Stuart_Armstrong comments on Genetic "Nature" is cultural too - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 18 March 2016 02:33PM

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Comment author: V_V 18 March 2016 04:27:29PM *  1 point [-]

Obviously racial effects go under this category as well. It covers anything visible. So a high heritability is compatible with genetics being a cause of competence, and/or prejudice against visible genetic characteristics being important ("Our results indicate that we either live in a meritocracy or a hive of prejudice!").

This can be tested by estimating how much IQ screens off race/gender as a success predictor, assuming that IQ tests are not prejudiced and things like the stereotype threat don't exist or are negligible.

But is it possible that IQ itself is in part a positional good? Consider that success doesn't just depend on competence, but on social skills, ability to present yourself well in an interview, and how managers and peers judge you. If IQ affects or covaries with one or another of those skills, then we would be overemphasising the importance of IQ in competence. Thus attempts to genetically boost IQ could give less impact than expected. The person whose genome was changed would benefit, but at the (partial) expense of everyone else.

National average IQ is strongly correlated with national wealth and development indexes, which I think refutes the hypothesis that IQ mainly affects success as a positional quality, or a proxy of thereof, at least at the level of personal interactions.

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 18 March 2016 10:00:52PM 1 point [-]

This can be tested by estimating how much IQ screens off race/gender as a success predictor

Got any good references on that? Googleing these kind of terms doesn't lead to good links.

National average IQ is strongly correlated with national wealth and development indexes

I know, but the way it does so is bizarre (IQ seems to have a much stronger effect between countries than between individuals). Then I add the fact that IQ is very heritable, and also pretty malleable (flynn effect), and I'm still confused.

Now, I'm not going to throw out all I previously believed on heredity and IQ and so on, but the picture just got a lot more complicated. Or "nuanced", if I wanted to use a positive term. Let's go with nuanced.

Comment author: V_V 21 March 2016 05:30:58PM 1 point [-]

Got any good references on that? Googleing these kind of terms doesn't lead to good links.

I don't know if anybody already did it, but I guess it can be done by comparing the average IQ of various professions or high-performing and low-performing groups with their racial/gender makeup.

I know, but the way it does so is bizarre (IQ seems to have a much stronger effect between countries than between individuals).

This is probably just the noise (i.e. things like "blind luck") being averaged out.

Then I add the fact that IQ is very heritable, and also pretty malleable (flynn effect), and I'm still confused.

Heritability studies tend to be done on people living in the same country, of roughly the same age, which means that population-wide effects like the Flynn effect don't register.

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 22 March 2016 11:02:19AM 1 point [-]

This is probably just the noise (i.e. things like "blind luck") being averaged out.

And another plausible explanation is added to the list...

Heritability studies tend to be done on people living in the same country, of roughly the same age, which means that population-wide effects like the Flynn effect don't register.

Oh, I understand why this is the case. It just means that the outcome of many changes (if they are country-wide) are hard to estimate (and are typically underestimated from twin studies).

Comment author: Torchlight_Crimson 18 March 2016 10:44:45PM *  1 point [-]

I know, but the way it does so is bizarre (IQ seems to have a much stronger effect between countries than between individuals).

Why is this bizarre? It simply means that high IQ individuals don't capture all the value they create.

Edit: another possibility is that smart people tend to move to places that were doing well. I believe there was a thread in the comments to SSC a while back where it was discovered that the average IQ of American States correlated with a rather naively constructed measure of "favorable geography", e.g., points for being on the coast and for having navigable rivers.

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 21 March 2016 10:23:31AM 3 points [-]

Why is this bizarre? It simply means that high IQ individuals don't capture all the value they create.

Consider that if it had been the opposite - IQ was more a personal benefit than a country benefit - we'd be explaining it as "obviously smart people benefit themselves at the expense of others". Being able to explain something or its opposite isn't explaining, unless we dig deeper.

Comment author: Crownless_Prince 21 March 2016 11:50:39PM 0 points [-]

Consider that if it had been the opposite - IQ was more a personal benefit than a country benefit - we'd be explaining it as "obviously smart people benefit themselves at the expense of others".

Yes, it's called basing your beliefs on the evidence.

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 22 March 2016 11:04:25AM 2 points [-]

No, it's choosing the first plausible rationalisation for the data. People have been suggesting lots of plausible explanations for the effect, and they all sound plausible (and may all the true, to some extent), but we really don't know until we test.

Comment author: The_Bird 23 March 2016 02:34:46AM 3 points [-]

So, why were you calling reality "bizarre" again?

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