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Intelligence is Inherited
codeButcher writes: "Now you can blame it on your parents! NewScientist.com reports on a study done on twins, that determines that IQ [and lack thereof then too, I suppose] is inherited. Quote: The finding suggests that environment - their own personal experiences, what they learned in life, who they knew - played a negligible role in shaping it."
The end of the article makes a critical point about "IQ": it is what you need to do well in school not what you need to do well in life.
IQ, or intelligence, is only one factor contributing to how a person contributes to society and how "succesful" a person will be in life.
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A person of moderate zeal
In practice, IQs measure only one skill: how well you do on IQ tests.
(Incidentally, this isn't sour grapes -- I don't know what my IQ is exactly, but I'm told it's within a fraction of the top 1 percentile. And I don't consider myself particularly intelligent either.)
In 1869 Francis Galton wrote a book called "Hereditary Genius" on this very subject. It's the first quantitative analysis of the human mental ability. He studied scientists, poets, politicians and many more people, classifying then into nature vs. nurture. In the end he concludes genius is hereditary in humans. Many people consider this book as the creator of the nature vs. nurture argument. He puts forth a great deal of stats in the book, something I find many case studies to be missing.
Of course it is. Don't you remember when you were in school and there were those really stupid kids in your class, did you ever meet the parents? They were always stupid, or related, or both. There was a group of brothers going to the same school I did that were called the "Spud Brothers" who's parents where in the "family" way.
Of course, my parents moved from Chicago to Northern Michigan while I was still quite young, so my experience might be different from yours.
...think twice before shouting out "stupid parents" in the future, eh?
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This sort of finding bothers me. It bothers me in the same way as did a news article a couple of weeks ago reporting that a women was offering something on the order $10k for primo sperm from a Stanford student with certain physical characteristics.
Given the knowledge of this genetic connection, we should in principle be able to start a breeding program to increase the average IQ of the human species.
But is this necesssarily a good thing? I'm not convinced that a high IQ is the primary trait needed for human survival. (It's not a bad thing in of itself... some of my best friends have a high IQ. grin.)
We've come pretty far as a species responding to a number of adverse environments trusting in good old Natural Selection. If we start intentionally selecting out a certain set of genes as especially desirable, what's to stop us from creating a hyper specialized race of savants that do great in math and music, but don't have the ability to bind people together to a common goal?
I guess what I'm saying is that I've seen what effect overbreeding has had on the canine species - especially when humans have gotten involved. What will happen to our species if we follow that path?
In illa quae ultra sunt
As a new father, I immediately wondered about the very numerous studies that have shown breastfed babies generally have an I.Q. that's greater than formula fed babies by almost 10 points. I guess the author of the book would just tell me it's a correlation--that smart people breastfeed their babies and dumb people have a gene that makes them predisposed to feed formula. As for me, that just doesn't sound plausible.
You know the theory that all the dumb ppl having way more kids drags down the average IQ? It looks like it now has weight. That is bad.
;-)
I'm getting a mental picture of all the less-than-intellectual induhviduals from high school... Then thinking that that'll be most of the ppl in the future. Scary.
Of course, intelligence does seem to be increasing, so the dumb-stud theory must be counterbalanced by something.
But just to be sure, all us smart ppl better start reproducing like bunnies
The opinons expressed are those of the voices in the author's head and are not necessarily those of the author.
... they won't believe you at all. At that age, all parents are stupid - I know mine were. Of course, they started to get more intelligent when I hit the 20-year old mark. I can only conclude that intelligence is increased by continous contact with intelligent young people.
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Couple of points:
- There is no good quantifiable measurement for intelligence.
- Physical structure of the brain may not indicate ability, e.g., even with identical brain structures is it possible for the twins to have defniitely levels of ability?
- Sample size of the study leaves considerable margin for error. Perhaps these 20 twins were an anomoly.
I know next to nothing about brain functioning, and it does not seem based that this study, as reported here, provides any real evidence -- although, it may be provide some interesting points of departure for further research.many of the traits that contribute to iq do seem to be heritable, but iq only seems to test things that we've evolved to solve problems that are specific to our ancestors' environment (visualizing 3d spaces, for instance), and very basic logic (that even the earliest computers had no problem with, but people often have a very difficult time with). neither of which is a good measurement of "generic intelligence", as if there is such a thing.
:)
put simply, i just know too many people who test >150iq but don't know their ass from their elbow.
So the obvious question is that if genius is hereditary, can we breed for it intentionally?
rJames.org - illustration
This is why there is a growing divide between the haves and the have nots.
