Researchers Find Dozens of Genes Associated With Measures of Intelligence (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: We don't know a lot about the biological basis of our mental abilities -- we can't even consistently agree on how best to test them -- but a few things seem clear. One is that performance on a number of standardized tests that purport to measure intelligence tends to correlate with outcomes we'd associate with intelligence, like educational achievement. A second is that this performance seems to have a large genetic component. But initial studies clearly indicated that the effect of any individual gene on intelligence is small. As a result, the first genetics studies found very little, since you needed to look at a large number of people in order to see these small effects. Now, a new study has combined much of the previous work and has turned up 40 new genetic regions associated with intelligence test scores. But again, the effect of any individual gene is pretty minor. The team behind the new work took advantage of open data to pull together information from 13 different studies, which cumulatively looked through the genomes of over 78,000 individuals. While those individuals had been given a variety of tests, the authors focused on measures of general intelligence or fluid intelligence (the two seem to measure similar things). The genomes of these individuals had been scanned for single base pair differences, allowing the authors to look for correlations between regions of the genome and test scores. Two separate analyses were done. The first simply looked at each base difference individually. That turned up 336 individual bases, which clustered into 22 different genes. Half of these had not been associated with intelligence previously. To provide a separate validation of these results, the authors did a similar analysis with educational achievement. They found that nearly all of the sites they identified also correlated with that. In a second analysis, the authors tracked base differences that cluster in a single gene. Since there are more markers for each gene, this tends to be a more sensitive way of looking for effects. And in fact, it produced 47 genes associated with the intelligence test scores. Seventeen of those had been identified in the earlier analysis, which brought the total genes identified to 52, only 12 of which had been previously associated with intelligence test scores.

Comments

didn't you get the memo

[Swampash]

You're not allowed to talk about the possibility of there being a genetic basis for variations in intelligence. Because some genes are more common in certain ethnic groups than others, and then all hell will break loose and you'll get Bellcurved.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[Anonymous Coward]

It's ok, you didn't receive any of these genes. You are safe. So vote Republican.

Re: didn't you get the memo

[Anonymous Coward]

Top scientists who want to keep their jobs at universities agree: evolution stops at the neck.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's trendy in America to be racist toward whites and sexist towards males nowadays. That's probably why people are scared of any scientific findings showing up that might back up the statistical evidence that certain ethnic groups display on average higher intelligence than others (such as whites as compared to blacks).
Yes, they will use history to justify their own bias, but don't be fooled, it is racism all the same, the target has just changed.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[avandesande]

It's more about being domesticated. Why would humans be exempt from this phenomena?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Domesticated_Red_Fox

Re:didn't you get the memo

[ShanghaiBill]

statistical evidence that certain ethnic groups display on average higher intelligence than others (such as whites as compared to blacks).

IQ is not the same as intelligence, although it is almost certainly highly correlated.
Whites are not on top. Both Jews and East Asians score higher on average.
In America, blacks have mean IQ scores about 0.7 SD, or about 10 points, lower than whites.
Black children have, on average, twice the blood lead levels of white children.
The first large scale IQ testing in America was of recruits during the First World War, in 1917.
In those 1917 tests, the average score was 15 points below today's average.
A century ago, there was a 15 point gap in IQ scores between Protestant and Catholics in Ireland.
Today there is no gap.

So is the "IQ gap" caused by genetics? Maybe, but similar gaps in the past were not.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[Anonymous Coward]

There is also a long ugly history of even scientists ignoring scientific findings that are socially unacceptable.

Different mean and standard deviation of intelligence found in groups of people defined through genetic locus controlling for education, culture, diet, and socioeconomic status is one of them.

The person that can prove four decades of scientific evidence wrong will be quite famous. Until then, everyone tries very hard to ignore the evidence and pretend it doesn't exist, as this paper did.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[Anonymous Coward]

While that is true, it does not mean that there is no genetic basis for differences in intelligence.

Questioning motives in order to shut down discussion that is uncomfortable to some prevents society from accepting reality. Most of the technological progress we have today resulted from the efforts of those many would consider questionable under various ideologies and belief systems.

Politeness is just a form of white lying, really, and it should not be considered when trying to determine truth. There are plenty of self righteous scientists who'd disagree, but they're just trying to virtue signal their insecurities away. The truth does not care about feelings. It is what it is.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[Michael Woodhams]

One issue is comparing heritability within a group with differences between groups.

The old argument goes something like this. Within middle class white Americans, IQ is highly heritable. Black Americans and new immigrants from Eastern Europe (this is around 1910 when there were many such immigrants) score much worse than middle class white Americans on IQ tests. Because IQ is heritable, the Blacks and Eastern Europeans must be genetically inferior.

There are (at least) two major problems with this line of reasoning. One is that the tests had a cultural bias. This can be as simple as people with English as a second language not understanding the instructions, or just lack of familiarity with the types of questions being asked. Another is neglecting the contribution of environment: the testees may in fact be less intelligent, but because of impoverished childhood rather than inferior genes.

A good example of this second point is height. Height is more heritable than IQ, but is also affected by childhood nutrition. As a people become affluent, average height increases, even though the genes are not changing.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[piojo]

That doesn't seem like a good enough reason to put the kibosh on the study of intelligence. The racial angle is weak. Everyone that matters knows racial differences are small. But what we have to gain by learning about intelligence is huge. We can learn about learning disorders. We can try to ameliorate the damage of dementia. Granted that this also opens up a can of worms regarding what interventions are ethical, but that's not a racial issue.

The fact that something could--if you bend over backwards by ignoring the actual numbers--be used to promote racism shouldn't be a reason not to discuss it candidly when the context is bettering everybody's lives.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[Jzanu]

But Jewish populations are genetically distinct, even between small sub-groups. As a whole they are farther from European clusters than many African, and of course are more closely related to Arabs from genetic drift measurements. Races are artificial and are scientifically meaningless; genetics is reality.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[Gravis Zero]

You're not allowed to talk about the possibility of there being a genetic basis for variations in intelligence.

The real problem here is that this is no absolute definition for intelligence because it's a quality. There is a lot of neuroscience that needs to be done before we should even broach the issue of genetic associations because "intelligence tests" are no more than crude attempts to quantify this quality that we cannot define.

And remember, correlation does not imply causation.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[Maxo-Texas]

That's not really the issue.

The issue is racists have used psuedo science too many times to justify unequal treatment under the law, unequal treatment in schooling and even eugenics (more than once too).

Good solid science will be helpful. But racists using bad science to justify for horrific evil behavior means we have to use caution going forward.

I *agree* that the far left often suppresses free speech but that is partially due to decades of bad behavior in the past around pseudo science by racists.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[phantomfive]

Races are artificial and are scientifically meaningless; genetics is reality.

This is worth repeating. 'Race' is largely determined by skin color and a small number of other features. It's not a very good way to measure someone's other genetic traits.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[aliquis]

If you bring it up, you should be prepared to have your motives questioned.

The motive is of course to be the best one can be, possibly also to be your own people.

So.. Does that answer your question?

Re:didn't you get the memo

[Applehu Akbar]

"There is also a long ugly history of even scientists ignoring scientific findings that are socially unacceptable."

Totally understandable when you consider that researchers need to get funded somehow.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[jellomizer]

However showing that there are dozen of genes. It would make sense racial factors would be a minor aspect. Also many of our racial distinctions have less to do about genetics and more about culture.
Intelligence is complex, while we may measure it in terms of IQ but there are many variations of it and a lot of it is also based environment.
You could have genes that would make you the strongest person in the world, but you never exercised so they are genetically inferior people who are stronger than you because they maximize their potential while you didn't. The same with intelagance you can have the won the genetic lottery in terms of intelligence. But you may not have worked it out, so if you take that IQ test your score wouldn't reflect your full potential.
 

Re: didn't you get the memo

[Opportunist]

I'm more uncomfortable with the stupidity of some groups. But usually they're not ethnic, they're more a matter of association.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You're not allowed to talk about the possibility of there being a genetic basis for variations in intelligence.

But it's already accepted that the g-factor is heritable to a significant extent, isn't it?

Re:didn't you get the memo

[agm]

Charles Murray knows this all too well. He's been treated very poorly because of the controversial nature of his research. And from what I can tell he was meticulous in collecting and processing the data that lead him to the conclusion that intelligence has genetic factors. It would be a fluke for anything that has genetic factors to not express some divergence across populations. If your parents are tall there's a higher chance you will be tall. If your ethnicity is known for having dark hair the high chances are your hair will be dark. Similarly with IQ. Murray sought the data, came to this obvious conclusion and has been castigated for it for many years by SJWs who can't handle the truth.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[Kiuas]

There are (at least) two major problems with this line of reasoning. One is that the tests had a cultural bias. This can be as simple as people with English as a second language not understanding the instructions, or just lack of familiarity with the types of questions being asked. Another is neglecting the contribution of environment: the testees may in fact be less intelligent, but because of impoverished childhood rather than inferior genes.

A good example of this second point is height. Height is more heritable than IQ, but is also affected by childhood nutrition. As a people become affluent, average height increases, even though the genes are not changing.

Excellent points. The same topic came up towards the end of a recent podcast of Sam Harris (link, the discussion about IQ starts sometime after the 1 hour 30 minute mark) which had as a guest the cancer physician and researcher. Siddhartha Mukherjee. The point made by Mukherjee is that available evidence suggests that IQ is heritable but not inherited. So genetic factors certainly play into shaping an individuals IQ, but it doesn't mean the offspring of someone with high or really high IQ will inherit that trait.

