<p>From the NYTimes</p>
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<p>Read rest here: <a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/books/review/Holt-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/books/review/Holt-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0</a></p>
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<p>No it’s not.</p>
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<p>No it’s not.</p>
<p>Ah, the weekly “blacks are less intelligent” thread. I was getting worried there-hadn’t seen one in a few days (insert intense sarcasm here).</p>
<p>This kind of thinking tangles together a bunch of important and extremely different threads.</p>
<p>First, of course intelligence is hereditary. Duh. Nutrition matters. Other things matter but you are largely a bunch of traits inherited from your family trees and that includes things like athletic ability, math ability, language learning ability. </p>
<p>Second, there is some validity in a concept like G. It’s an abstraction of a significantly complicated set of attributes and processes, sort of like using a single financial measure to represent the entire US or world economy. Interesting but not always meaningful and clearly not very reflective of the way the attributes and processes function and matter from time to time. Maybe it’s sometimes more accurate and maybe it’s sometimes entirely useless as a measure. So if people ask if G has meaning, ask them if any abstraction has meaning. They do, so G does. But it has exactly the same limitations as other abstractions.</p>
<p>Third, the idea - the lousy idea - is that heredity can be extended to large groups. It can’t. That is fundamental to the material processes of human development, meaning evolution. We share certain very loose racial characteristics - maybe a susceptibility to a vitamin deficiency or a particular syndrome - but racial character is a broad aggregate, almost to the level of an abstraction (except it’s in at least some sense “real”). The idea, for example, that Asian skin and hair reflects a genetic level of intelligence is hilariously bad. The same is true of Jews, a much smaller group: for whatever level of mitrochondrial connections among Jews, there is absolutely no way to link those small bits to something as deeply complicated as mental acuity. It’s as stupid as believing that striking an absurdly diluted solution 10 times against a leather padded surface creates a memory in the substance of what was at one time added to that solution though not a single molecule of that substance exists in it. Science operates by specificity so what exactly is the specific way by which the minor genetics, diluted over many centuries but retaining an actual (as opposed to homeopathy’s zilch) memory, relates to the highly complicated processes of thinking and learning and doing? There is no possible way of answering that question rigorously. None. It’s science fiction.</p>
<p>Fourth, there is a well-described fallacy of using successful outcomes to determine ex post facto the cause. This sports team wins so therefore the way to win is the way this sports team wins. No. It just happens that is how they win. This investor made money using this system, so therefore that is the best system to use. No. It happened that it worked for this person then in that context and in that particular order in which it occurred. So point at Jews and say they are successful and they are limited in number and point at Asians because, at least to Westerners, they can be grouped as one - which is pathetic in reality - and induce the cause: it must be because they’re Jews and Asians. Voila! QED! No, it’s more reductio ad absurdam.</p>
<p>This article actually refutes the idea that intelligence is based mostly on genes. </p>
<p>The author begins with the arguments of those who believe in innate intelligence, and then he spends the rest of the article refuting those claims. He strongly argues that environment is the largest determinant. </p>
<p>I originally quoted three paragraphs, but it seems like one paragraph is the maximum that I’m allowed to post.</p>
<p>It is not at all easy to separate environment from genetics. I’ve looked at the twin studies, which are necessarily limited because you need identicals raised in sufficiently different environments with minimal influence from other factors (like the luck of injury). And even then, it’s hard.</p>
<p>And I would say intelligence testing does a crappy job - G is an abstraction - of distinguishing between innate and environmental. And even then if we’re talking within normal ranges, then one may only be “measuring” the degree to which the environment brought out the underlying abilities. </p>
<p>So yeah. But no. Intelligence is hereditary but how it is realized is dramatically affected by environment. And culture.</p>