post is about.

From what I've read, the inheritability of intelligence has a 0.50 correlation. That's not fantastic.

This is the Simpson paradox in action. It’s possible for smart parents to get less smart kids, or to observe a wide variation in smartness among siblings, but neither of those say anything about whether on average, smarter parents get smarter kids.

Genetics is a grab bag of traits. A whole bunch of marbles mixed around in a bag.

What I am speaking to is the types of marbles and their prevalence in a given bag. Not what is actually chosen in any given drawing.

A better phrasing would be "Kids who draw from bags with higher than average amounts of green marbles, are more likely to end up with green marbles in their bag"

>The emperor is walking around naked, and virtually all of academia is terrified to acknowledge it (namely step 5). Right there is the solution to 50 years of sociological fumbling to avoid saying "Intelligence has a strong genetic component, and we are not all born with equal mental capabilities"

Bien-pensants will tell us to the bitter end "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?" But they are aware of the truth.

Example: From a 2018 open letter by an eminent geneticist, "How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race'" <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-r...>:

>I am worried that well-meaning people who deny the possibility of substantial biological differences among human populations are digging themselves into an indefensible position, one that will not survive the onslaught of science. I am also worried that whatever discoveries are made — and we truly have no idea yet what they will be — will be cited as “scientific proof” that racist prejudices and agendas have been correct all along, and that those well-meaning people will not understand the science well enough to push back against these claims.

I have no interest in bringing race into this because of the wide genetic difference between groups that common people would label as being the same "race". Genetically there is wide diversity even within relatively small geographical areas.

Edit: grammar

Humans and mice have 85% commonality in their DNA.

More to the point, humans have between 99.6 and 99.9 commonality in their genetics. Even more interesting (quoted directly from below) " impossible to draw discrete genetic boundaries around human groups."

Your point is not accurate.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_genetics

> Humans are remarkably genetically similar, sharing approximately 99.6%-99.9% of their genetic code with one another. We nonetheless see wide individual variation in phenotype, which arises from both genetic differences and complex gene-environment interactions. The vast majority of this genetic variation occurs within groups; very little genetic variation differentiates between groups. Crucially, the between-group genetic differences that do exist do not map onto socially recognized categories of race. Furthermore, although human populations show some genetic clustering across geographic space, human genetic variation is "clinal", or continuous. This, in addition to the fact that different traits vary on different clines, makes it impossible to draw discrete genetic boundaries around human groups. Finally, insights from ancient DNA are revealing that no human population is "pure" – all populations represent a long history of migration and mixing.

The book "The Bell Curve" basically expressed the same point -- with data-- as yours here. And yeah, you are right. But then everyone is terrified by it, and hence the outcryand the name calling.

Partly right:

https://theconversation.com/are-rich-people-more-intelligent...

Wow, I thought this book had been burned by zealots and its ashes buried long ago. Thank you for resurrecting it.

The problem with this is that it is utterly ahistorical. Like it completely ignores every observation you could make about how wealth was historically allocated.

I mean, I just laid out how you end up with wealth dynasties. And this effect is observable in any population, it's not unique to the US, much less the the West.

If you think wealthy people are particularly smart in Europe, I have a few bridges you can handily take home.

My point would be that non-wealthy people in Europe are even less intelligent on the whole.

I know a lot of wealthy people, none of them are stupid. They aren't geniuses but none of them had issues in college. I know a lot of poor people from military, a lot of them are stupid and struggled with the very easy material you have to learn in the military.

And this is what statistics tells us, rich people are very rarely stupid, quite a lot of poor people are. The world isn't fair, but stupidity is such a massive drawback that it is basically impossible to get rich if you have it. Stupid people get tricked in deals everywhere etc, there is just no way for them to reach anywhere without extreme amounts of support.

Ah, but <insert US exceptionalism here>.

The Industrial Revolution is ahistorical.

Except the research doesn't show this at all.

However, having wealth provides tutors, better schooling and teachers which lead to better outcomes from having better mentors, opportunities and education which leads to...

and so on and so on.

Right, that is step 6.

If you go over the research, you realize that they all assume the premise "everyone is born with an identical blank slate". Which leads to conclusions (either said outright or implied) like; "If you give enough resources to any given child, they can grow up to be anything."

