Why is Terry Davis' comment [dead]? It's a sad truth, but a truth nonetheless. IQ's heritability is well-known. So is correlation of IQ with income (although it is much weaker)
That said, if the word gap was smaller, the poorer children would be better off. The effects described above are statistic and only apply to most cases for a certain definition of most.
You make it sound like he unfairly pissed off the political correctness police. He's actually shadowbanned because he posted wanton, meaningless, racial-slur-filled rants that contributed nothing to the discussion, despite warnings.
He's schizophrenic. Sometimes he has something useful to add, because he's a talented hacker who's one of the few people in the world to have written an entire OS stack from scratch. Sometimes his disease writes the comments.
I have no sympathy for racists, and I think it's a difficult tradeoff to make here between making HN an inclusive and welcoming place for people who don't happen to know anything about the human behind TerryADavis, and not discriminating on the basis of mental illness, but I think your comment goes too far into frank ableism.
It's nothing to do with ableism; it's everything to do with the garbage frequently spewed by certain accounts. Not just offtopic offensive racist stuff, but also long wholly ungrammatical screeds.
I wonder, though, how much of IQ's heritability is cultural.
It would work like this: My parents were poor, and had lower IQs. They didn't have time to read to me or talk a lot to me or spend a lot of time with me. They were too tired, just trying to make enough money to keep us all fed.
Now I've got kids, and I'm repeating the same pattern, partly because I'm tired from working too hard, and partly because that's the pattern I saw growing up, and so it's the default behavior for me.
Note well: This account is fictional, not my actual experience. It's not even anecdotal evidence for my position. It's a hypothetical explanation of how cultural baggage could be inherited between generations in a way that could affect IQ.
IQ (g) is highly inheritable at the high end and less so at the low normal range. It is like height. Almost all tall people have tall, well nourished parents, but many short people in the world were malnourished as children.
On this note I have found that replacing g/IQ with height in any conversation about human genetics make for a more civilised discussion.
The scenario you describe is really one more common to the modern world of just the past couple generations.
Intelligence has been evolving and subject to inheritance far longer than that.
Believe it or not, the scenario you describe has occurred to researchers as an avenue of study, and they found it didn't amount to much(i.e. nature over nurture), see 'twin studies.'
This subject, intelligence, is really one of the triumphs of 20th century science, in that it has come to be quite well understood. It's understandable that you and so many others seem unaware of this, however, because to quote Steven Pinker, 'people hate the message.'
https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/645301814955388930
Also, you may consider abandoning this notion of genetics and culture being in an uncorrelated relationship.
Cultures are simply people, that is they are emergent from the interactions of people, and since there are high IQ people and low IQ people, there are high IQ cultures and low IQ cultures.
That Wikipedia article is TERRIBLE, and badly mistakes the research on the topic (which I follow regularly in a journal club of behavior genetics researchers). Here is a better read on the topic, opposed by ideological point-of-view warriors on Wikipedia (I am also a Wikipedian):
How much of this gap is explained by the fact that low-income earners have to work harder and thus have both less time to interact with their children, and less money to hire other humans to interact with them?
Consider a wealthy "Leave it to Beaver" one-income family: dad works, mom stays at home and drags the tots to an endless series of carefully selected enrichment activites, maybe drops them off at a Montessori day care a few days a week.
While at the other end of the social scale, single mom works two jobs to make ends meet and is barely ever home, so kids are left with a relative who's taking care of a whole brood of children, or plunked down in front of the TV and told to keep quiet.
Follow-up studies showed that these differences in language and interaction experiences have lasting effects on a child’s performance later in life.
That's quite a leap to say "this caused that," rather than them both just being a side-effect/characteristic of something else.
It is the height of shoddy science to look at correlated data points and proclaim a conclusion. But of course, much of what falls under 'social science' especially these days is shoddy.
>>>
Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials
Abstract
Objectives To determine whether parachutes are effective in preventing major trauma related to gravitational challenge.
Design Systematic review of randomised controlled trials.
...
Study selection: Studies showing the effects of using a parachute during free fall.
Results: We were unable to identify any randomised controlled trials of parachute intervention.
