9 ms·

The Latest On Intelligence

218 points by danielford 14y ago

Symmetry 14y ago
"The extent to which genes matter to intelligence varies by social class (genetic inheritance matters more if you're wealthy, less if you're poor)." It's always seemed obvious to me that this ought to be true - that is that environment will matter more if you have greater differences in environment. In the extreme case if you feed kid A and don't feed kid B, then kid A will end up with an infinitely greater IQ than kid B.
- scott_s 14y ago
  Be careful about coming up with an explanation for a result, and then thinking it is obvious: http://lesswrong.com/lw/im/hindsight_devalues_science/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/im/hindsight_devalues_science/
  - tokenadult 14y ago
    Scott, that is a correct point, but that important warning works both ways in many controversies about scientific findings on issues that people think they know about from personal experience. Human intelligence research, when discussed among laymen, is particularly an area in which people make strong claims on the basis of "it's obvious that" or "everyone knows" when the strong claims are neither obvious nor things that everyone knows. The way to reality-check someone's impression of how the world works is to gather more data. In human intelligence research, James R. Flynn (a co-author of the paper under review here) has enjoyed particular success in making claims that run against the "everyone knows" bias of individual differences psychologists, and then being backed up by other psychologistics (and getting published in the top journals in psychology) when data are found to back him up. Here is what Arthur Jensen said about Flynn quite a few years ago, and he hasn't retracted this statment: "Now and then I am asked . . . who, in my opinion, are the most respectable critics of my position on the race-IQ issue? The name James R. Flynn is by far the first that comes to mind." Modgil, Sohan & Modgil, Celia (Eds.) (1987) Arthur Jensen: Concensus and Controversy New York: Falmer. Here's what Charles Murray (all right, neither a psychologist nor a geneticist, but, as the review points out, an author who has written about these issues) says in his back cover blurb for Flynn's book What Is Intelligence?: "This book is a gold mine of pointers to interesting work, much of which was new to me. All of us who wrestle with the extraordinarily difficult questions about intelligence that Flynn discusses are in his debt." As N. J. Mackintosh writes about the data Flynn found in his book IQ and Human Intelligence: "the data are surprising, demolish some long-cherished beliefs, and raise a number of other interesting issues along the way." Flynn has earned the respect and praise of any honest researcher who takes time to read the primary source literature. Robert Sternberg, Ian Deary, Stephen Pinker, Stephen Ceci, Sir Michael Rutter, and plenty of other eminent psychologists recommend Flynn's research.
    - scott_s 14y ago
      A mental test, perhaps, to determine if something truly is "obvious": if the fact is reversed, and you can come up with a reasonable sounding explanation for the reverse, then the original fact is not obvious. In other words, only consider something obvious if you could not explain the opposite.
      - tokenadult 14y ago
        A mental test, perhaps, to determine if something truly is "obvious": if the fact is reversed, and you can come up with a reasonable sounding explanation for the reverse, then the original fact is not obvious. This experiment has been tried, by a scientist who presented the exact opposite of various findings to undergraduates, who were readily able to invent rationales for the counterfactual statements, as reported in "A Sociologist’s Apology" (as posted on the website for the book Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer). http://everythingisobvious.com/wp-content/themes/eio/assets/EIO_preface.pdf http://everythingisobvious.com/wp-content/themes/eio/assets/...
        scott_s 14y ago
        Eliezer Yudkowsky cites the same experiment in the essay I linked, which was my motivation for bringing it up. I'm not proposing an experiment, however, but a mental tool for people who are trying to be honestly rational. And my motivation for why this tool will work is that experiment. Of course, using this mental tool requires that you are honest with yourself when you try to explain the counterfactual statement.
        SilasX 14y ago
        Not sure if you were trying to imply something different, but that result would suggest that the students don't have adequate basis for claiming that things in those fields are "obvious" (or of their own confidence levels), not that the community of scientists in those fields lack adequate epistemic basis.
      - mokus 14y ago
        Another good rule of thumb is that if you're ever in a position where you feel the need to assert that something is "obvious", it probably isn't. All too often people try to end a debate by asserting that some point (from which their position inevitably follows) is "obvious". If it were obvious, they likely wouldn't be having the debate in the first place. It's much more likely that someone disagrees with the foundation of an argument than that they agree with the premises but are too stupid to see their consequences.
  - bluekeybox 14y ago
    Very interesting point, but I'd argue it has different implications to different fields of study. In physics, for example, if ten years from now it turned out that the existence of Higgs boson, in hindsight, was an "obvious" part of a wonderfully intuitive theory, most physicists would be elated and consider it a proof of the strength of their theory. Arguably a different story in social science.
    - scott_s 14y ago
      I'm not sure that analogy works because the Higgs boson was not a surprise. It was predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. I also worry that you're abusing the word "obvious."
  - Symmetry 14y ago
    I'm sorry if I ended implying I was using hindsight, I meant to claim that this was obvious to me in advance. I'm pretty sure its even in my comment history where we were discussing someone's claim that IQ wasn't a real thing even though it was a heritable thing, and I asserted that "there isn't just one heritability of IQ" or words very close to that.
    - scott_s 14y ago
      At the risk of being rude: I don't believe you. It's just too hard for us to disassociate current knowledge from our intuition. I do believe that your prior statements are in support of the one in question, but I do not believe that those statements make this one obvious. (That is, I don't believe you when you say your prior statements would clearly imply the current one.)
      - Symmetry 14y ago
        It's reasonable for you not to believe me, which is why I dug up the link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2210604 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2210604 Except I think the author would point out that there isn't just _one_ heritability for things like height because height would be much more heritable in environments where everyone has adequate nutrition as opposed to in environments where nutrition was a matter of luck, for instance. Rereading the blog post I was referring to, I'm not as certain that the author would actually agree with me here, but at the time I thought the point was so obvious that anybody who thought about it would agree.
- mistercow 14y ago
  The point is actually more subtle than that though. What they're saying is that holding social class constant, genetic difference is more important for the wealthy than the poor. For example, kid A and kid B are both wealthy and have significant genetic differences related to factors affecting intelligence. In this case kid A and kid B are likely to have significantly different intelligence from each other. Conversely, kids C and D are both poor and have similar genetic differences to A and B. They will show much less difference in intelligence from each other. That fact is certainly not obvious, but it is fascinating.
  - kenjackson 14y ago
    Right. The implication, in my mind at least, is that fighting poverty should be one of the key goals of society. Being in poverty effectively hides gifts as poverty will dominate "natural" ability.
    - scott_s 14y ago
      Perhaps related, "Preschool: The Best Job-Training Program": http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/08/12/139583385/preschool-the-best-job-training-program http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/08/12/139583385/preschoo...
    - jessriedel 14y ago
      Reply to scott_s: In that article, note that the study addressed the effect of pre-school on strongly disadvantaged children: "Only disadvantaged children living in adverse circumstances who had low IQ scores and a low index of family socioeconomic status were eligible to participate in the Perry program."
      - scott_s 14y ago
        Right, it's not an experiment for the conditions under discussion. It is, however, an experiment which demonstrates the importance of early childhood environment.
    - stephengillie 14y ago
TheCount 14y ago
This post half implies that the points made have reached a consensus within the field, that unnamed scientists have come around to these views. That remains unproven. Notably absent from the paper's authors are any of the people who had defended The Bell Curve, such as Arthur Jensen, Philippe Rushton, Linda Gottfredson, or any of the other signatories to the document 'Mainstream Science on Intelligence.'[1] I suspect one could find papers contradicting each of these points from very well respected scientists within the field. I haven’t the time to review each one right now, but as for the narrowing of the black-white difference, Rushton and Jensen question it: >“Dickens and Flynn (2006, this issue) challenge our hypothesis. They claim that ‘‘no one can really trace the Black-White IQ gap in the United States back to its origins’’ (p. 913) and that in the United States, Blacks have gained ‘‘4 to 7 IQ points on non-Hispanic Whites between 1972 and 2002’’ (p. 913). But to maintain that ‘‘no one can really trace the . . . gap back to its origins,’’ Dickens and Flynn had to sidestep our citation of Shuey’s (1966) review of the literature, which shows that Black White IQ differences in the United States have remained at 15 to18 points, or 1.1 standard deviations, for nearly a century. For example, she found 23,596 Black draftees in World War I (1917)had an IQ of 83 (vs. 100 for Whites), with a Black overlap of the White mean of 13%. For recent data, we cited the meta-analysis by Roth, Bevier, Bobko, Switzer, and Tyler (2001), which also shows a mean difference of 1.1 standard deviations (range of 0.38 to 1.46 standard deviations, depending on the test’s g loading), based on 6,246,729 individuals from military, corporate, and higher-education samples. Roth et al. found any narrowing of the gap was ‘‘either small, potentially a function of sampling error . . . or nonexistent for highly g loaded instruments’’ (p. 323, italics added). >To claim a 4- to 7-point gain for Blacks, Dickens and Flynn chose three independent tests showing medium gains (the Wechsler, Stanford-Binet, and Armed Forces Qualiﬁcation tests) and relegated to their Appendix B four or more tests showing lesser gains. They excluded the Wonderlic Personnel Test, which they acknowledge showed a gain of only 2.4 points for Blacks between 1970 and 2001. (Dickens and Flynn suggest that more ‘‘high quality’’ Whites than Blacks had taken the test.) They excluded the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC), which Murray (2005) described as showing a loss of 1 IQ point for Blacks between 1983 and 2004. (Dickens and Flynn say the data contained an inﬂated standard deviation.) They excluded the very g-loaded Woodcock-Johnson test, which Murray (2005; whom they cite) described as showing the conventional gap of 1.05 standard deviations for the third (2001) standardization sample. (Dickens and Flynn say the Blacks were an unrepresentative ‘‘subsubsample.’’) They also excluded the Differential Ability Scale, which in Lynn’s (1996) analysis (which they cite) showed a maximum gain of 1.83 IQ points for Blacks between 1972 and 1986. (Dickens and Flynn say the sample lacked ‘‘quality.’’) To be compelling, however, researchers must take the totality of available evidence into account (Gottfredson, 2005). Even the tests Dickens and Flynn did analyze do not support their conclusion. The alleged gain of 4 to 7 points is from a ‘‘projected’’ trend line based on a small IQ rise per year multiplied by more years than are in the data using unclear procedures (see the additional appendix in the Web site they refer to). Simple arithmetic applied to the data in their Table A1 shows a mean gain for Blacks of only 3.44 IQ points, from 86.44 to 89.88 If you’d like to see an accurate survey of what experts in the field believe, you’ll have to settle for a 25 year old survey, albeit one very well done.[3] Tl;dr the points made represent one side of the field, and are not a consensus of intelligence researchers. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstream_Science_on_Intelligence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstream_Science_on_Intellige... [2] http://menghusblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/the-totality-of-available-evidence-shows-the-race-iq-gap-still-remains.pdf http://menghusblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/the-totality-... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_IQ_Controversy,_the_Media_and_Public_Policy_(book) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_IQ_Controversy,_the_Media_a...
