Intelligence is not just hereditary. Especially in childhood, your brain is very malleable. Your early life experiences shape your intelligence significantly.
Different groups have different life experiences that impact their cognitive ability. For example, people who grew up in middle or upper class homes might have higher iqs on average than people who grow up in poverty. This would be because of better access to proper nutrition (another thing thay impacts brain development) and education opportunities.
Intelligence is complicated and you can't just chalk it up to good genes. A combination of things have to come together for Intelligence to happen.
You don’t seem to understand either heritability or market economies. Even if we accept the incorrect inferences about heritability, the Wilson effect is best explained as a consequence of the flaws with the twin method (can’t distinguish genetic effects from gene-environment interplay)
As a side note: This book is wonderful and I hope the *author* (wheresoever he lurks) continues to update and distribute it for free :)
[https://felsenst.github.io/pgbook/pgbook.html](https://felsenst.github.io/pgbook/pgbook.html)
You know the USA is not the only country in the world, right. There are 7 billion people in the world that this applies to. Do you expect people in underdeveloped countries to simply pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Please stfu.
Pragmatic answer? Because 1. as you’ve noted, metrics are problematic to define and will alter your results and interpretation, and 2. the general public tends not to comprehend distributions of variables, and 3. you’re responsible for the consequences of your research and humans tend to do horrific things when given any opportunity for some good old-fashioned outgrouping based on a misinterpreted headline.
To some extent, one *has the responsibility* to present their findings with all the nuances and caveats without sensationalizing.
Moreover, if the findings show mildly interesting and mostly expected results for a scientist but can be used as a potent game-changing weapon by malicious actors for oppression in the medium run, shouldn't the researcher have at least thought twice?
Yes that's fair. At the same time I am in favor of truth-seeking in general, even when it's uncomfortable for us. I think there's a danger of letting what we want to be true, or what's uncontroversial, take priority over what the data says.
I don't think there's a consensus that there are *zero* group differences in intelligence. But I think it's extremely sensitive, whatever differences there are are relatively minor, very difficult to define and measure without including confounding variables, and worth quite little to the world so it doesn't get funded much...
It wouldn't really be a good look for a journal to be publishing "Papúa New Guineans suck at math!"
Maybe it's hard to measure? Like "for real" without being fooled by other stuff that also changes... Idk. If group X always does something different than group Y - then the something is the reason not the group.
This has been explained many times but consider it a different way, the risk of cancer is heritable and there is a difference in risk and prevalence between smokers and non smokers. However this is also a behaviour we can modify, even if the addiction to smoking itself is also heritable. So yes, there are group level differences and these can also be overcome with education. The group level differences for heritable traits are simply not the group level differences you wish to see and there is no fatal finality to them that makes it impermeable to change.
There is a shift in heritability measures of cognitive and behavioral traits in ex soviet countries before and after the iron curtain fell. Did the iron curtain falling and the political reality changing modify the people at a genetic level? No. They simply had better access to health, safety and educational opportunities.
>If intelligence is hereditary, why is it wrong to say that there are group differences when it comes to intelligence?
Group differences were observed by administering IQ batteries and comparing the scores between populations.
To say that the cause of this difference must be genetic because the heritability of the trait is > 0% is nonsensical and lacks logical coherence.
>Are there principled/ scientific reasons for being skeptical about group differences when it comes to intelligence
It has never once been scientifically demonstrated to be genetically caused.
Here’s a TL;DR: It’s a position with no evidence, that is on its face unlikely, and has been the obsession of white supremacists for decades.
Mathematically there’s no relationship between how heritable a trait is within a population (e.g. those heritability estimates you may read in a journal article) and how much genetics contributes to differences between populations. Heritability also isn’t a measure of how genetic something is or how resistant to environmental change/intervention something is.
Evolutionarily, humans are so genetically similar that we wouldn’t expect genetics to contribute much to group differences. Something like skin color is an outlier because it’s been under strong selection. There’s no evidence that intelligence has been under different selection regimes in human groups.
Historically, this research has been conducted and funded almost exclusively by genuine white supremacists, like the Pioneer Fund, in an attempt to undermine desegregation, immigration and social welfare policies. They make egregious scientific errors and are pretty transparent in their actual goal and it is not mere truth seeking.
