16 Responses

1. Berci Meskó says:

   November 11, 2007 at 12:15

   Very good mes­sage, Alvaro!

   It’s our mis­sion to tell peo­ple that genes cre­ate phe­no­type just with the effect of the environment.
2. Reason says:

   November 11, 2007 at 8:10

   Gould is almost on the verge of dis­hon­esty with his book. If you are going to read his book, then you should at least read a good defense of Wat­son The link is here.

   http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/10/james-watson-tells-inconvenient-truth_296.php
3. Alvaro says:

   November 12, 2007 at 11:56

   Thank you, Berci, yes, we need to improve aware­ness of that fact and its implications.

   Hello “Rea­son”:

   1– I think James Wat­son is an incred­i­ble sci­en­tist, and am sorry about the recent con­tro­versy. Now, he may ben­e­fit from explain­ing his views in a bet­ter way, and focus­ing on the areas he is no doubt an authority.

   2– Gould wrote his book 26 years ago, so I am unsure about the rel­e­vance on your com­ment. He obvi­ously wasn’t attack­ing Wat­son, but the ideas about IQ as a fixed, innate, entity.

   3– I took a brief look at that link. The author relies on the basic assump­tion that IQ is fixed, innate, real. Which is not correct.
4. Natural Sciences Carnival - 4th Edition | Geek Sisters says:

   November 18, 2007 at 2:43

   […] Alvaro Fer­nan­dez presents Is Intel­li­gence Innate and Fixed? posted at Sharp­Brains, say­ing, “Lessons from biology” […]
5. GNZ says:

   November 20, 2007 at 1:52

   Its ter­ri­bly PC to say that genet­ics makes hardly any dif­fer­ence to IQ or IQ makes hardly any dif­fer­ence to, er any­thing. Great for get­ting read­ers atten­tion and nods of agree­ment.
   Its also com­plete bollocks.

   Twin stud­ies (and cer­tainly any twins I know) as well as a sim­ple glance at any­one I know shows and incred­i­bly strong cor­re­la­tion between genet­ics and intel­li­gence, per­son­al­ity and all sorts of other things such as skin colour and eye colour.
   Of course bias and over­gen­er­al­iza­tions are com­mon flaws in such research but that doesn’t mean that they are auto­mat­i­cally flawed in more fun­da­men­tal ways. Nor does the fact that some might mis­in­ter­pret it, make the base research flawed.

   I remem­ber sit­ting in a class being taught about the bell curve while a group from a higher bell curve snig­gered in front and I thought. Hmm — what curve you asso­ciate your­self with doesn’t change your actual intelligence.
6. GNZ says:

   November 20, 2007 at 2:05

   prob­a­bly worth a read of the
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man
   for the cri­tiques (and praises I guess)
7. Alvaro says:

   November 20, 2007 at 9:32

   Hello GNZ,

   Thanks for the Wikipedia link.

   No one doubts genet­ics has an influ­ence. Even an strong influ­ence. The point is that that fac­tor is way less deter­min­is­tic than the other exam­ples you men­tion, like skin and eye colour. Our point is not that genes have no influ­ence. It is that intel­li­gence is not fixed, innate.

   Have you read about the Flynn effect? do you think our genes have changed so much in 50 years to make us all now, on aver­age, 15–20 points more “intel­li­gent” (IQ) than 50 years ago?
8. GNZ says:

   November 20, 2007 at 10:38

   I accept that intel­li­gence is not 100% deter­mined by genes – any­one who says that is obvi­ously not think­ing since, for one thing, I could drink alco­hol and take drugs until I was brain dam­aged or dead and I def­i­nitely wouldn’t have the same IQ after­wards. But surely no one ever pro­poses that that would have no impact on my intelligence.

