A reader points me in the direction of new research (study, writeup) that shows the largest associations yet between polygenic scores and educational outcomes.
I think there ought to be more flexibility and notification about this. Because all I do are "earlier drafts." They aren't finished so much as abandoned for a while, to be picked up again and added to later on. I publish them, and never know if subscribers are notified when they've been updated.
Hey—I sent you an email recently, as a reply to one of your posts. I understand if you don't check those (or if they dead-end somewhere) but I'd like to chat with you about the gut microbiome—a kind of genetic endowment that does not, in fact, lie entirely outside our own control, or at least not for much longer.
Our bacteria are highly heritable but non-"genetic", most of them are unique to the human gut, and they're likely to be responsible for an outsized portion of the recent phenotypic variation that's developed in our species, because evolution happens fastest at the microbial scale.
Rather than trying to explain things like IQ by reaching for hyper-polygenic models, why not consider the other 99% of active protein-coding genes in your body?
Here’s the short version without all the studies: in every classroom, in every school across the nation and the world, after the first three weeks (probably three days), every teacher knows who the smart kids are, who the middling ones are, and who the slow ones are. And the parents of the students know. And the kids know. And it never changes. Thus, the only possible dream is to organize society so that everyone is rewarded on the basis of doing the best he or she can do within the very real limitations of the possible. As MLK said, the lowliest street sweeper should be told by society that clean streets are very important, and when the street sweeper keeps the streets clean, he or she should take pride in a job well done and the sufficient paycheck that comes with it.
Yes part of what's so frustrating with all of this is knowing that almost no one who argues against natural academic potential actually believes what they're saying
MLK wanted them compared with Michaelangelo and Beethoven.
"If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well."
I agree with MLK. I wouldn't interpret him to mean that street cleaner is a humble trade. But that it can be the most magnificent trade if anybody performs it magnificently.
Just as an intellectual can be a contemptible individual who performs the role in the lowliest fashion.
A few years back one of the chefs at a restaurant where I was a regular jokingly suggested I come back and work a few shifts in the kitchen. "You'd get the hang of it," he said, but I couldn't even entertain the idea as a joke. "I'd never do that. I don't want everyone here to hate me."
It's not just that I've never worked in the service industry, but that I've hung out with enough people who have to know that I lack not just the skills but the inclination. I have a weak short term memory and an aversion to memorization. I can handle pressure and being yelled at, buy my attention to detail is highly selective, and I don't like to be rushed. Mostly I just don't care enough about food. I like what I like, but I'm not picky about it. Force me to work in a kitchen and I would learn to be passable, but I'd never be good. I'd always be dragging the people who were actually good down, and I'd never not know it.
"Force me to work in a kitchen and I would learn to be passable, but I'd never be good. I'd always be dragging the people who were actually good down, and I'd never not know it."
Your IQ would have much to do with whether or not you were a passable employee, regardless of your cooking skills.
MLK was an orator (among other things). His job was to inspire. But beckoning street sweepers to perform magnificently is condescending and patronizing, and, it seems to me, ultimately reveals a derision for menial labor. If you have to hyperbolically compare the value of cleaning streets to the greatest artistic geniuses of our time in order to demonstrate your embrace of those workers, then you're not valuing that actual, daily contribution to society.
You’re right. Apologies: my intention was to distinguish MLK making this comparison in a speech to using it here. His job was to inspire with high-flying language and I don’t begrudge: I neglected in my comment above to clarify the distinction.
"If you have to hyperbolically compare the value of cleaning streets to the greatest artistic geniuses of our time... then you're not valuing that actual, daily contribution to society"
I cannot figure out what this could mean, I do not see how this logically follows. He didn't make this speech to demonstrate his embrace of workers (he did that by, as others stated, consistently supporting labor actions), he did it to emphasize an inherent greatness in doing things that are useful and good, and how everyone should approach any such job with the attitude that they can do it magnificently, and feel pride afterward.
If you think that quote "reveals a derision for menial labor" then I hate to see what you think shows appreciation for it
I wasn’t making myself clear and apologize: It wasn’t my intent to criticize MLK. His job was to utter soaring ideas like this one, and I am aware of and applaud his commitment to labor. My point was that that sort of language makes less sense when discussing actual policy in the comments section of this essay, to literally urge street sweepers to perform “magnificence” on the level of the David and Mona Lisa, or pretend that it’s a tangible goal. Street sweeping or plumbing or punching tickets is as noble as practicing law or medicine. Period. You don’t need to be magnificent, and besides, the sheer number of people on this planet—billions of human beings—endeavoring to make a living via their labor, makes “magnificence” an impossible standard by which to value that labor.
Only half-serious but erring on more than less: after the last few years of increased disorder and general neglect for the commons, I'd personally appreciate a competent street sweeper a lot more than any classic artist-legend. Shakespeare's great and all, but the dearth of clean streets free of needles and...organic waste...and illegally dumped trash are a daily tax on myself and millions of others every day. Horatio's philosophy has nothing on good old fashioned elbow grease. Generalize this: Many Such Cases of unappreciated "lowly" jobs which are actually quite important for quality of life. It's hard to savour fine art and other Nice Things amidst a general state of squalor and decay.
You said "I'd personally appreciate a competent street sweeper a lot more than any classic artist-legend."
But it sounds like what you meant was "I would appreciate any street sweepers over having no street sweepers".
It is not clear to me why the "disorder and general neglect for the commons" would increase with artisan sweepers but decrease with merely competent ones?
I did word that ambiguously, sorry - was meant to juxtapose the utility I get out of Michaelangelo (or whoever) vs that of a street sweeper, janitor, housekeeper, what have you...rather than posit some sort of Pareto frontier of cleanliness where excessive sweeping talent actually leads to dirtier surfaces, ceterus paribus. (Although <s>OCD</s> "scrupulosity" levels of conscientiousness often do backfire this way for other tasks, so maybe it's A Thing? Never let the perfect sweep be the enemy of the good sweep?)
The categories aren't really apples-to-apples fungible, of course, since each provides different services...obviously I'd be rather cross if Just Stop Oil someday succeeded at permanently defacing a treasured artwork, or someone whoopsed a time machine assassination and eliminated Baby Shakespeare instead. And I do think a legendary-tier street sweeper would do a superlative job! It'd be amazing if the garbageman from Dilbert handled my street IRL. But it'd be silly to hire Lin-Manuel Miranda to clean toilets, in the same way it'd be silly to hire a car washer to restore the Sistine Chapel. (Although I suspect one of these would be a bigger mistake than the other!) And I feel the dearth of basic civilizational hygiene is a greater problem these days than the missing echelons of art. In *checks calendar* 2019 I might have answered differently...
You can only sweep so well, unfortunately. The ceiling for excellence in menial tasks is low: Michaelangelo can create magnificence, and sweep well, but the sweeper can only sweep well. At some point you're veering towards Harrison Bergeron if you use the same words to describe transcendent art, fantastic works of engineering, and tasks that a child can do well.
The better point is that providing value to society should be respected and the floor should be raised for the quality of material existence so that the sweeper who does do needed work is not in precarity or poverty, while we encourage the next Michaelangelo to rise to excellence and be justly celebrated and rewarded above and beyond the norm.
Many replies in this branch of the comments are focused on what society or we personally get from a sweeper tackling the job as if it were the greatest work of art.
It's only a secondary benefit that society is served when a sweep takes pride in their work. Van Gogh had no societal benefit whatsoever in his lifetime but he pursued excellence regardless. For the individual doing the sweeping to be conscientious and proud in their work is of greatest importance to them. It's a measure of society whether we look down our nose at anyone doing that job (or unrecognised art) as easily replaceable or view them with mutual respect.
The president is replaceable and is replaced regularly, that someone else can do a job doesn't make the job lower value.
Those nay-saying the value of street sweeping or questioning whether a magnificent street sweeper has any basis in reality persist in demeaning trades that don't require advanced education. If we agree with the genetic predisposition to education then this advocates a genetic predisposition to being demeaned by society.
There are YouTubers with hundreds of thousands of views simply sweeping and there are artists who never show a single painting. On the bell curve of greatness we might never see a sweeper as famous as Michaelangelo, but that shouldn't stymie the pursuit of excellence or respect for it in either case.
I work in the trades and don't have any educational credentials beyond high school and certifications that I attained though and for my work, so I have a hard time believing that I'm demeaning people by myself with my views.
I think it’s more than a thesaurus issue. There seems to be a strong impulse among certain progressives to condescend to the people they purport to champion.
It was enthusiastically embraced by the majority as a weekly exercise in appreciation, whether they were applauding or being applauded. As it dragged on week after week it became despised by everyone because it was scant reward. Politicians were joining in as a photo opportunity while failing to ensure people were being paid a living a wage. It came to disgust applauders and the applauded who wanted more tangible rewards.
The public were genuinely proud of their family, friends and fellow citizens. The politicians were condescending.
It is not condescending to say that nurses, cleaners, delivery men, factory workers and many other manual, lower educated roles are not "the lowliest". Perhaps MLK became condescending when he went to the other extreme. I think that's by far the better end of the spectrum to tend towards though, especially for a leader who wants to lift all of the people.
I don't think the parents know necessarily. Lake Wobegon effect, and all that.