And even if it turns out that genes account for 100 % of IQ variation that still does not eliminate the role of the environment and upbringing on how those genes (and hence, IQ) are expressed:

Unfortunately there is frequent confusion about the meaning of heritability. The most frequent misunderstanding is the purpose of twin studies. Heritability estimates are about understanding sources of similarities and differences in traits between members of a particular population. The results apply only to that population. The purpose is not to determine how much any particular individual’s traits are due to his or her genes or his or her environment. Behavioral geneticists are well aware that all of our traits develop through a combination of both nature and nurture. Heritability estimates are about explaining differences among people, not explaining individual development. The question on the table for them is this: In a particular population of individuals, what factors make those individuals the same as each other, and which factors make them different?

Therefore, twin studies aren’t designed to investigate human development. In recent years developmental psychologists, including L. Todd Rose, Kurt Fischer, Peter Molenaar, and Cynthia Campbell, have been developing exciting new techniques to study intraindividual variation. 12 Intraindividual variation focuses on a single person and looks at how an integrated dynamic system of behavioral, emotional, cognitive, and other psychological processes change across time and situations. New intraindividual techniques allow researchers to focus on a single twin pair and see how nature and nurture interact in nonlinear ways to explain both their similarities and their differences. 13 Both levels of analysis— twin studies and developmental analysis— are informative, but the results from the one do not apply to the other. 14

Many people also confuse heritability with immutability. They hear the word “heritable” and immediately think of “genes,” which then conjures up pictures of a fixed trait that can’t be altered by external forces. In contrast, many people hear the word “environment” and breathe a sigh of relief, thinking the trait is easily modifiable. This requires quite a strong faith in social engineering!

Just because a trait is heritable (and virtually all of our psychological traits are heritable) doesn’t necessarily mean that the trait is fixed or can’t be developed. Virtually all of our traits are substantially genetically influenced and are influenced by environm

Re:didn't you get the memo

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone that matters knows racial differences are small.

lol no.

You just have to look at statistics between African and European countries to show that racial differences are tremendous.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[ooloorie]

There is a long ugly history of people trying to wrap racism in scientific jargon.

The "ugly history" and the "people" you're talking about are government policies and government agencies saying "because group X is less intelligent on average, we need to adopt policy Y". But the problem there is not with the premise (which may or may not be true), it's with the conclusion. And it's racist and harmful whether policy Y is "anti-miscegenation" or "affirmative action", both (historically) favorites of progressives.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[TheRaven64]

Indeed. There are no cultural, educational, nutritional, or climate differences between African and European countries. All differences between them are entirely down to race.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[meta-monkey]

I would say the problem we encounter today is leftists suppressing science to justify horrific evil behavior, so we need an honest evaluation of the truth going forward.

It goes something like this. Assume there are no genetic differences in intellectual ability between people of recent European and African descent. Notice there is a difference in group average outcomes (income, test scores, job placement, etc) in the United States between people of recent European and African descent. Since you've already established (without proof, and contrary to empirical evidence as well as basic understanding of evouationary biology) that there is no difference in these populations' average natural ability, the difference in outcomes must be because of racism on the part of the European-Americans against the African-Americans. This justifies hatred and resentment against the European-Americans, and the use of government force to extract resources from the European-Americans or enforcement of different behavioral standards to "correct" their oppressive misdeeds. Naturally this will also be profitable for the people pushing this narrative.

If it turns out that no, in fact the reason for the difference in outcomes are largely genetic, then the entire justification for the redistribution and vilification falls apart. This is very bad for the left, so they have to forcibly shut down anyone who tells the truth about genetic differences between human haplogroups, insisting they are not just wrong, but also evil. This all ends very poorly.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[parkinglot777]

Show me the cultural bias in the tests.

I know that you are trolling, but I will bite. An example of a question in an IQ test could be...

The words “inclusive” and “exclusive” have:

• a) The same meaning
• b) Different meanings
• c) Are the opposite in meaning

What would be your answer? When it comes to questions asking about language (in many different ways), those who aren't culturally English speaking country would attempt to translate the word. Often time, one English word can be more than one word/meaning in the native language. However, there is only 1 correct answer in the test. Thus, you would be able to correctly answer the question if and only if you are familiar with the culture. You got it? Maybe not...

Re:didn't you get the memo

[TheRaven64]

If you want an historical perspective, here's the big difference: Growing food in Europe is much harder than growing food in Africa. The need to improve efficiency led to the agricultural revolution happening in Europe (and it's no coincidence that it happened to the north of Europe). This, in turn, provided a sudden glut of available labour, which drove the industrial revolution. This, in turn, drove a wave of colonisation and exploitation of less technologically advanced parts of the world, in particular Africa.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[Maxo-Texas]

Yes, it must be racism because blacks from european cultures and later immigrants from african countries do much better than descendents of blacks descended from slaves and blacks in southern states.

One of the largest problems with assistance based purely on race is that it means well connected wealthy blacks get extra money while poor blacks (and other minorities and whites) do not get extra money.

Assistance should be based on economic status- not the color of a person's skin.

And many awards have come to recognize that difference over time. The private school educated black daughter of a black doctor doesn't get the assistance as easily as they did with more primitive programs in the 1970s.

Your entire post just reeks of racism and begs exactly the point I was making above. Racists (as you appear to be) argue for changes RIGHT NOW cutting benefits for minorities based on an insufficient and biased set of data and on culturally biased and primitive "intelligence" tests.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[Comrade Ogilvy]

...One is that the tests had a cultural bias. This can be as simple as people with English as a second language not understanding the instructions, or just lack of familiarity with the types of questions being asked. Another is neglecting the contribution of environment: the testees may in fact be less intelligent, but because of impoverished childhood rather than inferior genes...

If general intelligence were really a thing with powerful correlations to all kinds of intelligence, as advertised, then we could use any kind of learning test to determine IQ. Such as....

Dancing!!!

To determine who are the Alphas, we should just line up all the 18 year olds in the gym, teach them a new dance routine, video tape it, and have judges pick out the best dancers to bless with the prizes.

Of course, such will never happen because we all know that IQ tests are culturally bias. We want them to be culturally bias, and then pretend otherwise. The process of creating an intelligence test involves making value judgements about which skills are more important than other skills, a task usually performed by PhDs with little life experience outside of academia. What a shock that skills that help academic success are declared better than others skills!

It not that I doubt that there are inheritable factors, but the field of intelligence testing has a long history of corruption by "marketing speak". I have doubts such has changed much at all.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[meta-monkey]

Yes, it must be racism because blacks from european cultures and later immigrants from african countries do much better than descendents of blacks descended from slaves and blacks in southern states.

Think there might be some self-selection going on there? That is, only the wealthier, and therefore likely more intelligent blacks from Africa and Europe are able to immigrate to the US these days?

Your entire post just reeks of racism and begs exactly the point I was making above. Racists (as you appear to be) argue for changes RIGHT NOW cutting benefits for minorities based on an insufficient and biased set of data and on culturally biased and primitive "intelligence" tests.

Except the data is not insufficient, and the tests are not biased. You are not the first person to suggest this, so researchers have gone to great lengths to make and administer unbiased tests.

Science is a real thing. Genetics are real things. Evolutionary biology is a real thing.

Intelligence correlates with income. In the US, blacks have the lowest average IQ and median income, then hispanics, then whites, then asians, then Jews. If whites are practicing evil white supremacy, they're fucking awful it, because they forgot to oppress the asians and the Jews. Either that, or are the Jews oppressing everyone, but in unequal ways? Really, how do you explain how the Jews and asians are doing better than the whites?

What race pimps (as you appear to be) do is foment racial hatred for your own political power.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[speedplane]

If your parents are tall there's a higher chance you will be tall. If your ethnicity is known for having dark hair the high chances are your hair will be dark. Similarly with IQ.

But the problem with that argument is that heritability is not the same as genetics. If your parents have tattoos, their children are more likely to have tattoos. If the parents drive a fancy car, the children are more likely to drive a fancy car. Same can be said of IQ.

Re: didn't you get the memo

[ooloorie]

Are you kidding? Progressives and the American left have been the primary proponents of government treating people differently based on race. Segregation and anti miscegenation laws were progressive policies supposedly intended to help everybody. Today, affirmative action and racial quotas are again favorites of the left.

With the left, it's always good intentions and lousy outcomes.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[Orgasmatron]

If only we had some data on identical twins adopted into different families that would shed light on this mystery.

Oh, wait...

Re:didn't you get the memo

[meta-monkey]

No, God's favor correlates with income. See how that works?

No, because God hates asians.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[david_thornley]

I'd have to get into the details of the tests to show it, but I'll give you examples from my last test.

I was told a couple of stories about everyday activities, and asked how many details I remembered. When listening, I was able to filter out the stuff to be expected and concentrate on the important details. If I wasn't as familiar with the "to be expected", I'd have been trying to remember more details. If some of the details had been unusual, I'd have remembered them differently.

I was read a list of words, and tested how many repetitions it took for me to remember them all. They were all English concrete nouns, which helped. If I had learned English as second language, it would have taken me longer.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[david_thornley]

Basic understanding of evolutionary biology suggests that genetic differences between the intelligence (or any other genetically complex quality) of races is probably very small, if it exists. We divide races with some fairly simple genetic markers, and other than those the genetic differences between races are swamped by genetic differences within races.

We also know that the average European-American lives in a more favorable development environment than the average African-American, leading to higher income and IQ scores. There is also racial discrimination in employment. It's nearly impossible to prove an individual case, but scientists have done things like sending out functionally identical resumes with different names, and found that having a black-sounding name is a handicap. Legal discrimination ended in my lifetime, and that's not enough time to equalize socio-economic standing.

