Genes are key to academic success

but why even make different fixed requirement scores and not just the same range for all ethnicities in which you have to be in in that case? is the average private life really a reason for different score requirements? probably not. asian americans make up only 5.6% of the total american population but they make up 25% of the students that are entering harvard in 2023. harvard and other such universities probably just want to ensure that one ethnicity doesn't take over so they stay ethnically diverse. that has bad but also good sides. though if they really just wanted the best it would look different.

The problem with this argument is when there were no Asians being "better", the diversity argument was simply non-existent, and white Americans were 100%.

I am not American, and I am not Asian. But I find highly distressing that a child that deserves, for his/her own merits, to "be there", is just expelled because he is in the "wrong" ethnic group, and instead, others with less merits, "are there" because they are in the "right" ethnic group.

In my opinion, this is simply racism (but a racism that is OK for the "anti-racists").
 
The problem with this argument is when there were no Asians being "better", the diversity argument was simply non-existent, and white Americans were 100%.

I am not American, and I am not Asian. But I find highly distressing that a child that deserves, for his/her own merits, to "be there", is just expelled because he is in the "wrong" ethnic group, and instead, others with less merits, "are there" because they are in the "right" ethnic group.

In my opinion, this is simply racism (but a racism that is OK for the "anti-racists").

as soon as you implement different score requirements, it's racist no matter how you look at it imo. if harvard really looks at a persons private life, and they didn't care about race, there would be no need for a difference in required scores. maybe harvard jusfifies it with an increased diversity at the universities, which leads to higher acceptance and helps to fight racism in the future since different social layers get a chance to climb up the ladder. and an increased diversity might be beneficial for the campus and the scientific community at the university.
 
as soon as you implement different score requirements, it's racist no matter how you look at it imo. if harvard really looks at a persons private life, and they didn't care about race, there would be no need for a difference in required scores. maybe harvard jusfifies it with an increased diversity at the universities, which leads to higher acceptance and helps to fight racism in the future since different social layers get a chance to climb up the ladder. and an increased diversity might be beneficial for the campus and the scientific community at the university.

You are accepting my thesis: there is a good racism, and a bad one. The good racism is against Asians. I cannot believe that anybody would support racism against African-Americans, for example, under the argument of the "future common good".

Also, if you want to do a pros&cons analysis of your proposal of "good racism" for the "future common good" (which I deeply dislike), you also need to take into account the negatives: for example, the resentment of the Asians. Or the possibility they leave the country.

Let me recall most of the geniuses in the world were people with clearly not the skills needed for Harvard nowadays (and I am not one of those!). In the end, the person that will solve big scientific problems will not be a person playing well a given sport, but a deeply committed and intelligent person.
 
Harvard does not owe anybody, anything. They are a private school. They can admit whoever they want. If you want to complain, complain about the legacies and kids of donors or politicians.
Once you are admitted to Harvard you they will not let you fail. They have a stake in admitting people that are successful. I know you think that scientists that win the Nobel Prize are prized at Harvard. But a successful Facebook founder or Microsoft founder will do more for the reputation of Harvard than 10 Nobel prizes for medicine.

As far as East Asians leaving the US, we will survive. And if you have noticed lately, there is a movement to consider national security implications in admitting and or hiring East Asian scientists, particularly Chinese.
 
Harvard gets Federal Research Grants (my money 😡) and other perks.

Harvard owes me!
 
Hot off the presses...sort of. :)

"The heritability of intelligence increases linearly from around 20% in infancy to 40 to 50% in adolescence, then 60% in young adulthood, upward to 80% (or even higher) in later adulthood, but probably declines somewhat after age 80./ The full effect of heritabilty occurs by mid-adulthood. This is due to something called the “Wilson Effect” -- a tenet of behavior genetics that, as people age, their genes exert more influence over IQ, and the influence of environmental factors decreases.

https://twitter.com/a_centrism/status/1183214965114712064

It seems the debate is over. Now, we have to make sure the data isn't used for nefarious purposes.
 

From the university of California:

Of those factors, moreover, race has become the strongest predictor. Rather than declining in salience, race and ethnicity are now more important than either family income or parental education in accounting for test score differences.