And I'm no exception. I get to see my 4 children learn, have Eureka! moments, and put together fairly adult concepts quite regularly. When with their peer groups, I see how they usually excel beyond them in many ways (with a big exception athletically). So they all seem quite bright to me. I'm neck deep in Lake Wobegon.
BUT.... at school, one is the top student in the school, one (gifted, with a learning disability) has moderately above average marks, another quite average, and one is slightly below average. Among the 4 of them, their relative performance is almost the opposite of how I'd evaluate their intelligence, inventiveness and non-linear thinking.
So what seems to make for good students as identified by teachers, at least in my children, is diligence and organization. Or maybe I'm so biased I really can't reliably evaluate. I'm really not sure.
From the press release: "Researchers at the University of York are calling for further exploration of the role DNA could play in predicting educational outcomes."
Evolutionary biology (non-human) is one of the fields I work in. Scientists are so frightened of being compared to Charles Murray or other boogeymen that many shy away from touching this topic. Kathryn Paige Harden is incredibly brave, and made a great decision to get off social media. It may be that the work proceeds quietly in China or elsewhere, but the best researchers and infrastructure are still in western countries where professional incentives are strongly weighted against carrying out these studies. I agree with FdB's longer-term projections of when these genetic association studies will inform genome editing. Interestingly, the Chinese scientist that secretly edited human embryos with a putative HIV-resistance variant (erroneously) is publicly out there saying he will publish his results, but only if a top journal accepts it. He is a pariah now so don't see it coming out - even preprint servers might deny it due to its "dangerous" content. Eventually we may see shifts - on the other hand there is a paper making the rounds written by a researcher in eastern Europe that treated her own cancer with experimental therapies.
Has her decision to get off social media reduced the amount of social media noise responding to her book, do you think (anecdotally)? Assuming that was her goal?
I read her on Twitter and it's hard to separate any individual's decisions from that site's general implosion. The scientific discussions on there are not even 15% of what they were before Musk. But I meant more for her mental health - it's difficult to absorb that level of criticism and have to make the same defenses over and over again. She published the paper below as kind of a mic drop, I guess:
X has always been utterly worthless, even when it was called Twitter. Her decision to abandon it speaks well of her: she is wiser than anyone foolish enough to play that particular video game.
Not only does the blank slate theory result in callousness to those inevitably left behind, it scars the souls of those who left behind. Imagine being a kid and absorbing the message from parents and teachers and the culture that they just didn’t work hard enough to master gatekeeping and weed out subjects like algebra and chemistry. I was horrified a few years ago when there was a push to make algebra II a HS grad requirement!
Environment is critically important—it’s true. There is a lot of wasted potential in the world because of poverty, malnutrition, pollution, and shitty parents. Every kid has a ceiling but not a floor.
The devil is in the details. If and when "natural academic ability" is incorporated into the vast bureaucratic structures of education, what are going to be means and metrics for educating those with lesser natural ability?
No one who is progressive thinks that only the higher IQ students deserve to develop their capacity for flourishing. But precisely because we do live in the grip of neoliberalism, there is a powerful pull toward an impersonal process of efficiently identifying future brain workers, directing resources toward the most capable, and letting the devil take the hindmost––the surplus kids with close to zero probability of working for Raytheon or Google.
Under neoliberalism, "No Child Left Behind" means an absurd, massive machinery of neoliberal testing and sifting. But exactly how would IQ tests aid any effort to resist or reorder neoliberalism? It's possible to conceive a very different world where such tests actually help direct resources to those "left behind," but I don't see how absorbing metrics for innate intelligence into education gets us any closer to that world.
"it is not only possible but in fact intuitive and evidence-based to believe that individual differences in academic ability are genetically influenced while group differences like racial or gender differences are environmental in origin"
This does not seem particularly logical, more like a brand of hopium. Would you ever say the same thing about an attribute like height?
Assume that IQ is in fact entirely environmental. Right now blacks score lower on IQ tests than other racial groups. What's the argument there: that someday racism will be fixed at a societal level and the children or grandchildren of the current generation will score at the same level as Asian kids on standardized testing?
Where does that leave everybody that's alive today? And where does that leave their kids if it takes 100 years to erase these environmental disparities?
Like him or not Murray thought through all these scenarios, and his conclusions are strikingly similar to King's: people from all walks of life should be respected for their contributions to society and character is not related to intelligence.
You should pretty easily be able to find my thought experiment about obesity in an Amazonian tribe. It's very easy to come up with scenarios where a group difference in a trait is environmental even though there's a genetic component to that trait.
It is indeed easy to come up with scenarios where group differences are environmental, but it's just as easy to come up with scenarios where the underlying dominant factor is truly genetic. Plausibility is not proof, in either direction.
This just all seems so obvious. Compassion to death is what I call it and other forms of choosing to protect feelings over finding ways to materially affect and improve a person's life. If I walk into a modeling agency at 5'3" and am expected to not only compete but get a job modeling at the same rate as someone who is 5'9" because no one wants to tell me that models are only hired above 5'7" does that make it better or worse for me? Do I keep trying? Why? Maybe I'm smarter than all of them and should be focused on opening my own modeling agency. Does that make me less valuable to society? Not in my opinion. We need a society filled with many different qualities and many different skills. We can't fix a problem we refuse to acknowledge and there are many different ways to make it in this world if we agree to respect all levels of talent.
Freddie, this topic is where your work is most needed.
My concern: decades ago, my school system tracked kids and the non-college track had good options, namely preparation for trades. Good jobs were waiting for all who could show up each day ready to work. But today lumber mills and machine shops require programmers, etc. Street sweepers are noisy, monstrous machines that require a whole different set of skills from yesterday.
I believe that a job that enables a person to fit in to society is essential (that includes caring for all who need care). But we just keep erasing whole categories of jobs, caring little about the humans left behind. I worry about this.
I see this concern frequently expressed by those who question the value of teaching trade skills, but I think the concern is expressed in terms that are too absolute. Though there are changes/advances in tools used for every type of job, it is not accurate to say that an electrician before this type of circuit finder came to be used finds his prior skills rendered useless. Workers adapt to these changes all the time and are better able to adapt because of the foundational skills. There obviously are certain instances where one way of doing something is so completely different from an earlier way of doing something that it requires an entirely different set of skills, but those events are less common than people seem to believe.
Jobs are being erased, but they're also being created. For example, in community college there are now job certificate programs for installing solar, many types of IT jobs, automotive work but in different ways. Certified welders coming out of 2 year programs make more than most 4 year college degrees.
My great-grandfather was a horse trader/trainer. It's pretty hard to make a living at that now.
It’s disappointing how often outcome of inequality is conflated with both the influencing factors themselves and the manipulators/exploiters of constructs. This seems to be the crux of misunderstanding in these cases.
I agree that it seems pretty obvious and intuitive to observe that there is latent differentiation between individuals, and there are various inherent and environmental factors that cause this. It seems like some people treat things like intelligence testing as a *construct* instead of as an influencing factor, however. This is where a backwards understanding occurs regarding what the problem at hand is - the identification of observational data is treated as the flaw, not how that data is distorted by reified constructs and manipulated/exploited after it is contextualized.
I’ve seen far too many young musicians think that they are flatly incapable of learning, say, Jazz improvisation. They think they do not have some inherent cognitive ability that would allow them to facilitate that skill. I was one of them once. But the reality is not that people are incapable of developing skills, it’s about *how* they understand and develop said skills and the context in which they are able to facilitate them. This does not neglect genetic aptitude towards specific aspects of communication in a linguistic and musical context. Students should not be treated as if they are arbitrarily incapable of developing a skill due to a vulgar understanding of intelligence nor should they be treated as blank-slates with no variation in skill development or nuance in mental faculties, they should be treated with their inherited conditions considered as background context and provided with adaptive education that allows for variance in skill development.
In the case of public education (especially where adaptive education is far more difficult to implement), intelligence, and socioeconomic conditions - it’s classic that intelligence would be used as the cudgel to calcify both ideologized educational systems and reinforce socioeconomic conditions that benefit the current class system through said education program. Of course intelligence has factors of aptitude that are not entirely separate from education outcomes, but when that is treated as the the flawed construct instead of as an influencing factor, socioeconomic disparity and the labor skills that can be developed in individuals through education programs can be ignored for manipulating/exploiting the actual constructs of social class and fronting pseudoscientific and/or ideological notions of intelligence.
I wonder how much of this is just personality differences, something easily observed even in babies and animals. One students says "oh, I'll never learn to improvise or do calculus, I should quit now" and another says "oh interesting, let me try this new thing out."
"this conversation tends to be too fixated on the usefulness of genetic testing of individuals and not sufficiently focused on the big picture - the fact that, if every student does not actually have equal potential, the entire foundation of modern educational philosophy has been utterly destabilized. As I put it exactly three years ago, you can define the problem with blank slate thinking in four words: No Child Left Behind."