Therefore, we have little reason to think that the differences are genetic, and we know they're affected by environment, so while there may be genetic differences they're likely to be small if they exist. You seem to be either ignorant or uncaring about racial relations in the US over the past couple hundred years.

If the difference in outcomes were found to be primarily genetic, that still would not justify racial discrimination, since people vary widely within races.

It's also easy to find people who tried using science to establish that some races are superior and inferior, and used those excuses to dominate other races. It's easy to find people who resent other races and will find excuses to think them inferior. For that reason, people who try to excuse US racial relations with appeals to science and genetics are suspicious, as most of them have had evil motives.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[Hognoxious]

A major problem with your line of reasoning is that testing has improved somewhat over the last century. They don't have questions about regattas any more.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[david_thornley]

Culture has a lot to do with income and education. My son was selected for a special program for talented young mathematicians. The selection was based on a test designed to be as culture- and education-neutral as they could (plus a a free-form question about why the kid wanted to join the program). Nomination was primarily by teachers looking at students' math abilities.

The test was pretty well swamped by people of Asian descent, and most of them simply didn't get in. They presumably excelled at match in school for cultural reasons, despite not having any greater inherent aptitude.

Re: didn't you get the memo

[david_thornley]

You might want to check the 1950s and 1960s to see which people were involved in the big change in the legal climate that occurred then.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[david_thornley]

A long time ago, I was told about a study done with child protection. There were a large number of women who were basically unfit to raise their children, and so the children were taken and placed in generally similar white middle-class households. The tested IQ of the mother plus twenty points was a good predictor of the child's IQ.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[Hognoxious]

If I had learned English as second language, it would have taken me longer.

I just had a brilliant idea. Create tests in different languages!

I'm going to patent that.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[Hognoxious]

Ah, but he says it's not inherited. Perhaps he thinks the turtle's offspring will teach you quantum mechanics or advanced hermeneutics.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[Hognoxious]

And even if it turns out that genes account for 100 % of IQ variation that still does not eliminate the role of the environment and upbringing on how those genes (and hence, IQ) are expressed

If one factor has any influence at all then no other factor can have 100% influence.

Protip: unless you're a sports coach percentages add up to 100 by definition.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[Hognoxious]

Whites have the widest bell curve of any ethnic group

I'm surprised it isn't bimodal, since Polacks and Irish are white.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[HeckRuler]

The real problem here is that this is no absolute definition for intelligence because it's a quality.

Huh? It's a quality, a trait, a characteristic, a set of behaviours that follow a trend. wtf is a "quality" that makes something undefinable? Or did you mean like... we can't absolutely define it the same way we can't absolutely define good art?

Because I'd define intelligence as how fast you can internalize new rule-sets and data. ie, how fast you learn stuff. And I guess not just how fast, but how much. People have WIIIIIDE search space for how every new tidbit of information interacts with everything else they've learned. And that's what internalizing is. Taking new information and adjusting ALL the other information you've got inside your head.

There is a lot of neuroscience that needs to be done before we should even broach the issue of genetic associations

No, I think we should broach every possible issue. Science is there to learn stuff. There should not be any taboo topics. Ethics concerns, sure. They won't let us raise up kids in sensory deprivation. But suggesting scientist and researchers not broach an issue is literally censorship. It's pretty soft censorship, but it's there.

because "intelligence tests" are no more than crude attempts to quantify this quality that we cannot define.

Ok, let's use IQ tests instead. They really don't measure intelligence, they measure how well you can complete the IQ test. And no perfect test exists and HOLY COW is it easy for sneaky little biases to slip into the test questions. But so what? If we could give the next generation the gift of doing REALLY WELL at IQ tests, then that's fantastic. Because there's a very high correlation between the ability to solve IQ tests and doing all the useful shit we need people to do to advance society. And while correlation does not imply causation. The fact that the genes come first kinda lends weight to that argument.

But anyway, this study looks like P-hacking to me.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[meta-monkey]

Except all of that has been studied and addressed. The overwhelming bulk of scientific evidence points to genetic differences between human haplogroups. You deny this for political reasons, not for scientific reasons.

You can have left-wing answers to human biodiversity. Charles Murray wrote The Bell Curve and he's getting assaulted by leftists on campuses. His answer to biological differences in humans is Universal Basic Income. This is hardly right-wing extremism.

Understand, I do not want there to be genetic differences in intelligence between races. It would be wonderful if there were not, and differences in outcome were in fact because of primarily societal factors. That would make the problems easily solvable. Instead they're very, very hard problems because we have populations that are separated by 50,000 years of disparate biological evolutionary selection pressures. But the left sells us racial resentment and hatred with the easy solution of "give us political power to redistribute wealth" so they and their friends can scrape off the top while never solving the problem because they're not even addressing the cause of the problem: that bitch Mother Nature.

It's easy to find people who resent other races and will find excuses to think them inferior. For that reason, people who try to excuse US racial relations with appeals to science and genetics are suspicious, as most of them have had evil motives.

But it's also very easy to find people who resent other races and will find excuses to think them equivalent and interchangeable. For that reason, people who try to criticize US racial relations while ignoring or denying science and genetics are suspicious, as most of them have had evil motivations.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[HeckRuler]

Yeah, ok, that's fair enough. Good to learn actually, thanks. That bit with the tattoos was an eye-opener.

But of course intelligence and IQ has a genetic factor. How else do you explain how evolution gave rise to humanity from primates? Genetics is what differentiates homo sapians from... all other life. Ravens and octopuses have tool use. Bees have communication. But we those traits to a whole 'nother level. Thanks to our brain. Which is formed based on our genetics. Come on.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[Gravis Zero]

Because I'd define intelligence as how fast you can internalize new rule-sets and data. ie, how fast you learn stuff.

Alright, now you have to identify the specific mechanisms that cause that to be true and determine if it's cellular, structural or something else completely. You then need to identify which genes cause that cellular/structural/etc behavior to be exhibited.

I think we should broach every possible issue.

Sure, there is no problem with looking into the matter but unless you are getting to the actual root cause any conclusions about intelligence that you draw are going to be premature and ethically questionable at best.

no perfect test exists

No perfect test exists because you haven't really defined what you are looking for and then found what causes that specific behavior at the lowest level. You need to approach this from the viewpoint that people are complex machines rather than simple mechanisms that have degrees of "smartness".

And while correlation does not imply causation. The fact that the genes come first kinda lends weight to that argument.

Sounds like you don't know about epigenetics.

Re: didn't you get the memo

[ooloorie]

You might want to check the 1950s and 1960s to see which people were involved in the big change in the legal climate that occurred then.

See, I used to believe that. But in reality, there was no big change: progressives were racist before then 1960's and progressives have been racist since the 1960's, it's just that their racism has changed from "you're inferior, therefore we're going to segregate you" to "you're inferior, therefore we're going to make you welfare dependent wards of the state".

Conservatives, Republicans, and libertarians have simply been consistent: race should not be a factor in government, no matter whether you're advocating enslaving people or whether you're advocating making people welfare dependent.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[Maxo-Texas]

Son, I'm a retired white guy from Texas and I call it like I see it.

Women did poorly on IQ tests because the 3d spatial questions were based on male culture.
Vocabulary tests (and analogies) were (and still sometimes are) often designed with very culturally biased choices.

Solve the following analogy

OLORUN is to YEMAYA as Thor is to ??????

No clue what or who Olorun and Yemaya are? You must have a low IQ!

Just like someone failing to answer

Crab Bisque is to Lobster Rolls are to ?????

High income also equates to private schooling and tutors. And $300 calculators. And special summer camps where you learn LOGO as a 7 year old. And being taught IQ and SAT tests.

Low income also equates with people refusing to sell or rent you houses or to hire you- even when you are equally qualified in every other way except your skin is slightly more brown. And to being put in jail for 2-4 years for the exact same crime that a white person is let off entirely without even a jail record (Florida- frikkin 2016!?!?!?!).

You, sir, are a racist idiot. It was clear from your first post.

Go educate yourself better on genetics, biased IQ tests, racism, and get some counseling.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[meta-monkey]

Do you honestly think no one has ever bothered to create culturally unbiased IQ tests? Do you think the researchers who study the biological nature of intelligence are evil racist sexists out to disparage blacks and women? Do you also think climate researchers are part of an evil conspiracy to fake global warming?

Why? Why are the genetics researchers all evil racists? Why don't the good genetics and intelligence researchers make better tests that prove how evil and racist the bad ones are? Why don't they do that, if it's the truth?

You, sir, are a fucking idiot, and you need to educate yourself on genetics, unbiased IQ tests, and get some counseling.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[Mr.CRC]

"Everyone that matters..."

That you would say such a thing says more than anything else you said.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[surd1618]

I identify as pretty far left (okay, extremely far left), and I have a different take on the left's criticisms of this topic. I would start out by assuming that each so-called 'race' has the same ability to succeed and thrive in a variety of environments and conditions. Then I would examine the genetic variation in humans and look at test results related to genetics. I'd best my last dollar that what you would find is that either there is ~0 variance between different populations, or that different populations favor slight variations in approaches to problem solving. Like say the test is to solve a rubik's cube, and none of the participants had ever seen one before or anything similar (so already this is an impossible test, but bear with me). Perhaps what you'd see is either no substantial difference at all, or that someone from one population would do a much better job of solving the spatial problem (inventing algorithms based on spatial reasoning), and another person would do better at figuring out new algorithms based on ones they discovered or were shown (symbolic reasoning). In order to minimize bias in testing and gain insight into physical variation in reasoning ability, I think we need to set up a variety of tests and assume that any big variation in test results is due to experiment design rather than differences in overall intelligence between different populations.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[piojo]

"Everyone that matters..."

That you would say such a thing says more than anything else you said.

