Intelligence: Genetic inheritance or function of effort?

[Poverty]

Primary socialization is the process whereby people learn the attitudes, values, and actions appropriate to individuals as members of a particular culture.

So where they were brought up/and watched theyre parents to work hard and do so at the best of their abilities they inevitabaly do the same.

 

[LeadSlead#2]

some people suck in school simply because they think their friends will laugh at them for anything else.
Some do great because everybody expects them to fail constantly.

My girlfriend trys quite hard in school usually, and does pretty well, but no matter how hard she has tried, she's still never done better than I did, overall, she simply didnt inherit the appropriate genetics for it.
Likewise, I could never do as good as my brother did, but I tried, I simply got the shaft from out parents genes.

 

[niky]

The "primary socialization" doesn't always hold true, though. Take me, my mom's an Asian-American workaholic... I'm an internet junkie.

Determination will carry you only so far, yes, but if it does, you do become better at your chosen profession than the guy who just breezed through. The best college teachers are the ones who took a few extra years to finish, because they had to work hard for their knowledge and skills.

 

[Moot]

A new study published today giving new evidence that intelligence is passed on through particular genetics.
http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/mp201185a.html
3500 unrelated adults were tested.
Basically it shows that intelligence is not governed by a simple mutation of a gene or 2 . It appears in tiny variations over hundreds or perhaps thousands of different genes. And they have evolved over thousands of years to give us better intelligence.
The adage of blame the parents still applies. Intelligent families will spawn intelligent offspring, low intelligence parents will have stupid children (comparatively, within the bounds of genetic variation and statistical averages of course).
The genetic variations form a percentage of 40% of knowledge (crystallised-intelligence) and 51% for problem solving (fluid-intelligence).
So at worst you can only be born half stupid, which is nice.
But still half your brain power for this kind of processing is quite a hefty chunk when it just comes from simple (complex) biology of your parents.

Anyway after the result of this study, we now have proof that, irrespective of any other factors, looking purely at peoples genetic code, a measure of intelligence can be apportioned.
The limiting issue so far is that they don't know which genes are effective, just the variance proportions.
They say with possibly many thousands of them the scope for further research is quite limited, in order to find which ones make good thinkers.
Still, surely it just a matter of time.

 

[Danoff]

...but at what point does that study become more about parents' intelligence than about the kids? I imagine they must have looked at very young children to do that study. I still think in the long run determination plays a much bigger role - and I think that determination is a teachable, learnable trait.

 

[Moot]

The study was performed on adults.

knowledge is 40% genetic the rest is learn-able.
Problem solving is 51% genetic the rest is learn-able.

Parents or kids does not matter as the test rules out any other factors, all that was left was the genetic factor of intelligence. I don't know how they did that but that is what they are saying is proof.
So that is the report which is open to question on that point of how did they manage to prove it as 51% genetic and absolutely nothing to do with environmental factors etc.
Maybe 3500 people is enough to show the true pattern of intelligence.

 

[Keef]

I still think in the long run determination plays a much bigger role - and I think that determination is a teachable, learnable trait.

I think it is consciously learnable in mature people only on rare occasions. Determination is something learned unconsciously through personal experience, especially during young childhood. There are obvious examples showing that it can be improved, destroyed, or trained in general by personal experience or outside forces. Like a military drill instructor, for example, or a wise and passionate old man, or watching a university graduation ceremony as it was in my case.

In general I think you can accurately predict where a person is headed by looking at their habits in high school. After that age it's usually very difficult for a person to consciously change their personality. But sometimes a flunkee succeeds because they want to change, and I would argue that a person like that is actually more intelligent, if less knowledgeable, than his valedictorian classmates.

 

[Grand Prix]

All the knowledge you could ever want to know is but an internet search engine away. Wisdom, on the other hand, is gained through experience.

Intelligence is something you can't place a tangible value on, in my humble opinion. Many people are smart with things because they learned how to do those things, and not others.

For example, who is the smarter person here? The person that philosophizes about metaphysics and trying to understand the universe? Or the person instead using that time to read up on business practices to become a successful entrepreneur? There is no right or wrong answer here. Intelligence, much like art and culture, is something that has time devoted to it. Some people just choose to use on that time on other things.

Likewise with learning speed. People are going to learn something slowly if they're not that interested in it.

So essentially what I'm saying is, I think there is no set limit on intelligence/wisdom/knowledge, at least in humans. When you introduce other animals and how their intelligence compares to humans, that's when it opens up an even bigger can of worms.