I don't think IQ tests measure Spearman's "g", so I don't think IQ tests measure what they claim to measure. They measure <i>something</i> valid,- although not, in my opinion, anything as profound as "general intelligence." And I certainly don't believe in the "blank slate", a concept I actually find menacing. I think there are some actual specific biological/neural elements that aid or impede the results on intelligence and performance tests (for example, whatever it is that allows some individuals to have flawless autobiographical recall https://www.brainandlife.org/the-magazine/online-exclusives/web-extra-actress-marilu-henner-helps-researchers-learn-more-about-memory/ Which has to be a plus.) But the way those abilities sum up differs in mysterious ways, and I'm skeptical that summing univariate results with bell-shaped curves provides an accurate assessment of intelligence. Ask the wrong questions, and you won't get the answers you seek.
Freddie, your words: "IQ instruments like the Raven’s Progressive Matrices tests remove language entirely to attempt to minimize cultural influence. (These efforts have not closed perceived gaps.)" Well yes they do, evidently. Perhaps not in terms of "cultural influence" (an imprecise phrase.) But for at least part of the population diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), studies indicate that testing with RPM leads to markedly improved results as compared with the performance of the same individuals on the Weschler. The difference is not trivial.
"We...assessed a broad sample of 38 autistic children on the preeminent test of fluid intelligence, Raven's Progressive Matrices. Their scores were, on average, 30 percentile points, and in some cases more than 70 percentile points, higher than their scores on the Wechsler scales of intelligence. Typically developing control children showed no such discrepancy, and a similar contrast was observed when a sample of autistic adults was compared with a sample of nonautistic adults. We conclude that intelligence has been underestimated in autistics..." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17680932/ From 2007.
(They way I'd put it is that <i>some subset</i> of intelligence <i>abilities</i>" has been underestimated in autistics." Or some subset of people with ASD, anyway. Of what level of diagnosed severity, I can't tell from reading the abstract summary.)
From 2015: " In the current study, verbal children with ASD performed moderately better on the RPM than on the Wechsler scales; children without ASD received higher percentile scores on the Wechsler than on the RPM. Adults with and without ASD received higher percentile scores on the Wechsler than the RPM. Results suggest that the RPM and Wechsler scales measure different aspects of cognitive abilities in verbal individuals with ASD..." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4148695/
(fwiw, I took an RPM test a few years back, and found myself rebelling against the linearity of what was demanded by the questions on the test. I was also tired and out of sorts. I received the lowest score I've ever had on an IQ test. I continue to crush the Weschler and Stanford-Binet. And I nailed the SAT in 1972, although my math score didn't match my verbal score. I actually think my math score has probably improved significantly since them. In high school I rejected higher math as an abstract exercise. But I later embraced it, once it was attached to the practical project of learning electronics.)
Once the conclusions shift toward the narrative that intelligence abilities and tropisms have a plural character, constituted in ways that sum to different strengths, I think that more clear and complete analysis--of a wider array of the aspects--becomes possible. A purview of this sort does not involve embracing a "blank slate" hypothesis for mental abilities. But it does reject the bias toward linearity that is found in a comparison of mental abilities and skill sets to physical attributes that are easily measured, like tallness.
Another problem with focusing on human intelligence is that it gives short shrift to the study of human stupidity, a problem so common in humans as to be all-pervading in some respect or another. That's another problem with Spearman's g; once one is assured that Intelligence is some linear measure of inferiority and superiority, they're prompted to make all sorts of unwarranted assumptions about their own perspicacity in all sorts of realms where they might just be out of their depth. Both ego arrogance and ego insecurity comprise serious impediments to both the activation of intelligence potential and the ability to acknowledge ones own weaknesses and vulnerability to error, and the problematic nature of the Ego ("self-image", subjective conclusions about first-person worth, or what have you) is never really vanquished. Those defaults and design flaws can only be minimized, as the result of properly focused, diligent and continuing effort.
Imagine if the US public education system had not disposed of trade education in high schools. The very classes where kids who are mechanically inclined but don't have the mental fortitude to plod their way through AP math and science classes. Those kids now enter the world with no skills and are essentially left to their own devices to determine what they could be good at. We know why we don't use a similar tracking model for education like Germany because it defeats continuing belief in the blank slate/progressive notion that all kids should go to top-tier colleges to become doctors, lawyers and white-collar professionals. Yet we'll ignore the fact that people who have real-world skills can earn a better living than many of the MFA graduates out there.
We really did lose our way when shop classes went the way of the Dodo for the never-ending insistence that everyone needs to be in a STEM field to be successful and a valuable member of society. At the same time we lament the loss of skilled labor and a continued hollowing out of the manufacturing industries.
It's also a bit ironic that trade education moved out of the high school level of education and became the domain of technical and community colleges. Which is just another way of screening out potentials for trades based on the students' abilities to navigate academic gatekeeping.
The rigidity of some of our social conventions baffles me. Really, as if someone who learns welding or HVAC repair at age 22 could never go on to get a college degree- an advanced college degree in the humanities, even. Or as if undergraduate studies must be completed by age 23, preferably within a fixed span of four years or less. It's like getting hooked to a static line at age 18 and marched out the door. A narrative laid down to favor "the market", to get young people into harness as soon as possible. As with the massive amount of debt often accrued in the process. (I'll reserve my critique of the Prestige University phenomenon for another day.)
The narrowing of liberal arts/humanities/social disciplines to tightly focused studies at the graduate school level also mystifies me. I know people with PhDs and JDs who haven't done any serious amount of nonfiction reading outside of their chosen professional field since they got their bachelors degrees.
Strangely enough, the people I know who tend to have a wide level of general knowledge and interests, as well as skilled hobbies tend to be those that aren't necessarily in the professional classes. I'm not talking about the doctor religiously playing golf on the weekends and gets their sommelier certification because their hobby is wine. I'm talking about the people who went to college for a few years, maybe got a degree and stumbled into a trade career making good money but also know how to frame a house, raise cattle on the side, fix an outboard motor or build furniture but might also read a lot of history.
My undergrad degree took me 5 1/2 years because I took a year off to work as a carpenter before returning to change my degree from engineering to architecture. It was the right choice at the end of the day because over the decades I've worked with a broad swath of people whose skills run the gamut of being talented structural engineers to brick layers and glazers. I've found myself straddling that divide between the professional and blue collar working classes and it's been rewarding in many ways for me.
Yes, the difference between authentic accomplishment and breadth of achievement, vs. Credentialism.
My own formal academic path was much more complicated: five different colleges, years away from the classroom, graduated with a BA at age 37.
But in many ways I was just getting started with skills acquisition. I paid only intermittent attention to physical fitness and exercise until I was over age 50, for example. (The crucial motivator- Lasik surgery! I had previously been legally blind, uncorrected. The result improved not just distance vision but other abilities, like hand-eye coordination.) I had no facility with playing guitar until I was over 60- now I'm much better at it than I ever thought I would be. And that really does feel like a new ability that emerged out of nowhere, because I found some cognitive facility that had never been present before, even though I had tried to learn it. (How "the discipline of psychology" might explain that, I can't say.) Etc.
I'm not going to complain about my advanced age. Too busy digging the Now.
I have to add this: speaking as someone with a degree in cultural anthropology, I don't think anyone majoring in the social disciplines should be allowed to graduate from an American university without demonstrating proficiency in at least one foreign language. That's right, everyone should basically have a minor concentration in at least one language besides English. That way, a BA would be guaranteed to graduate with at least one Practical Skill.
The American Exceptionalist attitude has not served us well, in terms of teaching languages other than English. (The language of Current Hegemony.) Other countries kick our ass up and down the road in that respect. (Consider that at least as late as the 1980s, very few of our ambassadors or high-ranking embassy members in Latin American countries even had a working knowledge of Spanish!)
I agree. I have spent the majority of my work life in the oil industry, around people who have no academic education beyond high school but outearn many college graduates. I have a friend who took every drafting course available in our suburban high school back in the 1970's. Of course, the school system sent the message that everyone should go to college, but a few vocational courses were still available. He had a successful, lifelong career as a draftsman based entirely on that handful of classes. His skills were even more in demand in the 20th century, since computer drafting had become the norm, but people with manual drafting skills were desperately needed to revise or copy drawings done manually in the 20th century.
I once read an Internet post from an English poster who accused the US of intentionally using the SAT and other standardized tests to "exclude certain demos", and said that the obvious solution was for us to use the system used in the the UK and elsewhere, where everyone takes a standardized test around 9th grade or so, and the results determine who goes to an academic high school and who goes to a trade high school.
When in fact, A) the cognitive psychologists have spent decades trying to eliminate cultural biases that might contribute to the embarassing racial differences in standardized test scores, and B) the UK's system would never fly in the US, politically or legally, because those tests, applied here, would probably have disparate outcomes just like the SAT. The population tracked for academic high schools would almost certainly be disproportionately white and asian, and those tracked for the vocational schools would be disproportionately black and latino. And that would never be permitted, even if it was better for the kids.
From what I've read of UK secondary school scholastic performance scores, a disproportionate majority of students on the high-performing track would be female.
"Cognitive psychologists have spent decades trying to eliminate cultural biases that might contribute to the embarassing racial differences in standardized test scores"
I don't view the problem with test scores as one of induced cultural biases; it's just that every one I've ever taken is accurately a test of activated performance on some subset of mental/scholastic skills, not an "intelligence test." I've never seen a question on an "IQ test" that measured the ability to recall a number sequence, for example- and how is that not a mental skill?
