Genes are key to academic success

I didn't want to return to this topic, but I want to make something crystal clear.

I do believe that a good portion of what people achieve is the result of inherited capabilities of all kinds. So, not genetic determinism, but certainly scales weighted by genetics. That's evolutionary genetics at work. For me, it's a fact.

Do I think it's fair? No, I absolutely don't, but life is never, ever fair. Do I wish it were different? Yes, I absolutely do. Facts are sometimes extremely unpalatable.

I'll point to one example with which I'm deeply familiar: the judicial system. One reason I got out of criminal law is because it became increasingly clear to me that while certain people clearly had to be incarcerated for the good of the community as a whole, their propensity to crime had a great deal to do with factors beyond their control, including low IQ, mental health disorders of one kind or another, and horrific rearing situations. All you have to do to realize that is to look at statistics on prison populations. The number of high intelligence, well adjusted people without mental health issues is a small percentage of that population, and usually to be found in the prisons mostly for white collar criminals. As for the inmates in the "hard core" prisons, which house the vast majority of inmates, it's a completely different story, and, to make the situation even more horrific, for them and for society as a whole, I didn't and don't see any way to "rehabilitate" them. I have little hope that any of them can be rehabilitated.

What, however, is the solution, in terms of economic and political systems? What system will create the greatest good for the greatest number?

To me, it's beyond clear that given human nature, which is again "baked" into our dna, imo, capable people will not perform optimally if there is not a commensurate reward for their efforts. If they get paid X for their hard work, but a lazy or just not as capable person gets paid the same X, they'll slack off. Total production will go down.

Therefore, from my perspective, a capitalist system produces the most goods and services overall. Just look at the most "strict" Marxist/Socialist countries, like the old Soviet Union, the old Eastern Bloc countries, Cuba, Venezuela, to mention just a few. They just didn't and don't work economically, and everyone suffers economically.

What, however, to do about the portion of the population which just "isn't" capable, for cognitive, mental health reasons etc. If anyone thinks I'm a social Darwinian who believes, well, let them just sink, you don't know me. I think it's tragic. Of course I don't want anyone to starve or die for lack of medical attention. Out of sheer compassion for our fellow human beings, there has to be a "safety net" to protect them. It can't, however, be so equalizing that the producers stop producing, because then there is nothing, or at least far less, for everyone to share.

What is the solution, however? I can tell you that this country has spent trillions trying to raise our "underclass" out of poverty, and trying to increase their performance cognitively. It just DOESN'T work. That's the reality that the far leftist wing of people in this country just won't or can't accept. It's not a plot to keep these people down. It's not racial discrimination anymore, or lack of opportunity for people growing up poor white in rural Appalachia. It's genetics.

In the Europe of the past, with its more homogeneous populations, providing a higher standard of living for the bottom percentage of the population, in effect gifting it to them, was doable without destroying the economy because there were just fewer of them. From what I can see, with the growth of that "less capable" part of the population in these countries, attitudes are changing. It's natural, and, human nature again. It doesn't take a math genius to realize that these social welfare programs are starting to overstrain the system. You can't spend more money on social services when less money is coming in because the number of producers is going down.

The extraordinary thing to me is that, given the size of our underclass, much larger than that in any European country, we've been able to do as much as we have. However the media may portray things, there is a "safety net" in the U.S., even if the benefits of the social service programs is not as good as in Europe. No one with the intelligence and mental health to apply for social services will starve, or lack housing, or even lack medical care, because, in the latter case, they either go on Medicaid or go to emergency rooms which are not allowed to turn them away. It's the "working poor" who have to be taken care of in terms of medical care.

What really worries me is that given a very near future when machines will take away virtually not only most manual labor, but computers will take away most lower level white collar work, the proportion of the population which isn't "capable" enough to function optimally in society will be ever smaller.

I can't see a long term solution other than genetic engineering, which would in effect be the disproportionately allocated high IQ people figuring out a way to even the playing field genetically for low IQ impaired people.

One other point: I believe Marxism is inherently anti-democratic and fascistic, as well as completely wrong about economics. I know of no strictly socialist country which ever had either a thriving economy or a society which respected human rights. I don't trust people who espouse Marxist ideology, and I don't want them in control of my country. I've heard what they plan from their own mouths as far back as the late 70s. That's when they don't know there are recording devices around, of course. Nor can I stomach the "WOKE" mentality which is part of the package.

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Now, I really am out.

I believe that people are not equal talented or gifted. So people are inherent not equal. For me the outcomes of a social system doesn't have to be equal. But please moderate, with prudence. I prefer a social system in which also low and moderate talented people have a chance to have a decent living. All a matter of social fairness/decency. The middle class needs to be broad as possible.

And that's always a matter of choices. Yes small homegenous countries have it more easy in this respect, but the US has shown in the past (with the New Deal for example) that a broadening of the middle class is possible! IMO it's a matter of ideological harshness to deny that it's possible.

And an example (omg here he comes again with his Dutchies ;) But this is an illustrative example. Do you know who are the biggest agricultural exporteurs in the world:
1. US
2. The Netherlands.