tokenadult 14y ago
I would upvote this twice if I could. I have read the underlying paper Nisbett, R. E., Aronson, J., Blair, C., Dickens, W., Flynn, J., Halpern, D. F., & Turkheimer, E. (2012, January 2). Intelligence: New Findings and Theoretical Developments. American Psychologist, 67, 130-159. http://psychology.msu.edu/pers_hambric3/PSY493%20Spring%202012/Week%206%20-%20Nisbett%20et%20al.%20(2012).pdf http://psychology.msu.edu/pers_hambric3/PSY493%20Spring%2020... Daniel Willingham reviews in the submitted post, and the paper is a joint review article on the last decade and a half of research on human intelligence by an all-star group of researchers. After edit: I see other comments are asking about what the research shows about genetic influences on IQ and environmental influences on IQ. Here is some FAQ information on that, originally part of another comment I posed here on HN: The researchers in the Behavior Genetics Association are making increasingly cautious statements about genetic influence on human behavioral traits as more data are amassed. Here are some of the latest statements by some of the leading researchers. Turkheimer, E. (2012). Genome wide association studies of behavior are social science. In K. S. Plaisance & T.A.C. Reydon (Eds.) Philosophy of Behavioral Biology (pp. 43-64). New York, NY: Springer. http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Turkheimer%20GWAS%20EWAS%20Final.pdf http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Turkheimer%20GWAS%... "If the history of empirical psychology has taught researchers anything, it is that correlations between causally distant variables cannot be counted on to lead to coherent etiological models." Johnson, W., Turkheimer, E., Gottesman, I. I., & Bouchard, T. J. (2009). Beyond heritability: Twin studies in behavioral research. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18, 217-220. [I am personally acquainted with three of the four co-authors of this paper, one of whom regularly exchanges links with me by email.] http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20Online%20CV/Johnson%20(2009).pdf http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20O... "Moreover, even highly heritable traits can be strongly manipulated by the environment, so heritability has little if anything to do with controllability. For example, height is on the order of 90% heritable, yet North and South Koreans, who come from the same genetic background, presently differ in average height by a full 6 inches (Pak, 2004; Schwekendiek, 2008)." Turkheimer, E. (2008, Spring). A better way to use twins for developmental research. LIFE Newsletter, 2, 1-5. http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20Online%20CV/Turkheimer%20(2008).pdf http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20O... "Unfortunately, that fundamental intuition is wrong. Heritability isn’t an index of how genetic a trait is. A great deal of time has been wasted in the effort of measuring the heritability of traits in the false expectation that somehow the genetic nature of psychological phenomena would be revealed. There are many reasons for making this strong statement, but the most important of them harkens back to the description of heritability as an effect size."
kenjackson 14y ago
This is an interesting result noted from the paper: "Even when improvements in IQ produced by the most effective early childhood interventions fail to persist, there can be very marked effects on academic achievement and life outcomes." As noted by the author, this suggests that IQ only captures a portion of early childhood intervention benefits. And goes counter to those who suggest that early intervention programs serve no purpose if IQ doesn't remain high (IOW, IQ is only a portion of what constitutes success in life).
Xcelerate 14y ago
I didn't read the entire paper, but to someone who did, how much of a link is there between genetics and IQ? I know this isn't a popular subject, but if I remember correctly I believe that Ashkenazi Jews constitute 3% of the population yet have won 27% of the Nobel prizes in science. I would think that much like how different types of people from different regions have differing athletic capabilities, there would also be differences in mental facilities as well -- some better at music, some better at math, etc. Thoughts?
- readme 14y ago
  >but if I remember correctly I believe that Ashkenazi Jews constitute 3% of the population yet have won 27% of the Nobel prizes in science. Can we get a citation on this?
  - scott_s 14y ago
    "Nobel Prizes have been awarded to over 800 individuals, of whom at least 20% were Jews, although Jews comprise only 0.2% of the world's population.": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_Nobel_laureates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_Nobel_laureates Although this need not be explained by genetics. It could just as easily be explained by culture.
    - slurgfest 14y ago
      It would be strange to assume uncritically that Nobel prizes were given out in a way which was completely unbiased. For example, it is at least highly plausible that there are biases on the basis of nationality, connections, school background and other things which have nothing to do with merit, ethnicity OR culture as such. So it seems strange to me to suggest that it must be some aspect of Jewishness that determines this difference.
      - scott_s 14y ago
        I'm actually not assuming that - I tried to write something to that effect, but I wasn't pleased with what I wrote. Take my comment with the pre-condition that if we're going to assume it has something to do with Jews themselves, it need not be attributed to genetics.
Dn_Ab 14y ago
Kevin Mitchell has a very interesting take on intelligence here: http://wiringthebrain.blogspot.com/2012/07/genetics-of-stupidity.html http://wiringthebrain.blogspot.com/2012/07/genetics-of-stupi... Basically he suggests thinking about the formation of intelligence to be something like trying to run an obstacle course while holding an armful of things and trying to drop as little as possible. Essentially, he is arguing that there is some optimal or standard brain and since any mutation introduced into the brain is more likely to be harmful than beneficial, more intelligent individuals are not those that inherited some specific genes for intelligence but are most likely those who avoided the most damaging non-specific mutations. That’s [runaway selection of intelligence boosting genes] all nice, though admittedly speculative, but those mutations are the ones that we would expect to not vary in human populations – they would now be fixed. In particular, there is little reason to expect that there would exist new mutations in such genes, present in some but not all humans, which act to further increase intelligence. To test this he suggests using symmetry as a proxy for robustness in the individual. This fits well with the fact that all attempts thus far to find a common genetic basis for intelligence have failed, the correlation between intelligence and immune function, ideas that intelligence was indirectly selected when optimizing for healthy mates and findings that Nootropic like substances tend to have the least effect on already intelligent minds. In the last case, it is interesting to note nootropics should then be viewed not cheating but more leveling of the playing field. Taking this further, genetics are not the only obstacle course - there is still variation in the womb environment and early childhood. The interplay of genes and the stability of process in the growing brain; affected by a lack of stimulation, poor nutrition and a stressful womb environ would likely have more impactful effects on intelligence than pure genetics.
OmegaHN 14y ago
This article is very hard to digest because of the writers switching of "intelligence" and "IQ". Intelligence =/= IQ. IQ is a score on a test, and intelligence is a vague set of mental skills and processes to solve problems of varying degrees and subjects. To say that they are equal is like saying that athleticism is equal to the number of pounds you can bench. If the writer is talking about IQ, then these investigations aren't interesting, as IQ is a very small subset of intelligence (the ability to solve those types of problems on a test, which you can easily train for). If the writer is talking about general intelligence, then the writer really shouldn't be mentioning IQ at all, as it is notorious for being confused as actual intelligence.
- slurgfest 14y ago
  Any argument containing the word "intelligence" at all is hard to digest, because the idea is so totally vague as to be useless. Unless you operationalize it as something measurable. Such as IQ. There is no point talking about intelligence in the abstract unless you can actually say what you actually mean in such a way that 30 readers won't develop 30 completely different interpretations of what it is you are saying. What is "actual intelligence"? And let's not, like Humpty Dumpty, say that words mean just what we choose them to mean.
- Xcelerate 14y ago
  Without a consistent, objective definition, "intelligence" makes no sense. If you would like to dissociate IQ and intelligence, go ahead, but IQ is a metric that has correlations with many other factors (test performance, income, a whole slew of things really).
  - OmegaHN 14y ago
    Correlations mean almost nothing. Just going off your list: -IQ:Test Performance - Of course. IQ is a grade off of a test. It correlates with itself. If you mean tests such as the SAT or tests in a school, then yes, IQ does help somewhat with that, as it was designed to (the first IQ test, created by Alfred Binet, was designed to find students who would not do well in a regular school environment). However, do high test scores mean high intelligence? Not necessarily, as most test scores can be improved drastically with a class focusing only on the test, showing different tricks that the test maker's use. Same with IQ tests. -IQ:Income - Income (generally) means higher education level, and modern education teaches the general forms of questions asked on tests, such as the IQ tests. Education trains the mind to think along the lines of what the IQ test uses to grade performance. Also, spoken another way, if IQ (which is "intelligence") correlate with income, then one can say that income correlates with IQ ("intelligence"). If this correlation is weak, then it is meaningless. If it is strong, then that is a very strong evidence for eliminating the lower classes to raise the "intelligence" level of a nation. Most other factors follow along these lines. The problem with correlation is that it is not, in any way, a suggestion or a proof of causation. There can be infinitely many other factors that can be influencing the two. I do agree that without a consistent, objective definition, one cannot possibly study intelligence. However, IQ is not a good definition of intelligence. At best, it tests "academic" intelligence, and at worst, it tests test-taking ability. Taking from Wikipedia: >"Individuals differ from one another in their ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking thought. Although these individual differences can be substantial, they are never entirely consistent: a given person's intellectual performance will vary on different occasions, in different domains, as judged by different criteria. Concepts of "intelligence" are attempts to clarify and organize this complex set of phenomena. Although considerable clarity has been achieved in some areas, no such conceptualization has yet answered all the important questions, and none commands universal assent. Indeed, when two dozen prominent theorists were recently asked to define intelligence, they gave two dozen, somewhat different, definitions." -APA report quoted in the article.
