Is Intelligence Innate and Fixed?

13 Comments

1. Berci Meskó on November 11, 2007 at 12:15

   Very good mes­sage, Alvaro!

   It’s our mis­sion to tell peo­ple that genes cre­ate phe­no­type just with the effect of the environment.

   
   
   
2. Reason on November 11, 2007 at 8:10

   Gould is almost on the verge of dis­hon­esty with his book. If you are going to read his book, then you should at least read a good defense of Wat­son The link is here.

   http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/10/james-watson-tells-inconvenient-truth_296.php

   
   
   
3. Alvaro on November 12, 2007 at 11:56

   Thank you, Berci, yes, we need to improve aware­ness of that fact and its implications.

   Hel­lo “Rea­son”:

   1- I think James Wat­son is an incred­i­ble sci­en­tist, and am sor­ry about the recent con­tro­ver­sy. Now, he may ben­e­fit from explain­ing his views in a bet­ter way, and focus­ing on the areas he is no doubt an authority.

   2- Gould wrote his book 26 years ago, so I am unsure about the rel­e­vance on your com­ment. He obvi­ous­ly was­n’t attack­ing Wat­son, but the ideas about IQ as a fixed, innate, entity.

   3- I took a brief look at that link. The author relies on the basic assump­tion that IQ is fixed, innate, real. Which is not correct.

   
   
   
4. GNZ on November 20, 2007 at 1:52

   Its ter­ri­bly PC to say that genet­ics makes hard­ly any dif­fer­ence to IQ or IQ makes hard­ly any dif­fer­ence to, er any­thing. Great for get­ting read­ers atten­tion and nods of agreement.
   Its also com­plete bollocks.

   Twin stud­ies (and cer­tain­ly any twins I know) as well as a sim­ple glance at any­one I know shows and incred­i­bly strong cor­re­la­tion between genet­ics and intel­li­gence, per­son­al­i­ty and all sorts of oth­er things such as skin colour and eye colour.
   Of course bias and over­gen­er­al­iza­tions are com­mon flaws in such research but that doesn’t mean that they are auto­mat­i­cal­ly flawed in more fun­da­men­tal ways. Nor does the fact that some might mis­in­ter­pret it, make the base research flawed.

   I remem­ber sit­ting in a class being taught about the bell curve while a group from a high­er bell curve snig­gered in front and I thought. Hmm — what curve you asso­ciate your­self with doesn’t change your actu­al intelligence.

   
   
   
5. GNZ on November 20, 2007 at 2:05

   prob­a­bly worth a read of the
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man
   for the cri­tiques (and prais­es I guess)

   
   
   
6. Alvaro on November 20, 2007 at 9:32

   Hel­lo GNZ,

   Thanks for the Wikipedia link.

   No one doubts genet­ics has an influ­ence. Even an strong influ­ence. The point is that that fac­tor is way less deter­min­is­tic than the oth­er exam­ples you men­tion, like skin and eye colour. Our point is not that genes have no influ­ence. It is that intel­li­gence is not fixed, innate.

   Have you read about the Fly­nn effect? do you think our genes have changed so much in 50 years to make us all now, on aver­age, 15–20 points more “intel­li­gent” (IQ) than 50 years ago?

   
   
   
7. GNZ on November 20, 2007 at 10:38

   I accept that intel­li­gence is not 100% deter­mined by genes – any­one who says that is obvi­ous­ly not think­ing since, for one thing, I could drink alco­hol and take drugs until I was brain dam­aged or dead and I def­i­nite­ly wouldn’t have the same IQ after­wards. But sure­ly no one ever pro­pos­es that that would have no impact on my intelligence.

   Clear­ly it is a mix­ture of things. What appears to hap­pen, though, is that some­one will pro­pose that a cer­tain group has a high­er aver­age intel­li­gence (Let us say, ‘philoso­phers’ have a high­er aver­age intel­li­gence than ‘ditch dig­gers’ or ‘peo­ple in Man­hat­tan’ have a high­er aver­age IQ than ‘peo­ple in the mid­dle of Texas’). Those groups that are maligned then kick back and insist that one can’t say that. Rather less an argu­ment that it isn’t true and more one that you “just can’t say it” because then you might try to use it for somthing. And one side debates with log­ic and the oth­er with more of a ‘aren’t they dis­gust­ing and mean” sort of approach.