Conclusions: As with many interventions intended to prevent ill health, the effectiveness of parachutes has not been subjected to rigorous evaluation by using randomised controlled trials. Advocates of evidence based medicine have criticised the adoption of interventions evaluated by using only observational data. We think that everyone might benefit if the most radical protagonists of evidence based medicine organised and participated in a double blind, randomised, placebo controlled, crossover trial of the parachute.
<<<
If mine wasn't clear to you, the article starts with a claim that this 'word gap' is the cause of effects observed later in life. It's easy to see the attraction of this, simply talk to kids more, then better adults right?
This is hardly cutting edge research, this has been floating around for some time, long enough for people to do some 'interventions,' of talking to kids more and the like, what did they find? Not much difference.
Back to the drawing board then right? Nope, not in social science, in social science if the results don't match our desires, we keep trying to beat the square peg into the round hole until they do!
What makes this shoddy science is that they assert the 'word gap' to be the cause with no evidence of it being so, and ignore other explanations, things like perhaps there are heritable 'psychological proclivities' that lead to parents raising a child in a particular way, the child inherits some portion and arrangement of these 'psychological proclivities' from the parent, these same 'psychological proclivities' then have an effect on the things observed later in life.
So if the social scientists want to do something productive instead of ignoring or bemoaning the fact that there are genuine differences among people, they could explore ways of structuring societies and institutions such that better results for people of all 'psychological proclivities' can be achieved.
I agree that just looking at only the Word Gap and Socioeconomic Status probably doesn't tell the whole picture. If those were the only two levers that mattered, it would be easy to assume that giving people money would close the gap, but it is likely a combination of many factors - some of which likely stem from socioeconomic status - and others which stem from other reasons.
Some of the other data points that would be interesting to know would be:
1) whether or not the child has a parent or full-time caretaker in the home
2) does the child attend preschool
3) how much television/videos does the child watch
What you're getting at is important, and described really well in a recent article by Judea Pearl on Simpson's paradox [here](http://ftp.cs.ucla.edu/pub/stat_ser/r414.pdf). Namely, because they didn't manipulate words spoken directly the evidence for more words causing an increase in performance is conditional on your/their beliefs about the structure of the world.
I would say that many scientists are good at acknowledging this, though they may get over eager and forget to emphasize the point once they get to their discussion (or when an article is summarizing a piece of research).
Whenever I read observational research, I just mentally insert "under a set of structural assumptions about the world" before every statement like the one you listed above, and everything is okay again :).
It's frustrating because they didn't have to resort to the unfounded conclusion.
There's tons of evidence around stereotype threat/self-talk and performance[0] so there's a strong argument that being exposed to fewer words, and far more negative words, won't help these people be successful.
I think the kind of people (socio-economically speaking) who would actually buy this are not the ones that actually need it. I would be more worried about attaching an RF transmitter to my kids hearing enough words.
Hi schd - I'm one of the creators of the Starling. We've designed the Starling for every family, including gadget distracted parents (like me). We're also working with a non-profit called Literacy Lab in Oakland to get Starlings into low income homes and have had a number of devices donated through our campaign.
On RF, the Starling uses Bluetooth LE, which uses about 1500 times less energy than a smartphone. We've also designed it so parents can tell it to only sync with their phones when they place it in its charging dock.
32 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 69.7 ms ] threadThat said, if the word gap was smaller, the poorer children would be better off. The effects described above are statistic and only apply to most cases for a certain definition of most.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Income
He is an interesting person. If you're curious, http://motherboard.vice.com/read/gods-lonely-programmer gives you a picture of his life's work and some of the challenges that he faces.
I have no sympathy for racists, and I think it's a difficult tradeoff to make here between making HN an inclusive and welcoming place for people who don't happen to know anything about the human behind TerryADavis, and not discriminating on the basis of mental illness, but I think your comment goes too far into frank ableism.
It would work like this: My parents were poor, and had lower IQs. They didn't have time to read to me or talk a lot to me or spend a lot of time with me. They were too tired, just trying to make enough money to keep us all fed.
Now I've got kids, and I'm repeating the same pattern, partly because I'm tired from working too hard, and partly because that's the pattern I saw growing up, and so it's the default behavior for me.
Note well: This account is fictional, not my actual experience. It's not even anecdotal evidence for my position. It's a hypothetical explanation of how cultural baggage could be inherited between generations in a way that could affect IQ.
On this note I have found that replacing g/IQ with height in any conversation about human genetics make for a more civilised discussion.