Fair enough. I don't care to cater to racists. I'll leave the social outreach to people that are less brusque than me. But I guess that's not what you meant?

Re:didn't you get the memo

[RespekMyAthorati]

If your parents have tattoos, their children are more likely to have tattoos. If the parents drive a fancy car, the children are more likely to drive a fancy car. Same can be said of IQ.

Except that even when all such factors have been allowed for, intelligence has a strong genetic factor.
Poor people with high intelligence still have children with high intelligence.
Rich dummies generally have dumb children.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[RespekMyAthorati]

The test was pretty well swamped by people of Asian descent, and most of them simply didn't get in.

What does "most of them" mean?
If the program is intended for gifted children, then presumably "most children" will fail to get in no matter what their ethnic background.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[K. S. Kyosuke]

That is a different factor, though. Your result has to be filtered out first before the contribution of the genetic component can be assessed.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[Reziac]

"I'd define intelligence as how fast you can internalize new rule-sets and data. ie, how fast you learn stuff. "

As it happens, there's a strong correlation between speed of neural transmissions (easily measured by twitch reflexes) and IQ. So it does look like IQ is fundamentally a property of processing speed.

And IQ testing isn't done so much by questions, as by visuals that are culture/education-neutral: figuring out how A leads to B solely from what's immediately in front of you:

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

Re:didn't you get the memo

[Reziac]

It also means that if IQ is genetic, that means there are biochemical factors involved, which might be altered via medication, gene therapy, etc. and the low-IQ problem might be fixable. But if it does prove fixable, and there are no low-IQ people left, there won't be anyone left stuck in the welfare state, and again the leftist agenda falls apart.

As to culture and the man keepin' 'em down, this doesn't explain how low IQ peoples whose entire continents spent millennia in splendid isolation never managed to so much as invent the wheel, or even a concept of the future. (Not enough pressure from outside forces? That theory falls apart when you realise how much these isolated peoples made war on one another.)

Re: didn't you get the memo

[david_thornley]

Modern Republicans have been doing a lot to suppress black voting, so you're wrong.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[david_thornley]

One of the basic principles in The Bell Curve was that IQ tests are reliable indicators of intelligence and not based on environment. Unless people's genes have been changed somehow to increase their intelligence over the past century, which seems incredible, we know from the Flynn Effect that something else, which has to be environmental, is increasing IQ scores. Since there are environmental disparities between whites and blacks in the US, on the average, a measured difference of 10 IQ points means nothing. If there's other research that shows inherent racial differences in intelligence, I haven't seen it.

So, I have seen no good evidence that there is such a disparity. IQ is partly genetic, but it's complex. The study in question found lots of genes that have something to do with intelligence, but none of them had a large effect. I'm not aware of complicated genetic phenomena that vary a lot racially. I'm sticking with the null hypothesis, that there is no significant racial difference in genetic factors for intelligence, until somebody provides me with evidence to the contrary.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[david_thornley]

I wasn't asked whether I was a native English speaker before the test.

Re: didn't you get the memo

[ooloorie]

Modern Republicans have been doing a lot to suppress black voting, so you're wrong.

Each party obviously tries to discourage supporters of the opposing party from going to the polls, and supporters of its own party to turn out; that is, parties act based on party affiliation, not based on race.

Of course, many of the claims of "voter suppression" by Democrats are bogus anyway; for example, voter ID laws are not just sensible in any democracy and widely used abroad, they also do not result in "voter suppression".

Re:didn't you get the memo

[HeckRuler]

Intelligence is how fast you learn stuff.

Alright, now you have to identify the specific mechanisms that cause that to be true

Huh? It's not a True/False sort of thing.

and determine if it's cellular, structural or something else completely.

No you don't. That's like saying you can't calculate ballistics without understanding all the details of how gravity works. Regardless, your genes have an effect on BOTH your cells AND their structure. (Also, wtf, "structural"? Are you talking about cellular structure, the structure of the brain, social structure, or the flipping building you're in? talk about vague).

You then need to identify which genes cause that cellular/structural/etc behavior to be exhibited.

YES. Yes you do. Which is EXACTLY what the researchers are claiming to have found. Read the article. That happened. That's.... the entire reason we're talking about this.

They (and geneticists in general) certainly don't have a clear understanding of HOW these genes go on to have the effect that they observe. Because we don't yet understand all the mechanisms of how the DNA language does it's mojo. It's like the mother of all reverse-engineering gigs. But they've seen that if they fiddle these bits over here, it has an effect over there.

Nobody CARES if Thog didn't understand the chemical process of oxidation, he INVENTED FIRE! That was a pretty damn good day.

because you haven't really defined what you are looking for

How fast people learn stuff... I already said that. So you make a bunch of puzzles with different rulesets and see how fast people can learn those rulesets and extrapolate or deduce an answer. Puzzles come in all different flavors. Some use spoken languages to describe things. Others use shapes and pattern recognition. Some puzzles dip into pre-established rulesets like how stuff work in reality and are known as "science questions".

epigenetics.

Yeah, it's interesting stuff. Real Lemarkian shit right there. Regardless if your descendants are affected, it's still classified as "nurture", the environment, things that happen to you after your DNA is configured. The opposite of nature. Like if you dope up on a bunch of smack, it'll affect how well you can do calculus. The fact that it also affects the nature of your kids makes that epigenetic. Which is... you know... fucked up.

What I don't know about epigenetic is how this stuff gets transferred to kids if not through the DNA. Presumably, it's neonatal. Foetuses are fragile.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[Gravis Zero]

Huh? It's not a True/False sort of thing.

So it's a magical non-science thing? No, it's all chemical reactions. You need to figure out what intelligence is, how it's formed and then what causes its formation then you can figure out what makes it optimal. I realize it's a huge macro-property which is why it's foolish to think you've found it without understanding it.

Nobody CARES if Thog didn't understand the chemical process of oxidation, he INVENTED FIRE!

Discovering something and understanding it are very different things. Using your analogy, Thog has claimed things like wood catch fire because they float which explains why rocks don't catch fire. It's rudimentary and not even wrong. That's what we have here.

What I don't know about epigenetic is how this stuff gets transferred to kids if not through the DNA.

it is transferred through DNA but the DNA is only activated under certain conditions.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[HeckRuler]

wtf are you smoking? Magic?

Of course it's a "huge macro-property". So is "things falling down". But we still study ballistics without knowing the details of gravity. But fuckin' A, I'm just repeating myself. If you haven't been able to internalize my statements in the hour since I posted them, maybe this is just beyond your ken.

Discovering something and understanding it are very different things

Sure. Fine. Whatever floats your goat. "Researchers FIND dozens of genes associated with measures of Intelligence" Like a discovery. That's what we're talking about.

And the actual paper: "Genome-wide association meta-analysis of 78,308 individuals identifies new loci and genes influencing human intelligence".

The crux of the entire counterpoint is from your very first statement: "The real problem here...." I'm saying that it's not a problem.

it is transferred through DNA but the DNA is only activated under certain conditions.

yeah, but the kids get it too. They get the DNA, of course, but they ALSO get epigenetic characteristic WITHOUT being in those conditions. If you had the characteristic, but only when exposed to the condition, that's the same thing as getting hit upside the head with a brick. And the part where epigenetics skips a generation like in that 1944 famine, so that the conditions of the grandfather have an effect on the grandson are just weird.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[Gravis Zero]

The crux of the entire counterpoint is from your very first statement: "The real problem here...." I'm saying that it's not a problem.

Then you don't know that the "genes associated with measures of Intelligence" are related to Intelligence in any meaningful way. For all you know, they could be a group of inbred idiots and the genes they found actually make them less intelligent but have been extensively schooled so they did well on the test.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[agm]

And since it has a strong genetic factor one would expect that this is expressed differently in different populations. As studies have shown and as is documented in "The Bell Curve". And yet those that point this out are branded as racist. Unfairly so.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[computererds]

It wasn't all Jews, it was Ashkenazi Jews as a genealogical germline subsect.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[HeckRuler]

Even if you DID know the exact pathway and grand sum total of all factors that effect intelligence.... This group could still have intelligence-supporting genes and also still be inbred AND also be idiots AND ALSO have extensive schooling (specifically how to pass IQ tests).

oh man... YOU linked ME the "not even wrong" wiki entry. Come on. Have at least a tiny dose of introspection.

Of course there is both nurture and nature. Of course schooling has an impact. Of course there is a chance that out of 78,000 individuals, these 336 all had lucky coincidence when it came to genes and test scores. (And it's not even necessarily chance, let's say they've got Irish genes and the Irish neighborhood was simply richer with better schools. ERGO, it'll look like Irish genes makes people smart. But finding the truth in that sort of haystack is literally the job of these scientists. I still maintain it looks like p-hacking. You're bound to find trends in 75K x the size of the human genome.)

I'm calling it. This is just horrendous anti-intellectual and anti-science emotional lashing out because it's tip-toeing in the neighborhood of eugenics. Hey. I get that. Eugenics was really bloody terrible. Lasting ramifications on society. The sort of taboo topic that opens up old wounds. And it would be disingenuous of me to not acknowledge the total asshats in the room pointing at this and screeching about racial purity or whatever. Yeah, those guys suck. And this research really might uncover some uncomfortable truths. Like naturalists wisening up to inbreeding and how Charles Darwin married his cousin. Awkward. But it doesn't stop being true. You're displaying characteristics like the climate change deniers and the creationists. You don't like the facts so you're squirming at the edges. I'm hoping this sort of research leads to smart designer babies, which could help EVERYONE.

Holy fucking has the original poster's claim never been more evident. "You're not allowed to talk about the possibility of there being a genetic basis for variations in intelligence."