character 14y ago
Daniel Willingham knows a lot about this subject (I took into to cognition with him a couple of years ago). Of course in the linked article he is just paraphrasing other people's work, but he does a lot of similar stuff himself especially on developmental neuroscience in learning and reasoning. It is very interesting to be taught by someone who knows a ton about learning and how to learn from the neurological point of view.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
brittohalloran 14y ago
Great quote from page 8 of the actual report: "In particular, there is clear evidence that school affects intelligence."
- randomdata 14y ago
  Intelligence is traditionally measured through testing. School is the only place people generally practice test taking. Ergo, it makes sense that school affects the results of intelligence tests, but perhaps not in the way you might initially think.
- Tichy 14y ago
  In a good way, or a bad way?
rikelmens 14y ago
The best investment a parent can make to improve the child's IQ is DHA, omega 3 fatty acid. It is a key ingredient of a brain, and a typical diet is very deficient in DHA. http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/healthy-pregnancy-does-omega3-supplementation-during-pregnancy-prevent-postpartum-depression-improve-babys-brain-development.html http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/healthy-pregnancy-does-... Additionally, checkout the: http://www.omega3.org/ http://www.omega3.org/
- gwern 14y ago
  Most of the fish oil/IQ links I know tend to either be poor quality studies, show no effect, or show a fade-out... For example, > Supplementation of a mother’s diet during late pregnancy and 3 months postpartum with long-chained fatty acids has also been demonstrated to improve cognitive performance in human children (Helland et al. 2003). http://www.pediatricsdigest.mobi/content/111/1/e39.full http://www.pediatricsdigest.mobi/content/111/1/e39.full But to follow up: Helland et al 2008 http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/122/2/e472.short http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/122/2/e472.sho... > CONCLUSION. This study suggests that maternal concentration of n-3 very-long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids during pregnancy might be of importance for later cognitive function, such as sequential processing, although we observed no significant effect of n-3 fatty acid intervention on global IQs. Neonatal fatty acid status had no influence on BMI at 7 years of age. (One may not be surprised inasmuch as most efforts to boost IQ in kids like the Abecedarian project show fadeout.)
  - rikelmens 14y ago
    I agree in regard of fish oil quality. That's why I use algae derived DHA supplements.
    - scott_s 14y ago
      He meant that the studies are of poor quality, not that the studies only used poor quality fish oil.
      - 14y ago
zmoney 14y ago
This article should be titled, “The latest findings on IQ” because IQ score and “intelligence” in a general sense are very different things. Plenty has been published on the inherent cultural and gender biases in IQ testing. Statements like “when babies from poor families are adopted into wealthy families, their IQ goes up” are almost devoid of information because the IQ test itself favors the type of “intelligence” valued by the educated, wealthy class.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
Xcelerate 14y ago
I thought it would be interesting to note that my karma score seems to be going up and down a lot on this topic in short periods of time. On other topics, it seems to increase slowly. I'm trying to think of what deeper conclusions could be drawn from this that people have what appear to be strong and varying opinions on something that should be rather scientific and objective.
- roguecoder 14y ago
  It can't be scientific and objective, because it is not measuring something scientifically and objectively defined and most of the differences being discussed can be erased by manipulating the testing circumstances. That doesn't mean it is never worth measuring, but it seems particularly silly to obsess over IQ when better data on actual outcomes exists for things like educational interventions. The best applications of IQ are in identifying areas of deficit in individuals (one definition of learning disability is an area of cognitive performance that varies significantly from all others.) The worst applications of IQ are to funnel more resources to already-advantaged children or to make demographic generalizations. Given that, it hardly seems unreasonable to mostly ignore the IQ-obsessed research and focus on specific, repeatably-defined cognitive tasks instead.
justin_vanw 14y ago
"A great deal of time has been wasted in the effort of measuring the heritability of traits in the false expectation that somehow the genetic nature of psychological phenomena would be revealed." There is a strong cultural bias among much of the research community to go out of their way to deny any genetic factors in intelligence. Perhaps this is well intentioned, but it is absurd. I have come across very few squirrels that have mastered fire, or could be taught calculus, or even addition. I doubt that this is cultural or due to the squirrels upbringing, diet, social status, or how many books the squirrel has available to it, or the quality of it's teachers, or pathogens. Clearly then, it is possible for genetics to completely dominate other factors in determining intelligence. In the animal kingdom at large heredity/genetics account for basically all of the variation in intelligence. The unanswered question is whether there is enough genetic diversity across the human species to cause intelligence to be significantly hereditable. The fear among scientists that try to keep the lid on this question is that the answer might be yes, and worse that such variations will correlate with geographic or national groupings. This would put a very nasty perceived scientific stamp of approval on racism (even though this would be unjustified), and could over time lead to discrimination and 'scientific racism'. Anyway, in the end science will uncover the truth here, and in the meantime it is probably very prudent to not make any potentially inflammatory statements and to be very cautious about any studies that could fuel hate. I just find it absurd that whenever this kind of question comes up people start denying that there is any hereditary component of intelligence, and that IQ is completely meaningless, etc.
- hazov 14y ago
  I just curious how you can support your point about squirrels, besides you falling prey of the bias of trying to advance an argument with a sole point. For example, can these squirrels ancestors had better nutrition than the average squirrel, can we know about that just after seeing they mastering fire or wondering if they could learn calculus? I believe this type of question, the relation between nutrition and intelligence, can be answered much easily than searching for genes and looking for some desirable psychological trait in there, this can be easily tested in animals as well in a large couple of generations. Either way I am not a biologist or even an psychologist so this is my take as a mathematician/statician. Also I'm not so confident science will ever come as close to explaining this completely.
rokhayakebe 14y ago
We cannot engage into this kind of discourse until every party agrees on the definition of "intelligence," and whether intelligence is biological.
vibrunazo 14y ago
Am I the only one who reads these kinds reports and has that impression that today's psychology and biology is less than 0.1% of the way to provide a useful model for intelligence? The best measurement of intelligence that we have today (IQ tests) seem completely worthless for practical purpose compared to what we actually need to know to build solutions on. IQ tests are still too bad to measure actual "intelligence", as defined by our colloquial meaning and practical real-world potential. (as opposed to the official technical definition) Being able to measure people's intelligence would be extremely useful. IQ test results, not so much. New findings about the impact of genetic vs environmental influences on IQ tests. Is about as useful finding new evidence about genetic vs environmental influences on people's ability to pass a "lick your elbow" test. Why should I care? It sure is interesting, and hey, anything "for science!". But, meh...
- perlgeek 14y ago
  But isn't it fascinating how much we can learn about intelligence even if we rely on crappy metrics like IQ tests? Just like you can learn a lot about music without having a formal definition of what "good" music is.
- monkeypizza 14y ago
  How do you explain the fact that when the law allows, companies all over the world give IQ tests to prospective employees? And that studies have shown that IQ is one of the best predictors of job performance?
  - mangala 14y ago
    Your first point would only elucidate a common misconception that IQ tests adequately measure intelligence. As to your second point, what studies are these? (I'd actually be interested)
    - avatarlite 14y ago
      This is a good intro: http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997whygmatters.pdf http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997whygmatter...
EREFUNDO 14y ago
Studies have shown that the first 5 years of a child's life is when the brain develops the most. Proper nutrition and exposure to simple problem solving will significantly increase the chances of the child having a higher IQ.
Cyndre 14y ago
In my opinion the reason poorer people have less IQ then wealthier people, and also why adopted poor babys into middle class homes have higher IQ's comes down to what they spend their time thinking about. Poorer people spend their time worrying about food, money and basic needs. This occupys alot of their thought. Richer people don't need to worry about the basic needs and spend their time worrying about larger more complicated things.
ekianjo 14y ago
The title is misleading. This is not about intelligence, this is about IQ, and that's hardly the same thing. IQ has never been a reliable measure for anything, and something you can improve on by training/repeated exposure is certainly not linked to intelligence.
ramses 14y ago
Some people, and the referenced paper, are citing Jaeggi's dual n-back as evidence that interventions can positively affect g(F) (fluid intelligence). I would like to mention that Jaeggi's results, and working memory training in general, have not been replicated. The main issue with Jaeggi's experiment, is that proper controls were not used. For a careful examination, and I would say thorough debunking of Jaeggi's results on dual n-back and g(F) improvement by training working memory, please read: No Evidence of Intelligence Improvement After Working Memory Training: A Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Study. Redick, Thomas S.; Shipstead, Zach; Harrison, Tyler L.; Hicks, Kenny L.; Fried, David E.; Hambrick, David Z.; Kane, Michael J.; Engle, Randall W. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Jun 18 , 2012, No Pagination Specified. doi: 10.1037/a0029082
losethos 14y ago