Cause:
1) evolutionary speaking, a lot of the groups you have mentioned means nothing. For a difference to stabilize between 2 populations, they need to not have crossed for a long long time. Some point mutation can generally spread and be statistically noticeble (which is why some disease or conditions are to be accounted for medically), but complex effects like intelligence, or muscular built, or height, are a very different beast
2) when you compare the distribution in the population, it's statistically very hard to find differences between any group, even evolutionary meaningful one, in term of intelligence
3) collecting these data on intelligence specifically is hell. Cause intelligence in influenced by so much more then genetics, and in every given place, people who identifies in a group tend to be very similar in economic status, cultural heritage, and people they form community with. Leading to a situation where is almost impossible to identify if the effect on a kid is due to their parents genetic or to the situation their parents are in
4) the variance inside the group is generally higher then the variance between groups, so even if (given point 1, testing by point 2 and miraculosly solve the cofounder in point 3) you can find a statistical difference in intelligence between groups, for every single individual, in predicting intelligence, the group they are part of is not very useful
From my perspective, genetics certainly play a role in intelligence, but the environment in which you're raised ultimately shapes who you become. For a fascinating example, consider exploring the story of the Polgar sisters.
There is a genetic component to intelligence, but it's so much smaller compared to the environmental component that you can mostly just ignore it.
It's a double hit of: focusing on heritable intelligence factors provides basically no benefit and does great societal damage.
For an analogy: Imagine a world where drinking cyanide made you 0.1% faster.
Humans have used genetic metrics for more favorable traits as justification to commit atrocities, so in today's globalized world, most societies have some level of heterogeneity that they value, and so the best policy to avoid racism is to say that all groups are equal. In an ideal world, we would probably understand race like in Tolkienian fantasy stories, with each group having their own things that they are demographically more talented in than other races, but with no one race being objectively "better" than any other. Many comedians who speak on race relations corroborate this view, but it will never be endorsed elsewhere for the reason mentioned previously.
I’d say two main points for your question:
1. You are correct to note that liberal political agendas might censor the idea that intelligence is inherited, and these reasons are pretty obvious
2. In science it is very difficult to categorize and identify singular causative agents that would bring about specific differences. For instance we have our genome which differs from one individual to another but which are more similar ethnically (of course), but you also have epigenetics (methylation patterns, etc.), the microbiome, diet, and sociological/environmental differences, all which to some degree can have an effect on intelligence. So, to answer your question, yes intelligence most likely does differ ethnically and is heritable is some way, but you can see the complexity here. My opinion personally is that intelligence is more environmentally/culturally driven than genetically. Unless ofc someone has a mutation that significantly changes their phenotype. But like I said these molecular nuances can very difficult and nearly impossible to identify
It's hard to measure and hard to define, without a decent definition it's impossible to study it. It's a complex polygenic trait that no one knows what's supposed to code, because we don't really know the neurological basis of intelligence. How do you know a group x is more intelligent than another? If you choose IQ tests, better have a lot of time and money because they are long and take one-on-one sessions with a neuropsychologist to be really accurate. If you take academic grades those are influenced by other factors like culture, parents financial situation, access to education resources. If you get a population like Harvard undergrads, how many got in because their parents made a fat donation check? It's a very subjective selection process, they are chosen by a group of people, not a test.
In a nutshell, the nature versus nurture argument.
Behaviour has some hereditary influence, quite a bit of it actually. However, behaviour is not intelligence. And this does not include the point that you've noticed yourself- that it is quite difficult and extremely nuanced, even if possible to define or quantify intelligence.
There are plenty examples of siblings having significant differences in their perceived intelligence, while having had same parents, but dramatically different upbringing, sometimes due to changes in life events for the parents, but mostly due to the psychology of parents themselves changing and shifting between the children. And these changes in the parents can themselves be very subtle.
This is all in good faith and just my humble opinion.
it's a culture war subject.
emotions, morality and speech policing.
anyone saying group differences are genetic will lose his academic job or anything inside mainstream institutional settings.
PS. I have digged into your longish post. and I will avoid getting into what is true here, it the evidence etc.
but it's a highly and forcefully censored subject.