Re:didn't you get the memo

[Gravis Zero]

Even if you DID know the exact pathway and grand sum total of all factors that effect intelligence.... This group could still have intelligence-supporting genes and also still be inbred AND also be idiots AND ALSO have extensive schooling (specifically how to pass IQ tests).

Agreed but if you did know the "grand sum total of all factors" then you could know which genes are responsible. If you do not know, then you are just guessing, which has been my point all along.

I'm calling it. This is just horrendous anti-intellectual and anti-science emotional lashing out because it's tip-toeing in the neighborhood of eugenics.

What have I written to indicate this was an "anti-intellectual and anti-science emotional lashing out"? Furthermore, why would you think it's "anti-science" when I'm simply stating we wouldn't jump to conclusions without proper evidence to support it?

Holy fucking has the original poster's claim never been more evident. "You're not allowed to talk about the possibility of there being a genetic basis for variations in intelligence."

You can talk about anything you want but if you are going to claim a conclusion based on science then you are going to need to support that conclusion scientifically rather than statistically.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[meta-monkey]

I would start out by assuming that each so-called 'race' has the same ability to succeed and thrive in a variety of environments and conditions.

Why would you assume that? Wouldn't evolutionary biology tell us that the 50,000 years of different selection pressures in different environments would produce different sorts of people with different abilities? I don't think Creationism is real, and man is not a magical animal immune to environmental selection.

Then I would examine the genetic variation in humans and look at test results related to genetics. I'd best my last dollar that what you would find is that either there is ~0 variance between different populations, or that different populations favor slight variations in approaches to problem solving.

Except people have done the experiments, over and over again, going out of their way to make tests as unbiased as possible. African tests for Africans designed by Africans given to Africans who have never seen a non-African. They get the same results as the "biased" western tests.

Different groups of people are different. There are reasons for these things. For instance, in much colder climates evolution selects against high time preference because if you eat your seed corn during the harsh winter you die. This tends to get rid of the people who can't plan ahead and develop abstract representations of the future. The ability to conceptualize the future, imagine different options and pick ones with good results over bad results is a pretty good definition of "intelligence." Certainly correlated with.

This is reality and we have to deal with it. You can do it while still maintaining leftist policies (Charles Murray's answer to human biodiversity is Universal Basic Income). What you cannot do is look at the differences in outcomes and blame the lower outcome for one group of genetically different people on evil oppression on the part of the more successful group without evidence of actual evil. Especially in America. If over-representation of an ethnic group in high income/prestige places in society is prima facie evidence of evil, then I'd expect you to join with the anti-Semites screaming at all the Jews who make up 43% of the top 1% of the wealthy in society while only being 2% of the population. I don't think this is true, that Jews are particularly more or less evil than any other group of people. It's more likely that peculiar breeding habits made Ashkenazi Jews super smart. For awhile anyway.

Take your pick. Either everyone is the same as one group doing better than another means they're evil and oppressed them and the Nazis are right and the Jews are screwing everyone, or different groups of people are more capable than others because evolutionary biology and genetics are real things and we have to deal with reality as it stands and not resort to blaming the successful for the woes of the unsuccessful. But you can't have it both ways.

Re:didn't you get the memo

[Hognoxious]

It doesn't matter if you're genetically predisposed to have a high IQ if you're never taught to read or write properly and thus keep failing in education.

Also, height isn't genetic. No matter how tall your parents are, you'll be fairly short if someone cuts both your legs off.

p hacking

[eis2718bob]

This is a textbook example of p-hacking. Note the plural in "measures of intelligence", along with "educational achievement" as dependent variables. Something was gonna show a correlation, to the vaunted oh point oh five. What a crock.

882. We don't even need the links for these anymore, just the number.

Re:p hacking

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because if you look at enough variables, given a truly random set, some portion of the variables are going to appear non-random. P-hacking isn't just twisting knobs to show something, it can also be looking at enough knobs. https://xkcd.com/882/

Re:p hacking

[phantomfive]

It's very possible. The effect found by each of these genes was very small, a fraction of an IQ point. At that small size, I would doubt that I had accounted for all confounding variables. Something as simple as hair color might be a confounding factor, and height certainly would be.

Re:p hacking

[Michael Woodhams]

It passed peer review in a high quality journal. While this doesn't completely rule out p-hacking, at the very least it means you shouldn't make the accusation without closely reading the paper.

Re:p hacking

[phantomfive]

The paper is probably false, with a P value < .05. Sad but true.

Re:p hacking

[ooloorie]

Even if they didn't do anything else, their p-levels are 10^-6 to 10^-8. You're welcome to try to explain how to produce that with "p-hacking" in this study.

In addition, it's clear that intelligence is highly heritable, so why wouldn't the default conclusion be (absent other evidence) that the most strongly correlated markers are the ones that are responsible?

Re:p hacking

[ooloorie]

True, but the p-values here are 10^-6 to 10^-8.

Re:p hacking

[meta-monkey]

Did you look at the p values for this study? Are they only .05?

Re:p hacking

[pesho]

I don't think so. For their SNP (DNA variant) discovery tests they used 12 cohorts tested, depending on the cohort by 8 different measures of intelligence. The cohorts had mean ages from 6 to 62 years. Then they took the genes associated with the DNA variants they discovered and check correlation with various traits - ranging from waist-to-hip ration, through neurological disorders to educational attainment. The strongest positive correlation is with educational attainment. Top negative correlations are with Alzheimer's, depression and ADHD. So they used did not pick individual measures, they actually used all of them and sourced a broad and diverse cohort of people of European discent. Then they validated their results using and orthogonal test, that did not depend on the variables used for the DNA variant discovery. This is exactly the opposite of p-hacking. Yeah and to comments up in the discussion, the study say nothing about race. They clearly state in their methods that they used individuals of European origin. So these genes are associated with intelligence in Europeans. The genes affecting intelligence in other races and populations may or may not be the same.

Re:p hacking

[pesho]

p-values for individual SNPs range from 5*10^-4 to 9*10^-14. Considering that all of the genome regions they identify are marked by clusters of SNPs that show correlation with intelligence, I would say that their results are statistically significant.

Re:p hacking

[parkinglot777]

It's very possible. The effect found by each of these genes was very small, a fraction of an IQ point. At that small size, I would doubt that I had accounted for all confounding variables. Something as simple as hair color might be a confounding factor, and height certainly would be.

However, if you really look at the study, you should see that it has NOTHING to do with the GP accusation. I have no idea why the GP is so negative on the study??? Also, how could the post be insightful??? Abstract below...

Intelligence is associated with important economic and health-related life outcomes. Despite intelligence having substantial heritability (0.54) and a confirmed polygenic nature, initial genetic studies were mostly underpowered. Here we report a meta-analysis for intelligence of 78,308 individuals. We identify 336 associated SNPs (METAL P < 5 × 10^-8) in 18 genomic loci, of which 15 are new. Around half of the SNPs are located inside a gene, implicating 22 genes, of which 11 are new findings. Gene-based analyses identified an additional 30 genes (MAGMA P < 2.73 × 10^-6), of which all but one had not been implicated previously. We show that the identified genes are predominantly expressed in brain tissue, and pathway analysis indicates the involvement of genes regulating cell development (MAGMA competitive P = 3.5 × 10^-6). Despite the well-known difference in twin-based heratiblity for intelligence in childhood (0.45) and adulthood (0.80), we show substantial genetic correlation (rg = 0.89, LD score regression P = 5.4 × 10^-29). These findings provide new insight into the genetic architecture of intelligence.

And the title of the study is "Genome-wide association meta-analysis of 78,308 individuals identifies new loci and genes influencing human intelligence" which has nothing to do with the GP accusation (again)...

Re:p hacking

[phantomfive]

Note that when I say "p hacking" I don't mean that they intentionally lied, just that statistics is hard and sometimes these effects will come out. I think that the hacking technique they used (and I say this without getting my equipment to reproduce, so caveat emptor) is to accept only a very small difference, so if a gene made even the difference of a small fraction of an IQ point, they counted it. It is hard to separate counfounding factors at such a small level. In addition, they didn't give these people IQ tests, instead they used education level as a proxy for IQ, which is a very very rough approximation.

The authors of the paper are hedging a bit on the finding, saying it's a starting point for further research, here's a quote:

as the authors point out, the work was meant to be a foundation rather than the last word: "These findings provide starting points for understanding the molecular neurobiological mechanisms underlying intelligence."

Finally, previous studies that have found genes for intelligence later didn't hold up under reproduction. So in that sense, this study would be typical if the same thing happened to it.

Of course I'm open to the idea that I'm wrong and we should wait to see if the study gets reproduced before drawing any strong conclusions.

Re:p hacking

[meta-monkey]

But if you look at the study, the p-values for individual SNPs range from 5*10^-4 to 9*10^-14.

Sure, absolutely, do further research. But to start accusing them of p-hacking when in fact their p-values are absolutely fantastic (ten to the minus fourteen?!) is incredibly unfair on your part. Maybe some motivated reasoning on your part here?

Re:p hacking

[phantomfive]

Did you even read the papers I linked to?

Re:p hacking

[meta-monkey]

What exactly do you think those papers mean? What do you think p-hacking is?

Re:p hacking

[phantomfive]

I don't know what the GGP way up there refers to as p-hacking, but I use it as a shorthand for incorrectly calculating the probabilities.

Re: p hacking

[david_thornley]

Your claim would seem to conflict with the well-established Flynn effect.

Re:p hacking

[david_thornley]

I would take p-hacking to mean that the probabilities are likely correctly calculated, but the p values used were insufficient to tell significant results by chance. If you have 400 correlations, you'll likely find about 20 significant at 0.05 and 4 significant at 0.01, just by chance. I'd call that p-hacking if it were published (and I've seen it in a peer-reviewed paper). If you get p values on the order of 1e-6, however, that's not at all likely to be due to chance.