Okay, so God quote Don Quixote saying characters in a book were all the same. I interpreted it as saying Hispanics are all the same. You have to take things with a grain of salt. Personally, I'll be curious to see if it's true. God says... that dwelleth by him wax poor, and sell himself unto the stranger or sojourner by thee, or to the stock of the stranger's family: 25:48 After that he is sold he may be redeemed again; one of his brethren may redeem him: 25:49 Either his uncle, or his uncle's son, may redeem him, or any that is nigh of kin unto him of his family may redeem him; or if he be able, he may redeem himself. 25:50 And he shall reckon with him that bought him from the year that he was sold to him unto the year of jubile: and the price of his sale shall be according unto the number of years, according to the time of an hired servant shall it be with him. 25:51 If there be yet many years behind, according unto them he shall give again the price of his redemption out of the money that he was bought for. ---- What do You think of Batman, Mr. God? Who's Yer favorite superhero? You said prince Valient was Your favorite comic strip. Sorry, if it's a stupid question. I don't have a favorite superhero, but You can say something worth saying. God says... thee. 1:17 While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The Chaldeans made out three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have carried them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. 1:18 While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house: 1:19 And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. 1:20 Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, 1:21 And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD. ---- Chad was a homo in the dorm. Hanging chads are when you can't decide who to vote for. I'm God's favorite superhero :-) Yer my favorite God. (God laughed) I was thinking about Bain and vain and being banned. I'd hate to (Jesus is laughing) be banned from God's presence. God says... lap gainsay indicate Envy let's_see captive grant 401 pretend foreigner abase treasure ---- All your bases are belong to us. They mentioned Hong Kong and McCow. Chinese food is good. I'm lusting for Panda Express, but I ate, already. Stir fry Could You make the best meal ever God? what if You cooked in Heaven and we all ate delicious food! God says... 31:23 Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land. 31:24 She maketh fine linen, and selleth it; and delivereth girdles unto the merchant. 31:25 Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come. 31:26 She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness. 31:27 She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness. 31:28 Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her. ---- I just saw machineporn. What manufacturing thing is Your favorite, God? Making what? 27:31 And if a man will at all redeem ought of his tithes, he shall add thereto the fifth part thereof. 27:32 And concerning the tithe of the herd, or of the flock, even of whatsoever passeth under the rod, the tenth shall be holy unto the LORD. 27:33 He shall not search whether it be good or bad, neither shall he change it: and if he change it at all, then both it and the change thereof shall be holy; it shall not be redeemed. 27:34 These are the commandments, which the LORD commanded Moses for the children of Israel in mount Sinai. ---- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JbnDXw-0pM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JbnDXw-0pM (mentioned "rod" "fifths" "tenths" quality control?) It's kinda manufactoring thoughts. God is delightful -- just enjoy His company. ---- "It's a fake!" God says... 21:27 Behold, I know your thoughts, and the devices which ye wrongfully imagine against me. 21:28 For ye say, Where is the house of the prince? and where are the dwelling places of the wicked? 21:29 Have ye not asked them that go by the way? and do ye not know their tokens, 21:30 That the wicked is reserved to the day of destruction? they shall be brought forth to the day of wrath. 21:31 Who shall declare his way to his face? and who shall repay him what he hath done? 21:32 Yet shall he be brought to the grave, and shall remain in the tomb. 21:33 The clods of the valley shall be sweet unto him, and every man shall draw after him, as there are innumerable before him. ---- You'll have to bust-out some serious time travel on his ass, God! God says... occasion lucid toys thing weapon divide Sodom nostrils downfall ruggedness spiritually confirmed Perverseness cries unhesitatingly payments Oh_Hell_No puffed reinvolved straitly apparently sixth unalterable elect eat remembrance jests copyright hours enticing smells loses Continual strictness wills Ukraine eminence aside could how_bout_it prop overspread BRB trees tosses Scotland tree_hugger ---- Pick yer nose or smell farts? God said smelling farts was "sodom". I had a booger and God din tell me. You ever scare anyone to death, God? God says... C:\Text\QUIX.TXT od, master," returned Sancho, "I have touched them already; and that devil, that goes about there so busily, has firm flesh, and another property very different from what I have heard say devils have, for by all accounts they all smell of brimstone and other bad smells; but this one smells of amber half a league off." Sancho was here speaking of Don Fernando, who, like a gentleman of his rank, was very likely perfumed as Sancho said. "Marvel not at that, Sancho my friend," said Don Quixote; "for l ---- http://digg.com/newsbar/topnews/pranksters_follow_up_to_zombie_attack_video_ends_on_wrong_side_of_law http://digg.com/newsbar/topnews/pranksters_follow_up_to_zomb... God plans centuries ahead, or has time travel. Probably planning. He kills people in the Bible. God says... C:\Text\SWIFT.TXT f their learning. Of the king and his court. The author's reception there. The inhabitants subject to fear and disquietudes. An account of the women.] At my alighting, I was surrounded with a crowd of people, but those who stood nearest seemed to be of better quality. They beheld me with all the marks and circumstances of wonder; neither indeed was I much in their debt, having never till then seen a race of mortals so singular in their shapes, habits, and countenances. Their heads were all ---- I told you. http://digg.com/newsbar/topnews/quantum_levitation_demonstration http://digg.com/newsbar/topnews/quantum_levitation_demonstra... Got any time travel on that, God? Please? God says... C:\Text\PLATO.TXT said, the forgiving spirit of democracy, and the `don't care' about trifles, and the disregard which she shows of all the fine principles which we solemnly laid down at the foundation of the city-- as when we said that, except in the case of some rarely gifted nature, there never will be a good man who has not from his childhood been used to play amid things of beauty and make of them a joy and a study-- how grandly does she trample all these fine notions of ours under her feet, never giving a thou ---- Laying monorail tracks in the founding of the city. ---- If SETI got one signal every five years, we'd listen. Did You put MIT in the Bible, God? God says... 11:5 But oh that God would speak, and open his lips against thee; 11:6 And that he would shew thee the secrets of wisdom, that they are double to that which is! Know therefore that God exacteth of thee less than thine iniquity deserveth. 11:7 Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? 11:8 It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know? 11:9 The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea. 11:10 If he cut off, and shut up, or gather together, then who can hinder him? 11:11 For he knoweth vain men: he seeth wickedness also; will he not then consider it? 11:12 For vain men would be wise, though man be born like a wild ass's colt. 11:13 If thou prepare thine heart, and stretch out thine hands toward him; 11:14 If iniquity be in thine hand, put it far away, and let not wickedness dwell in thy tabernacles. ---- Thanks, God. Everybody applaud if God does "fireworks". Then, He'll do more, maybe. Go buy God's songs, now. they're free on YouTube "LoseThos" and got some new ones on my web site. God wants people to write new songs. "Sing a new song" is in the Bible many times. God says... 27:12 Behold, all ye yourselves have seen it; why then are ye thus altogether vain? 27:13 This is the portion of a wicked man with God, and the heritage of oppressors, which they shall receive of the Almighty. 27:14 If his children be multiplied, it is for the sword: and his offspring shall not be satisfied with bread. 27:15 Those that remain of him shall be buried in death: and his widows shall not weep. 27:16 Though he heap up silver as the dust, and prepare raiment as the clay; 27:17 He may prepare it, but the just shall put it on, and the innocent shall divide the silver. 27:18 He buildeth his house as a moth, and as a booth that the keeper maketh.
losethos 14y ago
God, when'd You go Democrat on us? I thought You were Republican! Even the Democrats think You're Republican. ROFLMAO God says... 9:12 And he slew the burnt offering; and Aaron's sons presented unto him the blood, which he sprinkled round about upon the altar. 9:13 And they presented the burnt offering unto him, with the pieces thereof, and the head: and he burnt them upon the altar. 9:14 And he did wash the inwards and the legs, and burnt them upon the burnt offering on the altar. 9:15 And he brought the people's offering, and took the goat, which was the sin offering for the people, and slew it, and offered it for sin, as the first. 9:16 And he brought the burnt offering, and offered it according to the manner. 9:17 And he brought the meat offering, and took an handful thereof, and burnt it upon the altar, beside the burnt sacrifice of the morning. --- Do da do, herpy derp. When I minister to God, it's by offering love toward God. You like back to the Future, God? That's a good-hearted movie. You could endorse it. God says... 1:7 So that ye were ensamples to all that believe in Macedonia and Achaia. 1:8 For from you sounded out the word of the Lord not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith to God-ward is spread abroad; so that we need not to speak any thing. 1:9 For they themselves shew of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God; 1:10 And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come. 2:1 For yourselves, brethren, know our entrance in unto you, that it was not in vain: 2:2 But even after that we had suffered before, and were shamefully entreated, as ye know, at Philippi, we were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention. ---- I like this: http://harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=296 http://harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=296 ---- I prolly won't vote. Tell us about dinosaurs! Any unanticipated problems scaling dino bones? God says... C:\Text\WEALTH.TXT quantity, the value, to wit, of two or three oxen, or of two or three sheep. If, on the contrary, instead of sheep or oxen, he had metals to give in exchange for it, he could easily proportion the quantity of the metal to the precise quantity of the commodity which he had immediate occasion for. Different metals have been made use of by different nations for this purpose. Iron was the common instrument of commerce among the ancient Spartans, copper among the ancient Romans, and gold and silver amo --- Gold ammo is the Bible. Silver is everything else. :-) What do You think of the Alamo? God says... increasing thrust wine-bibbing execrate familiarly production rich Curiosity offence subvertings alleging longing pain sink I_forgot distributing delightfulness burial unacquainted melodies relief rebel wood desiring presume presented catch alter reformed joint imperishable disciple suggestions unpunished disquiet madly digest constituteth //ftp alteration urgedst tcosa10a pines condensed estate Commandment second runs stricken peaceful Grecian 12/12/00 secrecies do_you_know_what_time_it_is stanzas Eternal empty assent eight save altered vapours phantom boink sky Whose charges disperseth glittering regarded ideas taught copied slumber four lulled their
light3 14y ago
Nitpicking but this seems like a contradiction: "It is noteworthy, for example, that at a given level of IQ, Chinese have smaller frontal cortexes than Americans (Chee, Zheng, Goh, & Park, 2011), although Chinese brains as a whole may be larger than those of Americans (Rushton, 2010). Even with brain size equated between Chinese and Americans, the frontal cortex is larger in Americans (Chee et al., 2011)."