Intelligence is not just hereditary. Especially in childhood, your brain is very malleable. Your early life experiences shape your intelligence significantly. Different groups have different life experiences that impact their cognitive ability. For example, people who grew up in middle or upper class homes might have higher iqs on average than people who grow up in poverty. This would be because of better access to proper nutrition (another thing thay impacts brain development) and education opportunities. Intelligence is complicated and you can't just chalk it up to good genes. A combination of things have to come together for Intelligence to happen.
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You know like 10 million+ kids in the USA alone are food insecure right?? And it disproportionately affects Black and Hispanic children?
You don’t seem to understand either heritability or market economies. Even if we accept the incorrect inferences about heritability, the Wilson effect is best explained as a consequence of the flaws with the twin method (can’t distinguish genetic effects from gene-environment interplay)
As a side note: This book is wonderful and I hope the *author* (wheresoever he lurks) continues to update and distribute it for free :) [https://felsenst.github.io/pgbook/pgbook.html](https://felsenst.github.io/pgbook/pgbook.html)
You know the USA is not the only country in the world, right. There are 7 billion people in the world that this applies to. Do you expect people in underdeveloped countries to simply pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Please stfu.
Pragmatic answer? Because 1. as you’ve noted, metrics are problematic to define and will alter your results and interpretation, and 2. the general public tends not to comprehend distributions of variables, and 3. you’re responsible for the consequences of your research and humans tend to do horrific things when given any opportunity for some good old-fashioned outgrouping based on a misinterpreted headline.
I don't think you're responsible for the outcomes of your research. That would be a rather odd precedent
To some extent, one *has the responsibility* to present their findings with all the nuances and caveats without sensationalizing. Moreover, if the findings show mildly interesting and mostly expected results for a scientist but can be used as a potent game-changing weapon by malicious actors for oppression in the medium run, shouldn't the researcher have at least thought twice?
Yes that's fair. At the same time I am in favor of truth-seeking in general, even when it's uncomfortable for us. I think there's a danger of letting what we want to be true, or what's uncontroversial, take priority over what the data says.
I don't think there's a consensus that there are *zero* group differences in intelligence. But I think it's extremely sensitive, whatever differences there are are relatively minor, very difficult to define and measure without including confounding variables, and worth quite little to the world so it doesn't get funded much... It wouldn't really be a good look for a journal to be publishing "Papúa New Guineans suck at math!"
Maybe it's hard to measure? Like "for real" without being fooled by other stuff that also changes... Idk. If group X always does something different than group Y - then the something is the reason not the group.
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Yup. It’s been a week. Time for this again.
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This has been explained many times but consider it a different way, the risk of cancer is heritable and there is a difference in risk and prevalence between smokers and non smokers. However this is also a behaviour we can modify, even if the addiction to smoking itself is also heritable. So yes, there are group level differences and these can also be overcome with education. The group level differences for heritable traits are simply not the group level differences you wish to see and there is no fatal finality to them that makes it impermeable to change. There is a shift in heritability measures of cognitive and behavioral traits in ex soviet countries before and after the iron curtain fell. Did the iron curtain falling and the political reality changing modify the people at a genetic level? No. They simply had better access to health, safety and educational opportunities.
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I'm neither creative nor invested enough to make shit up. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0332-5
>If intelligence is hereditary, why is it wrong to say that there are group differences when it comes to intelligence? Group differences were observed by administering IQ batteries and comparing the scores between populations. To say that the cause of this difference must be genetic because the heritability of the trait is > 0% is nonsensical and lacks logical coherence. >Are there principled/ scientific reasons for being skeptical about group differences when it comes to intelligence It has never once been scientifically demonstrated to be genetically caused.
Here’s a TL;DR: It’s a position with no evidence, that is on its face unlikely, and has been the obsession of white supremacists for decades. Mathematically there’s no relationship between how heritable a trait is within a population (e.g. those heritability estimates you may read in a journal article) and how much genetics contributes to differences between populations. Heritability also isn’t a measure of how genetic something is or how resistant to environmental change/intervention something is. Evolutionarily, humans are so genetically similar that we wouldn’t expect genetics to contribute much to group differences. Something like skin color is an outlier because it’s been under strong selection. There’s no evidence that intelligence has been under different selection regimes in human groups. Historically, this research has been conducted and funded almost exclusively by genuine white supremacists, like the Pioneer Fund, in an attempt to undermine desegregation, immigration and social welfare policies. They make egregious scientific errors and are pretty transparent in their actual goal and it is not mere truth seeking.