 

[niky]

Unless you do a study on children who are orphans, then you can't discount the environmental factors at all.

 

[Moot]

I think the latest test does discount the environmental factors to get the figures they published.
They now have a working testable theory. So that would mean you could give them another 3500 random people, and before even testing them for knowledge and problems solving they will say which ones will score higher. Based on the genetic analysis of them.
No environmental factors are involved or needed for the test.
They worked out environmental factors have just over a half input to the intellect skills.
Just a numbers game I think.
The accuracy could get better if they tested more people. But they seem confident enough to publish at that number.

 

[Keef]

I think the latest test does discount the environmental factors to get the figures they published.
They now have a working testable theory. So that would mean you could give them another 3500 random people, and before even testing them for knowledge and problems solving they will say which ones will score higher. Based on the genetic analysis of them.
No environmental factors are involved or needed for the test.
They worked out environmental factors have just over a half input to the intellect skills.
Just a numbers game I think.
The accuracy could get better if they tested more people. But they seem confident enough to publish at that number.

In 90%+ of these cases the genetic factors are associated with environmental factors. Intelligent people often have a typical environment about them - they might be wealthy, live in a nice neighborhood, attend good schools, etc. Stereotypes are based on reality. Their lifestyles are often considerably different than people you might classify as "dumb". So which is it - are their environments influenced by their genes, or are their genes a result of their environments?

 

[Moot]

In 90%+ of these cases the genetic factors are associated with environmental factors. Intelligent people often have a typical environment about them - they might be wealthy, live in a nice neighborhood, attend good schools, etc. Stereotypes are based on reality. Their lifestyles are often considerably different than people you might classify as "dumb". So which is it - are their environments influenced by their genes, or are their genes a result of their environments?

That's evolutionary genetics effected by environment. Which is different.
Your DNA doesnt change after your born.
The test of this study is about DNA.

Being a child in a wealthy and healthy family, good food and schools etc does not change your DNA pattern to make you intelligent. Those things do effect the 60%/49% intelligence reserved for environment while growing up.
We now know the percentages.

I would have thought through evolution. Most people in a population are already near maximising their genetic intellect. This is not talked about in the summary I read. I wonder what the range is. The range might only be 1% difference for people with good thinking genes and those with poor. So the poor thinkers might still have a near half genetic based intelligence.
But variances have been spotted so they are significant.
As intelligence is an evolved attribute genetically, we can assume those with less genetic intelligence are more primeval. This may cause the class divides.

Most differences between intelligence might be environmental, so the difference between peoples intelligence might be 99% environmental. I think i'm getting confused now though.
But what I said about the report in my first post is true numbers. It needs interpreting.
Hopefully more experts will talk about it so they can be quoted.

 

[niky]

Big numbers mean nothing if you can't control external factors or eliminate them.

Like one research study, which had thousands of respondents, that clearly linked soda to heart disease... except it didn't... because of the fact that most of the respondents who drank soda ate red meat, and most of the respondents who drank fruit juice were vegetarian or on a diet.

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I'll believe it when I see uncorrupted data. And there ain't no such thing when you're talking nature versus nurture.

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Obviously, genetics does play some role in intelligence, but putting a solid number on that without controlling the "nurture" factor is foolish. Which is why studies on how identical identical twins are in terms of personality are always carried out with those who were adopted by separate families.

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The only way to truly control environmental factors is to look at children who grow up in an orphanage, and whose parents' IQ is known. Of course, this pre-biases your data set, since parents who abandon children probably aren't on the sunny side of the Apple tree.

Elsewise, you need to look at communal families, where child-rearing is shared equally amongst couples.

 

[Moot]

From article:
"Previous work on the environmental and genetic contributions to cognitive ability has been based on comparing intelligence in identical and non-identical twins, or studying it in people who were adopted. In the study led by Deary, the conclusions were gleaned from direct testing of people's DNA. "It is the first to show biologically and unequivocally that human intelligence is highly polygenic [involving lots of genes] and that purely genetic (SNP) information can be used to predict intelligence," Deary wrote in the journal paper."

As I say the fact that the test does not take into account an almost infinite amount of varying outside factors is the reason on why the findings are so insightful. It is able to disregard all other factors. For the precise reason that outside factors do not influence DNA?