218 points by danielford 14y ago

"The extent to which genes matter to intelligence varies by social class (genetic inheritance matters more if you're wealthy, less if you're poor)." It's always seemed obvious to me that this ought to be true - that is that environment will matter more if you have greater differences in environment. In the extreme case if you feed kid A and don't feed kid B, then kid A will end up with an infinitely greater IQ than kid B.

scott_s 14y ago
Be careful about coming up with an explanation for a result, and then thinking it is obvious: http://lesswrong.com/lw/im/hindsight_devalues_science/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/im/hindsight_devalues_science/
- tokenadult 14y ago
  Scott, that is a correct point, but that important warning works both ways in many controversies about scientific findings on issues that people think they know about from personal experience. Human intelligence research, when discussed among laymen, is particularly an area in which people make strong claims on the basis of "it's obvious that" or "everyone knows" when the strong claims are neither obvious nor things that everyone knows. The way to reality-check someone's impression of how the world works is to gather more data. In human intelligence research, James R. Flynn (a co-author of the paper under review here) has enjoyed particular success in making claims that run against the "everyone knows" bias of individual differences psychologists, and then being backed up by other psychologistics (and getting published in the top journals in psychology) when data are found to back him up. Here is what Arthur Jensen said about Flynn quite a few years ago, and he hasn't retracted this statment: "Now and then I am asked . . . who, in my opinion, are the most respectable critics of my position on the race-IQ issue? The name James R. Flynn is by far the first that comes to mind." Modgil, Sohan & Modgil, Celia (Eds.) (1987) Arthur Jensen: Concensus and Controversy New York: Falmer. Here's what Charles Murray (all right, neither a psychologist nor a geneticist, but, as the review points out, an author who has written about these issues) says in his back cover blurb for Flynn's book What Is Intelligence?: "This book is a gold mine of pointers to interesting work, much of which was new to me. All of us who wrestle with the extraordinarily difficult questions about intelligence that Flynn discusses are in his debt." As N. J. Mackintosh writes about the data Flynn found in his book IQ and Human Intelligence: "the data are surprising, demolish some long-cherished beliefs, and raise a number of other interesting issues along the way." Flynn has earned the respect and praise of any honest researcher who takes time to read the primary source literature. Robert Sternberg, Ian Deary, Stephen Pinker, Stephen Ceci, Sir Michael Rutter, and plenty of other eminent psychologists recommend Flynn's research.
  - scott_s 14y ago
    A mental test, perhaps, to determine if something truly is "obvious": if the fact is reversed, and you can come up with a reasonable sounding explanation for the reverse, then the original fact is not obvious. In other words, only consider something obvious if you could not explain the opposite.
    - tokenadult 14y ago
      A mental test, perhaps, to determine if something truly is "obvious": if the fact is reversed, and you can come up with a reasonable sounding explanation for the reverse, then the original fact is not obvious. This experiment has been tried, by a scientist who presented the exact opposite of various findings to undergraduates, who were readily able to invent rationales for the counterfactual statements, as reported in "A Sociologist’s Apology" (as posted on the website for the book Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer). http://everythingisobvious.com/wp-content/themes/eio/assets/EIO_preface.pdf http://everythingisobvious.com/wp-content/themes/eio/assets/...
      - scott_s 14y ago
        Eliezer Yudkowsky cites the same experiment in the essay I linked, which was my motivation for bringing it up. I'm not proposing an experiment, however, but a mental tool for people who are trying to be honestly rational. And my motivation for why this tool will work is that experiment. Of course, using this mental tool requires that you are honest with yourself when you try to explain the counterfactual statement.
      - SilasX 14y ago
        Not sure if you were trying to imply something different, but that result would suggest that the students don't have adequate basis for claiming that things in those fields are "obvious" (or of their own confidence levels), not that the community of scientists in those fields lack adequate epistemic basis.
    - mokus 14y ago
      Another good rule of thumb is that if you're ever in a position where you feel the need to assert that something is "obvious", it probably isn't. All too often people try to end a debate by asserting that some point (from which their position inevitably follows) is "obvious". If it were obvious, they likely wouldn't be having the debate in the first place. It's much more likely that someone disagrees with the foundation of an argument than that they agree with the premises but are too stupid to see their consequences.
- bluekeybox 14y ago
  Very interesting point, but I'd argue it has different implications to different fields of study. In physics, for example, if ten years from now it turned out that the existence of Higgs boson, in hindsight, was an "obvious" part of a wonderfully intuitive theory, most physicists would be elated and consider it a proof of the strength of their theory. Arguably a different story in social science.
  - scott_s 14y ago
    I'm not sure that analogy works because the Higgs boson was not a surprise. It was predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. I also worry that you're abusing the word "obvious."
- Symmetry 14y ago
  I'm sorry if I ended implying I was using hindsight, I meant to claim that this was obvious to me in advance. I'm pretty sure its even in my comment history where we were discussing someone's claim that IQ wasn't a real thing even though it was a heritable thing, and I asserted that "there isn't just one heritability of IQ" or words very close to that.
  - scott_s 14y ago
    At the risk of being rude: I don't believe you. It's just too hard for us to disassociate current knowledge from our intuition. I do believe that your prior statements are in support of the one in question, but I do not believe that those statements make this one obvious. (That is, I don't believe you when you say your prior statements would clearly imply the current one.)
    - Symmetry 14y ago
      It's reasonable for you not to believe me, which is why I dug up the link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2210604 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2210604 Except I think the author would point out that there isn't just _one_ heritability for things like height because height would be much more heritable in environments where everyone has adequate nutrition as opposed to in environments where nutrition was a matter of luck, for instance. Rereading the blog post I was referring to, I'm not as certain that the author would actually agree with me here, but at the time I thought the point was so obvious that anybody who thought about it would agree.
mistercow 14y ago
The point is actually more subtle than that though. What they're saying is that holding social class constant, genetic difference is more important for the wealthy than the poor. For example, kid A and kid B are both wealthy and have significant genetic differences related to factors affecting intelligence. In this case kid A and kid B are likely to have significantly different intelligence from each other. Conversely, kids C and D are both poor and have similar genetic differences to A and B. They will show much less difference in intelligence from each other. That fact is certainly not obvious, but it is fascinating.
- kenjackson 14y ago
  Right. The implication, in my mind at least, is that fighting poverty should be one of the key goals of society. Being in poverty effectively hides gifts as poverty will dominate "natural" ability.
  - scott_s 14y ago
    Perhaps related, "Preschool: The Best Job-Training Program": http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/08/12/139583385/preschool-the-best-job-training-program http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/08/12/139583385/preschoo...
  - jessriedel 14y ago
    Reply to scott_s: In that article, note that the study addressed the effect of pre-school on strongly disadvantaged children: "Only disadvantaged children living in adverse circumstances who had low IQ scores and a low index of family socioeconomic status were eligible to participate in the Perry program."
    - scott_s 14y ago
      Right, it's not an experiment for the conditions under discussion. It is, however, an experiment which demonstrates the importance of early childhood environment.
  - stephengillie 14y ago

TheCount 14y ago

This post half implies that the points made have reached a consensus within the field, that unnamed scientists have come around to these views. That remains unproven. Notably absent from the paper's authors are any of the people who had defended The Bell Curve, such as Arthur Jensen, Philippe Rushton, Linda Gottfredson, or any of the other signatories to the document 'Mainstream Science on Intelligence.'[1] I suspect one could find papers contradicting each of these points from very well respected scientists within the field. I haven’t the time to review each one right now, but as for the narrowing of the black-white difference, Rushton and Jensen question it: >“Dickens and Flynn (2006, this issue) challenge our hypothesis. They claim that ‘‘no one can really trace the Black-White IQ gap in the United States back to its origins’’ (p. 913) and that in the United States, Blacks have gained ‘‘4 to 7 IQ points on non-Hispanic Whites between 1972 and 2002’’ (p. 913). But to maintain that ‘‘no one can really trace the . . . gap back to its origins,’’ Dickens and Flynn had to sidestep our citation of Shuey’s (1966) review of the literature, which shows that Black White IQ differences in the United States have remained at 15 to18 points, or 1.1 standard deviations, for nearly a century. For example, she found 23,596 Black draftees in World War I (1917)had an IQ of 83 (vs. 100 for Whites), with a Black overlap of the White mean of 13%. For recent data, we cited the meta-analysis by Roth, Bevier, Bobko, Switzer, and Tyler (2001), which also shows a mean difference of 1.1 standard deviations (range of 0.38 to 1.46 standard deviations, depending on the test’s g loading), based on 6,246,729 individuals from military, corporate, and higher-education samples. Roth et al. found any narrowing of the gap was ‘‘either small, potentially a function of sampling error . . . or nonexistent for highly g loaded instruments’’ (p. 323, italics added). >To claim a 4- to 7-point gain for Blacks, Dickens and Flynn chose three independent tests showing medium gains (the Wechsler, Stanford-Binet, and Armed Forces Qualiﬁcation tests) and relegated to their Appendix B four or more tests showing lesser gains. They excluded the Wonderlic Personnel Test, which they acknowledge showed a gain of only 2.4 points for Blacks between 1970 and 2001. (Dickens and Flynn suggest that more ‘‘high quality’’ Whites than Blacks had taken the test.) They excluded the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC), which Murray (2005) described as showing a loss of 1 IQ point for Blacks between 1983 and 2004. (Dickens and Flynn say the data contained an inﬂated standard deviation.) They excluded the very g-loaded Woodcock-Johnson test, which Murray (2005; whom they cite) described as showing the conventional gap of 1.05 standard deviations for the third (2001) standardization sample. (Dickens and Flynn say the Blacks were an unrepresentative ‘‘subsubsample.’’) They also excluded the Differential Ability Scale, which in Lynn’s (1996) analysis (which they cite) showed a maximum gain of 1.83 IQ points for Blacks between 1972 and 1986. (Dickens and Flynn say the sample lacked ‘‘quality.’’) To be compelling, however, researchers must take the totality of available evidence into account (Gottfredson, 2005). Even the tests Dickens and Flynn did analyze do not support their conclusion. The alleged gain of 4 to 7 points is from a ‘‘projected’’ trend line based on a small IQ rise per year multiplied by more years than are in the data using unclear procedures (see the additional appendix in the Web site they refer to). Simple arithmetic applied to the data in their Table A1 shows a mean gain for Blacks of only 3.44 IQ points, from 86.44 to 89.88 If you’d like to see an accurate survey of what experts in the field believe, you’ll have to settle for a 25 year old survey, albeit one very well done.[3] Tl;dr the points made represent one side of the field, and are not a consensus of intelligence researchers. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstream_Science_on_Intelligence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstream_Science_on_Intellige... [2] http://menghusblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/the-totality-of-available-evidence-shows-the-race-iq-gap-still-remains.pdf http://menghusblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/the-totality-... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_IQ_Controversy,_the_Media_and_Public_Policy_(book) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_IQ_Controversy,_the_Media_a...