How well can an English speaker do on an "IQ" test presented to them in a different language? It depends on how much prior acquaintance they have with that language. Even the RPM test of that subset of intelligence skills known as spatial reasoning uses some verbal language to ask its questions. (Although I'll grant that cultural bias is largely absent. And some other touchpoints, in the process.)
RPM testing does eliminate "cultural bias" from the criteria of its multiple choice options. But I find its demands to be an awful lot of a shoehorn- which is to say that I could compose a very tendentious argument to defend the answer I gave on a given RPM question that was marked "wrong." That dissent would make no reference at all to any sort of "cultural bias."
(I'm also skeptical of your statement that "cognitive psychologists have spent decades trying to eliminate cultural biases..." I want a cite for that- it really took "decades"? How many of them pursued the assignment? Although considering all of the sunk costs of ostensibly high-performing intellects trying to build a fully autonomous unpiloted roadway vehicle without yet achieving success, I guess all sorts of extended efforts at tasks that resist productive result are possible, in the realm of Research. Still...granting a common baseline of language skills required to understand the preliminary test instructions, I think I could figure out how to remove cultural bias from a verbal skills test as a solo project within a matter of weeks.)
I wonder if it had anything to do with the cost of providing the equipment for the shop classes? Can you imagine the cost of the diagnostic machines for auto mechanics?
Here in Oregon, kids age 14 and up can go to community college. It's not free though.
Indeed.It had a great deal to do with the cost of shop class.However, let me say once again as an academic teacher who is also an engineering teacher with a CTE credential (three in fact) that there is lots of funding in high school for all sorts of trade and technical classes.
There is massive funding for high school trade education. Go read up about Perkins funding.
There was never any glorious heyday for trade education. It was always a dumping ground.
The problem with trade education is the expense. Trade education is extremely expensive. And skilled trades still require a considerable I.Q. Colleges have lowered their standards so dramatically that anyone with an I q high enough to be successful in skilled trades is also smart enough to get through college easily.
The people who are left behind by both high school academics and trade are people with I q that will not qualify them to be electricians or plumbers.
I think a lot could be done with on-the-job-training. I've talked to trades people who moan about not being able to find good workers.
I wonder if we are unintentionally raising kids to not be good workers. My daughter was talking about a friend of hers with a 19/20 year old son who works part time, lives at home and doesn't pay rent. A friend of mine does the same with her grandson.
My daughter said its too expensive now for kids to live on their own. But as we discussed it, we figured that minimum wage 20 years ago and renting a room 20 years ago is about the same ratio as it is now. When my daughter majored in billiards and beer ending the school year with a D average she got x amount of time to find a job and first and last months rent on a room. Why learn a trade if you can live at home and all you have to do is pay for your entertainment?
Trade education is expensive but no where near the expense of a generic 4yr humanities degree. Trade education funding has seen growth but I'd have to ask how many public high schools or districts, for that matter, have well-funded vocational training.
I also find it a bit defeatist when vocational training programs are focused on training high-school drop outs. A signal society seems to send to young people that only high-school drop-outs and low IQ losers get vocational training. But then we complain that we can't find good trades people. There's been a decades long slide in American education, as a whole, where we view the "trades" as something to be avoided by "smart" people and also the catch-all basket for "dumb" people.
I also would caution people on thinking that job-training for these trades is the answer as well because many companies refuse to train their employees beyond the skill-set the employee has because the mindset is that if they train the person to be the "expert" on the floor, that employee is now worth more and will get snatched by a competitor. Better to go out and hire someone new with the skills you need (at a higher cost to the company) than up-train an existing employee and turn them into a loyal employee because they know the company values them.
There's no quick fix to education. Even with a small renaissance in trade education, its not enough to overcome decades of social biases that the US appears to have baked in.
Am I right that If group differences in academic ability such as race or gender, are environmental and not genetic, then those groups must have the same percentage of genetic variants related to intelligence as the groups that are more academically successful, but severe environmental stressors suppress the expression of those genetic variants.
You don’t have to like or approve of Malcolm and Simone Collins (and I’m not here to defend anyone in particular), but the LA Review article seemed like a smear piece and got a lot of stuff about them wrong. This is relevant because there really is not a progressive case to be made against what they’re doing. You can oppose IVF for religious reasons, or you can oppose creating more embryos than a couple intends to use, but if you accept IVF and you accept that some embryos are going to be discarded, then there is no reasonable objection to selecting the embryos that are less likely to develop cancer, less likely to have depression or schizophrenia, or yes, more likely to be high IQ. It’s weird that progressives use eugenics as a loaded, automatically-discrediting term here, when the founder of Planned Parenthood was an avowed eugenicist. But in any case I think it is stretching the definition much too broadly when it’s applied to Polygenic Embryo Screening (which I personally haven’t done and wouldn’t do, but as currently practiced, is definitely not eugenics).
Like, there is no “engineering” going on there, no gene editing (yet), they are just making a surplus of embryos and using them in an order of priority based on various polygenic scores. This is described in very incendiary, hysterical terms but I fail to see how it’s hurting anyone or has anything to do with racism. The only real issue I could see someone having with it is if you believe human embryos should not be discarded (valid!), but that is a more general problem with IVF.
The fact that there are loud minorities opposed to genetic engineering even for serious diseases ("eugenics!") makes me skeptical indeed that we'll see widespread use of the technology Real Soon Now. Can't have an inch of nice things if it means ceding an ell to the privileged. Which I think is the end rationale for a lot of slate-blankism - overreacting really strongly in the other direction to get as far away from genetic engineering as possible. (Also useful cover for strong societal intervention - if people are 100% environmental, society is liable for every failure as well as every success, which justifies a heavy hand indeed...and intensive parenting, incidentally.) Which is a weird contrast to the correlated bogeyman of "GMOs", justified instead by a naturalistic-fallacy belief that Nature Knows Best and it'd be somehow blasphemous to influence how the chips lie. Even atheists are afraid of playing God.
In a broader view, I think a large component of the quiet-part-out-loud support for genetic differences and related views is the belief that humanity is disproportionately advanced by the effort of the better-endowed. Whether that's intelligence, sports talent, creative juice...it's definitely important to consider how society treats its worst-off. And, sure, the well-off will always be well off in any system. But I think it's not wrong to ask how we maximize the potential of those who have a lot of it, too. Just like the blank slatists say about intelligence - you can have a Mensa IQ and still end up bumming off your parents and Robinhood for a living, if you don't have the other skills required to effectively utilize that intellect, most of which are much more "teachable"/less intrinsic than academic ability. In some sense, meritocracy marks that as a personal failure (shout-out to all the other ashamed college dropouts out there!). But it's a failure for society as well - even for those who do find success, the Ivy-to-McKinsey pipeline is not exactly a crowning jewel of human achievement and societal progress. Lot of potential being wasted there, same as the genius who applies himself primarily towards videogames. I won't argue that neoliberal meritocracy is the *ideal* system for actuating human potential...but it does continue to say a lot that so many of the rest of the world's best and brightest want to come live/work/study/go viral here. Something's going right there, or at least not wrong.
What makes me "skeptical indeed that we'll see widespread use of the technology Real Soon" is that the current state of science and technology does not have the faintest idea how to accomplish a genetic engineering goal that advanced, and that intricately targeted. I've read of no evidence that the geneticists and neurobiologists would even know where to begin with their modifications. They don't even know what to modify in order to elicit the improvements desired (oh, wait- The Brain!) Much less how to do it.
There's a widespread popular conceit that the state of human knowledge has advanced so far that all that remains to be done is to clear up a few loose ends and minor details.
It isn't like that.
It's also practically a certainty that any technology advanced enough to accomplish the goal of optimizing the precursors and vectors of intelligence functions in human brain neurochemistry would be able to accomplish it in almost every human individual subjected to the processes, regardless of their class background, ancestry or phenotype.
I realize that I have no guaranteed proof of that proposition. As I mentioned, the state of the art is a long way from being able to test it. But it stands to reason, shall we say. Enough so that I'd bet on it. I'd bet the farm on it.
So I think your "political" trepidations are not germane. Upgrading intelligence with genetic engineering is not even a thing yet.
Vastly overestimating current medicine and tech is such a constant phenomenon is our moment. I’m surprised Freddie went there with genetic engineering. The world of genetics, or fertility treatments for that matter, is a lot like the AI craze—there’s something there but its so much more basic than anyone wants to think.
Once again a fucking earlier draft was published, GRRRRRRR
I think there ought to be more flexibility and notification about this. Because all I do are "earlier drafts." They aren't finished so much as abandoned for a while, to be picked up again and added to later on. I publish them, and never know if subscribers are notified when they've been updated.
Hey—I sent you an email recently, as a reply to one of your posts. I understand if you don't check those (or if they dead-end somewhere) but I'd like to chat with you about the gut microbiome—a kind of genetic endowment that does not, in fact, lie entirely outside our own control, or at least not for much longer.
Our bacteria are highly heritable but non-"genetic", most of them are unique to the human gut, and they're likely to be responsible for an outsized portion of the recent phenotypic variation that's developed in our species, because evolution happens fastest at the microbial scale.