So we end up with schools that serve low income areas getting enormous amounts of funding to teach admin assistants and tile layers to be heart surgeons. And the data on that end shows unequivocally that it is not working.

> And the data on that end shows unequivocally that it is not working.

Of course throwing money at (sometimes corrupt) school boards isn’t going to be effective. There isn’t much 1/20th of a school teacher can do 8am-2pm M-F to counter a bad environment. It takes a village after all.

Not exactly data that’s useful to your hypothesis.

> If you go over the research, you realize that they all assume the premise "everyone is born with an identical blank slate".

From my experience this is a large exaggeration to not true at all. For example the Colorado adoption project has been around has been around for a longer time and was well regarded last I checked.

Are there piles of hard science papers out there that are concluding "everyone is born with an identical blank slate" that I am missing?

It's worth remembering this next time you hear someone say something along the lines of, "I believe in equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome". If people are indeed born with unequal abilities, then equality of opportunity is impossible.

You seem confused. If people are unequal then equality of outcome is impossible and not worth pursuing[1]. The only possible equality is equal opportunity which as you rightly point out isn’t really equal. But it’s the only possibility. Equality of outcome denies free will.

[1] edit to clarify, I mean “not worth pursuing” past the point of equilibrium. We can improve equality of outcome to a point but then will hit a plateau. Pretending that plateau doesn’t exist is one of humanities biggest problems. It’s a costly lie that doesn’t serve anyone but certain professional groups.

Here's my simplified way of thinking about equality at times - let's say you've worked hard all your life and have saved $2.5 million dollars - quite a nice sum. I just looked and Bill Gates stands at $128 billion. So 51,200 times more money. Do you think Bill Gates worked 51,200 times harder? Is he 51,200 times smarter? Better? Some level of inequality just seems inherently unjustifiable. I have no specific quarrel with Gates; insert any other filthy rich person and imagine it.

Bill Gates has probably had 51200 times more impact on the world than me or other more average people. Do you disagree about that? Maybe I could have had that level of impact given the same circumstances, but probably I wouldn't, most people with his circumstances didn't. And most likely I would have stopped working the moment I had enough money, I never would have gone on to push for more and more, expand for ever greater impact, I'd be happy as a millionaire like most other people would and stop growing.

People who continue working to expand their impact even when they don't need to are rare.

I think Dennis Ritchie and Linus Torvalds have had a roughly similar impact upon the world with the benefit that I also consider it a positive impact.

Expanding your area of impact, when it is no longer your technical domain, is to put it mildly, dangerous and often counterproductive.

“Some level of inequality just seems inherently unjustifiable.“

Define justifiable. I would agree with “unfair.” Life is not fair. Is life “justifiable” to you? In nature, there are predators and prey, is that “justifiable”?

I like to simplify my thinking too, but your view seems inherently suppose almost superhuman discernment, that you (or other humans individually or collectively) can judge what is justified on a case by case basis without any concrete principals or criteria, and without bias! Doesn’t seem simple to me at all! How to distinguish the bill gateses from the other guys is a problem as old as civilization. There is more law and tax code written on this than you can ever hope to capture in your thinking. Ignoring policy and centuries of human knowledge isn’t “simple” as much as it is ignorance.

That's not what equality of opportunity is referring to. It's about removing barriers and discrimination that would lead someone with equal or greater abilities to do worse than someone else with the same or lower abilities.

The phrase, "I believe in equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome" explicitly acknowledges that equality of opportunity will not yield equality of outcome. In part, because of the unequal distribution of talent that you point out.

The use of equality of opportunity there is about making sure a kid has the chance to perform as well as they can regardless of where they happen to be born and the socioeconomic status of their parents because today where you're born has a lot to do with how good of a school you get into unless your parents are well off enough to go private or have the time and energy to get you into a magnet/charter program that can bypass the geographic destiny of property and income tax levels.

Equality of opportunity means in a strict sense external factors, in an even stricter sense things that can be changed by policy. Otherwise, it would be asking for all people to be born with the same mental processing potential. Which is absurd, which I guess is your point. But it isn't that absurd if you define opportunity as "things society can actually do for the individual".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com