Yes indeed....now take a make map of the world, see the scale of the Netherlands and the scale of the US...... ROFLOL I guess it's not necessarily to say how incredible efficient and intensive the Dutch agricultural sector is.

So an in your eyes "Socialist" economy like the Netherlands is as productive and competative as you can imagine....was the world agricultural sector organized like the Dutch one then there was no food problem in the world (and yes this has it's giga side effects).

So social responsibility and high effective can go together.....

https://humboldt.global/top-agricultural-exporters/
 
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I guess anything is possible when you are using someone else's money to pay for it...

Breaking thought. I must correct myself I see that some claim that Trump has an IQ of 156 (99,99% of the world scores lower).....indeed in a meritocratic society the people with the highest position have always the highest IQ.....how could I overlook such a prove!

https://www.salon.com/2019/12/30/pr...ng-that-his-iq-is-156-at-the-minimum_partner/

:grin:

That's a garbage "news" outlet they infamously tried to apologize, and normalize pedophilia.
 
@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 see.

👋 .... . .-.. .-.. ---
 
I have a very limited vocabulary even in my own native language I don't use long figurative speeches. I always keep it short and simple. Don't know if genes play a role into that, I think it is probably environmental in my case.

Either what is interesting that I was really good at Maths (especially Calculus), but it took me way longer than my friends in other High School fields to memorize the text, like in Biology.
Now that might be genetic, I did not actually see those things, I just learnt it by heart without knowing what I am talking about in most cases. But still I think I strugle to memorize the text even when I am understanding it logically compared to the averange population, but not as much.
 
Is Albanian written phonetically?
 
Yes it is very easy.
I am talking when someone writes an entire huge paragraph for something that can be said in one line.

I ask because countries where the writing is phonetic almost always report low levels of dyslexia, but it may still be present.

However, if you learned to read very quickly it wouldn't apply.

It just may mean that your verbal and spatial abilities (the latter related to math) may have a higher differential than is common in most people, whose scores are usually similar.

That's what happened in my family; my brother got a perfect 800 on the math Sats, and I got an 800 in the verbal. We both got in the low 700s for the other half. Of course, we didn't have parents who even knew that there were courses you could take to prepare for the tests. My brother only started reading a lot when he hit his late 20s. It's as if verbal abilities developed later in him.

I'm not comparing him to Einstein, but that was the case with him. Einstein said he spoke very late, had difficulty learning to read, and developed an appreciation for language rather late.

There's also the male female differential with more men scoring at the top levels of math ability and women at the verbal abilities. Since most IQ tests are skewed toward numbers and spatial abilities, it's my personal opinion that's the reason the highest point of the curve for IQ has more men in it.

My brother, who is a mathematician and a mechanical engineer, is often very scornful of the IQ of most doctors because so much of it is memorization. Yet, he can't do it. I think it's because he can't "visualize" strings of letters and words the way he can visualize the kind of a graph that would result if certain numbers are put into an equation.

It's all chance; a roll of the genetic dice.

There aren't very many good lawyers in the U.S. Congress, but there are a few. When those few have someone like Mark Zuckerberg in front of them they can make him look educable retarded in about five minutes. Of course, they can't do what he can do.

We're all different. As I said, just the roll of the genetic dice.
 
I ask because countries where the writing is phonetic almost always report low levels of dyslexia, but it may still be present.

However, if you learned to read very quickly it wouldn't apply.

It just may mean that your verbal and spatial abilities (the latter related to math) may have a higher differential than is common in most people, whose scores are usually similar.

That's what happened in my family; my brother got a perfect 800 on the math Sats, and I got an 800 in the verbal. We both got in the low 700s for the other half. Of course, we didn't have parents who even knew that there were courses you could take to prepare for the tests. My brother only started reading a lot when he hit his late 20s. It's as if verbal abilities developed later in him.

I'm not comparing him to Einstein, but that was the case with him. Einstein said he spoke very late, had difficulty learning to read, and developed an appreciation for language rather late.

There's also the male female differential with more men scoring at the top levels of math ability and women at the verbal abilities. Since most IQ tests are skewed toward numbers and spatial abilities, it's my personal opinion that's the reason the highest point of the curve for IQ has more men in it.

My brother, who is a mathematician and a mechanical engineer, is often very scornful of the IQ of most doctors because so much of it is memorization. Yet, he can't do it. I think it's because he can't "visualize" strings of letters and words the way he can visualize the kind of a graph that would result if certain numbers are put into an equation.

It's all chance; a roll of the genetic dice.

There aren't very many good lawyers in the U.S. Congress, but there are a few. When those few have someone like Mark Zuckerberg in front of them they can make him look educable retarded in about five minutes. Of course, they can't do what he can do.

We're all different. As I said, just the roll of the genetic dice.

I am going to be a Mathematican too. Even though I am a third worlder so I don't know how my University courses actually look like to American universities, definitely weaker but I don't know by how much. Anyways I have been using a book of Combinatorics written by Asian-Americans, even though it contains hunderds of different combinatorical problems only a small fraction of them are needed for me and my course. But I can see how deep and hard it is, some of those problems were in international contests. It mostly logic it contains very little tricks or formulas or whatever you call them, I mean you can even understand some of those problems when you see the solutions (sometimes) but the key is to come up with the idea yourself and that is where the genes play a role. I don't really like this fact, but I know concrete examples.