   Clearly it is a mix­ture of things. What appears to hap­pen, though, is that some­one will pro­pose that a cer­tain group has a higher aver­age intel­li­gence (Let us say, ‘philoso­phers’ have a higher aver­age intel­li­gence than ‘ditch dig­gers’ or ‘peo­ple in Man­hat­tan’ have a higher aver­age IQ than ‘peo­ple in the mid­dle of Texas’). Those groups that are maligned then kick back and insist that one can’t say that. Rather less an argu­ment that it isn’t true and more one that you “just can’t say it” because then you might try to use it for somthing. And one side debates with logic and the other with more of a ‘aren’t they dis­gust­ing and mean” sort of approach.

   (hav­ing siad that some­times they are jsut plain racist ofcourse)

   Regard­ing the Flynn effect, I guess it depends on what you call intel­li­gence. I read the Flynn effect accord­ing Flynn was explained by how we orga­nize infor­ma­tion — i.e. it didn’t refer to a change in pro­cess­ing speed — just a change in the way the infor­ma­tion being processed was orga­nized. That’s one the­ory anyway.

   It would seem how­ever that as IQ tests get bet­ter it gets more con­stant (Of course we would dis­card a IQ method­ol­ogy that got a less con­stant result!). But if for some rea­son one had to dis­card ‘IQ” and instead use a new mea­sure for ‘g’ I don’t think peo­ple would be very worried.

   I note that I had an IQ test at a very young age and another rea­son­ably recently both under proper test con­di­tions – and got an iden­ti­cal result (yes not a sin­gle point of dif­fer­ence). Appar­ently the vast major­ity of my life and all that edu­ca­tion made no dif­fer­ence at all.

   Regard­ing Crick I think that this trig­gers my racist bells “He went on to say that although he hopes all races are equally intel­li­gent, “peo­ple who have to deal with black employ­ees find this is not true.“” But there could be a valu­able piece of truth in “he is “inher­ently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” (although the truth might be dan­ger­ous, and if some­one hon­estly says so I can respect that)

   Even if our intel­li­gence hap­pens to be absolutely iden­ti­cal across races – it won’t be ‘the same’ on aver­age (ie of exactly the same type). One model that seems to have some rela­tion to real­ity is that peo­ple are most able to deal with cap­i­tal­ism in places where they have (as a genealog­i­cal line) had the longest expo­sure to money (again poten­tially dan­ger­ous but also implies that changes hap­pen over ‘short’ period of time).
9. James says:

   November 22, 2007 at 10:06

   For GNZ:

   “Regard­ing Crick I think that this trig­gers my racist bells “He went on to say that although he hopes all races are equally intel­li­gent, “peo­ple who have to deal with black employ­ees find this is not true.“”

   You meant Watson.

   (I have the same prob­lem with Abbott and Costello.)
10. » Brain Fitness: November Monthly Digest   « Brain Fitness Revolution at SharpBrains      says:

    November 30, 2007 at 3:00

    […] Is Intel­li­gence Innate and Fixed?: some reflec­tions based on biology. […]
11. GNZ says:

    December 2, 2007 at 12:17

    woops appolo­gies to Crick.
12. » Jogging our Brains for Brain Vitality, Healthy Aging-and Intelligence!   « Brain Fitness Revolution at SharpBrains      says:

    December 13, 2007 at 8:31

    […] Com­ment: As we wrote here, genes pre­dis­pose us, but it is the com­bi­na­tion of our envi­ron­ments and our actions that we bet­ter focus on. This last arti­cle sets the stage very well for why intel­li­gence is not a purely genetic attribute, and the pre­vi­ous three arti­cles offer very use­ful sug­ges­tions for becom­ing “smarter” and main­tain our men­tal abil­i­ties over time. […]
13. Big Don says:

    December 14, 2007 at 4:01

    You can talk openly about dogs with­out being polit­i­cally incor­rect. You won’t get into trou­ble, lose your career or research grants, as you might if you reveal unpleas­ant truths about humans.