When the starved kid lives to be 80 and the "nurished" one dies at 38 from a heart-attack because of being over nurished who wins then? Sometimes being too smart can be a bad thing. For example until college i weighed 160-165lbs (5'10") after college I weigh 215. Simply because all I do now is sit in front of a computer. Where as in school I waited tables (40hrs of exercise) and didnt have time to eat and couldnt afford to eat out. Now all I do is eat out b/c my time is more precious and i can afford it!
abilities such as being able to abstract rules or figure out how to order things according to rules.
So, perhaps the ability to become a good programmer? Sounds like it to me. So, who's for breeding clones/children of the greatest programmers of our time, and growing them in big tanks, then raising them to write, revise, and maintain future software projects?
Hmm what song is that from, I think it was weaser??? I wonder how much truth there is in that. Are we breeding dumber Americans? Sure seems that way when I get on the road and people can't figure out how to use their turn signals properly or how to drive....
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I think these studies are in general highly misinterpreted, which has been done so here. For example, in the article they refer to MRI studies in the similarities of identical twins' brains. Ok, great. Why would you expect anything different? These dudes look the same, they're built the same, of course their brains have similar structure. But given that our models of cognition are shite at this point in time, to extrapolate from a structural similarity to a functional similarity is preposterous.
Furthermore, this whole IQ testing thing is pretty much bunk to begin with. Quoting from the article:
Now, as we who have taken a statistics class know, when you do 17 tests which have a very high degree of correlation, you don't do all 17 damn tests, because they're all measuring the same thing. So you just do one. Second, to assume that you're actually measuring something real is also pretty ridiculous. If the only evidence that something exists is that you've designed 17 tests (which are all highly correlated), then you need to take Stats 101.There is a very good exposition of all of these issues in Steven J. Gould's Mismeasure of Man. I would advise anyone who wants to understand some of the scientific issues in this field, as opposed to the crap, should look at that book.
Come on, give it up, that's
The twins shared environments, means researchers can separate genetic and environmental factors.
This means that the subjects were in the same environments and makes genetics the dependent variable. This doesn't make any indication of environmental influence on intelligence. As I understand the article, they are stating that in this experiment, environment is not significant since both of the twins had the same basic environment.
"It's extraordinary how similar they are," he says. The finding suggests that environment - their own personal experiences, what they learned in life, who they knew - played a negligible role in shaping it.
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes. -- Dr. Who
It is politically incorrect to suggest that not all humans are born with with a clean slate and have the same potential. It's OK to say that people can inherit trivial things like hair or eye color, skin tone, and so on. But no one is willing to accept the fact that a brain is just another organ in the body - it can be affected by birth defects, it can be damaged by chemical abuse, and it can be affected by genetics.
The reasons people don't want to accept this are obvious, but they were similar to the reasons that kept the Ptolemic Solar System alive for centuries. Both sets of reasons are intellectually bankrupt.
first of all,let me say that, in general, the New Scientist is, IMHO, much closer to pseudoscience than science. . . it's not a very serious publication.
Nor is it intended to be. New Scientist is a compendium of abstracts from serious scientific journals that have been edited to read by non-scientists. In this case the study was published in Nature Neuroscience (DOI: 10.1038/nn758). (See the last line of the article).
Now as to the article as a whole, I think the study was little pointless if at all it was attempting to prove is that intelligence has a significant genetic component. If it didn't then humans would have the same level of intelligence as our ape ancestors.
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I'd never have guessed. I thought it was just a coincidence that most humans seemed to be more intelligent that members of other species. It's amazing what these scientists discover.
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The nature nurture debate has raged for centuries in respect to intelligence. Ever since Darwin's cousin Francis Galton proposed his theories of hereditary intelligence.
At first glance, it seems neat that these guys did a study on twins. You might think, "wow, what a great approach." You'd be right, then you'd hopefully realize that other people had these ideas in the past, and they did the right studies and came to the right conclusions.
When Thomas Bouchard was in charge of the Minnesota Twin Studies, he and his colleagues compared twins raised together and apart.
Bouchard and colleagues tested 56 pairs of monozygotic (identical) twins who had been raised apart and compared them to hundreds of identical twins who had been reared together. The twins were tested on dozens of capacities. This approach allowed them to examine spatial ability, verbal ability, mathematical ability, personality, etc. Rather than the antiquated "g" or general intelligence factor.