Re:p hacking

[phantomfive]

Yeah, I probably won't use the term p-hacking in the future, it causes too much confusion.

Intelligence is heritable

[sinij]

Intelligence is heritable and we are not born equally intelligent. It is normally distributed and unless selected for results in regression to the mean in the offspring in general population.

Re:Intelligence is heritable

[AHuxley]

The other test is the US spending per student on education over the decades. Not many other nations had the funds to try and spend on new methods.
On computer labs, new books, lots of funding, support by experts in emerging educational computer languages, arts, languages, math, science, computer networks per school, new robot kits, GUI code, US wide math and science funding since the 1950's, extra staff per class.
Better daily food, generations of well educated teachers, the ability to be granted easy access to the best US universities.
All the correct inputs have been made for decades that few other nations could afford. The expected academic result over the decades in different parts of the USA should have been counted and tracked.
If just spending ever more on education worked, the world would have seen really dramatic results all over the USA in past decades and emulated the easy big spending trends that raised all US students on average.
Big spending and a good educational environment, generations of better than average teachers did not result in nation wide amazing results.
Easy (no merit testing) and free access to a good university does not seem to help much later.

Re:Intelligence is heritable

[ooloorie]

It's hard quantify intelligence and hard to suss how much of it is hereditary and how much of it is environment.

The heritability of IQ is usually quantified as the portion of the variance in IQ accounted for by genetics. That's about 0.75 for adults, making it very strongly genetically determined.

No time to read the article....

[WolfgangVL]

I'm off to the feelies. I'm so glad I'm an Alpha.

Re:No time to read the article....

[Gravis Zero]

Please do not correct this Wolfgang Delta fellow. ;)

For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

When I was born, I was the poster child for mongolism (the proper term in the 1970's) and promptly mentally declared retarded to because I had a speech impediment in kindergarten. You could say I was slow on the uptake. I also had an undiagnosed hearing loss in one ear that wasn't diagnosed until much later. Each year I had the annual evaluation. Each time I scored on the genius side of the scale. Each time the tester noted it was statistical fluke and reconfirmed that I was mentally retarded. That the school got extra funding for having a well behaved idiot in Special Ed classes wasn't a factor. I graduated the eighth grade with a college-level reading comprehension and fifth grade skills in everything else. School officials couldn't explain how that happened and they were also disturbed that my skinny parents had a fat kid. A half-dozen blood tests revealed nothing. No one knows how genes played a role in my intelligence.

Re:For the Mongos among us...

[sexconker]

Sick, and apt, burn!

Re:For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

Unlikely. My mother didn't start drinking until after I was born. I have the opposite symptoms than what is associated with FAS.

Problems may include an abnormal appearance, short height, low body weight, small head size, poor coordination, low intelligence, behavior problems, and problems with hearing or seeing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_alcohol_spectrum_disorder

Re:For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

The one situation that I was aware of when I worked at Cisco was a misconfigured router or switch because the engineer used a semicolon instead of a colon in the configuration file. My boss to had to look at 200 devices before he found the offending configuration file.

Re:For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

"Skinny parents" can easily have a "fat kid" - why is this so shocking to you, or anybody else?

I was always the proverbial fat kid at school. A sixth-grade principal tried to fat shame my parents because his logical conclusion was that my parents were fat. Except my parents were skinny — and I ate what they ate. So the school ordered blood tests, which didn't find anything unusual.

But someday you'll realize that the only thing keeping you fat is your refusal to acknowledge that your eating habits are not working for you, and that you need to accept a little advice from other people who know something about the topic.

Meanwhile, I'm watching my belly shrink on my low-carb diet and exercise program.

Re:For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

> single misconfigured switch
> cisco didn't properly design their flagship server

Your reading comprehension is lacking. You missed my opening statement: "The one situation that I was aware of [...]"

Re:For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

Because I've seen you claiming 350 here since forever.

Correct.

Re:For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

You should be studied by science, because the whole thing where your weight is unrelated to how much you eat defies any expectation.

I had a college roommate who was skinny, underweight according to the doctor, and I could never gain weight no matter how many Big Macs he stuffed down each day. Despite being underweight, the FBI accepted him as an armed network technician.

Re:For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

So you're staying the same weight, but you think you're losing significant fat by walking at an extremely slow rate for 20 minutes every couple days?

Walking on the treadmill is one component of my workout. Pulling 75 reps @ 75 pounds and 15 reps @ 150 pounds on the sit-up rowing machine is another component of my workout. There are other components to my workout that I haven't share on Slashdot. I'm too easily amused by all the half-assed assumptions that are made on what little information I provide.

Re:For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

For a self-proclaimed genius, you sure do have trouble with basic comprehension.

You failed to comprehend that I pick and chose what I want to answer. I gave you a real life example from my work experience when you wanted me to answer an imaginary example that you pulled out of your ass.

Re:For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

Otherwise, you're gonna die young, kiddo.

I've been hearing that for decades for now. Here's the problem with that assessment: I don't believe it and I don't let it stop me from living. That's the real problem you have with me.

You are not built like a body-builder [...]

Broad shoulders, narrow waist. The potential is there.

[...] you are not even built like a football player.

I'm frequently asked if I ever played high school or college football. People are often surprised that I haven't. I was a butterball when I was younger. After I did long-distance bike riding (20+ miles) for three years, I started going to the gym 15+ years ago.

Re:For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

Your concept of long-distance biking is ... interesting.

I had a restaurant job and lived ten miles away. So I rode my bike six days a week. The longest bike trip I ever made in one day was 36 miles.

And your gym workouts of 20 minutes of walking and 5 minutes of rowing...

Are only two components of my workout that I shared about on Slashdot.

Re:For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

[..] how long after the restaurant hired you did they go out of business?

The Old Spaghetti Factory in San Jose is still in business.
http://www.osf.com/location/san-jose-ca/.

When did they figure out that the terrible shrieking and tearing sounds from the basement was actually you eating all their profits?

The kitchen manager was bigger and taller than me. According to his father (who is bigger and taller at 7'-0"), kitchen manager was the runt (smallest) of the family. After having spaghetti dinners for three years in a row, I didn't eat spaghetti for the next seven years.

Yes, after 15 years of your daily 20 minutes of treadmill, you can powerwalk to the fridge like an Olympian! Even a hyena would blush in shame at how you attack a fridge!

It's painfully obvious that fat people make you stupider.

Re:For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

1) Drastically curtailed (or perhaps even eliminated) your sex life, unless you're wasting a shitload of money by paying for it;

The boys downstairs disagree — and are still perky as ever. Especially with volume. The girls don't call me Heavy Creamer for nothing.

2) Dramatically reduced your ability to enjoy activities that involve getting up from your chair;

The desk chair that I get up from every 45 minutes to take a walk?

3) Subjected you to uncountable aches, pains and other inconveniences which make day-to-day living less enjoyable.

The only aches I have are from working out at the gym. Or when I spend eight hours walking around or standing in lines at the comic cons.

And you're still a butterball.

Butterballs don't have thin waists.

If the photo you've been sharing here is after 15+ years of working out at the gym, you should really ask for your money back.

I should get my money back on allergy medication. Every Spring I get sick when the roses are in full bloom. That's the only I'm ever sick.

Re:For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

Sorry, I guess I meant "the terrible growling and slurping sounds from the basement".

The only time noise became an issue is when the kitchen manager and I drink small bottles of hot sauce to stare each other down. We would both turned bright red and sweat profusely. The Mexicans on the line were hooting and hollering. My boss always looked away. I always get these loud hiccups. The front of the house manager would ask me to go outside because people in the restaurant could hear me..

Re:For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

And ultimately, the link between being morbidly obese and dying early is very well established.

For fat people who don't exercise, don't diet and gave in to the naysayers. I do exercise, I do diet and I keep a positive attitude in the face of overwhelming negativity. And 99.9% of the negativity comes from Slashdot. The only time someone made an issue of my weight in real life was when a coworker announced during a meeting that I needed lap-band surgery — and then he wondered why everyone treated him like a douche bag after the meeting.

Re:For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

Have you EVER been to see a doctor about your inability to lose weight?

The last doctor I've been to 15 years ago when he told me I was fat and tried to poke me in the stomach. He almost broke his finger. Muscle is harder than fat. He then kicked me out of his office. After that incident, I stopped seeing doctors entirely. My doctor prior to him never talked to me about my weight since I'm physically a big guy and not just overweight.

Re:For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

In real life, people think the exact same things, will say the exact same things when you're not in the room, they just don't say it to your face.

Except for the health nuts at work. They're always in my face. "You need to drink more water!" I show them my water bottle. "You need to eat healthier!" I show them my yogurt and sunflowers seeds. "You need to exercise more!" When I ask them to help me take monitors over to far side of the campus (three blocks away), they have something else to do.

Re:For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

He weight about the same as you, but he is also 6'7 [...]

I'm 5'-10" and 350 pounds. You're comparing me to a taller and heavier guy. That's like comparing white chocolate to dark chocolate!

How would it make sense that an IT dude with neck rolls does?

A thin layer of skin covers the flat area between my breast bone and belly button. If someone tells you that you are fat and then indicate that he will poke you in the stomach (halfway between the breast bone and belly button), you react by tensing your muscles to become hard as a rock.

This also works when being punched in the stomach. Tense up your muscles, absorb the impact, and throw a counter punch while your opponent is reacting to the pain of slamming his fist into a brick wall. Works every time.

Re:For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

So imagine how much a fat a person who is 5'10" and doesn't exercise must have at 350 lbs.