Intelligence has been evolving and subject to inheritance far longer than that.
Believe it or not, the scenario you describe has occurred to researchers as an avenue of study, and they found it didn't amount to much(i.e. nature over nurture), see 'twin studies.'
This subject, intelligence, is really one of the triumphs of 20th century science, in that it has come to be quite well understood. It's understandable that you and so many others seem unaware of this, however, because to quote Steven Pinker, 'people hate the message.' https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/645301814955388930
Also, you may consider abandoning this notion of genetics and culture being in an uncorrelated relationship.
Cultures are simply people, that is they are emergent from the interactions of people, and since there are high IQ people and low IQ people, there are high IQ cultures and low IQ cultures.
http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20O...
See this thread (and the sub it links to) for more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10298512
But second it's off topic anyway, if somehow it is on topic it would need to be explained better.
http://www.amazon.com/Thirty-Million-Words-Building-Childs/d...
Consider a wealthy "Leave it to Beaver" one-income family: dad works, mom stays at home and drags the tots to an endless series of carefully selected enrichment activites, maybe drops them off at a Montessori day care a few days a week.
While at the other end of the social scale, single mom works two jobs to make ends meet and is barely ever home, so kids are left with a relative who's taking care of a whole brood of children, or plunked down in front of the TV and told to keep quiet.
We don't know how often these parents conversed with their kids outside these observation periods.
That's quite a leap to say "this caused that," rather than them both just being a side-effect/characteristic of something else.
It is the height of shoddy science to look at correlated data points and proclaim a conclusion. But of course, much of what falls under 'social science' especially these days is shoddy.
>>> Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials
Abstract Objectives To determine whether parachutes are effective in preventing major trauma related to gravitational challenge.
Design Systematic review of randomised controlled trials.
...
Study selection: Studies showing the effects of using a parachute during free fall.
Results: We were unable to identify any randomised controlled trials of parachute intervention.
Conclusions: As with many interventions intended to prevent ill health, the effectiveness of parachutes has not been subjected to rigorous evaluation by using randomised controlled trials. Advocates of evidence based medicine have criticised the adoption of interventions evaluated by using only observational data. We think that everyone might benefit if the most radical protagonists of evidence based medicine organised and participated in a double blind, randomised, placebo controlled, crossover trial of the parachute. <<<
If mine wasn't clear to you, the article starts with a claim that this 'word gap' is the cause of effects observed later in life. It's easy to see the attraction of this, simply talk to kids more, then better adults right?
This is hardly cutting edge research, this has been floating around for some time, long enough for people to do some 'interventions,' of talking to kids more and the like, what did they find? Not much difference.
Back to the drawing board then right? Nope, not in social science, in social science if the results don't match our desires, we keep trying to beat the square peg into the round hole until they do!
What makes this shoddy science is that they assert the 'word gap' to be the cause with no evidence of it being so, and ignore other explanations, things like perhaps there are heritable 'psychological proclivities' that lead to parents raising a child in a particular way, the child inherits some portion and arrangement of these 'psychological proclivities' from the parent, these same 'psychological proclivities' then have an effect on the things observed later in life.
So if the social scientists want to do something productive instead of ignoring or bemoaning the fact that there are genuine differences among people, they could explore ways of structuring societies and institutions such that better results for people of all 'psychological proclivities' can be achieved.
Some of the other data points that would be interesting to know would be:
1) whether or not the child has a parent or full-time caretaker in the home
2) does the child attend preschool
3) how much television/videos does the child watch
4) how regularly the child is read to
I would say that many scientists are good at acknowledging this, though they may get over eager and forget to emphasize the point once they get to their discussion (or when an article is summarizing a piece of research).
Whenever I read observational research, I just mentally insert "under a set of structural assumptions about the world" before every statement like the one you listed above, and everything is okay again :).
There's tons of evidence around stereotype threat/self-talk and performance[0] so there's a strong argument that being exposed to fewer words, and far more negative words, won't help these people be successful.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat
tl;dr I think 30 million is an overestimate.
http://www.versame.com/
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/starling-a-child-s-wearab...
On RF, the Starling uses Bluetooth LE, which uses about 1500 times less energy than a smartphone. We've also designed it so parents can tell it to only sync with their phones when they place it in its charging dock.