Rather than trying to explain things like IQ by reaching for hyper-polygenic models, why not consider the other 99% of active protein-coding genes in your body?
Also, to be clear, I'm not just speculating here:
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2021.681485/full
Stephen's Substack is amazing, I've learned so much from it. Would recommend to anyone.
Here’s the short version without all the studies: in every classroom, in every school across the nation and the world, after the first three weeks (probably three days), every teacher knows who the smart kids are, who the middling ones are, and who the slow ones are. And the parents of the students know. And the kids know. And it never changes. Thus, the only possible dream is to organize society so that everyone is rewarded on the basis of doing the best he or she can do within the very real limitations of the possible. As MLK said, the lowliest street sweeper should be told by society that clean streets are very important, and when the street sweeper keeps the streets clean, he or she should take pride in a job well done and the sufficient paycheck that comes with it.
Yes part of what's so frustrating with all of this is knowing that almost no one who argues against natural academic potential actually believes what they're saying
Yes! Perfectly put.
Calling them "the lowliest" isn't the best start in encouraging society towards mutual respect for important roles across the educational spectrum. 😂
Okay, change "lowliest" to "humblest" . . . but true is still true, however the thesaurus is manipulated.
MLK wanted them compared with Michaelangelo and Beethoven.
"If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well."
I agree with MLK. I wouldn't interpret him to mean that street cleaner is a humble trade. But that it can be the most magnificent trade if anybody performs it magnificently.
Just as an intellectual can be a contemptible individual who performs the role in the lowliest fashion.
Sorry to be a pedant. I take your point.
A few years back one of the chefs at a restaurant where I was a regular jokingly suggested I come back and work a few shifts in the kitchen. "You'd get the hang of it," he said, but I couldn't even entertain the idea as a joke. "I'd never do that. I don't want everyone here to hate me."
It's not just that I've never worked in the service industry, but that I've hung out with enough people who have to know that I lack not just the skills but the inclination. I have a weak short term memory and an aversion to memorization. I can handle pressure and being yelled at, buy my attention to detail is highly selective, and I don't like to be rushed. Mostly I just don't care enough about food. I like what I like, but I'm not picky about it. Force me to work in a kitchen and I would learn to be passable, but I'd never be good. I'd always be dragging the people who were actually good down, and I'd never not know it.
"Force me to work in a kitchen and I would learn to be passable, but I'd never be good. I'd always be dragging the people who were actually good down, and I'd never not know it."
Your IQ would have much to do with whether or not you were a passable employee, regardless of your cooking skills.
MLK was an orator (among other things). His job was to inspire. But beckoning street sweepers to perform magnificently is condescending and patronizing, and, it seems to me, ultimately reveals a derision for menial labor. If you have to hyperbolically compare the value of cleaning streets to the greatest artistic geniuses of our time in order to demonstrate your embrace of those workers, then you're not valuing that actual, daily contribution to society.
I think the guy who was assassinated while supporting a sanitation workers strike valued labor.
You’re right. Apologies: my intention was to distinguish MLK making this comparison in a speech to using it here. His job was to inspire with high-flying language and I don’t begrudge: I neglected in my comment above to clarify the distinction.
Perhaps there are some endeavors that no man can find pride in doing better than his fellow man, but if there are, I haven't found it yet.
"If you have to hyperbolically compare the value of cleaning streets to the greatest artistic geniuses of our time... then you're not valuing that actual, daily contribution to society"
I cannot figure out what this could mean, I do not see how this logically follows. He didn't make this speech to demonstrate his embrace of workers (he did that by, as others stated, consistently supporting labor actions), he did it to emphasize an inherent greatness in doing things that are useful and good, and how everyone should approach any such job with the attitude that they can do it magnificently, and feel pride afterward.
If you think that quote "reveals a derision for menial labor" then I hate to see what you think shows appreciation for it
I wasn’t making myself clear and apologize: It wasn’t my intent to criticize MLK. His job was to utter soaring ideas like this one, and I am aware of and applaud his commitment to labor. My point was that that sort of language makes less sense when discussing actual policy in the comments section of this essay, to literally urge street sweepers to perform “magnificence” on the level of the David and Mona Lisa, or pretend that it’s a tangible goal. Street sweeping or plumbing or punching tickets is as noble as practicing law or medicine. Period. You don’t need to be magnificent, and besides, the sheer number of people on this planet—billions of human beings—endeavoring to make a living via their labor, makes “magnificence” an impossible standard by which to value that labor.
Only half-serious but erring on more than less: after the last few years of increased disorder and general neglect for the commons, I'd personally appreciate a competent street sweeper a lot more than any classic artist-legend. Shakespeare's great and all, but the dearth of clean streets free of needles and...organic waste...and illegally dumped trash are a daily tax on myself and millions of others every day. Horatio's philosophy has nothing on good old fashioned elbow grease. Generalize this: Many Such Cases of unappreciated "lowly" jobs which are actually quite important for quality of life. It's hard to savour fine art and other Nice Things amidst a general state of squalor and decay.
You said "I'd personally appreciate a competent street sweeper a lot more than any classic artist-legend."
But it sounds like what you meant was "I would appreciate any street sweepers over having no street sweepers".
It is not clear to me why the "disorder and general neglect for the commons" would increase with artisan sweepers but decrease with merely competent ones?
I did word that ambiguously, sorry - was meant to juxtapose the utility I get out of Michaelangelo (or whoever) vs that of a street sweeper, janitor, housekeeper, what have you...rather than posit some sort of Pareto frontier of cleanliness where excessive sweeping talent actually leads to dirtier surfaces, ceterus paribus. (Although <s>OCD</s> "scrupulosity" levels of conscientiousness often do backfire this way for other tasks, so maybe it's A Thing? Never let the perfect sweep be the enemy of the good sweep?)
The categories aren't really apples-to-apples fungible, of course, since each provides different services...obviously I'd be rather cross if Just Stop Oil someday succeeded at permanently defacing a treasured artwork, or someone whoopsed a time machine assassination and eliminated Baby Shakespeare instead. And I do think a legendary-tier street sweeper would do a superlative job! It'd be amazing if the garbageman from Dilbert handled my street IRL. But it'd be silly to hire Lin-Manuel Miranda to clean toilets, in the same way it'd be silly to hire a car washer to restore the Sistine Chapel. (Although I suspect one of these would be a bigger mistake than the other!) And I feel the dearth of basic civilizational hygiene is a greater problem these days than the missing echelons of art. In *checks calendar* 2019 I might have answered differently...
You can only sweep so well, unfortunately. The ceiling for excellence in menial tasks is low: Michaelangelo can create magnificence, and sweep well, but the sweeper can only sweep well. At some point you're veering towards Harrison Bergeron if you use the same words to describe transcendent art, fantastic works of engineering, and tasks that a child can do well.
The better point is that providing value to society should be respected and the floor should be raised for the quality of material existence so that the sweeper who does do needed work is not in precarity or poverty, while we encourage the next Michaelangelo to rise to excellence and be justly celebrated and rewarded above and beyond the norm.
Thank you for saying this much gooder than me done!
Many replies in this branch of the comments are focused on what society or we personally get from a sweeper tackling the job as if it were the greatest work of art.
It's only a secondary benefit that society is served when a sweep takes pride in their work. Van Gogh had no societal benefit whatsoever in his lifetime but he pursued excellence regardless. For the individual doing the sweeping to be conscientious and proud in their work is of greatest importance to them. It's a measure of society whether we look down our nose at anyone doing that job (or unrecognised art) as easily replaceable or view them with mutual respect.
The president is replaceable and is replaced regularly, that someone else can do a job doesn't make the job lower value.
Those nay-saying the value of street sweeping or questioning whether a magnificent street sweeper has any basis in reality persist in demeaning trades that don't require advanced education. If we agree with the genetic predisposition to education then this advocates a genetic predisposition to being demeaned by society.
There are YouTubers with hundreds of thousands of views simply sweeping and there are artists who never show a single painting. On the bell curve of greatness we might never see a sweeper as famous as Michaelangelo, but that shouldn't stymie the pursuit of excellence or respect for it in either case.
I work in the trades and don't have any educational credentials beyond high school and certifications that I attained though and for my work, so I have a hard time believing that I'm demeaning people by myself with my views.
I think it’s more than a thesaurus issue. There seems to be a strong impulse among certain progressives to condescend to the people they purport to champion.
In the UK, during covid, we stood on our doorsteps and applauded key workers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clap_for_Our_Carers
It was enthusiastically embraced by the majority as a weekly exercise in appreciation, whether they were applauding or being applauded. As it dragged on week after week it became despised by everyone because it was scant reward. Politicians were joining in as a photo opportunity while failing to ensure people were being paid a living a wage. It came to disgust applauders and the applauded who wanted more tangible rewards.
The public were genuinely proud of their family, friends and fellow citizens. The politicians were condescending.
It is not condescending to say that nurses, cleaners, delivery men, factory workers and many other manual, lower educated roles are not "the lowliest". Perhaps MLK became condescending when he went to the other extreme. I think that's by far the better end of the spectrum to tend towards though, especially for a leader who wants to lift all of the people.
I don't think the parents know necessarily. Lake Wobegon effect, and all that.