   (hav­ing siad that some­times they are jsut plain racist ofcourse)

   Regard­ing the Fly­nn effect, I guess it depends on what you call intel­li­gence. I read the Fly­nn effect accord­ing Fly­nn was explained by how we orga­nize infor­ma­tion — i.e. it didn’t refer to a change in pro­cess­ing speed — just a change in the way the infor­ma­tion being processed was orga­nized. That’s one the­o­ry anyway.

   It would seem how­ev­er that as IQ tests get bet­ter it gets more con­stant (Of course we would dis­card a IQ method­ol­o­gy that got a less con­stant result!). But if for some rea­son one had to dis­card ‘IQ” and instead use a new mea­sure for ‘g’ I don’t think peo­ple would be very worried.

   I note that I had an IQ test at a very young age and anoth­er rea­son­ably recent­ly both under prop­er test con­di­tions – and got an iden­ti­cal result (yes not a sin­gle point of dif­fer­ence). Appar­ent­ly the vast major­i­ty of my life and all that edu­ca­tion made no dif­fer­ence at all.

   Regard­ing Crick I think that this trig­gers my racist bells “He went on to say that although he hopes all races are equal­ly intel­li­gent, “peo­ple who have to deal with black employ­ees find this is not true.“” But there could be a valu­able piece of truth in “he is “inher­ent­ly gloomy about the prospect of Africa” (although the truth might be dan­ger­ous, and if some­one hon­est­ly says so I can respect that)

   Even if our intel­li­gence hap­pens to be absolute­ly iden­ti­cal across races – it won’t be ‘the same’ on aver­age (ie of exact­ly the same type). One mod­el that seems to have some rela­tion to real­i­ty is that peo­ple are most able to deal with cap­i­tal­ism in places where they have (as a genealog­i­cal line) had the longest expo­sure to mon­ey (again poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous but also implies that changes hap­pen over ‘short’ peri­od of time).

   
   
   
8. James on November 22, 2007 at 10:06

   For GNZ:

   “Regard­ing Crick I think that this trig­gers my racist bells “He went on to say that although he hopes all races are equal­ly intel­li­gent, “peo­ple who have to deal with black employ­ees find this is not true.“”

   You meant Watson.

   (I have the same prob­lem with Abbott and Costello.)

   
   
   
9. GNZ on December 2, 2007 at 12:17

   woops appolo­gies to Crick.

   
   
   
10. Big Don on December 14, 2007 at 4:01

    You can talk open­ly about dogs with­out being polit­i­cal­ly incor­rect. You won’t get into trou­ble, lose your career or research grants, as you might if you reveal unpleas­ant truths about humans.

    All domes­tic dogs, from Chi­huahua to Great Dane, are species can­is famil­iaris; breed genet­ic dif­fer­ences result from enforced sep­a­ra­tions by breeders/trainers for the last 800 years. Domes­tic dogs are all one species. Sim­i­lar­ly, all humans are species homo sapi­ens with race dif­fer­ences result­ing from sep­a­ra­tion over thou­sands of years by geo­graph­ic bar­ri­ers. Dog breeds and human races are direct­ly anal­o­gous as sub-groups with­in the respec­tive species.
    Much can be learned from study­ing dogs; med­ical sci­ence does a great deal of this to avoid exper­i­men­ta­tion on humans. The brain is no excep­tion, as dog brain struc­ture and infor­ma­tion flow process­es are quite sim­i­lar to that in humans. Numer­ous dog brain stud­ies to ana­lyze human brain diseases/conditions are in the med­ical literature.