As people have stated before, if you want to have high IQ kids, marry somebody who comes from a high IQ family.

Bangladesh is doing the opposite of Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley schools that the tech geniuses are sending their kids to, are removing technology from the classroom and teaching them the old fashion way. They recognize that face to face and paper and pen are far more valuable to their kids than technology.

https://www.businessinsider.fr/us/s...-raising-their-kids-tech-free-red-flag-2018-2

I was telling those in Bangladesh on a forum that simply giving their kids technology will not impart high IQs onto them, technology is a tool, not some panacea to solve education problems. For it made the news that Bangladesh wants to give every student a tablet to learn, and having this technology they think should improve grades. If somebody has difficulty learning from books, technology is not going to solve the problem. With technology, you have access to more information, so yes, technology is great, it destroys old false beliefs because the amount of facts you have at your fingertips. But those who excelled without technology will excel with technology. If you were not interested in learning with books, simply having a tablet is not going to raise IQs.
 
As for the following, it's not only vastly incorrect, but it's bizarre. By that standard Germans should have low IQs.

Europeans get no prizes for being humane. For goodness sakes, the Balkan Wars with their mass rape as a tactic of war and their genocide and ethnic cleansing was barely thirty years ago, World War II seventy years ago. I still have some ancient aunts who lived through it. Don't tell me how civilized Germans are. It wasn't just the SS who burned my people alive in their churches. It was the Wehrmacht too. And most of them got away with it. My own people did their share. What is humane in bombing Ethiopian villagers in their huts?

Please.

Messier:

Christianity for 2000 years sort of tamed barbarism. Allowing Universities to rise and learning and technology to grow. The Church both flourished learning and stifled learning (as was the case of Galileo), but the barbarians that the 'civilized' Romans could not tame were tamed by a religion, which allowed the continuation of Near East and Greco-Roman learning to carry on during the Middle Ages, causing the Industrial Revolution and nearly everything that we think about as modern life.

But as Christianity waned, barbarism returned, as was the case of occult Nazis Germany. The barbarians returned to their ways. The rise of the 'far right' is the continuation of the return.
 
@salento
We both know that any college Ivy league or not is a business and their primary goal is to make money. If it's more profitable to admit people with 2.5 GPA's or chipmunks they will gladly do so.

The majority of the classes i took in college/University taught me how to waste money and time learning
nothing ill ever need to know to excel in the profession I wanted
 
I completely agree with your post number 47, and partly agree with post number 48.

Where I differ as to the latter is that Christianity either wasn't able to completely tame the beast or actively encouraged him, i.e. the slaughter even of Christians in the Near East during the Crusades, as well, of course, as the near genocide of the Jews in Central Europe, the Albigensian Crusade, etc. Even World War I, which destroyed an entire generation of young men, and was, I think, even bloodier than World War II, was fought with each European country sure that God was on their side.

I will concede that the two worst ideologies ever to spring from the culture of the West, Nazism and Communism, were both atheistic and were sworn enemies of Christianity.

For me, all it proves is what the good sisters taught me: there is no human endeavor or institution which isn't flawed, because they are created by men and men are fatally flawed, men in the universal sense of humankind, of course. :) So, the Church is not, was not, and never could be perfect, as there are no perfect Christians, and never were. It's an aspiration for believers, not an achieved goal.
 
@salento
We both know that any college Ivy league or not is a business and their primary goal is to make money. If it's more profitable to admit people with 2.5 GPA's or chipmunks they will gladly do so.

The majority of the classes i took in college/University taught me how to waste money and time learning
nothing ill ever need to know to excel in the profession I wanted

I don't think you wasted your money by attending classes unrelated to your Profession.

Besides making money, the main goal of your College was to teach you the basic subject of the career you chose, and to give you a decent General Education.

One can be efficient in math or IT languages, but he/she must also be capable of having a high level conversation in a variety of subjects, and be able to write a comprehensive grammatically perfect letter.