And I'm no exception. I get to see my 4 children learn, have Eureka! moments, and put together fairly adult concepts quite regularly. When with their peer groups, I see how they usually excel beyond them in many ways (with a big exception athletically). So they all seem quite bright to me. I'm neck deep in Lake Wobegon.
BUT.... at school, one is the top student in the school, one (gifted, with a learning disability) has moderately above average marks, another quite average, and one is slightly below average. Among the 4 of them, their relative performance is almost the opposite of how I'd evaluate their intelligence, inventiveness and non-linear thinking.
So what seems to make for good students as identified by teachers, at least in my children, is diligence and organization. Or maybe I'm so biased I really can't reliably evaluate. I'm really not sure.
I have nothing interesting to add to this post other than to say: YES!
(I used to be a teacher.)
From the press release: "Researchers at the University of York are calling for further exploration of the role DNA could play in predicting educational outcomes."
Evolutionary biology (non-human) is one of the fields I work in. Scientists are so frightened of being compared to Charles Murray or other boogeymen that many shy away from touching this topic. Kathryn Paige Harden is incredibly brave, and made a great decision to get off social media. It may be that the work proceeds quietly in China or elsewhere, but the best researchers and infrastructure are still in western countries where professional incentives are strongly weighted against carrying out these studies. I agree with FdB's longer-term projections of when these genetic association studies will inform genome editing. Interestingly, the Chinese scientist that secretly edited human embryos with a putative HIV-resistance variant (erroneously) is publicly out there saying he will publish his results, but only if a top journal accepts it. He is a pariah now so don't see it coming out - even preprint servers might deny it due to its "dangerous" content. Eventually we may see shifts - on the other hand there is a paper making the rounds written by a researcher in eastern Europe that treated her own cancer with experimental therapies.
Has her decision to get off social media reduced the amount of social media noise responding to her book, do you think (anecdotally)? Assuming that was her goal?
I read her on Twitter and it's hard to separate any individual's decisions from that site's general implosion. The scientific discussions on there are not even 15% of what they were before Musk. But I meant more for her mental health - it's difficult to absorb that level of criticism and have to make the same defenses over and over again. She published the paper below as kind of a mic drop, I guess:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41576-022-00537-x
I love that. Bravo to her for making that choice and sticking to it. I hope more people follow her lead! Thank you so much for sharing!
X has always been utterly worthless, even when it was called Twitter. Her decision to abandon it speaks well of her: she is wiser than anyone foolish enough to play that particular video game.
Not only does the blank slate theory result in callousness to those inevitably left behind, it scars the souls of those who left behind. Imagine being a kid and absorbing the message from parents and teachers and the culture that they just didn’t work hard enough to master gatekeeping and weed out subjects like algebra and chemistry. I was horrified a few years ago when there was a push to make algebra II a HS grad requirement!
Environment is critically important—it’s true. There is a lot of wasted potential in the world because of poverty, malnutrition, pollution, and shitty parents. Every kid has a ceiling but not a floor.
"A common complaint among critics of a genetics-academics link is to ask, why does this matter?"
What about simple curiosity about the universe?
"What can you do with this..."
An utterly impoverished philosophy/way of looking at the world.
The devil is in the details. If and when "natural academic ability" is incorporated into the vast bureaucratic structures of education, what are going to be means and metrics for educating those with lesser natural ability?
No one who is progressive thinks that only the higher IQ students deserve to develop their capacity for flourishing. But precisely because we do live in the grip of neoliberalism, there is a powerful pull toward an impersonal process of efficiently identifying future brain workers, directing resources toward the most capable, and letting the devil take the hindmost––the surplus kids with close to zero probability of working for Raytheon or Google.
Under neoliberalism, "No Child Left Behind" means an absurd, massive machinery of neoliberal testing and sifting. But exactly how would IQ tests aid any effort to resist or reorder neoliberalism? It's possible to conceive a very different world where such tests actually help direct resources to those "left behind," but I don't see how absorbing metrics for innate intelligence into education gets us any closer to that world.
Yup - I think this is why people (myself definitely included) are suspicious of people who claim that academic ability is genetically predetermined.
"it is not only possible but in fact intuitive and evidence-based to believe that individual differences in academic ability are genetically influenced while group differences like racial or gender differences are environmental in origin"
This does not seem particularly logical, more like a brand of hopium. Would you ever say the same thing about an attribute like height?
Assume that IQ is in fact entirely environmental. Right now blacks score lower on IQ tests than other racial groups. What's the argument there: that someday racism will be fixed at a societal level and the children or grandchildren of the current generation will score at the same level as Asian kids on standardized testing?
Where does that leave everybody that's alive today? And where does that leave their kids if it takes 100 years to erase these environmental disparities?
Like him or not Murray thought through all these scenarios, and his conclusions are strikingly similar to King's: people from all walks of life should be respected for their contributions to society and character is not related to intelligence.
You should pretty easily be able to find my thought experiment about obesity in an Amazonian tribe. It's very easy to come up with scenarios where a group difference in a trait is environmental even though there's a genetic component to that trait.
It is indeed easy to come up with scenarios where group differences are environmental, but it's just as easy to come up with scenarios where the underlying dominant factor is truly genetic. Plausibility is not proof, in either direction.
This just all seems so obvious. Compassion to death is what I call it and other forms of choosing to protect feelings over finding ways to materially affect and improve a person's life. If I walk into a modeling agency at 5'3" and am expected to not only compete but get a job modeling at the same rate as someone who is 5'9" because no one wants to tell me that models are only hired above 5'7" does that make it better or worse for me? Do I keep trying? Why? Maybe I'm smarter than all of them and should be focused on opening my own modeling agency. Does that make me less valuable to society? Not in my opinion. We need a society filled with many different qualities and many different skills. We can't fix a problem we refuse to acknowledge and there are many different ways to make it in this world if we agree to respect all levels of talent.
Freddie, this topic is where your work is most needed.
My concern: decades ago, my school system tracked kids and the non-college track had good options, namely preparation for trades. Good jobs were waiting for all who could show up each day ready to work. But today lumber mills and machine shops require programmers, etc. Street sweepers are noisy, monstrous machines that require a whole different set of skills from yesterday.
I believe that a job that enables a person to fit in to society is essential (that includes caring for all who need care). But we just keep erasing whole categories of jobs, caring little about the humans left behind. I worry about this.
I see this concern frequently expressed by those who question the value of teaching trade skills, but I think the concern is expressed in terms that are too absolute. Though there are changes/advances in tools used for every type of job, it is not accurate to say that an electrician before this type of circuit finder came to be used finds his prior skills rendered useless. Workers adapt to these changes all the time and are better able to adapt because of the foundational skills. There obviously are certain instances where one way of doing something is so completely different from an earlier way of doing something that it requires an entirely different set of skills, but those events are less common than people seem to believe.
Jobs are being erased, but they're also being created. For example, in community college there are now job certificate programs for installing solar, many types of IT jobs, automotive work but in different ways. Certified welders coming out of 2 year programs make more than most 4 year college degrees.
My great-grandfather was a horse trader/trainer. It's pretty hard to make a living at that now.
It’s disappointing how often outcome of inequality is conflated with both the influencing factors themselves and the manipulators/exploiters of constructs. This seems to be the crux of misunderstanding in these cases.
I agree that it seems pretty obvious and intuitive to observe that there is latent differentiation between individuals, and there are various inherent and environmental factors that cause this. It seems like some people treat things like intelligence testing as a *construct* instead of as an influencing factor, however. This is where a backwards understanding occurs regarding what the problem at hand is - the identification of observational data is treated as the flaw, not how that data is distorted by reified constructs and manipulated/exploited after it is contextualized.
I’ve seen far too many young musicians think that they are flatly incapable of learning, say, Jazz improvisation. They think they do not have some inherent cognitive ability that would allow them to facilitate that skill. I was one of them once. But the reality is not that people are incapable of developing skills, it’s about *how* they understand and develop said skills and the context in which they are able to facilitate them. This does not neglect genetic aptitude towards specific aspects of communication in a linguistic and musical context. Students should not be treated as if they are arbitrarily incapable of developing a skill due to a vulgar understanding of intelligence nor should they be treated as blank-slates with no variation in skill development or nuance in mental faculties, they should be treated with their inherited conditions considered as background context and provided with adaptive education that allows for variance in skill development.
In the case of public education (especially where adaptive education is far more difficult to implement), intelligence, and socioeconomic conditions - it’s classic that intelligence would be used as the cudgel to calcify both ideologized educational systems and reinforce socioeconomic conditions that benefit the current class system through said education program. Of course intelligence has factors of aptitude that are not entirely separate from education outcomes, but when that is treated as the the flawed construct instead of as an influencing factor, socioeconomic disparity and the labor skills that can be developed in individuals through education programs can be ignored for manipulating/exploiting the actual constructs of social class and fronting pseudoscientific and/or ideological notions of intelligence.
I wonder how much of this is just personality differences, something easily observed even in babies and animals. One students says "oh, I'll never learn to improvise or do calculus, I should quit now" and another says "oh interesting, let me try this new thing out."
150 years? Embryo selection with IVF will very quickly move from avoiding morbidity to embracing socially preferred phenotypes.
