I’m a lover of wisdom, which is why I named my blog (the french is simply for pretense) the crossroads of wisdom. Each individual crossroad is an interest: sex- and race-realism, IQ, human bio-diversity, economics, politics, and philosophy. I find these seemingly disparate disciplines to coincide very well. My aim is to piece them together into a coherent nexus; my hope is burgeoning wise ideas.
I want to learn, so please don’t hesitate to comment on my posts. I find that discussion ferries us to wisdom.
BGC
26 March 2009
Finding this blog has been a treat (I came via UJ’s comment at the Audacious Epigone tody).
I try to help promote good quant bloggers…
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.com/2008/08/figureheads-ghost-writers-and-quant.html
…and I’m delighted to find another terrific addition to the ‘stable’.
Lover of Wisdom
26 March 2009
BGC:
Thanks so much for the kind words. I just took a look at your post, and I now recall reading that when it was first published. I found it then, and still now, fascinating (and right on the mark). Hope things go well for you in the future.
j. legere
29 March 2009
When you write: “the french is simply for pretense,” I think you meant to say: “the French is simply for pretentiousness.” Non?
Luna
5 May 2009
I’m not precisely sure what the obsession over IQ on this blog has to do with anything– it is by no means even relatively close to a nuanced or consistent measurement of intelligence, so it seems dubious at best to try to draw any kind of meaningful inferences from the accumulated data on IQ scores.
teageegeepea
13 May 2009
Luna, if you’ve got something else with more predictive power, let us know.
wtgsn
13 May 2009
“Luna, if you’ve got something else with more predictive power, let us know.”
~ONE~
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=all
One of her main research projects looked at the relationship between self-control and grade-point average. She found that the ability to delay gratification—eighth graders were given a choice between a dollar right away or two dollars the following week—was a far better predictor of academic performance than I.Q. She said that her study shows that “intelligence is really important, but it’s still not as important as self-control.”
…If Mischel and his team succeed, they will have outlined the neural circuitry of self-control. For decades, psychologists have focussed on raw intelligence as the most important variable when it comes to predicting success in life. Mischel argues that intelligence is largely at the mercy of self-control: even the smartest kids still need to do their homework. “What we’re really measuring with the marshmallows isn’t will power or self-control,” Mischel says. “It’s much more important than that. This task forces kids to find a way to make the situation work for them. They want the second marshmallow, but how can they get it? We can’t control the world, but we can control how we think about it.”
~TWO~
http://books.google.com/books?id=aXFsb2UogOkC
“What is noble, i.e. what is uncommon and indeed sublime, is brought into the drama [into dramatic arts] primarily through knowing as opposed to willing. For the sublime element hovers freely over all those movements of the will and makes them even the material of its contemplation. Shakespeare, in particular, shows this everywhere, especially in Hamlet. Now if knowledge reaches the point where the vanity of all willing and striving dawns on it and the will consequently abolishes itself, it is then that the drama becomes really tragic and hence truly sublime and attains its purpose… Peevishness or bad temper is something very different from melancholy. From cheerfulness to melancholy is a much shorter path than from bad temper to melancholy. Melancholy attracts; bad temper [e.g., IQ fundamentalism] repels.”
~THREE~
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yerkes-Dodson_law
~FOUR~
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/humannature/archive/2009/04/07/poverty-biology-and-intelligence.aspx
“Childhood poverty no longer predicts young adults’ working memory capacity once chronic stress exposure is partialed from the covariance between childhood poverty and adult working memory,” they report. In other words, stress is the missing link. They conclude:
The income–achievement gap is a formidable societal problem, but little is known about either neurocognitive or biological mechanisms that might account for income-related deficits in academic achievement. We show that childhood poverty is inversely related to working memory in young adults. Furthermore, this prospective relationship is mediated by elevated chronic stress during childhood. Chronic stress is measured by allostatic load, a biological marker of cumulative wear and tear on the body that is caused by the mobilization of multiple physiological systems in response to chronic environmental demands…
One, we demonstrate that the duration of childhood poverty is related prospectively to working memory performance later in life among young adults. Two, we show that allostatic load, an index of chronic stress, conveys a significant proportion of the covariation between childhood deprivation and an adult’s working memory performance. The longer the period of childhood poverty, the higher the levels of allostatic load during childhood, and the greater the reductions in young adults’ subsequent working memory. Furthermore, elevated childhood allostatic load predicts working memory in young adults and, in turn, largely explains the prospective relationship between childhood poverty and these working memory deficits.