Intelligence and what it means can be rightly argued. The more conservative would say it's a variance in mind make-up.
Whether they are good at certain "tests" than others in that sense is irrelevant, but it does show an actual brain difference. The other variances could have brain advantages in other areas. Such as toilet cleaning tests etc.*

(do I have to say joke?)

It makes sense that intelligence is an evolutionary trait and since we became humans has been genetically refined to make us more able over thousands of years.

I expect experiment could be done to adapt ape DNA to make them more genetically intelligent, and then raise them perfectly to cultivate it. The results could be compared to standard ape DNA who has had the same training.
Or instead of making it, just look for variances already existing within apes and see what can be found.
Does that experiment make sense?

Sounds a bit like rise of the planet of the Apes, which I have yet to see.

 

[PureAwesomeness]

"Intelligence: Genetic inheretance or function of effort?"

 

[Pupik]

^ Point taken...

 

[HenrySwanson]

Saw this a while back and thought I'd post it here:



Thanks in part to discussions on this forum I don't value IQ tests as highly anymore but still found this interesting.

 

[Danoff]

Saw this a while back and thought I'd post it here:



Thanks in part to discussions on this forum I don't value IQ tests as highly anymore but still found this interesting.

More people are able to learn the material and pass now compared to previously. This is what it looks like when the education system leaves fewer people behind. Previously our education system selected for the type of people that do well on IQ tests (this is not a coincidence) and enabled those people to pass and shrugged shoulders at the rest.

 

[MIE1992]

I believe IQ is just a big joke. Do people really think they can distill someone's ability to succeed purely by a two or three-digit number? How absurd! Steven Hawking once said, "People who boast about their IQ are losers." And who am I to disagree with someone who was clearly so erudite?

 

[UKMikey]

I bet Professor Hawking had a high IQ (or however you want to measure intellectual attainment). Just because he said boasting about one's test score is useless doesn't mean the entire science of intelligence measurement is a waste of humanity's time.

Nor, I think, has anyone said that the ability to succeed can be distilled into a single number. Maybe I missed it somewhere.

 

[Jump_Ace]

Saw this a while back and thought I'd post it here:



Thanks in part to discussions on this forum I don't value IQ tests as highly anymore but still found this interesting.

My first thought on this is because kids are getting pushed into college in recent years, where in the '60s you didn't necessarily 'have' to go to college to do well in life. But with the rise of education inflation, in order to most likely 'succeed' in life, you have to get a degree. What 'succeed' means, is anyone's guess, but I'm thinking along the lines of an office/skilled job. But imo (and labor prices can back me up on this) just about any trade can be lucrative (plumbing, electrical, heavy machinery). And if you can make good money, does it really matter how 'smart' you are? Granted, you still make good, common sense decisions in life (retirement savings, yada yada).


Jerome

 

[Pupik]

My first thought on this is because kids are getting pushed into college in recent years, where in the '60s you didn't necessarily 'have' to go to college to do well in life. But with the rise of education inflation, in order to most likely 'succeed' in life, you have to get a degree. What 'succeed' means, is anyone's guess, but I'm thinking along the lines of an office/skilled job. But imo (and labor prices can back me up on this) just about any trade can be lucrative (plumbing, electrical, heavy machinery). And if you can make good money, does it really matter how 'smart' you are? Granted, you still make good, common sense decisions in life (retirement savings, yada yada).


Jerome

It's not as if a trade school is "free" either. Training, tools, supplies, certifications, licensing, insurance, transportation, and advertising costs money. And it's even harder to get a loan for all that; in essence a college loan, is leveraging your brainpower for a loan, but with the restriction that one can only spend it at certain places.

That's certainly not to say one is worse than the other. But it's tougher to go the trade route without a good head start (inheriting a business, being part of a family business, or being an apprentice for a long time). And we need those careers; electricity, water, and equipment is always in demand.

I think the IQ thing is part artificial (advertisements and anecdotal jokes have used it for/against for years), but presumably it can figure out the extrema at some point. But nobody tests the populace after a certain point, it seems artificial because adults are typically removed from any IQ classification by the time they've hit 20 (I think I was last "checked" at age 9). As you age further, you pick up different skills and abilities and your spread of knowledge has less overlap with that of with others. There's limited ways to reliably use that quantifiable information and make assumptions.

Later on, it's not always how you take orders and repeat it back, it's how your figure out, react, and adapt quickly in useful ways. And then you get hired on and have to keep following orders until you find get a great way to save the company money or keeping them profitable.