You also want to sound educated when you talk to people, they'll take you more seriously, Smarty Pants :)
 
Hot off the presses...sort of. :)

"The heritability of intelligence increases linearly from around 20% in infancy to 40 to 50% in adolescence, then 60% in young adulthood, upward to 80% (or even higher) in later adulthood, but probably declines somewhat after age 80./ The full effect of heritabilty occurs by mid-adulthood. This is due to something called the “Wilson Effect” -- a tenet of behavior genetics that, as people age, their genes exert more influence over IQ, and the influence of environmental factors decreases.

https://twitter.com/a_centrism/status/1183214965114712064

It seems the debate is over. Now, we have to make sure the data isn't used for nefarious purposes.

the debate is far from over. explain how the average iq in the west was able to increase by 0.3 points every year since the 1930's?

your link leads to twitter profile named "a new radical centrism" with the description "1/ A Daily Thread of Rough Draft Excerpts From an Article I'm Writing on Race and IQ." and there are lots of other posts about race.
but i think high heritability does not mean that the environment has a weaker effect than with low heritability so these results have little value for a discussion about race. so we see, the data is already beeing misused.
 
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You just don't want to accept that you're not going to change someone's IQ by early intervention or playing Mozart to children or reading to them at two. The latter worked for me, and I started reading at about four. That's rare, however. Even my brother didn't read until four almost five, although he was always better than I am at math.

It is what it is. Even by the studies you quoted it's 50-60% heritable. That's why all those tens of millions spent on Head Start have been a total waste of time and money.

Your last sentence is a jumble, but I'll try to respond to what I think you mean. As all the identical twin studies have shown time and time again, home environment has a very small effect. Ask the parents of adopted children. There's even a very recent paper on IQ in Africa which shows the same thing.

The legitimate question is: what then accounts for the remaining percentage if it isn't home environment or the classroom, which have both been shown to have minimum impact. I'm leaning toward the idea it may be something in the in utero environment, or epigenetics. They certainly should be investigated.

I don't see any point in continuing the discussion. If you don't want to accept the scientific evidence, don't. It's still a free country, sort of...
 
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You just don't want to accept that you're not going to change someone's IQ by early intervention or playing Mozart to children or reading to them at two. The latter worked for me, and I started reading at about four. That's rare, however. Even my brother didn't read until four almost five, although he was always better than I am at math.
8
good for you (heritability is lowest during early childhood btw so it might not even be that rare with given similar environment), but what exactly makes you think that i don't accept scientific evidence? you can't use the heritability numbers of the study in question for a discussion about iq differences between racial groups. so the person from twitter is misusing the data. it seems like the person doesn't understand heritability.
i never said there is no correlation between genes and iq but the discussion is far from over.

and explain how the average iq was able to increase by 0.3% every year? only because of genetic reasons?


"The legitimate question is: what then accounts for the remaining percentage if it isn't home environment or the classroom, which have both been shown to have minimum impact. I'm leaning toward the idea it may be something in the in utero environment, or epigenetics. They certainly should be investigated."

it could be epigenetics, uterus environment but it could also just be random effects for example.
 
good for you but what exactly makes you think that i don't accept scientific evidence? you can't use the heritability numbers of the study in question for a discussion about iq differences between racial groups. so the person from twitter is misusing the data. it seems like the person doesn't understand heritability.
i never said there is no correlation between genes and iq but the discussion is far from over.

and explain how the average iq was able to increase by 0.3% every year? only because of genetic reasons?




it could be epigenetics, uterus environment but it could also just be random effects for example.

Last comment.

Real IQ tests require a one on one interaction with an educational psychologist and take at least 6-8 hours to complete.

The pen and ink, or now, computer tests, (NOT the ones with 20 questions you can take online, but the kind administered in schools), aren't as accurate, and rely far more on learned abilities. If a paper is tracking changes in IQ over time the latter kind of test may be measuring more than just raw ability. In the same way, SAT scores are not really synonymous with IQ, because you can't do a verbal analogy without having learned the meaning of the words, or a trigonometry problem without having taken trigonometry. Of course, it's a rough indication, because if you don't have a certain level of cognitive function, you can't learn those things.

The one on one hours long test is a much better approximation of IQ.

I never said the particular study I was discussing said anything about race. I was talking about IQ in general. However, there are plenty of papers which do study it. All you have to do is read them. I would guard against relying upon any work by Lynn, however. His methodology was shockingly poor, mixing all sorts of testing, and not strictly IQ testing, and he even used what he called "approximations", if you can believe it.
 