I assumed this is already taking place, beyond the publicly known examples, such as gender in some cultures.
150 years seemed bizarre, because most things take far less to go from current-but-fringe to mainstream to dominant and finally mandated-for-safety.
"this conversation tends to be too fixated on the usefulness of genetic testing of individuals and not sufficiently focused on the big picture - the fact that, if every student does not actually have equal potential, the entire foundation of modern educational philosophy has been utterly destabilized. As I put it exactly three years ago, you can define the problem with blank slate thinking in four words: No Child Left Behind."
I don't think IQ tests measure Spearman's "g", so I don't think IQ tests measure what they claim to measure. They measure <i>something</i> valid,- although not, in my opinion, anything as profound as "general intelligence." And I certainly don't believe in the "blank slate", a concept I actually find menacing. I think there are some actual specific biological/neural elements that aid or impede the results on intelligence and performance tests (for example, whatever it is that allows some individuals to have flawless autobiographical recall https://www.brainandlife.org/the-magazine/online-exclusives/web-extra-actress-marilu-henner-helps-researchers-learn-more-about-memory/ Which has to be a plus.) But the way those abilities sum up differs in mysterious ways, and I'm skeptical that summing univariate results with bell-shaped curves provides an accurate assessment of intelligence. Ask the wrong questions, and you won't get the answers you seek.
Freddie, your words: "IQ instruments like the Raven’s Progressive Matrices tests remove language entirely to attempt to minimize cultural influence. (These efforts have not closed perceived gaps.)" Well yes they do, evidently. Perhaps not in terms of "cultural influence" (an imprecise phrase.) But for at least part of the population diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), studies indicate that testing with RPM leads to markedly improved results as compared with the performance of the same individuals on the Weschler. The difference is not trivial.
"We...assessed a broad sample of 38 autistic children on the preeminent test of fluid intelligence, Raven's Progressive Matrices. Their scores were, on average, 30 percentile points, and in some cases more than 70 percentile points, higher than their scores on the Wechsler scales of intelligence. Typically developing control children showed no such discrepancy, and a similar contrast was observed when a sample of autistic adults was compared with a sample of nonautistic adults. We conclude that intelligence has been underestimated in autistics..." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17680932/ From 2007.
(They way I'd put it is that <i>some subset</i> of intelligence <i>abilities</i>" has been underestimated in autistics." Or some subset of people with ASD, anyway. Of what level of diagnosed severity, I can't tell from reading the abstract summary.)
From 2015: " In the current study, verbal children with ASD performed moderately better on the RPM than on the Wechsler scales; children without ASD received higher percentile scores on the Wechsler than on the RPM. Adults with and without ASD received higher percentile scores on the Wechsler than the RPM. Results suggest that the RPM and Wechsler scales measure different aspects of cognitive abilities in verbal individuals with ASD..." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4148695/
(fwiw, I took an RPM test a few years back, and found myself rebelling against the linearity of what was demanded by the questions on the test. I was also tired and out of sorts. I received the lowest score I've ever had on an IQ test. I continue to crush the Weschler and Stanford-Binet. And I nailed the SAT in 1972, although my math score didn't match my verbal score. I actually think my math score has probably improved significantly since them. In high school I rejected higher math as an abstract exercise. But I later embraced it, once it was attached to the practical project of learning electronics.)
Once the conclusions shift toward the narrative that intelligence abilities and tropisms have a plural character, constituted in ways that sum to different strengths, I think that more clear and complete analysis--of a wider array of the aspects--becomes possible. A purview of this sort does not involve embracing a "blank slate" hypothesis for mental abilities. But it does reject the bias toward linearity that is found in a comparison of mental abilities and skill sets to physical attributes that are easily measured, like tallness.
Another problem with focusing on human intelligence is that it gives short shrift to the study of human stupidity, a problem so common in humans as to be all-pervading in some respect or another. That's another problem with Spearman's g; once one is assured that Intelligence is some linear measure of inferiority and superiority, they're prompted to make all sorts of unwarranted assumptions about their own perspicacity in all sorts of realms where they might just be out of their depth. Both ego arrogance and ego insecurity comprise serious impediments to both the activation of intelligence potential and the ability to acknowledge ones own weaknesses and vulnerability to error, and the problematic nature of the Ego ("self-image", subjective conclusions about first-person worth, or what have you) is never really vanquished. Those defaults and design flaws can only be minimized, as the result of properly focused, diligent and continuing effort.
Imagine if the US public education system had not disposed of trade education in high schools. The very classes where kids who are mechanically inclined but don't have the mental fortitude to plod their way through AP math and science classes. Those kids now enter the world with no skills and are essentially left to their own devices to determine what they could be good at. We know why we don't use a similar tracking model for education like Germany because it defeats continuing belief in the blank slate/progressive notion that all kids should go to top-tier colleges to become doctors, lawyers and white-collar professionals. Yet we'll ignore the fact that people who have real-world skills can earn a better living than many of the MFA graduates out there.
We really did lose our way when shop classes went the way of the Dodo for the never-ending insistence that everyone needs to be in a STEM field to be successful and a valuable member of society. At the same time we lament the loss of skilled labor and a continued hollowing out of the manufacturing industries.
It's also a bit ironic that trade education moved out of the high school level of education and became the domain of technical and community colleges. Which is just another way of screening out potentials for trades based on the students' abilities to navigate academic gatekeeping.
The rigidity of some of our social conventions baffles me. Really, as if someone who learns welding or HVAC repair at age 22 could never go on to get a college degree- an advanced college degree in the humanities, even. Or as if undergraduate studies must be completed by age 23, preferably within a fixed span of four years or less. It's like getting hooked to a static line at age 18 and marched out the door. A narrative laid down to favor "the market", to get young people into harness as soon as possible. As with the massive amount of debt often accrued in the process. (I'll reserve my critique of the Prestige University phenomenon for another day.)
The narrowing of liberal arts/humanities/social disciplines to tightly focused studies at the graduate school level also mystifies me. I know people with PhDs and JDs who haven't done any serious amount of nonfiction reading outside of their chosen professional field since they got their bachelors degrees.
Strangely enough, the people I know who tend to have a wide level of general knowledge and interests, as well as skilled hobbies tend to be those that aren't necessarily in the professional classes. I'm not talking about the doctor religiously playing golf on the weekends and gets their sommelier certification because their hobby is wine. I'm talking about the people who went to college for a few years, maybe got a degree and stumbled into a trade career making good money but also know how to frame a house, raise cattle on the side, fix an outboard motor or build furniture but might also read a lot of history.
My undergrad degree took me 5 1/2 years because I took a year off to work as a carpenter before returning to change my degree from engineering to architecture. It was the right choice at the end of the day because over the decades I've worked with a broad swath of people whose skills run the gamut of being talented structural engineers to brick layers and glazers. I've found myself straddling that divide between the professional and blue collar working classes and it's been rewarding in many ways for me.
Yes, the difference between authentic accomplishment and breadth of achievement, vs. Credentialism.
My own formal academic path was much more complicated: five different colleges, years away from the classroom, graduated with a BA at age 37.
But in many ways I was just getting started with skills acquisition. I paid only intermittent attention to physical fitness and exercise until I was over age 50, for example. (The crucial motivator- Lasik surgery! I had previously been legally blind, uncorrected. The result improved not just distance vision but other abilities, like hand-eye coordination.) I had no facility with playing guitar until I was over 60- now I'm much better at it than I ever thought I would be. And that really does feel like a new ability that emerged out of nowhere, because I found some cognitive facility that had never been present before, even though I had tried to learn it. (How "the discipline of psychology" might explain that, I can't say.) Etc.
I'm not going to complain about my advanced age. Too busy digging the Now.
I have to add this: speaking as someone with a degree in cultural anthropology, I don't think anyone majoring in the social disciplines should be allowed to graduate from an American university without demonstrating proficiency in at least one foreign language. That's right, everyone should basically have a minor concentration in at least one language besides English. That way, a BA would be guaranteed to graduate with at least one Practical Skill.
The American Exceptionalist attitude has not served us well, in terms of teaching languages other than English. (The language of Current Hegemony.) Other countries kick our ass up and down the road in that respect. (Consider that at least as late as the 1980s, very few of our ambassadors or high-ranking embassy members in Latin American countries even had a working knowledge of Spanish!)
I agree. I have spent the majority of my work life in the oil industry, around people who have no academic education beyond high school but outearn many college graduates. I have a friend who took every drafting course available in our suburban high school back in the 1970's. Of course, the school system sent the message that everyone should go to college, but a few vocational courses were still available. He had a successful, lifelong career as a draftsman based entirely on that handful of classes. His skills were even more in demand in the 20th century, since computer drafting had become the norm, but people with manual drafting skills were desperately needed to revise or copy drawings done manually in the 20th century.
I once read an Internet post from an English poster who accused the US of intentionally using the SAT and other standardized tests to "exclude certain demos", and said that the obvious solution was for us to use the system used in the the UK and elsewhere, where everyone takes a standardized test around 9th grade or so, and the results determine who goes to an academic high school and who goes to a trade high school.