    Any expe­ri­enced dog breed­er will acknowl­edge the pro­found influ­ence of genet­ics on intel­li­gence and behav­ior. Traits such as train­abil­i­ty, aggres­sion, prey dri­ve, docil­i­ty, bite inhi­bi­tion are high­ly her­i­ta­ble and dif­fi­cult to mod­i­fy. Exten­sive eval­u­a­tions of dog intel­li­gence have devel­oped breed rank­ings accord­ing to ease of train­ing (num­ber of rep­e­ti­tions need­ed to learn a com­mand) and reli­a­bil­i­ty (per­cent of time) of cor­rect response to learned com­mands. Instinc­tive abil­i­ty to to take cor­rect action in com­plex sit­u­a­tions is also rec­og­nized to vary with breed (there is a valid rea­son police K‑9 units use Ger­man Shep­herds instead of Pit Bulls). Among dog breeds, there is a huge Achievement_Gap, and it is GENETIC. This is all eas­i­ly Googled…

    Humans are not exempt from the fun­da­men­tal rules of biol­o­gy. Rushton’s pub­li­ca­tions (and James Watson’s recent com­ments) are heav­i­ly-sup­port­ed with moun­tains of peer-reviewed research by well-cre­den­tialed schol­ars; numer­ous key cita­tions are avail­able in two recent books: Hart “Under­stand­ing Human His­to­ry” and Lynn “Race Dif­fer­ences in Intelligence.”

    
    
    
11. Alvaro on December 15, 2007 at 8:31

    Hel­lo,

    Thanks for adding that angle, but I think it con­fus­es things more than clar­i­fies them.

    1) No one is doubt­ing the influ­ence of genes. I agree with “Humans are not exempt from the fun­da­men­tal rules of biology”

    2) What you seem to be doubt­ing is the influ­ence of the envi­ron­ment. Why?

    3) The state­ment “Dog breeds and human races are direct­ly anal­o­gous as sub-groups with­in the respec­tive species.” is high­ly suspicious

    4) Even if it were, humans and dogs are dif­fer­ent species, cor­rect? and it is humans who domes­ti­cate dogs, not the oth­er way, right? so per­haps, no mat­ter what you say about dogs, that is not the most rel­e­vant in our debate regard­ing the human species

    5) Can you please explain the Fly­nn effect?

    6) Mal­colm Glad­well just pub­lished a great arti­cle on this,
    http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/12/17/071217crbo_books_gladwell

    
    
    
12. Sideways on June 9, 2008 at 9:19

    “1) No one is doubt­ing the influ­ence of genes. I agree with “Humans are not exempt from the fun­da­men­tal rules of biology”

    2) What you seem to be doubt­ing is the influ­ence of the envi­ron­ment. Why?”

    I know I’m real­ly late to this, but you’ve got it back­wards: there are lit­er­al­ly no sci­en­tists who think/argue/hypothesize that intel­li­gence is 100% genet­ic or hered­i­tary. Being a “genet­ic deter­min­ist” in prac­tice means that you think that some­where between 1% and 99% (and, on aver­age, more like 40% and 80%) of intel­li­gence is hereditary.

    There are, on the oth­er hand, quite a few who argue that intel­li­gence is 0% genetic. 

    As for Crick, it seems he was saved from being burnt at the stake by going off the scene ear­ly. ” In brief I think it like­ly that more than half the dif­fer­ence between the aver­age I.Q. of Amer­i­can whites and Negroes is due to genet­ic rea­sons, and will not be elim­i­nat­ed by any fore­see­able change in the envi­ron­ment” would have got­ten him the Wat­son treat­ment in 2007, to be sure.

    Any­way, it’s rather amus­ing to read this and real­ize that, by Gould’s def­i­n­i­tion, Alvaro is a genet­ic determinist.

    All that aside, we’d be bet­ter off if peo­ple stopped read­ing a 28 year old book by a pale­on­tol­o­gist who want­ed to advance the blank slate the­o­ry, cre­at­ing a book that essen­tial­ly every­one in the rel­e­vant field thinks is a pile of garbage.

    Go argue about twins stud­ies, trans-racial adop­tion stud­ies, etc, but leave Mr. “IQ tests 80 years ago were biased, so the entire field is junk!” out of it.

    
    
    
13. Alvaro on June 9, 2008 at 5:27

    Side­ways: you are answer­ing your­self… when you don’t con­tra­dict yourself.

    May I sug­gest you spend less time on word gym­nas­tics (i.e. set­ting up your own def­i­n­i­tions of genet­ic deter­min­ism) and more on com­pre­hend­ing oth­er’s per­spec­tives with a research, not ide­o­log­i­cal, hat (and, yes, that includes Gould’s book), and focus­ing on implications.

    Per­haps, by hav­ing a more mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion, we would both be clos­er to reach­ing the 100% of our potential.