I do exercise. That's the part you keep ignoring because it's an inconvenient fact. You want to see a piggery fat person. I carry my weight well enough to look like your football.

Re:For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

So you've chosen the ONE spot on your belly where it's possible to tense your muscles and feel it.

That's the spot where the doctor poked.

Tell your doctor about the numbness and tingling you get in your feet every now and again. Tell him about the headaches.

Symptoms that I don't have.

The best revenge on us asshats here on Slashdot would be for you to get healthy, and live to a ripe old age.

Yes, I'm going to outlive you and all my relatives.

Re:For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

I don't say this to discourage you, I say this to encourage you to change your lifestyle now, while it's still possible to change the trajectory you're on.

I made a lifestyle change 15+ years ago by dieting and working out in the gym. I'm more healthier today than when I weighed 400 pounds as a teenager. Because I'm not doing it your way, than I'm obviously doing it wrong. Which gives your the perfect excuse to lecture me about my weight. This is why you and others go off on paragraphs after paragraphs of self-righteousness about my weight — and then whine when I push back.

Re: For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

It's taken you 15 years to lose 50 pounds - by any measure that is a ridiculously slow weight loss,

As a teenager, I went from 400 pounds to 325 pounds in one summer after I got a new bike and rode all over the county. My weight settled to 350 after I started working out the gym 15 years ago. I have no problem getting bigger with weight lifting. Sliming down has been a bitch.

Re: For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

Did your relatives die young? That's another increased risk factor for problems.

The heroin addicts are dying young. Everyone else is dying old from drinking, smoking and fucking everything with two- or four-legs that can stand still. My family provided many examples of unhealthy living for me not to follow.

And no, you won't outlive me. I'm under 40, I'm very healthy (verified by actual regular visits with my physician), and I have no family history of major diseases. Men in my family have regularly lived into their 90s, with full vigor.

Are you planned my to live to be 120? You should. Nothing is worse than outliving your retirement funds by 30+ years.

Be honest now - what is it about the medical data available to you that you don't get?

Based on my life experience, the law of averages don't apply. Medical data is all about average people living and dying an average life.

Re: For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

You have neck rolls and you don't lift heavy weights.

I pull 7,875pounds (75 reps @ 75 pounds, 15 reps @ 150 pounds) on the sit-up rowing machine during my workouts.

Re: For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

No one *adds up* the pulls from a rowing machine you fucking mongoloid clown.

You do on a sit up rowing machine, asshat.

http://weighttraining.guide/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/cablerow.png

Re: For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

[...] "add up the weight you do for a super impressive total."

That's how I keep track of my progress. When I worked at the community college bookstore warehouse, I had to move one-ton of textbooks to ship back to the publisher six times in one day. Six tons of weights is my workout goal.

The back is very strong for that motion, I'd consider 150 a warmup, and 75 pounds is just wasting time.

The 75 reps @ 75 pounds is the warm up to get the kinks out of my back. The 15 reps @ 150 pounds is the workout. I plan to add 5 reps @ 300 pounds in the near future.

Re: For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

That's why I have over a million dollars saved in my retirement fund already, along with nearly 150k in my personal brokerage account as relatively liquid assets. Oh, and a 650k house that's about halfway paid off now.

That's kinda of low.

You claim to be technical, but you don't seem to understand how science and math work.

The human body is a perfect state machine — on paper. Real life is a lot messier.

Re: For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

How's your nest egg looking, bro?

Above average for most Americans — especially considering that I only had $25 left after my Chapter Seven bankruptcy in 2011. Once I get my side business to start paying me a salary, I can put 100% salary and corporate matching into a qualified retirement plan for $54K per year. That's more than you can get via 401K ($18K) and IRA ($5K) each year.

Re: For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

You must shit yourself daily worrying about your own future - no wonder you're setting yourself up to die young.

Nope. I'm too busy making the future happen. I'm only 47. I got another 73 years to live.

Ever notice how you keep talking about how "your next job" will pay really well, and "next year" you'll get those certifications, and "once your side business really starts rolling," you'll be able to save up enough money for retirement, yet your plans and dreams are all wildly unrealistic?

Those are goals. What you don't see is the efforts that I'm putting in to make those goals happened. If you did see my effort, you would still claim that "plans and dreams are all wildly unrealistic". Why? Because I'm the fat retard kid on the short bus should have been dead at 10-, 20-, 30-, 40-years-old. The reason I'm not dead is that I've chosen to live, to suffer and become a better human being than the people around me.

Re: For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

Your side-business of writing $.99 cent e-books?

That's one aspect of the side business.

Don't expect that to fund your retirement any time soon.

The thing about ebooks is that they don't have a shelf life. If you have a print book and it doesn't sell in 90 days, the print books are pulled from the bookstore shelves and pulped. My ebooks have been selling since 2010 and will continue to sell for many years to come. I make more money selling ebooks than I do selling the first serial rights for the original stories.

Re: For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

Nope, three years ago, you were breathlessly assuring everyone here that you were "studying for" the same security certifications.

Over the last three years I discovered that I don't learn the same way that I did 15 years ago when I got my first set of certifications (A+, Network+ and MCP W2K). Plus life tends to get in the way.

So Creimer, be honest: have you even cracked a single book?

I got three Security+ books and I'm using Transcender for online studying. Exam by end of summer. I also signed up for a ITIL course on Udemy, don't have a book yet, and plan to take that exam in December.

You could have gone back to college and earned a fucking Master's Degree in that time.

Uh, no. I would have to be reinstated into the university to get my BS degree. I'm not willing to take out student loans for a BS/MS degree that will be worthless on the day I graduate. Something that many people have been finding out after racking up $100K in student debt.

If I was to go back to school, it would be professional development courses at $1K per class to learn project management.

https://www.ucsc-extension.edu/programs/project-management

Stop blowing smoke, you incompetent illiterate fuckwit.

Why are you wasting your time trying to prove me wrong on every little niggling detail?

Re: For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

I want to see exactly how far you'll contort yourself while trying to rationalize your bullshit and keep your delusions alive.

Except my delusions have a tendency to become real. Some just take longer than others.

Your bullshit reminds me of that line from Macbeth: "it is a tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."

I would have gone with "Nowhere Man" from the Beatles.

He's a real nowhere man
Sitting in his nowhere land
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody

Re: For the Mongos among us...

[__aaclcg7560]

You plan on jumping straight from 150 lbs (light weight) to 300 lbs (higher than most machines even go to)?

The sit up rowing machine at my gym maxes out at 300 pounds.

Height genes

[phantomfive]

This quote from the article is really interesting:

“If you try to predict height using the genes we’ve identified in Europeans in Africans, you’d predict all Africans are five inches shorter than Europeans, which isn’t true,” Dr. Posthuma said.

A few technical comments

[Michael Woodhams]

These results are from using SNP chips. To make a SNP chip, a sample of individuals from a population (in this case, humans of European descent) are sequenced, then the sequences are compared to find SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphism: i.e. a place where some individuals have one DNA base and others have a different one.) Then some hundreds of thousands of those SNPs are selected (we want something like an even spread of SNPs over the genome, and we want to chose SNPs which have a fairly high degree of polymorphism - we'd rather something which was 50:50 rather than 99:1.) A SNP chip is designed which when exposed to DNA from an individual will say yes/no for each SNP. (Scanning the paper, I see two of the SNP chips they used were UK BiLEVE Axiom array and the UK Biobank Axiom array which have over 820,000 SNPs each.)

This has several consequences. One is that the SNP chip is of limited use for populations other than the one for which it was designed. Another is that seldom is the SNP on the chip directly related to the feature/quality (intelligence in this case) that we are trying to correlate with. Rather, the SNP which correlates positively with IQ is probably just nearby the genetic difference which matters. Because they are close, recombination (shuffling of the two genome copies you have, which happens in the production of gametes) is unlikely to separate them. Because they will occasionally get separated, the correlation of IQ with the SNP is going to be a little less strong than the correlation of IQ with the actual variant gene (allele). A SNP chip is less informative than a full genome sequence, but is much cheaper, and much easier to analyse.

A final point is that genome wide association studies like this have in the past been plagued with false positives. When there are so many variables being tested (hundreds of thousands of SNPs on the SNP chip) some will strongly associate with your measured quality (IQ) by chance. This is even more so if you use sophisticated analyses which look for combinations of SNPs as predictors. I will provisionally accept that they've accounted for this correctly, as I lack the expertise to judge for myself.

I work in a tangentially associated field (phylogenetics) so my knowledge has some professional basis, but is well short of that of an expert in the field.

Re:A few technical comments

[phantomfive]

Also worth mentioning the effect here was very small, each gene just a small fraction of an IQ point. And I think they used education level as a proxy for IQ test, since they didn't test everyone in the sample set.

Re:A few technical comments

[ooloorie]

All true, but not really all that relevant. They weren't trying to show that IQ has a strong genetic component, that's been established for a long time, they were trying to identify genes that actually were responsible for that genetic component. As such, finding many genes, each of which has a small effect, is consistent with what we already know about the genetics of IQ. That is, their paper effectively says "this set of genes (and more like them) could account for the genetics of IQ that we actually observe". If they hadn't found these genes, we'd still believe that IQ was genetically determined, but we'd have to look for more complex genetic explanations (more, even weaker genes, or more complex interactions between genes).

Five Percent is the important number

[gurps_npc]

ALL the genes put together had a total of 5% impact on Intelligence. That means an IQ of 105 vs 100. That is a minor effect.

Worst of all, minor effects like this, are typical of false positives. That is, most scientific tests use a significance threshold of no more than 4%, which is one in 25. That means if you test 25 different random alcoholic drinks, one of them, by random chance, will be shown to cause a minor increase in intelligence. This would be a false positive.)