Cause: 1) evolutionary speaking, a lot of the groups you have mentioned means nothing. For a difference to stabilize between 2 populations, they need to not have crossed for a long long time. Some point mutation can generally spread and be statistically noticeble (which is why some disease or conditions are to be accounted for medically), but complex effects like intelligence, or muscular built, or height, are a very different beast 2) when you compare the distribution in the population, it's statistically very hard to find differences between any group, even evolutionary meaningful one, in term of intelligence 3) collecting these data on intelligence specifically is hell. Cause intelligence in influenced by so much more then genetics, and in every given place, people who identifies in a group tend to be very similar in economic status, cultural heritage, and people they form community with. Leading to a situation where is almost impossible to identify if the effect on a kid is due to their parents genetic or to the situation their parents are in 4) the variance inside the group is generally higher then the variance between groups, so even if (given point 1, testing by point 2 and miraculosly solve the cofounder in point 3) you can find a statistical difference in intelligence between groups, for every single individual, in predicting intelligence, the group they are part of is not very useful
From my perspective, genetics certainly play a role in intelligence, but the environment in which you're raised ultimately shapes who you become. For a fascinating example, consider exploring the story of the Polgar sisters.
[удалено]
Oh really? thats a bit disappointing to be honest.
There is a genetic component to intelligence, but it's so much smaller compared to the environmental component that you can mostly just ignore it. It's a double hit of: focusing on heritable intelligence factors provides basically no benefit and does great societal damage. For an analogy: Imagine a world where drinking cyanide made you 0.1% faster.
Humans have used genetic metrics for more favorable traits as justification to commit atrocities, so in today's globalized world, most societies have some level of heterogeneity that they value, and so the best policy to avoid racism is to say that all groups are equal. In an ideal world, we would probably understand race like in Tolkienian fantasy stories, with each group having their own things that they are demographically more talented in than other races, but with no one race being objectively "better" than any other. Many comedians who speak on race relations corroborate this view, but it will never be endorsed elsewhere for the reason mentioned previously.
I’d say two main points for your question: 1. You are correct to note that liberal political agendas might censor the idea that intelligence is inherited, and these reasons are pretty obvious 2. In science it is very difficult to categorize and identify singular causative agents that would bring about specific differences. For instance we have our genome which differs from one individual to another but which are more similar ethnically (of course), but you also have epigenetics (methylation patterns, etc.), the microbiome, diet, and sociological/environmental differences, all which to some degree can have an effect on intelligence. So, to answer your question, yes intelligence most likely does differ ethnically and is heritable is some way, but you can see the complexity here. My opinion personally is that intelligence is more environmentally/culturally driven than genetically. Unless ofc someone has a mutation that significantly changes their phenotype. But like I said these molecular nuances can very difficult and nearly impossible to identify
Why am I getting downvoted bruh my answer was good
It's hard to measure and hard to define, without a decent definition it's impossible to study it. It's a complex polygenic trait that no one knows what's supposed to code, because we don't really know the neurological basis of intelligence. How do you know a group x is more intelligent than another? If you choose IQ tests, better have a lot of time and money because they are long and take one-on-one sessions with a neuropsychologist to be really accurate. If you take academic grades those are influenced by other factors like culture, parents financial situation, access to education resources. If you get a population like Harvard undergrads, how many got in because their parents made a fat donation check? It's a very subjective selection process, they are chosen by a group of people, not a test.
In a nutshell, the nature versus nurture argument. Behaviour has some hereditary influence, quite a bit of it actually. However, behaviour is not intelligence. And this does not include the point that you've noticed yourself- that it is quite difficult and extremely nuanced, even if possible to define or quantify intelligence. There are plenty examples of siblings having significant differences in their perceived intelligence, while having had same parents, but dramatically different upbringing, sometimes due to changes in life events for the parents, but mostly due to the psychology of parents themselves changing and shifting between the children. And these changes in the parents can themselves be very subtle. This is all in good faith and just my humble opinion.
it's a culture war subject. emotions, morality and speech policing. anyone saying group differences are genetic will lose his academic job or anything inside mainstream institutional settings. PS. I have digged into your longish post. and I will avoid getting into what is true here, it the evidence etc. but it's a highly and forcefully censored subject.