When I started High School I was really bad at Math due to my own preparation, and a close friend of mine was pretty good at it. We had the same class and I worked really hard to win my "base", which I did. By the time passed I started to suspect that I am indeed more "logical" than him, not to sound vain, because I have met many people who were smarter than me (talking about real life, about internet or TV is not even arguable). By the third year in High School it became really obvious. And for his career he picked Computer Science where he still struggles with Maths (there is major discontinuity between High School and Univeristy maths when in comes to difficulty, IMO greater than in other sciences) way more than I do, but he does try hard.

TBH, memorizing text had always been more difficult for me. An other friend of mine was able to comprehend and memorize a large amount of text with a second read. She will become a doctor (her father was a brain surgeon), she was obviously at least slightly above the average when it comes the IQ. I would like to take an IQ test even though I don't think they are reliable, but just for coursity.

I agree that among the very best, men are probably overrepresented. (and maybe among the very worst too) But when it comes to the average population there is no significant difference between men and women.
 
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I have a very very very generalized question which apply to much more topics than only academic success and is bothering me quiet a while: How helpfull are twin studies for measuring the genetic component of a certain phenotype versus the epigentic component?

The problem here is that epigenetics tend to modify organism already before they are born. So if you come from the same womb - as twins usually do - than you had the same epigentic influences acting on you. For example we know that the brain of children from poor mothers and more generally mothers under high stress differ measurably directly after birth from the brains of children that where not exposed to such stress.

I am sure this problem is known. But how is it controlled for in such twin studies like the cited one? Is it even possible to safely say that something is genetic unless you have identified the individual genes for it? This is not ment to troll you or something, I am genuinely confused about this subject.

But as a side note to the study: I have to warn that genetic components of academic success might measure more how well your are able to work in a group, and how well you are accepted there than how intelligent you are. We see this for example in authism: for some tasks (visual logics) the authist brain should be absolutely superior, but you don't necessarily see this in academic success. We know furthermore that people with a highly neotonos face shape (aka beautifull people) are treated nicer by others even if nothing is known about their personality. So beeing able to integrate well into a group might genetically derive from pretty dadaistic reasons.
 
I have a very very very generalized question which apply to much more topics than only academic success and is bothering me quiet a while: How helpfull are twin studies for measuring the genetic component of a certain phenotype versus the epigentic component?

The problem here is that epigenetics tend to modify organism already before they are born. So if you come from the same womb - as twins usually do - than you had the same epigentic influences acting on you. For example we know that the brain of children from poor mothers and more generally mothers under high stress differ measurably directly after birth from the brains of children that where not exposed to such stress.

I am sure this problem is known. But how is it controlled for in such twin studies like the cited one? Is it even possible to safely say that something is genetic unless you have identified the individual genes for it? This is not ment to troll you or something, I am genuinely confused about this subject.

But as a side note to the study: I have to warn that genetic components of academic success might measure more how well your are able to work in a group, and how well you are accepted there than how intelligent you are. We see this for example in authism: for some tasks (visual logics) the authist brain should be absolutely superior, but you don't necessarily see this in academic success. We know furthermore that people with a highly neotonos face shape (aka beautifull people) are treated nicer by others even if nothing is known about their personality. So beeing able to integrate well into a group might genetically derive from pretty dadaistic reasons.

Twin studies are of "identical twins", so, exact same genetics and same womb environment. Furthermore they then use only twins separated through, say, adoption, to try to see how similar they are despite different environments, i.e. one in a poor environment, one in a rich one etc.

The studies are absolutely clear. The twins are remarkably similar in terms of cognitive ability. Now, if one was put into a sensory deprivation chamber or a third world orphanage or something, the results might be different.

The results are actually a bit "creepy" for lack of a better word. They like the same food, the same music, marry women who look alike etc.

It's not at all the same with fraternal twins, despite sharing a womb.

I've known two sets of identical twins, admittedly not raised apart, but the bond between them is extraordinary. They told me that their mother often had trouble telling them apart, and when one misbehaved and she wanted to punish them, she was stymied, especially when she asked the girls, named Kim and Dee who did it, they would answer: kimanddee. From what I've read, some love it, but some feel they're missing an individual identity, and so try to develop a different identity.
 
I think it's a mixture of nature and nurture, but there is more emphasis on nature than some would like to believe in today's world. But it's a complex interaction between a lot of factors. I agree that some are not destined to be on top regardless of how much expensive schooling they have, and others who are naturally gifted may not have the right exposure and education to really tap into it in a meaningful way. I also know some people that have idiot-savant type qualities, where they are very book smart and have multiple Ivy League postgrad degrees, work as lawyers, but are almost starving and eating ramen or pb&j sandwiches (and I'm talking about a guy who is nearly 30) every day because they massively mismanaged their life, are in heavy debt and lack practical skills to get by in today's world. So it can be complicated.
 

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