tokenadult 14y ago

I would upvote this twice if I could. I have read the underlying paper Nisbett, R. E., Aronson, J., Blair, C., Dickens, W., Flynn, J., Halpern, D. F., & Turkheimer, E. (2012, January 2). Intelligence: New Findings and Theoretical Developments. American Psychologist, 67, 130-159. http://psychology.msu.edu/pers_hambric3/PSY493%20Spring%202012/Week%206%20-%20Nisbett%20et%20al.%20(2012).pdf http://psychology.msu.edu/pers_hambric3/PSY493%20Spring%2020... Daniel Willingham reviews in the submitted post, and the paper is a joint review article on the last decade and a half of research on human intelligence by an all-star group of researchers. After edit: I see other comments are asking about what the research shows about genetic influences on IQ and environmental influences on IQ. Here is some FAQ information on that, originally part of another comment I posed here on HN: The researchers in the Behavior Genetics Association are making increasingly cautious statements about genetic influence on human behavioral traits as more data are amassed. Here are some of the latest statements by some of the leading researchers. Turkheimer, E. (2012). Genome wide association studies of behavior are social science. In K. S. Plaisance & T.A.C. Reydon (Eds.) Philosophy of Behavioral Biology (pp. 43-64). New York, NY: Springer. http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Turkheimer%20GWAS%20EWAS%20Final.pdf http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Turkheimer%20GWAS%... "If the history of empirical psychology has taught researchers anything, it is that correlations between causally distant variables cannot be counted on to lead to coherent etiological models." Johnson, W., Turkheimer, E., Gottesman, I. I., & Bouchard, T. J. (2009). Beyond heritability: Twin studies in behavioral research. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18, 217-220. [I am personally acquainted with three of the four co-authors of this paper, one of whom regularly exchanges links with me by email.] http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20Online%20CV/Johnson%20(2009).pdf http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20O... "Moreover, even highly heritable traits can be strongly manipulated by the environment, so heritability has little if anything to do with controllability. For example, height is on the order of 90% heritable, yet North and South Koreans, who come from the same genetic background, presently differ in average height by a full 6 inches (Pak, 2004; Schwekendiek, 2008)." Turkheimer, E. (2008, Spring). A better way to use twins for developmental research. LIFE Newsletter, 2, 1-5. http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20Online%20CV/Turkheimer%20(2008).pdf http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20O... "Unfortunately, that fundamental intuition is wrong. Heritability isn’t an index of how genetic a trait is. A great deal of time has been wasted in the effort of measuring the heritability of traits in the false expectation that somehow the genetic nature of psychological phenomena would be revealed. There are many reasons for making this strong statement, but the most important of them harkens back to the description of heritability as an effect size."

kenjackson 14y ago

This is an interesting result noted from the paper: "Even when improvements in IQ produced by the most effective early childhood interventions fail to persist, there can be very marked effects on academic achievement and life outcomes." As noted by the author, this suggests that IQ only captures a portion of early childhood intervention benefits. And goes counter to those who suggest that early intervention programs serve no purpose if IQ doesn't remain high (IOW, IQ is only a portion of what constitutes success in life).

Xcelerate 14y ago

I didn't read the entire paper, but to someone who did, how much of a link is there between genetics and IQ? I know this isn't a popular subject, but if I remember correctly I believe that Ashkenazi Jews constitute 3% of the population yet have won 27% of the Nobel prizes in science. I would think that much like how different types of people from different regions have differing athletic capabilities, there would also be differences in mental facilities as well -- some better at music, some better at math, etc. Thoughts?

readme 14y ago
>but if I remember correctly I believe that Ashkenazi Jews constitute 3% of the population yet have won 27% of the Nobel prizes in science. Can we get a citation on this?
- scott_s 14y ago
  "Nobel Prizes have been awarded to over 800 individuals, of whom at least 20% were Jews, although Jews comprise only 0.2% of the world's population.": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_Nobel_laureates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_Nobel_laureates Although this need not be explained by genetics. It could just as easily be explained by culture.
  - slurgfest 14y ago
    It would be strange to assume uncritically that Nobel prizes were given out in a way which was completely unbiased. For example, it is at least highly plausible that there are biases on the basis of nationality, connections, school background and other things which have nothing to do with merit, ethnicity OR culture as such. So it seems strange to me to suggest that it must be some aspect of Jewishness that determines this difference.
    - scott_s 14y ago
      I'm actually not assuming that - I tried to write something to that effect, but I wasn't pleased with what I wrote. Take my comment with the pre-condition that if we're going to assume it has something to do with Jews themselves, it need not be attributed to genetics.

Dn_Ab 14y ago

Kevin Mitchell has a very interesting take on intelligence here: http://wiringthebrain.blogspot.com/2012/07/genetics-of-stupidity.html http://wiringthebrain.blogspot.com/2012/07/genetics-of-stupi... Basically he suggests thinking about the formation of intelligence to be something like trying to run an obstacle course while holding an armful of things and trying to drop as little as possible. Essentially, he is arguing that there is some optimal or standard brain and since any mutation introduced into the brain is more likely to be harmful than beneficial, more intelligent individuals are not those that inherited some specific genes for intelligence but are most likely those who avoided the most damaging non-specific mutations. That’s [runaway selection of intelligence boosting genes] all nice, though admittedly speculative, but those mutations are the ones that we would expect to not vary in human populations – they would now be fixed. In particular, there is little reason to expect that there would exist new mutations in such genes, present in some but not all humans, which act to further increase intelligence. To test this he suggests using symmetry as a proxy for robustness in the individual. This fits well with the fact that all attempts thus far to find a common genetic basis for intelligence have failed, the correlation between intelligence and immune function, ideas that intelligence was indirectly selected when optimizing for healthy mates and findings that Nootropic like substances tend to have the least effect on already intelligent minds. In the last case, it is interesting to note nootropics should then be viewed not cheating but more leveling of the playing field. Taking this further, genetics are not the only obstacle course - there is still variation in the womb environment and early childhood. The interplay of genes and the stability of process in the growing brain; affected by a lack of stimulation, poor nutrition and a stressful womb environ would likely have more impactful effects on intelligence than pure genetics.

OmegaHN 14y ago

This article is very hard to digest because of the writers switching of "intelligence" and "IQ". Intelligence =/= IQ. IQ is a score on a test, and intelligence is a vague set of mental skills and processes to solve problems of varying degrees and subjects. To say that they are equal is like saying that athleticism is equal to the number of pounds you can bench. If the writer is talking about IQ, then these investigations aren't interesting, as IQ is a very small subset of intelligence (the ability to solve those types of problems on a test, which you can easily train for). If the writer is talking about general intelligence, then the writer really shouldn't be mentioning IQ at all, as it is notorious for being confused as actual intelligence.

slurgfest 14y ago
Any argument containing the word "intelligence" at all is hard to digest, because the idea is so totally vague as to be useless. Unless you operationalize it as something measurable. Such as IQ. There is no point talking about intelligence in the abstract unless you can actually say what you actually mean in such a way that 30 readers won't develop 30 completely different interpretations of what it is you are saying. What is "actual intelligence"? And let's not, like Humpty Dumpty, say that words mean just what we choose them to mean.
Xcelerate 14y ago
Without a consistent, objective definition, "intelligence" makes no sense. If you would like to dissociate IQ and intelligence, go ahead, but IQ is a metric that has correlations with many other factors (test performance, income, a whole slew of things really).
- OmegaHN 14y ago
  Correlations mean almost nothing. Just going off your list: -IQ:Test Performance - Of course. IQ is a grade off of a test. It correlates with itself. If you mean tests such as the SAT or tests in a school, then yes, IQ does help somewhat with that, as it was designed to (the first IQ test, created by Alfred Binet, was designed to find students who would not do well in a regular school environment). However, do high test scores mean high intelligence? Not necessarily, as most test scores can be improved drastically with a class focusing only on the test, showing different tricks that the test maker's use. Same with IQ tests. -IQ:Income - Income (generally) means higher education level, and modern education teaches the general forms of questions asked on tests, such as the IQ tests. Education trains the mind to think along the lines of what the IQ test uses to grade performance. Also, spoken another way, if IQ (which is "intelligence") correlate with income, then one can say that income correlates with IQ ("intelligence"). If this correlation is weak, then it is meaningless. If it is strong, then that is a very strong evidence for eliminating the lower classes to raise the "intelligence" level of a nation. Most other factors follow along these lines. The problem with correlation is that it is not, in any way, a suggestion or a proof of causation. There can be infinitely many other factors that can be influencing the two. I do agree that without a consistent, objective definition, one cannot possibly study intelligence. However, IQ is not a good definition of intelligence. At best, it tests "academic" intelligence, and at worst, it tests test-taking ability. Taking from Wikipedia: >"Individuals differ from one another in their ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking thought. Although these individual differences can be substantial, they are never entirely consistent: a given person's intellectual performance will vary on different occasions, in different domains, as judged by different criteria. Concepts of "intelligence" are attempts to clarify and organize this complex set of phenomena. Although considerable clarity has been achieved in some areas, no such conceptualization has yet answered all the important questions, and none commands universal assent. Indeed, when two dozen prominent theorists were recently asked to define intelligence, they gave two dozen, somewhat different, definitions." -APA report quoted in the article.