 

[Danoff]

Imagine that you have one school that aligns their tests toward "traditional" notions of intelligence, the same kinds of traditional notions of intelligence that IQ tests identify. You'll generally have people who do well on an IQ test doing well on the school's test, and thus people who tend to do well on an IQ test will pass the school's program more often than people who will not. This aligns IQ score with passing.

Now imagine that you have another school that aligns their tests toward additional notions of intelligence. You'll generally have people who score lower on an IQ test performing well in some of these additional areas. As a result, more people will pass the school's program, and the aggregate passing IQ will be generally lower.

This is what it looks like when schools broaden their understanding of aptitude.

 

[MatskiMonk]

I believe IQ is just a big joke. Do people really think they can distill someone's ability to succeed purely by a two or three-digit number? How absurd! Steven Hawking once said, "People who boast about their IQ are losers." And who am I to disagree with someone who was clearly so erudite?

I've never heard anyone describe IQ purely as someone's ability to succeed.

In my personal experience, I would treat it as a measure of someones ability to comprehend something they don't have knowledge of, or experience with. A person with a high IQ would therefore be capable of understanding things they are learning more quickly, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'd be any better prepared to solve a problem than someone with a much lower IQ that already has experience and an understanding of solving that problem.

 

[Danoff]

I've never heard anyone describe IQ purely as someone's ability to succeed.

In my personal experience, I would treat it as a measure of someones ability to comprehend something they don't have knowledge of, or experience with. A person with a high IQ would therefore be capable of understanding things they are learning more quickly, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'd be any better prepared to solve a problem than someone with a much lower IQ that already has experience and an understanding of solving that problem.

The many different kinds of IQ tests include a wide variety of item content. Some test items are visual, while many are verbal. Test items vary from being based on abstract-reasoning problems to concentrating on arithmetic, vocabulary, or general knowledge.

A lot of IQ tests are memory or spatial reasoning-based. Not really an assessment of how quickly you learn. In fact, no IQ test I have ever taken or seen involves assessing how rapidly someone learns. I believe that may have been something people have tested, but I've not seen it as part of an IQ test.

Depending on the test, there may be a verbal comprehension component, or math. I think the tests have changed over the years. But they are often focused on abstract reasoning of particular kinds (such as logic or spatial). It might be a good measure of your ability to succeed in specific fields or kinds of problems. But certainly not generally.

 

[MatskiMonk]

A lot of IQ tests are memory or spatial reasoning-based. Not really an assessment of how quickly you learn. In fact, no IQ test I have ever taken or seen involves assessing how rapidly someone learns. I believe that may have been something people have tested, but I've not seen it as part of an IQ test.

Depending on the test, there may be a verbal comprehension component, or math. I think the tests have changed over the years. But they are often focused on abstract reasoning of particular kinds (such as logic or spatial). It might be a good measure of your ability to succeed in specific fields or kinds of problems. But certainly not generally.

I'm not saying that's what they're there to evaluate but quicker comprehension of abstract problems would surely lead to faster learning, so I'd assume that people with higher IQ's were probably quicker learners.

I'm sure with a long enough test and a particular structure of repetitive styles of question, how the subject was adapting throughout the test could be shown, if desired.

Anecdotally, the tests I've taken were done through work (though not for work) and included personality tests and stress monitoring - the package of information returned seemed pretty accurate and I can only assume that they could correlate stress with specific questions or sections within tests to determine not only if I got something right or wrong but also how taxing I was finding the questions (not quite polygraph style, but maybe fairly similar). This was well over a decade ago, with at least a couple of years between the first evaluation and the second evaluation, and was all off the back of a chap renting spare office space from us that was selling the package/service to corporations. I was pretty happy with the results but the stress test exposed to my employer how good at hiding stress I am, whilst also being very bad at dealing with it, and that led to an admission of a history of depression and anxiety which previously I'd been keeping mostly to myself.

 

[Danoff]

I'm not saying that's what they're there to evaluate but quicker comprehension of abstract problems would surely lead to faster learning, so I'd assume that people with higher IQ's were probably quicker learners.

For concepts relying on abstract or spatial reasoning, sure. For other kinds of things, probably not. Depends on what you're trying to learn.

I'm sure with a long enough test and a particular structure of repetitive styles of question, how the subject was adapting throughout the test could be shown, if desired.

Yea, but that's not what IQ tests... at least not in my experince.