When in fact, A) the cognitive psychologists have spent decades trying to eliminate cultural biases that might contribute to the embarassing racial differences in standardized test scores, and B) the UK's system would never fly in the US, politically or legally, because those tests, applied here, would probably have disparate outcomes just like the SAT. The population tracked for academic high schools would almost certainly be disproportionately white and asian, and those tracked for the vocational schools would be disproportionately black and latino. And that would never be permitted, even if it was better for the kids.
From what I've read of UK secondary school scholastic performance scores, a disproportionate majority of students on the high-performing track would be female.
"Cognitive psychologists have spent decades trying to eliminate cultural biases that might contribute to the embarassing racial differences in standardized test scores"
I don't view the problem with test scores as one of induced cultural biases; it's just that every one I've ever taken is accurately a test of activated performance on some subset of mental/scholastic skills, not an "intelligence test." I've never seen a question on an "IQ test" that measured the ability to recall a number sequence, for example- and how is that not a mental skill?
How well can an English speaker do on an "IQ" test presented to them in a different language? It depends on how much prior acquaintance they have with that language. Even the RPM test of that subset of intelligence skills known as spatial reasoning uses some verbal language to ask its questions. (Although I'll grant that cultural bias is largely absent. And some other touchpoints, in the process.)
RPM testing does eliminate "cultural bias" from the criteria of its multiple choice options. But I find its demands to be an awful lot of a shoehorn- which is to say that I could compose a very tendentious argument to defend the answer I gave on a given RPM question that was marked "wrong." That dissent would make no reference at all to any sort of "cultural bias."
(I'm also skeptical of your statement that "cognitive psychologists have spent decades trying to eliminate cultural biases..." I want a cite for that- it really took "decades"? How many of them pursued the assignment? Although considering all of the sunk costs of ostensibly high-performing intellects trying to build a fully autonomous unpiloted roadway vehicle without yet achieving success, I guess all sorts of extended efforts at tasks that resist productive result are possible, in the realm of Research. Still...granting a common baseline of language skills required to understand the preliminary test instructions, I think I could figure out how to remove cultural bias from a verbal skills test as a solo project within a matter of weeks.)
I wonder if it had anything to do with the cost of providing the equipment for the shop classes? Can you imagine the cost of the diagnostic machines for auto mechanics?
Here in Oregon, kids age 14 and up can go to community college. It's not free though.
Indeed.It had a great deal to do with the cost of shop class.However, let me say once again as an academic teacher who is also an engineering teacher with a CTE credential (three in fact) that there is lots of funding in high school for all sorts of trade and technical classes.
There is massive funding for high school trade education. Go read up about Perkins funding.
There was never any glorious heyday for trade education. It was always a dumping ground.
The problem with trade education is the expense. Trade education is extremely expensive. And skilled trades still require a considerable I.Q. Colleges have lowered their standards so dramatically that anyone with an I q high enough to be successful in skilled trades is also smart enough to get through college easily.
The people who are left behind by both high school academics and trade are people with I q that will not qualify them to be electricians or plumbers.
I think a lot could be done with on-the-job-training. I've talked to trades people who moan about not being able to find good workers.
I wonder if we are unintentionally raising kids to not be good workers. My daughter was talking about a friend of hers with a 19/20 year old son who works part time, lives at home and doesn't pay rent. A friend of mine does the same with her grandson.
My daughter said its too expensive now for kids to live on their own. But as we discussed it, we figured that minimum wage 20 years ago and renting a room 20 years ago is about the same ratio as it is now. When my daughter majored in billiards and beer ending the school year with a D average she got x amount of time to find a job and first and last months rent on a room. Why learn a trade if you can live at home and all you have to do is pay for your entertainment?
Trade education is expensive but no where near the expense of a generic 4yr humanities degree. Trade education funding has seen growth but I'd have to ask how many public high schools or districts, for that matter, have well-funded vocational training.
I also find it a bit defeatist when vocational training programs are focused on training high-school drop outs. A signal society seems to send to young people that only high-school drop-outs and low IQ losers get vocational training. But then we complain that we can't find good trades people. There's been a decades long slide in American education, as a whole, where we view the "trades" as something to be avoided by "smart" people and also the catch-all basket for "dumb" people.
I also would caution people on thinking that job-training for these trades is the answer as well because many companies refuse to train their employees beyond the skill-set the employee has because the mindset is that if they train the person to be the "expert" on the floor, that employee is now worth more and will get snatched by a competitor. Better to go out and hire someone new with the skills you need (at a higher cost to the company) than up-train an existing employee and turn them into a loyal employee because they know the company values them.
There's no quick fix to education. Even with a small renaissance in trade education, its not enough to overcome decades of social biases that the US appears to have baked in.
Am I right that If group differences in academic ability such as race or gender, are environmental and not genetic, then those groups must have the same percentage of genetic variants related to intelligence as the groups that are more academically successful, but severe environmental stressors suppress the expression of those genetic variants.
You don’t have to like or approve of Malcolm and Simone Collins (and I’m not here to defend anyone in particular), but the LA Review article seemed like a smear piece and got a lot of stuff about them wrong. This is relevant because there really is not a progressive case to be made against what they’re doing. You can oppose IVF for religious reasons, or you can oppose creating more embryos than a couple intends to use, but if you accept IVF and you accept that some embryos are going to be discarded, then there is no reasonable objection to selecting the embryos that are less likely to develop cancer, less likely to have depression or schizophrenia, or yes, more likely to be high IQ. It’s weird that progressives use eugenics as a loaded, automatically-discrediting term here, when the founder of Planned Parenthood was an avowed eugenicist. But in any case I think it is stretching the definition much too broadly when it’s applied to Polygenic Embryo Screening (which I personally haven’t done and wouldn’t do, but as currently practiced, is definitely not eugenics).
Like, there is no “engineering” going on there, no gene editing (yet), they are just making a surplus of embryos and using them in an order of priority based on various polygenic scores. This is described in very incendiary, hysterical terms but I fail to see how it’s hurting anyone or has anything to do with racism. The only real issue I could see someone having with it is if you believe human embryos should not be discarded (valid!), but that is a more general problem with IVF.
The fact that there are loud minorities opposed to genetic engineering even for serious diseases ("eugenics!") makes me skeptical indeed that we'll see widespread use of the technology Real Soon Now. Can't have an inch of nice things if it means ceding an ell to the privileged. Which I think is the end rationale for a lot of slate-blankism - overreacting really strongly in the other direction to get as far away from genetic engineering as possible. (Also useful cover for strong societal intervention - if people are 100% environmental, society is liable for every failure as well as every success, which justifies a heavy hand indeed...and intensive parenting, incidentally.) Which is a weird contrast to the correlated bogeyman of "GMOs", justified instead by a naturalistic-fallacy belief that Nature Knows Best and it'd be somehow blasphemous to influence how the chips lie. Even atheists are afraid of playing God.
In a broader view, I think a large component of the quiet-part-out-loud support for genetic differences and related views is the belief that humanity is disproportionately advanced by the effort of the better-endowed. Whether that's intelligence, sports talent, creative juice...it's definitely important to consider how society treats its worst-off. And, sure, the well-off will always be well off in any system. But I think it's not wrong to ask how we maximize the potential of those who have a lot of it, too. Just like the blank slatists say about intelligence - you can have a Mensa IQ and still end up bumming off your parents and Robinhood for a living, if you don't have the other skills required to effectively utilize that intellect, most of which are much more "teachable"/less intrinsic than academic ability. In some sense, meritocracy marks that as a personal failure (shout-out to all the other ashamed college dropouts out there!). But it's a failure for society as well - even for those who do find success, the Ivy-to-McKinsey pipeline is not exactly a crowning jewel of human achievement and societal progress. Lot of potential being wasted there, same as the genius who applies himself primarily towards videogames. I won't argue that neoliberal meritocracy is the *ideal* system for actuating human potential...but it does continue to say a lot that so many of the rest of the world's best and brightest want to come live/work/study/go viral here. Something's going right there, or at least not wrong.
What makes me "skeptical indeed that we'll see widespread use of the technology Real Soon" is that the current state of science and technology does not have the faintest idea how to accomplish a genetic engineering goal that advanced, and that intricately targeted. I've read of no evidence that the geneticists and neurobiologists would even know where to begin with their modifications. They don't even know what to modify in order to elicit the improvements desired (oh, wait- The Brain!) Much less how to do it.
There's a widespread popular conceit that the state of human knowledge has advanced so far that all that remains to be done is to clear up a few loose ends and minor details.
It isn't like that.
It's also practically a certainty that any technology advanced enough to accomplish the goal of optimizing the precursors and vectors of intelligence functions in human brain neurochemistry would be able to accomplish it in almost every human individual subjected to the processes, regardless of their class background, ancestry or phenotype.
I realize that I have no guaranteed proof of that proposition. As I mentioned, the state of the art is a long way from being able to test it. But it stands to reason, shall we say. Enough so that I'd bet on it. I'd bet the farm on it.
So I think your "political" trepidations are not germane. Upgrading intelligence with genetic engineering is not even a thing yet.
Vastly overestimating current medicine and tech is such a constant phenomenon is our moment. I’m surprised Freddie went there with genetic engineering. The world of genetics, or fertility treatments for that matter, is a lot like the AI craze—there’s something there but its so much more basic than anyone wants to think.