And they did over 300 tests. So if they are using a 4% significance, that would be 4*3= 12 false positives.

This article looks like the worst kind of fake science news. You know, the kind that a President would quote (Pick Trump/Obama, whichever your personal bias thinks would do that).

Re:Five Percent is the important number

[enrique556]

Not sure if you meant to say that the difference between an IQ of 100 and 105 is minor, but if so, I disagree. This could, if the average of a population, mean the difference between democracy and despotism; at the individual, it could easily mean the difference between a $100k+ salary and homelessness.

Re:Five Percent is the important number

[phantomfive]

Probably not since the average IQ 200 years ago was less than five points below the average today (see the Flynn affect).

Re:Five Percent is the important number

[SLi]

You cannot calculate with it IQ scores like that. A 50% impact does not mean the difference of 150 to 100, or a 100% impact does not mean 200 to 100. For one thing, while the mean IQ is 100, that in itself means nothing unless you also pick a standard deviation, which is an arbitrary choice. I think 15 is the most commonly used, but by no means only, choice for IQ nowadays. This would mean that a score of 115 is one standard deviation above average, or that 68% of people fall below it, and a score of 130 is two standard deviations above average, corresponding to 95%.

The 5% impact in this kind of studies always means that the measured variable explains 5% of the total variance. 100% impact would mean that the IQ is directly determined by the measured variables (ie. the identified genetic variants), with randomness or environmental factors playing no role. As a side note, this would still not imply causation; both the intelligence and the genetic variations could be caused by another, unknown factor.

Re:Five Percent is the important number

[ooloorie]

ALL the genes put together had a total of 5% impact on Intelligence. That means an IQ of 105 vs 100. That is a minor effect.

They aren't asking the question of whether IQ has a strong genetic component, that's already known. They are asking which genes might be responsible for the genetic component that we already know exists.

And they did over 300 tests. So if they are using a 4% significance, that would be 4*3= 12 false positives.

Why don't you read RTFA? Their p-values are 10^-6 to 10^-8. In addition, they seem to be using software and techniques specifically intended for these kinds of analyses. Now, there could still be plenty of things wrong with their analysis, but your criticism is not valid.

Furthermore, they are not asking "are there any genes that influence IQ", they are asking "given that we know that IQ has a strong genetic component, which genes might be responsible".

The fact that they didn't find any strong correlations but a lot of weak correlations is a useful result in itself; you simply seem to misinterpret what the result actually means.

Re:Five Percent is the important number

[gurps_npc]

You have misunderstood what is going on.

1) It is true that every year they reset the average IQ to be equal to 100.

2) But the questions in general do not change. Instead what they do is reset the number of correct answers neccessary to get a "100". That is, in 2016, getting say 87 right might give you a score of 100, but in 2017, you need to get 88 question right to get the same score of 100. This is called 'grading on a curve'.

3) This means that YES, the average has in fact been changing. Historically almost every year people have been doing better on the test.

4) So average results on an IQ test keeping getting BETTER, while the reported I score is not changed.

On a side note, there is some argument about whether the change in scoring method is indiciative of nature or nurture. That is, is it just better education, or are people actually getting smarter.

Considering that last year we had a choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and that one of them won the popular election but the other won the electoral election, I would have to say that we are NOT GETTING SMARTER.

To my mind, it has to be better education.

Re:Five Percent is the important number

[nephilimsd]

Standard deviation is not an arbitrary choice. You take the variance of each measure from the mean, square that, add those together, then take the square root. If you take a sufficiently random sample, you will find a deterministic standard deviation. It also doesn't matter that they set the average to 100, that's just the same thing in statistics as using 1 as the standard mean. What you are measuring is how far away a typical random sample is likely to be from the mean, so you get an idea about what the distribution looks like.

Re:Five Percent is the important number

[SLi]

But the thing is, the IQ scores that we're talking about are not direct measured scores, and therefore the 15 point choice is entirely arbitrary, in that they could just as well have chosen the standard deviation to be 24 or 32 (and some testers did). It's not in any way a measured quantity; rather, they measure the percentile and calculate the IQ score from it. An IQ score of 115 from a test with std 15 is exactly the same as an IQ score of 124 from a test of std 24. Neither provides more or less information, hence, the choice is entirely arbitrary (just like using 100 as the mean, but when talking about IQ scores, it seems everybody has agreed that 100 is a good standard mean).

So, the standard mean of 15 was not measured in the way you say. Rather, the calculation went in the opposite direction; they measured the distribution of raw score in an IQ test, and map it to a scale with an arbitrarily chosen mean of 100 and std of 15.

Not to mention

[nospam007]

...that in some people, they are all switched off. Sad.

Match against questions!

[SharpFang]

IQ test is an aggregate, a lot of questions testing different aspects of logical thinking and pattern spotting. Trying to find a single gene for IQ is a bit like trying to find which single screw makes a car engine work.

Instead, try correlating the genes against results from distinct questions from the IQ test. That way you can get genes responsible for specific aspects of IQ. Otherwise... found any singular gene that makes people perform well at chess-boxing?

Re:Match against questions!

[SLi]

This "theory of multiple intelligences" is a quite popular narrative, but it's not empirically supported by studies. Rather, it seems that there is one "g factor", or general cognitive ability, that tends to explain quite well the "different kinds of intelligence". That is, any IQ test seems to be a good predictor of performance in any other IQ test, whether testing logical-mathematical, linguistic, spatial or some other "kind" of intelligence.

Re:Match against questions!

[ooloorie]

IQ test is an aggregate, a lot of questions testing different aspects of logical thinking and pattern spotting.

That's what IQ tests do, but that's not what they measure. What IQ tests measure is the factor that's common to all those different expressions of intelligence.

Trying to find a single gene for IQ is a bit like trying to find which single screw makes a car engine work

Researchers aren't trying to find "a single gene", they are looking for many genes, each of which individually contributes a little to what we observe as IQ.

Instead, try correlating the genes against results from distinct questions from the IQ test. That way you can get genes responsible for specific aspects of IQ

By definition, there is no such thing as "specific aspects of IQ", so that doesn't make sense.

Iodine is the US gap

[mveloso]

Apparently iodine is the reason people today are marginally more intelligent than the were before.

http://blogs.discovermagazine....

That doesn't mean that genetics doesn't make a difference.

Intelligence isn't everything

[clickety6]

I sometimes think it would be more useful to discover the genes for common sense because I know quite a few highly-intelligent people who could do with having a bit more of it.

Re:Intelligence isn't everything

[bugs2squash]

I would think that common sense in terms of having a good general set of priorities for dealing with unfamiliar situations is probably trainable and seems a reasonable thing to develop

But too often the people I hear complaining about lack of common sense are those that deride actual experience and knowledge of what to do in a given situation

present company excepted of course

Paragraphs

[Hognoxious]

Is there a gene for using paragraphs instead of a wall of text?

It doesn't even matter if intelligence is genetic

[Anonymous Coward]

There are certainly genetic components that contribute to intelligence. But you know what? It almost doesn't matter.

Fact is: the average IQ of a black African is around 70. Africa is a disaster, and all the aid from the rest of the world has not helped. A population with an average IQ of 70 cannot maintain a Western infrastructure without help. But we aren't allowed to talk about intelligence as a contributing factor. If we could, we might have different strategies for aid; strategies that might actually work.

And if it turns out that, after pulling Africa out of its hole, those 30 points of IQ are due to environmental factors, or disease, or education, or whatever? Everybody wins.

tl;dr: Before we can do anything about the problems in Africa, we have to be able to talk openly about intelligence.

How do you measure intelligence?

[Neuronwelder]

I'm sure a lot of "dumb" people came up with a lot of smart gadgets.

Increase in general IQ

[Dareth]

IQ test were based partially on speed of completion. People a generation or two back started spending larger portions of their lives watching the world go by at 35+ mph. The theory is this led to an increase in speed of cognition led to a small but measurable increase in general IQ scores.

Re:Increase in general IQ

[Comrade Ogilvy]

Speed completion is also strongly related to familiarity with similar questions/problems, and thus cannot be separated from culture.

Re:Increase in general IQ

[david_thornley]

I've seen counts of repetitions. Last I took such a test, I was given a list of words and asked for them several times until I repeated them all back perfectly. I suspect that went into the score. I got a Tower of Hanoi test that was explicitly not timed, and graded based on number of false moves, which of course I didn't make. (All you need for that is a good understanding and patience for detail.)

Re:Increase in general IQ

[Dareth]

https://www.quora.com/Are-all-real-IQ-tests-timed

With all those genes

[Z00L00K]

For crazy scientists applying these genes to other species might end up in scary or interesting results.

Imagine raccoons with the IQ level of Einstein.

Odds are...

[Dareth]

Odds are the smartest person in the whole world is illiterate and wasting many brain cycles while subsistence farming.

Re:Odds are...

[Reziac]

If they're the smartest person in the world, and given the world we have today... how come they haven't figured out how to better themselves and are still doing subsistence farming?

Cuz historically, no one stays a subsistence farmer if they're smart enough to observe that there are better prospects, and I doubt there's anyone today, other than a few extremely isolated primitives, is not to some degree aware of the wider world.

Get Ready for Science Denial...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Ironically from the SJW folks.

Re:Get Ready for Science Denial...

[Opportunist]

It's not like stupidity accumulates more on one side of the fence. SJWs, religious nutjobs, it's all good.

Re: It doesn't even matter if intelligence is gene

[Gr8Apes]

They know they are stupid.

Only a wise man realizes he knows little. A fool thinks he knows everything.