Comment author: alliumnsk 23 March 2015 04:20:01PM 0 points [-]

I noticed such thing that if previous question was estimated to have 60% confidence and the next one is supposed to be 70% I sometimes leave it as 60 due to laziness.

Comment author: harpend 12 May 2010 05:50:24PM 6 points [-]

It must be simple in some way since it is so heritable. People with IQs of 90 and IQs of 140 both prosper and do fine. although there are lots of statistical differences between two such groups.

Other other hand if we take a trait like "propensity to learn language in childhood" this seems to me to be relatively invariable and fixed and so probably very complex.

Certainly one could breed for IQ and raise the population mean a lot. But what would we be doing to our children? People with 140 IQ seem to do all right but I would worry a lot about the kind of life a kid with an IQ of 220 would have.

Comment author: alliumnsk 23 March 2015 08:08:52AM 3 points [-]

an IQ 220 kid will do just fine in company of other IQ 220 kids and teachers.

Comment author: NaN 11 May 2010 11:55:11AM 8 points [-]

We think that we know a little bit about how to raise intelligence. Just turn down the suppression of early CNS growth. If you do that in one way the eyeball grows too big and you are nearsighted, which is highly correlated with intelligence.

There is now substantial evidence that there is a causal link between prolonged focusing on close objects - of which probably the most common case is reading books (it appears that monitors are not close enough to have a substantial effect) - and nearsightedness/myopia, though this is still somewhat controversial. This is the typical explanation for the correlation between myopia and IQ and academic achievement.

A genetic explanation is possible, and would be fascinating, but I wouldn't want to accept that without further evidence. If the genetic explanation is true and environment makes no contribution, then I think one should find that IQ is more highly correlated with myopia than academic achievement -- I don't know if this has been found or not.

Comment author: alliumnsk 23 March 2015 08:06:49AM 0 points [-]

If the genetic explanation is true and environment makes no contribution, then I think one should find that IQ is more highly correlated with myopia than academic achievement

It's like saying "if evolution is true, crocoducks should exist". You are (deliberately?) misrepresenting opponent's views. He meant that of all genetic variation affecting IQ, only small, but non-negligible, subset affects both myopia and IQ. However I still don't quite get how larger brain can cause myopia rather than hyperopia.