character 14y ago

Daniel Willingham knows a lot about this subject (I took into to cognition with him a couple of years ago). Of course in the linked article he is just paraphrasing other people's work, but he does a lot of similar stuff himself especially on developmental neuroscience in learning and reasoning. It is very interesting to be taught by someone who knows a ton about learning and how to learn from the neurological point of view.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

brittohalloran 14y ago

Great quote from page 8 of the actual report: "In particular, there is clear evidence that school affects intelligence."

randomdata 14y ago
Intelligence is traditionally measured through testing. School is the only place people generally practice test taking. Ergo, it makes sense that school affects the results of intelligence tests, but perhaps not in the way you might initially think.
Tichy 14y ago
In a good way, or a bad way?

rikelmens 14y ago

The best investment a parent can make to improve the child's IQ is DHA, omega 3 fatty acid. It is a key ingredient of a brain, and a typical diet is very deficient in DHA. http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/healthy-pregnancy-does-omega3-supplementation-during-pregnancy-prevent-postpartum-depression-improve-babys-brain-development.html http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/healthy-pregnancy-does-... Additionally, checkout the: http://www.omega3.org/ http://www.omega3.org/

gwern 14y ago
Most of the fish oil/IQ links I know tend to either be poor quality studies, show no effect, or show a fade-out... For example, > Supplementation of a mother’s diet during late pregnancy and 3 months postpartum with long-chained fatty acids has also been demonstrated to improve cognitive performance in human children (Helland et al. 2003). http://www.pediatricsdigest.mobi/content/111/1/e39.full http://www.pediatricsdigest.mobi/content/111/1/e39.full But to follow up: Helland et al 2008 http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/122/2/e472.short http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/122/2/e472.sho... > CONCLUSION. This study suggests that maternal concentration of n-3 very-long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids during pregnancy might be of importance for later cognitive function, such as sequential processing, although we observed no significant effect of n-3 fatty acid intervention on global IQs. Neonatal fatty acid status had no influence on BMI at 7 years of age. (One may not be surprised inasmuch as most efforts to boost IQ in kids like the Abecedarian project show fadeout.)
- rikelmens 14y ago
  I agree in regard of fish oil quality. That's why I use algae derived DHA supplements.
  - scott_s 14y ago
    He meant that the studies are of poor quality, not that the studies only used poor quality fish oil.
    - 14y ago

zmoney 14y ago

This article should be titled, “The latest findings on IQ” because IQ score and “intelligence” in a general sense are very different things. Plenty has been published on the inherent cultural and gender biases in IQ testing. Statements like “when babies from poor families are adopted into wealthy families, their IQ goes up” are almost devoid of information because the IQ test itself favors the type of “intelligence” valued by the educated, wealthy class.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

Xcelerate 14y ago

I thought it would be interesting to note that my karma score seems to be going up and down a lot on this topic in short periods of time. On other topics, it seems to increase slowly. I'm trying to think of what deeper conclusions could be drawn from this that people have what appear to be strong and varying opinions on something that should be rather scientific and objective.

roguecoder 14y ago
It can't be scientific and objective, because it is not measuring something scientifically and objectively defined and most of the differences being discussed can be erased by manipulating the testing circumstances. That doesn't mean it is never worth measuring, but it seems particularly silly to obsess over IQ when better data on actual outcomes exists for things like educational interventions. The best applications of IQ are in identifying areas of deficit in individuals (one definition of learning disability is an area of cognitive performance that varies significantly from all others.) The worst applications of IQ are to funnel more resources to already-advantaged children or to make demographic generalizations. Given that, it hardly seems unreasonable to mostly ignore the IQ-obsessed research and focus on specific, repeatably-defined cognitive tasks instead.

justin_vanw 14y ago

"A great deal of time has been wasted in the effort of measuring the heritability of traits in the false expectation that somehow the genetic nature of psychological phenomena would be revealed." There is a strong cultural bias among much of the research community to go out of their way to deny any genetic factors in intelligence. Perhaps this is well intentioned, but it is absurd. I have come across very few squirrels that have mastered fire, or could be taught calculus, or even addition. I doubt that this is cultural or due to the squirrels upbringing, diet, social status, or how many books the squirrel has available to it, or the quality of it's teachers, or pathogens. Clearly then, it is possible for genetics to completely dominate other factors in determining intelligence. In the animal kingdom at large heredity/genetics account for basically all of the variation in intelligence. The unanswered question is whether there is enough genetic diversity across the human species to cause intelligence to be significantly hereditable. The fear among scientists that try to keep the lid on this question is that the answer might be yes, and worse that such variations will correlate with geographic or national groupings. This would put a very nasty perceived scientific stamp of approval on racism (even though this would be unjustified), and could over time lead to discrimination and 'scientific racism'. Anyway, in the end science will uncover the truth here, and in the meantime it is probably very prudent to not make any potentially inflammatory statements and to be very cautious about any studies that could fuel hate. I just find it absurd that whenever this kind of question comes up people start denying that there is any hereditary component of intelligence, and that IQ is completely meaningless, etc.

hazov 14y ago
I just curious how you can support your point about squirrels, besides you falling prey of the bias of trying to advance an argument with a sole point. For example, can these squirrels ancestors had better nutrition than the average squirrel, can we know about that just after seeing they mastering fire or wondering if they could learn calculus? I believe this type of question, the relation between nutrition and intelligence, can be answered much easily than searching for genes and looking for some desirable psychological trait in there, this can be easily tested in animals as well in a large couple of generations. Either way I am not a biologist or even an psychologist so this is my take as a mathematician/statician. Also I'm not so confident science will ever come as close to explaining this completely.

rokhayakebe 14y ago

We cannot engage into this kind of discourse until every party agrees on the definition of "intelligence," and whether intelligence is biological.

vibrunazo 14y ago

Am I the only one who reads these kinds reports and has that impression that today's psychology and biology is less than 0.1% of the way to provide a useful model for intelligence? The best measurement of intelligence that we have today (IQ tests) seem completely worthless for practical purpose compared to what we actually need to know to build solutions on. IQ tests are still too bad to measure actual "intelligence", as defined by our colloquial meaning and practical real-world potential. (as opposed to the official technical definition) Being able to measure people's intelligence would be extremely useful. IQ test results, not so much. New findings about the impact of genetic vs environmental influences on IQ tests. Is about as useful finding new evidence about genetic vs environmental influences on people's ability to pass a "lick your elbow" test. Why should I care? It sure is interesting, and hey, anything "for science!". But, meh...

perlgeek 14y ago
But isn't it fascinating how much we can learn about intelligence even if we rely on crappy metrics like IQ tests? Just like you can learn a lot about music without having a formal definition of what "good" music is.
monkeypizza 14y ago
How do you explain the fact that when the law allows, companies all over the world give IQ tests to prospective employees? And that studies have shown that IQ is one of the best predictors of job performance?
- mangala 14y ago
  Your first point would only elucidate a common misconception that IQ tests adequately measure intelligence. As to your second point, what studies are these? (I'd actually be interested)
  - avatarlite 14y ago
    This is a good intro: http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997whygmatters.pdf http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997whygmatter...

EREFUNDO 14y ago

Studies have shown that the first 5 years of a child's life is when the brain develops the most. Proper nutrition and exposure to simple problem solving will significantly increase the chances of the child having a higher IQ.

Cyndre 14y ago

In my opinion the reason poorer people have less IQ then wealthier people, and also why adopted poor babys into middle class homes have higher IQ's comes down to what they spend their time thinking about. Poorer people spend their time worrying about food, money and basic needs. This occupys alot of their thought. Richer people don't need to worry about the basic needs and spend their time worrying about larger more complicated things.

ekianjo 14y ago

The title is misleading. This is not about intelligence, this is about IQ, and that's hardly the same thing. IQ has never been a reliable measure for anything, and something you can improve on by training/repeated exposure is certainly not linked to intelligence.