In an interview with Rob Stein of the Washington Post, the study’s lead author enumerates various ways in which poverty can cause stress: “You may have housing problems. You may have more conflict in the family. There’s a lot more pressure in paying the bills. You’ll probably end up moving more often.”
This study alone doesn’t settle anything. It hasn’t monitored cognitive performance over time, doesn’t measure performance beyond working memory, and doesn’t rule out other underlying factors. But it shows how biological and environmental explanations can help each other. And that’s an important lesson in a field too often polarized between the two.
~FIVE~
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/opinion/16kristof.html
Professor Nisbett provides suggestions for transforming your own urchins into geniuses — praise effort more than achievement, teach delayed gratification, limit reprimands and use praise to stimulate curiosity [i.e., not IQ fundamentalism]… Eric Turkheimer of the University of Virginia has conducted further research demonstrating that in poor and chaotic households, I.Q. is minimally the result of genetics — because everybody is held back.
“Bad environments suppress children’s I.Q.’s,” Professor Turkheimer said.
[Likewise, one could argue, IQ fundamentalism 'depresses' children's IQ, creating a society where all inequalities are viewed and treated as genetically determined, contrary evidence is ignored, and measures to address inequalities are eliminated. A 'bad environment'.]
~SIX~
http://www.gladwell.com/2007/2007_12_17_c_iq.html
To the I.Q. fundamentalist, two things are beyond dispute: first, that I.Q. tests measure some hard and identifiable trait that predicts the quality of our thinking; and, second, that this trait is stable—that is, it is determined by our genes and largely impervious to environmental influences…
“The mind is much more like a muscle than we’ve ever realized,” Flynn said. “It needs to get cognitive exercise. It’s not some piece of clay on which you put an indelible mark.” The lesson to be drawn from black and white differences was the same as the lesson from the Netherlands years ago: I.Q. measures not just the quality of a person’s mind but the quality of the world that person lives in.
teageegeepea
14 May 2009
I believe the technical term used for #1 is “executive function” and you’ve definitely got a point there. There is some speculation that it’s the same thing as fluid intelligence or g, but it’s far more heritable. It’s a more recent focus of study than intelligence and something to keep an eye out for. Do you know of any large surveys like the GSS which have an executive function analogue?
#2 doesn’t seem particularly relevant. #3 is relevant, but I don’t know of any evidence it explains more of the variance in performance than IQ. #4-5 are not about something that might be relatively more important than IQ, but factors that may contribute to variation in IQ. If IQ was not important, we would not care about the articles in the first place. My suspicion is that finding such factors in order to make use of them is going to be quite difficult: twin-studies show tend to show negligible effect of shared environment and searches for a few genes of large effect have not been very fruitful.
SMD
25 October 2009
Are you a member of any IQ societies out there?
Lover of Wisdom
25 October 2009
SMD:
No, I’m not. I’ve never taken a true professionally administered test, like Ravens. But I am familiar with the myriad societies from my extensive internet perusing of IQ related topics.
The Professor
16 July 2010
Hi. I’m writing as the author of a new conservative blog, The Anthroconservative Beacon. As I’m sure you can understand, promoting my site has been a real challenge, especially considering that I am not what you would call “internet savvy”! Anyway, based on my perusal of your blog, I thought you might be interested in some of my ideas. In short, my version of conservatism, which I have labeled “Anthroconservatism,” is an attempt to construct conservative principles around human nature, which is increasingly being clarified by advances in evolutionary psychology and other disciplines. My view is that conservatism is right because it is more in line with human nature than other ideologies, and I feel confident that I can prove that this is so. What I would ask, then, is that you take a look at my blog and give me some feedback on what you like and dislike about it. Perhaps there is something I could improve? If on the whole you like what you see, would you consider adding a link to The Anthroconservative Beacon to your site? I would be happy to reciprocate. Either way, I hope you’ll visit my blog, and I would be thrilled if you commented on some of my posts…
Thanks, and best wishes,
THE PROFESSOR
John
23 October 2011
Here is a new HBD Bibliography:
http://www.humanbiologicaldiversity.com/