This is misleading. Anyone who wants to learn about IQ should Google it. It's the most replicated finding in psychology, and any questions you have about twins or groups with similar or different genes have probably been investigated. There is a lot of noise online in the form of commentary about IQ, so it's important to look at actual data if you are skeptical/curious.

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robwwilliams 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Not sure what you mean precisely. Yes lots if work in IQ, but that does not mean there is a grand consensus. I am a geneticist who studies cognitive function. The single most common misunderstanding about estimates of heritability is that a high heritability implies full genetic causation without potential malleability. That is total wrong. Heritability is always measured in the context of Environment X. If you change to Environment Y or Z then the heritability will often change greatly.

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EnPissant 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Heritability is always measured in the context of Environment X. If you change to Environment Y or Z then the heritability will often change greatly.

That's not a very meaningful statement. If you took two twins and severely malnourished one of them it would not be useful to say: "See! IQ is mostly environmental!".

You have to assume some kind of baseline environment that nearly everyone will share, and that can be full-filled just by the virtue of growing up in a country like America. Otherwise, you are just concerning yourself with insignificant outliers.

Here is a twin study that places the heritability at ~80%: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/twin-research-and-hu...

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robwwilliams 3 days ago | parent [-]

Wow, a baseline environment everyone in America shares. Come visit Memphis.

	▲	EnPissant 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Do you think that twin study included any children raised in a Memphis ghetto?

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cakealert 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Unfortunately most of the malleability is non-systematic (can't be engineered by a third party). Which means it's caused by the nonlinear dynamics between the genes and environment.

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hirvi74 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

As a geneticist who studies cognitive function, if you get a moment, do you mind reading this blog [1] and stating if you think it's factually correct or not? My genes are too poor, and thus, my IQ is likely too low for me to be certain I can trust my own opinions on the matter.

[1] http://bactra.org/weblog/520.html

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hirvi74 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> It's the most replicated finding in psychology

Why would it not be? It's not like intelligence was some sort of unknown intrinsic discovery that psychologist happened to uncover. Intelligence was defined and the tests were created to support the definition.

I've done quite a lot of personal, hobby-research on this subject, and I remain convinced that IQ deserves to be met with a lot of skepticism and controversy. I do believe the tests measure something insofar that all tests measure something, but I am not certain that either intelligence, or at least intelligence alone, is the only thing being measured on those tests.

Not to mention, with over one hundred years of intelligence research, what good has actually come from the field? Historically, there was plenty of racism, eugenics, and the furthering of certain political agendas that have come from intelligence research. Again, whose life has actually been improved from this research? Has IQ positively contributed to the field of education? Has the research helped increase human quality of life and happiness? Of course, leave it to psychology -- its most "robust and replicated finding" is, essentially, useless.

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briHass 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

One that jumps immediately to mind is IQ testing used for epidemiology, such as exposure to toxins and the effects on children. IQ tests were used in the original study (Phillip Landrigan) used to show how leaded gasoline causes cognitive imparement in children. For things that cause sub-clinical imparement, you need a way to test for lowered intelligence, that doesn't rise to disability level.

That's a few million, if not billion people who's lives have been improved by having IQ tests that were used to force environmental regulation worldwide.

	▲	hirvi74 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		The trends of removing lead from gasoline and such were already happening prior to IQ being used as evidence. In fact, the only way IQ could be used as evidence would be for the lead to already have started to be removed. So, using IQ for such was a data point, but it was not the cause of the movement.

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Jensson 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Again, whose life has actually been improved from this research?

IQ showed there were tons of poor people with high IQ and thus it was worth providing higher schooling to poor people, that is a big one. Without IQ research people would just argue all poor people are dumb, but you can't do that now since we have proof that they aren't, they are just uneducated.

Another group it helped massively was women, without IQ tests do you really think women would get into higher education that quickly? IQ tests proved women weren't dumber than men, something people have long believed.

If you think its bad that women and poor people today are allowed to get higher education, then sure IQ just had bad consequences, but I feel most think those are good things.

	▲	hirvi74 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		> Without IQ research people would just argue all poor people are dumb I do not believe that this was true without evidence. > do you really think women would get into higher education that quickly? Yes. I believe WWII played a much larger role in this, i.e., men being off to war and many women filling traditional men's roles sufficed as proof that women were capable of many of the same tasks men were.

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ants_everywhere 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Anyone who wants to learn about IQ should Google it

This is bad advice because Google returns poor results for most medical questions, including ones about controversial topics like IQ.

IQ was adopted as a pet cause by hard right wing political theorists, for example one of the authors of the Bell Curve.

When I was in grad school for psych, nobody serious studied it. Occasionally one person was still working on it, and everybody in the department whispered about them being a kook. This was at an elite psych department, it may have been different in smaller departments.

Often times if you see someone posting information about IQ it's either (1) they're selling IQ tests, (2) they're selling services that administer IQ tests, or (3) they align with a political faction that politicizes IQ.

If you want to learn about IQ, the best thing is probably to find a recent review article published by a top tier journal that does not specialize in IQ research.

My take the last time I looked into it was that it helps locate people who have learning disabilities, but it's not great at predicting individual outcomes.

The measure most people intuitively think of is correlation of IQ with success, keeping SES constant and throwing out the lowest range of IQ. That is, you want to know the incremental benefit of having a higher IQ given that you're not suffering from a learning disability. And you also don't want to accidentally measure the obvious impact that having more money gives you more opportunities.

When you make these adjustments it quickly becomes clear that IQ is much messier than people in this thread are claiming. For example, heritability varies by SES. And heritability is generally not what people think it is naively.