So, here's a study with many more subjects, much better comparisons, and more detailed data. Here's the cool part: if you correlate the scores of twins on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) (the standard IQ test in the US) and Ravens Progressive Matrices (An allegedly culturally unbiased test of reasoning skills), you see a 65% (WAIS) or 50% (Raven's) agreement among scores of twins raised together, and among twins raised apart, the WAIS scores are about 35% in agreement with nearly the same 50% agreement on Raven's scores.
What does this mean? Well, it means that even in the best cases, IQ scores are about 50% hereditary. In addition, the big drop off between WAIS scores indicates that environment has an important role in intelligence. Given that most of the twins were raised in similar middle class families (who adopt kids), the estimates of the role of environment are probably inflated.
That being said, the study mentioned in the story focuses primarily on brain structures. This pisses me off. One of the lamest things about current cognitive neuroscience is the common misunderstanding of the difference between structure and process. Given the little we know about how the brain works (yeah, we're getting good info about the molecular level, and we know in general what larger regions like Broca's area are responsible for, but we have woefully little info about how these structures actually work), idiot PR people take brain findings and blow them out of proportion.
The fact is, if you want to talk about intelligence, you have to talk about behavioral measurements. Looking at structures can, at best, tell you if something is wrong. So, yeah big deal, major structures are heritable, given the fact that environment has been shown in better studies to play a key role in intelligence, we shouldn't rely too much on these findings.
Bottom line: Yes of course nature plays an important role in intelligence. You'd have to be an idiot not to realize that. This study is not groundbreaking. Moreover, the headline of the article is sensationalistic and only a half-truth. Environment does play a role in intelligence. My god, meet a person who ate lead paint as a kid and you'll realize that.
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Hmm what song is that from, I think it was weaser???
That would be Weezer, but no, it wasn't them. You're thinking of Harvey Danger and the hit song "Flagpole Sitta."
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Ayn Rand and Stephen Hawking - Think of the children.
My siblings and I have always done well in school, and while our parents are intelligent our strengths are different. My parents were good at subjects other than Math and sciences, me and my younger sister are very good at these things. Whereas my older sister is a lot like my parents, strong in english, and non math-science intensive classes and is a business major. My younger sister and I both have IQ scores of above 145, my older sisters is 117. I am an engineering major and my little sister wants to major pre-veterinarian when she goes to college. When I was in 6th grade I scored higher on my SAT's than my parents did and my older sister when she took them for real. All of us consistently perform well. But our parents while smart did not have the numbers we do and never had an interest in math or the sciences. Although my parents numbers are not as high as my younger sister and I they are very intelligent in different ways, my father is a yale law school grad which means these numbers are fairly ridiculous. I commonly see people who have perfectly average parents but are not smart and I also see people with dumb parents who are smart. Yes genetics play a part but it possibly is not the genes of your parents. Also I am in Sociology/Social Psychology class where we addressed this and actually red studies of children who were isolated and unable to develop normally, while others in similar situations could develop eventually to a normal level. Environment is severely underestimated as it plays a definite role and it's role is different for different people.
I think that technology in one sense is bad for our overall health as a species, including average intelligence (however you want to define it, if you even can quantitatively). Technology has created an environment where it is really quite easy to get your genes into the gene pool, so to speak--i.e., to reproduce. Before technology, (really before large scale civilization, which has only occurred in the last bit of your existence as modern humans) natural selection played a much larger part in filtering the genes of the human species. Where a person with my eyesight (which is absolutely horrible) would not have lived to reproduce a thousand years ago (or at least had a much smaller chance of living to reproduce), now I can just wear glasses, and I have no fear of not being able to hunt or defend myself (both because of technology and civilized society). I can reproduce with a genetic defect that should really be filtered out. In essence, I am watering down our gene pool. (Thank God I am so damn handsome to make up for it! ;)
Anyway, this mechanism (basically technology and easy lifestyles because of law and order--civilization) is defeating or at least altering natural selection. We humans are no longer as genetically robust as we once were. We can have genes for horrible diseases which science can deal with. And because modern medicine has a cure, we can reproduce, sending these "flawed" genes (not the right term, but close) further into the future. So the undesireable trait survives. It multiplies over time. Eventually human eyesight, for example, will be on average worse than it was a few thousand years ago, because enough people with bad eyesight have reproduced.
Intelligence too is most definitely a survival mechanism. One we really don't need anymore as an individual in a modern society. So not only is our eyesight getting collectively worse, we are getting collectively dumber as a species because there is no longer death awaiting the too-stupid-to-live.