Real IQ tests require a one on one interaction with an educational psychologist and take at least 6-8 hours to complete.

That is like the one I took, when I was in 2nd grade. My parents took me to be evaluated by a professional, at a hospital.

He asked me a series of questions, as well as to draw a picture of my family. I recall, one of the questions, was if I could explain what hieroglyphics were.
 
Last comment.

Real IQ tests require a one on one interaction with an educational psychologist and take at least 6-8 hours to complete.

The pen and ink, or now, computer tests, (NOT the ones with 20 questions you can take online, but the kind administered in schools), aren't as accurate, and rely far more on learned abilities. If a paper is tracking changes in IQ over time the latter kind of test may be measuring more than just raw ability. In the same way, SAT scores are not really synonymous with IQ, because you can't do a verbal analogy without having learned the meaning of the words, or a trigonometry problem without having taken trigonometry. Of course, it's a rough indication, because if you don't have a certain level of cognitive function, you can't learn those things.

The one on one hours long test is a much better approximation of IQ.

I never said the particular study I was discussing said anything about race. I was talking about IQ in general. However, there are plenty of papers which do study it. All you have to do is read them. I would guard against relying upon any work by Lynn, however. His methodology was shockingly poor, mixing all sorts of testing, and not strictly IQ testing, and he even used what he called "approximations", if you can believe it.

so your answer fo the increasing average iq over the last few years is a change in iq test quality and wrong methodology? i can't argue against that since i'm no expert but it seems that this is not the case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#Proposed_explanations
"because children attend school longer now and have become much more familiar with the testing of school-related material, one might expect the greatest gains to occur on such school content-related tests as vocabulary, arithmetic or general information. Just the opposite is the case: abilities such as these have experienced relatively small gains and even occasional decreases over the years. Meta-analytic findings indicate that Flynn effects occur for tests assessing both fluid and crystallized abilities. For example, Dutch conscripts gained 21 points during only 30 years, or 7 points per decade, between 1952 and 1982.[11]"

it could be that your raw ability like for example spatial thinking can be increased through practice too.
about race and iq there are indeed plenty of papers but their conclusions all vary.
 
so your answer fo the increasing average iq over the last few years is a change in iq test quality and wrong methodology? i can't argue against that since i'm no expert but it seems that this is not the case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#Proposed_explanations
"because children attend school longer now and have become much more familiar with the testing of school-related material, one might expect the greatest gains to occur on such school content-related tests as vocabulary, arithmetic or general information. Just the opposite is the case: abilities such as these have experienced relatively small gains and even occasional decreases over the years. Meta-analytic findings indicate that Flynn effects occur for tests assessing both fluid and crystallized abilities. For example, Dutch conscripts gained 21 points during only 30 years, or 7 points per decade, between 1952 and 1982.[11]"

it could be that your raw ability like for example spatial thinking can be increased through practice too.
about race and iq there are indeed plenty of papers but their conclusions all vary.

The ones with good methodology, large numbers of samples, etc. all come to the same conclusion. There are differences in IQ by continent wide "breeding" groups, to use the approved terminology.

You won't be persuaded, so there's no point in continuing.
 
It should also be noted that the stultifying rigidness of lower-IQ individuals in academic administrations are a detriment to society as a whole. But I guess, paying people not to think, but to do, is how left-wing policies are exacted. They're like petty dictators at the cash register, that don't want to give you the sale, until the manager has to step in.

I remember having to deal with admins was an absolute nightmare. These people obviously don't care about their tasks, and are only there to collect a paycheck.
 
It should also be noted that the stultifying rigidness of lower-IQ individuals in academic administrations are a detriment to society as a whole. But I guess, paying people not to think, but to do, is how left-wing policies are exacted. They're like petty dictators at the cash register, that don't want to give you the sale, until the manager has to step in.

I remember having to deal with admins was an absolute nightmare. These people obviously don't care about their tasks, and are only there to collect a paycheck.

I know there will be massive upheaval in the future, due to automations. But I find myself caring less, and less about what will become of people who will no longer have utility.
 

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