 

[HenrySwanson]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/10/02/maryland-state-police-justice-department-investigation-settlement-discrimination/

The Maryland State Police have agreed to pay $2.75 million in back pay to Black and female state troopers who were discriminated against in the agency’s hiring process, as part of a legal settlement to resolve a two-year Justice Department investigation.

The investigation, led by the Justice Department’s civil rights division and the U.S. attorney’s office in Maryland, found that Maryland State Police used a written test that discriminated against Black candidates and a physical test that discriminated against female candidates. Both are violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

See also:

State Police agree to pay $2.75 million to settle federal probe of discriminatory hiring - Maryland Matters

The Maryland State Police agreed to change the way it tests recruits and said it will pay $2.75 million to 48 women and Black applicants who were turned down for trooper jobs after they failed recruiting tests that were deemed discriminatory.

marylandmatters.org

The investigation focused on two tests that are part of the process – including background checks, drug tests and interviews – to hire a new trooper.

The Police Officer Selection Test (POST) is a written test of an applicant’s abilities in math, reading, writing and grammar. A passing grade is 70%, and would-be officers can retake the test up to four times in a year in an effort to pass. Applicants who fail are eliminated from the program.

The Functional Fitness Assessment Test requires applicants to do 18 pushups in a minute and 27 situps in a minute, run 1.5 miles in 15 minutes, 20 seconds, and be able to reach 1.5 inches past their toes while seated to test their flexibility. All four parts of the test have to be successfully completed to pass, but applicants can try three times in a year before being eliminated.

The settlement caps a two-year civil rights investigation by the U.S. Justice Department. File Ppoto by Danielle E. Gaines

According to the Justice Department investigation, however, the skills assessed in those two tests were not actually essential to a trooper’s job performance. And while 91% of white applicants were ultimately able to pass the POST test, just 71% of Black applicants were able to so. On the physical test, 51% of women passed compared to 81% of men.

This is concerning as it adds evidence to my theory that we (at least, the UK and US) think the film "Idiocracy" is something to copy.

Why would I want an armed police officer who can't pass this:

https://mdsp.maryland.gov/Careers/Trooper%20and%20Cadet%20Application%20Documents/POST%20Study%20Guide_MSP.pdf

How can you better test suitability for the job?

This is something I had to deal with in my last role.

For a 20-something-year-old male with no known problems taking paracetamol, how much would you give and when (you are given a 5ml syringe):

 

[Danoff]

How can you better test suitability for the job?

That's the crux of the case. From your post:

"According to the Justice Department investigation, however, the skills assessed in those two tests were not actually essential to a trooper’s job performance."

This is very important. If you're going to test for something that gives apparently discriminatory results, it's very important to be able to tie what is tested with what is necessary for the job. For example, if you test eyesight for a bus driver position and it discriminates against blind people, it is very important to be able to tie, in court, eyesight to job performance. That is apparently the exercise that was failed in this case.

 

[HenrySwanson]

That's the crux of the case. From your post:

"According to the Justice Department investigation, however, the skills assessed in those two tests were not actually essential to a trooper’s job performance."

This is very important. If you're going to test for something that gives apparently discriminatory results, it's very important to be able to tie what is tested with what is necessary for the job. For example, if you test eyesight for a bus driver position and it discriminates against blind people, it is very important to be able to tie, in court, eyesight to job performance. That is apparently the exercise that was failed in this case.

I'm not that familiar with the day-to-day work of an armed officer. Still, looking at those example questions as a layperson it appears to cover things you'd hope someone with a gun and the power to use it against me legally in high-pressure situations is capable of answering. If it was a one-and-done deal, maybe I could see a call for change but they're allowed to take it four times in a year.... For god's sake, just practice if this is the career you want instead of crying discrimination - many have to for other roles and only get one shot per year. It's a much more relevant test than, for example, the UCAT or SJT that most doctors will sit in the UK. The SJT used to be used for selecting where in the country you would start your career after finishing medical school but following complaints, it's been disposed of and replaced with a lottery system. You could quite literally now finish in the 10th decile of the worst-ranked medical school and bag a place practicing medicine at one of the top hospitals in the world as merit has gone out the window.

I can't imagine what an ideal screening test should look like for an armed officer that would hold up in court to legal challenges like this. To my inexperienced eyes I would imagine the maths section and section 3 are the ones that are harder to put in the context of working as a cop but even then some of the maths questions involve basic addition/subtraction of stolen item values.

Also, is anyone feeling brave enough to answer the picture question (it isn't a trick)....