Not that I think we should try to get rid of technology or law and order, but I do think this influence on natural selection should be recognized. The easier it is to survive, the weaker our species becomes. What will happen if one day some of our more important technological crutches disappear? Imagine your life after an electromagnetic pulse has knocked out all electronics in your neighborhood. . . or your continent.
Right now, theres no easy way to measure true intelligence.
The "G" is Academic intelligence, which i dont even know if i can call that intelligence because its more of a trait.
Diffrent people have diffrent traits, some people love structure and rules that school forces on people, Some people hate structure and rules being forced on them (I am one of those people)
But whats this have to do with intelligence? Not much.
I'd measure intelligence by the speed at which someone learns something, by how fast they figure something out WITHOUT a teacher, and how well they can teach themselves, because in the real world, theres no one ot hold your hand, to force you to learn, and this is where the people who may have gotten all As in school end up being complete failures in life.
Intelligence is on many levels, I think thats what this proves, and genes decides which areas you are intelligent in and which you are weak in. This isnt very surprising to me because I already KNEW this.
Take a doctor, theres no way i could go to medical school for all those years, and do the kind of work a doctor does, but then again, theres no way the doctor could do the kinda technical work that I do.
And theres no way either of us could do the kinda work that an athelete does on the soccer field,
Well perhaps anyone can do anything, but depending on your genes decides how fast you learn what, I support my genes allow me to learn highly complicated technical information with ease, and allow me to operate a computer with ease. Some other people can handle math which i just cant mess with, like calculus, with ease and minimal effort,
Just like someone like micheal jordan can play basketball and make it look easy, because genetically people are very specialized, theres no such thing as general intelligence.
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You can measure someones IQ, thats still not going to measure their intelligence.
When you must understand is, people are very specialized. A person good at math may not know how to read. A person whos a writer may not know how to do math.
A computer technician may not have social skills
You see, each persons brain is very specialized, and everyone is a genius in certain things. No one is a genius in everything.
The people who become the genius's of the world are simply the people who happen to find their gift and focus 100 percent on it.
School does not promote this, school forces everyone to be the same, and tries to force the human brain which is very specialized to be well rounded, the exact opposite of what its designed to do.
Take a chess player like bobby fischer, put him in a classroom teaching everything besides chess and he'd be just an average guy, put him in a room with other chess players and hes the best player on the planet.
Take einstien, put him in a school, and hes just an average guy, may even fail, but then introduce him to science and he changes the world with his theory.
Take bill gates, put him in school, watch as he drops out and then starts the most successful company in american history.
Intelligence has nothing to do with academics, the only way academics could truely measure intelligence is if it allowed a person to truely focus on ONE thing, because in order to be a genius, you have to be focused on one thing and one thing only, Bill gates focus's 100 percent on business, its his life, Bobby fischer 100 percent on chess, Einstien 100 percent on science.
THIS does not mean these people are more intelligent than us, they are just more focused than us.
Being well rounded almost guarentees you'll never be a "genius" because its impossibile to be a jack of all trades.
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You can do well on the IQ test, do well in school, and not be very intelligent.
In fact, most people who you see doing well in school are just average people whos best trait happens to be a gene which allows them to listen to rules, and follow instructions, and pass tests.
This allows them to do well in school, its a trait.
This trait isnt intelligence and its been proven for many many years, that theres no such thing as general intelligence, theres skills, everyone has a set of skills, and everyone is a genius at something, either they havent found out what it is because they never got the chance, or they know what it is, but they want to be well rounded (school teaches you to be well rounded) and so they never focus on it.
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Some which we dont really understand, some which we havent even discovered yet.
And IQ isnt exactly math or logic either, if you want logical intelligence, talk to a world champion chess player, not someone who did well on a silly IQ test.
If you want math intelligence, talk to someone whos career is math, who created new types of math and does nothing but math.
To test people who havent even really FOCUSED on developing the intelligence needed to do well on an IQ test (most people try to be well rounded) they arent going to do good.
But i believe anyone can learn to develop skills to allow them to do good on tests, some easier than others, but its a skill and you cant really measure someones intelligence by a skill or natural talent unless you know they put all their effort into it.
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School has nothing to do with intelligence, how many times must i tell you.
And stupid kids in class may end up being scientists like einstien or rich like bill gates.
Last but not least, its a bad idea to test someones intelligence when they arent even fully developed, a child or a kids mind you can never truely figure out because its always changing, in phases.
Also the parents who "seem" stupid, may be smart as hell in specific areas.