ramses 14y ago

Some people, and the referenced paper, are citing Jaeggi's dual n-back as evidence that interventions can positively affect g(F) (fluid intelligence). I would like to mention that Jaeggi's results, and working memory training in general, have not been replicated. The main issue with Jaeggi's experiment, is that proper controls were not used. For a careful examination, and I would say thorough debunking of Jaeggi's results on dual n-back and g(F) improvement by training working memory, please read: No Evidence of Intelligence Improvement After Working Memory Training: A Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Study. Redick, Thomas S.; Shipstead, Zach; Harrison, Tyler L.; Hicks, Kenny L.; Fried, David E.; Hambrick, David Z.; Kane, Michael J.; Engle, Randall W. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Jun 18 , 2012, No Pagination Specified. doi: 10.1037/a0029082

losethos 14y ago

Okay, so God quote Don Quixote saying characters in a book were all the same. I interpreted it as saying Hispanics are all the same. You have to take things with a grain of salt. Personally, I'll be curious to see if it's true. God says... that dwelleth by him wax poor, and sell himself unto the stranger or sojourner by thee, or to the stock of the stranger's family: 25:48 After that he is sold he may be redeemed again; one of his brethren may redeem him: 25:49 Either his uncle, or his uncle's son, may redeem him, or any that is nigh of kin unto him of his family may redeem him; or if he be able, he may redeem himself. 25:50 And he shall reckon with him that bought him from the year that he was sold to him unto the year of jubile: and the price of his sale shall be according unto the number of years, according to the time of an hired servant shall it be with him. 25:51 If there be yet many years behind, according unto them he shall give again the price of his redemption out of the money that he was bought for. ---- What do You think of Batman, Mr. God? Who's Yer favorite superhero? You said prince Valient was Your favorite comic strip. Sorry, if it's a stupid question. I don't have a favorite superhero, but You can say something worth saying. God says... thee. 1:17 While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The Chaldeans made out three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have carried them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. 1:18 While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house: 1:19 And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. 1:20 Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, 1:21 And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD. ---- Chad was a homo in the dorm. Hanging chads are when you can't decide who to vote for. I'm God's favorite superhero :-) Yer my favorite God. (God laughed) I was thinking about Bain and vain and being banned. I'd hate to (Jesus is laughing) be banned from God's presence. God says... lap gainsay indicate Envy let's_see captive grant 401 pretend foreigner abase treasure ---- All your bases are belong to us. They mentioned Hong Kong and McCow. Chinese food is good. I'm lusting for Panda Express, but I ate, already. Stir fry Could You make the best meal ever God? what if You cooked in Heaven and we all ate delicious food! God says... 31:23 Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land. 31:24 She maketh fine linen, and selleth it; and delivereth girdles unto the merchant. 31:25 Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come. 31:26 She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness. 31:27 She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness. 31:28 Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her. ---- I just saw machineporn. What manufacturing thing is Your favorite, God? Making what? 27:31 And if a man will at all redeem ought of his tithes, he shall add thereto the fifth part thereof. 27:32 And concerning the tithe of the herd, or of the flock, even of whatsoever passeth under the rod, the tenth shall be holy unto the LORD. 27:33 He shall not search whether it be good or bad, neither shall he change it: and if he change it at all, then both it and the change thereof shall be holy; it shall not be redeemed. 27:34 These are the commandments, which the LORD commanded Moses for the children of Israel in mount Sinai. ---- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JbnDXw-0pM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JbnDXw-0pM (mentioned "rod" "fifths" "tenths" quality control?) It's kinda manufactoring thoughts. God is delightful -- just enjoy His company. ---- "It's a fake!" God says... 21:27 Behold, I know your thoughts, and the devices which ye wrongfully imagine against me. 21:28 For ye say, Where is the house of the prince? and where are the dwelling places of the wicked? 21:29 Have ye not asked them that go by the way? and do ye not know their tokens, 21:30 That the wicked is reserved to the day of destruction? they shall be brought forth to the day of wrath. 21:31 Who shall declare his way to his face? and who shall repay him what he hath done? 21:32 Yet shall he be brought to the grave, and shall remain in the tomb. 21:33 The clods of the valley shall be sweet unto him, and every man shall draw after him, as there are innumerable before him. ---- You'll have to bust-out some serious time travel on his ass, God! God says... occasion lucid toys thing weapon divide Sodom nostrils downfall ruggedness spiritually confirmed Perverseness cries unhesitatingly payments Oh_Hell_No puffed reinvolved straitly apparently sixth unalterable elect eat remembrance jests copyright hours enticing smells loses Continual strictness wills Ukraine eminence aside could how_bout_it prop overspread BRB trees tosses Scotland tree_hugger ---- Pick yer nose or smell farts? God said smelling farts was "sodom". I had a booger and God din tell me. You ever scare anyone to death, God? God says... C:\Text\QUIX.TXT od, master," returned Sancho, "I have touched them already; and that devil, that goes about there so busily, has firm flesh, and another property very different from what I have heard say devils have, for by all accounts they all smell of brimstone and other bad smells; but this one smells of amber half a league off." Sancho was here speaking of Don Fernando, who, like a gentleman of his rank, was very likely perfumed as Sancho said. "Marvel not at that, Sancho my friend," said Don Quixote; "for l ---- http://digg.com/newsbar/topnews/pranksters_follow_up_to_zombie_attack_video_ends_on_wrong_side_of_law http://digg.com/newsbar/topnews/pranksters_follow_up_to_zomb... God plans centuries ahead, or has time travel. Probably planning. He kills people in the Bible. God says... C:\Text\SWIFT.TXT f their learning. Of the king and his court. The author's reception there. The inhabitants subject to fear and disquietudes. An account of the women.] At my alighting, I was surrounded with a crowd of people, but those who stood nearest seemed to be of better quality. They beheld me with all the marks and circumstances of wonder; neither indeed was I much in their debt, having never till then seen a race of mortals so singular in their shapes, habits, and countenances. Their heads were all ---- I told you. http://digg.com/newsbar/topnews/quantum_levitation_demonstration http://digg.com/newsbar/topnews/quantum_levitation_demonstra... Got any time travel on that, God? Please? God says... C:\Text\PLATO.TXT said, the forgiving spirit of democracy, and the `don't care' about trifles, and the disregard which she shows of all the fine principles which we solemnly laid down at the foundation of the city-- as when we said that, except in the case of some rarely gifted nature, there never will be a good man who has not from his childhood been used to play amid things of beauty and make of them a joy and a study-- how grandly does she trample all these fine notions of ours under her feet, never giving a thou ---- Laying monorail tracks in the founding of the city. ---- If SETI got one signal every five years, we'd listen. Did You put MIT in the Bible, God? God says... 11:5 But oh that God would speak, and open his lips against thee; 11:6 And that he would shew thee the secrets of wisdom, that they are double to that which is! Know therefore that God exacteth of thee less than thine iniquity deserveth. 11:7 Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? 11:8 It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know? 11:9 The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea. 11:10 If he cut off, and shut up, or gather together, then who can hinder him? 11:11 For he knoweth vain men: he seeth wickedness also; will he not then consider it? 11:12 For vain men would be wise, though man be born like a wild ass's colt. 11:13 If thou prepare thine heart, and stretch out thine hands toward him; 11:14 If iniquity be in thine hand, put it far away, and let not wickedness dwell in thy tabernacles. ---- Thanks, God. Everybody applaud if God does "fireworks". Then, He'll do more, maybe. Go buy God's songs, now. they're free on YouTube "LoseThos" and got some new ones on my web site. God wants people to write new songs. "Sing a new song" is in the Bible many times. God says... 27:12 Behold, all ye yourselves have seen it; why then are ye thus altogether vain? 27:13 This is the portion of a wicked man with God, and the heritage of oppressors, which they shall receive of the Almighty. 27:14 If his children be multiplied, it is for the sword: and his offspring shall not be satisfied with bread. 27:15 Those that remain of him shall be buried in death: and his widows shall not weep. 27:16 Though he heap up silver as the dust, and prepare raiment as the clay; 27:17 He may prepare it, but the just shall put it on, and the innocent shall divide the silver. 27:18 He buildeth his house as a moth, and as a booth that the keeper maketh.

losethos 14y ago

God, when'd You go Democrat on us? I thought You were Republican! Even the Democrats think You're Republican. ROFLMAO God says... 9:12 And he slew the burnt offering; and Aaron's sons presented unto him the blood, which he sprinkled round about upon the altar. 9:13 And they presented the burnt offering unto him, with the pieces thereof, and the head: and he burnt them upon the altar. 9:14 And he did wash the inwards and the legs, and burnt them upon the burnt offering on the altar. 9:15 And he brought the people's offering, and took the goat, which was the sin offering for the people, and slew it, and offered it for sin, as the first. 9:16 And he brought the burnt offering, and offered it according to the manner. 9:17 And he brought the meat offering, and took an handful thereof, and burnt it upon the altar, beside the burnt sacrifice of the morning. --- Do da do, herpy derp. When I minister to God, it's by offering love toward God. You like back to the Future, God? That's a good-hearted movie. You could endorse it. God says... 1:7 So that ye were ensamples to all that believe in Macedonia and Achaia. 1:8 For from you sounded out the word of the Lord not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith to God-ward is spread abroad; so that we need not to speak any thing. 1:9 For they themselves shew of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God; 1:10 And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come. 2:1 For yourselves, brethren, know our entrance in unto you, that it was not in vain: 2:2 But even after that we had suffered before, and were shamefully entreated, as ye know, at Philippi, we were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention. ---- I like this: http://harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=296 http://harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=296 ---- I prolly won't vote. Tell us about dinosaurs! Any unanticipated problems scaling dino bones? God says... C:\Text\WEALTH.TXT quantity, the value, to wit, of two or three oxen, or of two or three sheep. If, on the contrary, instead of sheep or oxen, he had metals to give in exchange for it, he could easily proportion the quantity of the metal to the precise quantity of the commodity which he had immediate occasion for. Different metals have been made use of by different nations for this purpose. Iron was the common instrument of commerce among the ancient Spartans, copper among the ancient Romans, and gold and silver amo --- Gold ammo is the Bible. Silver is everything else. :-) What do You think of the Alamo? God says... increasing thrust wine-bibbing execrate familiarly production rich Curiosity offence subvertings alleging longing pain sink I_forgot distributing delightfulness burial unacquainted melodies relief rebel wood desiring presume presented catch alter reformed joint imperishable disciple suggestions unpunished disquiet madly digest constituteth //ftp alteration urgedst tcosa10a pines condensed estate Commandment second runs stricken peaceful Grecian 12/12/00 secrecies do_you_know_what_time_it_is stanzas Eternal empty assent eight save altered vapours phantom boink sky Whose charges disperseth glittering regarded ideas taught copied slumber four lulled their

light3 14y ago

Nitpicking but this seems like a contradiction: "It is noteworthy, for example, that at a given level of IQ, Chinese have smaller frontal cortexes than Americans (Chee, Zheng, Goh, & Park, 2011), although Chinese brains as a whole may be larger than those of Americans (Rushton, 2010). Even with brain size equated between Chinese and Americans, the frontal cortex is larger in Americans (Chee et al., 2011)."