Theres alot of people who are truely ignorant but totally a genius at the same time.
Someone like Adolph hitler, total military genius, but barely sane and if you met him in school you'd consider him to be stupid.
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Its funny how people starving in afganastan outsmart the hell out of us and destroy the world trade.
Its also funny how starving Chinese people somehow create all these nice electronics and how they have all these scientists,
And its also funny, that people in Isreal happen to make better computer technologies than the fat over eating lazy Americans.
Look at the new DNA computer?
The brain operates at a certain level regardless of what you eat, however if these other countries like China and the middle east etc etc ever got healthy, They'd be so much smarter than us that it wouldnt be funny anymore.
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I really dont see how humans have changed much mentally. Physically yes we have changed, gotten taller, less hairy, really though we dont know we came from apes so lets not assume that evolutionary darwin theories are absolute truths.
Second, Humans still act savage, they kill, they rape, they manipulate, they are greedy, theres alot of very apeish animal like traits that humans have. Alot of humans in fact the majority of them are still ignorant just like they were 5 thousand years ago, 10 thousand years ago, 20 thousand years ago.
The diffrence is, while most humans havent evolved at all, I say a few humans have evolved beyond that point and because theres a few humans who are evolved, they keep the rest of the ignorant ones in check.
We have technology, but please dont tell me the average human is developing technology, the average human does very slavish type work in an office.
The day when people no longer kill at all, meaning all people, the day when we no longer have wars, when terrorists dont exsists, when theres no racism, when theres no sexism, and when everyone generally evolves to the next level and not just 15%, this is when you can say humans have mentally evolved beyond what they were in the past.
Right now though, we are only maybe 1-2% beyond what we were during roman times, while we dont go around enslaving people anymore, theres still millions of people who want to do this still (the KKK and these other morons)
People have evolved technically, and science has evolved, but in terms of socially, and in terms of people being more intelligent, nothing has chanced much, and if it has only by a few percent.
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Excerpts to prove it:
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The twins _shared_environments_ (my emphasis), means researchers can separate genetic and environmental factors. (Huh?)
The researchers found that certain regions of the brain were highly heritable. These included language areas, known as Broca's and Wernicke's areas, and the frontal region, which, among other things, plays a huge role in cognition.
"It's extraordinary how similar they are," he says. The finding suggests that environment - their own personal experiences, what they learned in life, who they knew - played a negligible role in _shaping_ it (emphasis mine).
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Doh. Same environment + same wetware what do you expect? So what if wetware isn't shaped that much by the environment.
To prove inheritance shouldn't they use different environment + same/similar wetware?
Conclusion: stupid researchers|journalist.
That guy's specialty was psychology. Sit down and listen to some of thsoe Neurenberg Rally speeches where he sounds like he's about to bust an artery. Hitler was a huge fan of media technology and how it could influence people emotionally. You could call this a symptom of genius. Militarily he was an idiot and that's why he lost the war despite having captivated millions of Europeans with his stage presence and powerful, seductive imagery. In fact, his only military strategy was to lie about everything and try and get it over as fast as possible. That's hardly a genius strategy.
And as for genius being handed down from generation to generation, it's true I'm sure and I'm also sure it's genetic. But in addition, I'm also sure that genius can be an extremely painful condition that borders on or leads directly to insanity. Many people of superior mental capacity --ie quick witted-- self-medicate their condition with massive doeses of drugs and alcohol because of the pain it causes in their personal lives. Other people such as family members, friends, co-workers or in-laws easily recognize genius when they're standing face to face with it and their inevitable jealousy leads to antagonism against those who "have it easy" in mental terms.
A good example of how this jealousy gets played out is-- if you're so smart, where's your money? Imagine this line of questioning coming from the middle management see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil sack of shit to someone who spent years dedicating themselves to the pursuit of knowledge in art, math, science or philosophy and consequently wasn't living their life solely for the goal of making money but is indeed genuinely intelligent. Happens every day. Boy, the ten-thousandth time you get that shit you're looking for something to numb the whole experience of living. If you're both skilled and disciplined as well as mentally quick you find a path of least destruction to continue, but this isn't always easy to find. Often, it is simpler to simply destroy ones body and avoid the cruel joke of having been placed in this world populated primarily by idiots like HanzoSan --just kidding dude. I'm sure you're a swell fella if you're so interested in this thread.
But Hitler weren't no idjiot and if you met him in school you'd probably have been either impressed or at least frightened by him. The guy had stage presence from hell.
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