    All domes­tic dogs, from Chi­huahua to Great Dane, are species canis famil­iaris; breed genetic dif­fer­ences result from enforced sep­a­ra­tions by breeders/trainers for the last 800 years. Domes­tic dogs are all one species. Sim­i­larly, all humans are species homo sapi­ens with race dif­fer­ences result­ing from sep­a­ra­tion over thou­sands of years by geo­graphic bar­ri­ers. Dog breeds and human races are directly anal­o­gous as sub-groups within the respec­tive species.
    Much can be learned from study­ing dogs; med­ical sci­ence does a great deal of this to avoid exper­i­men­ta­tion on humans. The brain is no excep­tion, as dog brain struc­ture and infor­ma­tion flow processes are quite sim­i­lar to that in humans. Numer­ous dog brain stud­ies to ana­lyze human brain diseases/conditions are in the med­ical literature.

    Any expe­ri­enced dog breeder will acknowl­edge the pro­found influ­ence of genet­ics on intel­li­gence and behav­ior. Traits such as train­abil­ity, aggres­sion, prey drive, docil­ity, bite inhi­bi­tion are highly her­i­ta­ble and dif­fi­cult to mod­ify. Exten­sive eval­u­a­tions of dog intel­li­gence have devel­oped breed rank­ings accord­ing to ease of train­ing (num­ber of rep­e­ti­tions needed to learn a com­mand) and reli­a­bil­ity (per­cent of time) of cor­rect response to learned com­mands. Instinc­tive abil­ity to to take cor­rect action in com­plex sit­u­a­tions is also rec­og­nized to vary with breed (there is a valid rea­son police K-9 units use Ger­man Shep­herds instead of Pit Bulls). Among dog breeds, there is a huge Achievement_Gap, and it is GENETIC. This is all eas­ily Googled…

    Humans are not exempt from the fun­da­men­tal rules of biol­ogy. Rushton’s pub­li­ca­tions (and James Watson’s recent com­ments) are heavily-supported with moun­tains of peer-reviewed research by well-credentialed schol­ars; numer­ous key cita­tions are avail­able in two recent books: Hart “Under­stand­ing Human His­tory” and Lynn “Race Dif­fer­ences in Intelligence.”
14. Alvaro says:

    December 15, 2007 at 8:31

    Hello,

    Thanks for adding that angle, but I think it con­fuses things more than clar­i­fies them.

    1) No one is doubt­ing the influ­ence of genes. I agree with “Humans are not exempt from the fun­da­men­tal rules of biology”

    2) What you seem to be doubt­ing is the influ­ence of the envi­ron­ment. Why?

    3) The state­ment “Dog breeds and human races are directly anal­o­gous as sub-groups within the respec­tive species.” is highly suspicious

    4) Even if it were, humans and dogs are dif­fer­ent species, cor­rect? and it is humans who domes­ti­cate dogs, not the other way, right? so per­haps, no mat­ter what you say about dogs, that is not the most rel­e­vant in our debate regard­ing the human species

    5) Can you please explain the Flynn effect?

    6) Mal­colm Glad­well just pub­lished a great arti­cle on this,
    http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/12/17/071217crbo_books_gladwell
15. Sideways says:

    June 9, 2008 at 9:19

    “1) No one is doubt­ing the influ­ence of genes. I agree with “Humans are not exempt from the fun­da­men­tal rules of biology”

    2) What you seem to be doubt­ing is the influ­ence of the envi­ron­ment. Why?”

    I know I’m really late to this, but you’ve got it back­wards: there are lit­er­ally no sci­en­tists who think/argue/hypothesize that intel­li­gence is 100% genetic or hered­i­tary. Being a “genetic deter­min­ist” in prac­tice means that you think that some­where between 1% and 99% (and, on aver­age, more like 40% and 80%) of intel­li­gence is hereditary.

    There are, on the other hand, quite a few who argue that intel­li­gence is 0% genetic.

    As for Crick, it seems he was saved from being burnt at the stake by going off the scene early. ” In brief I think it likely that more than half the dif­fer­ence between the aver­age I.Q. of Amer­i­can whites and Negroes is due to genetic rea­sons, and will not be elim­i­nated by any fore­see­able change in the envi­ron­ment” would have got­ten him the Wat­son treat­ment in 2007, to be sure.

    Any­way, it’s rather amus­ing to read this and real­ize that, by Gould’s def­i­n­i­tion, Alvaro is a genetic determinist.

    All that aside, we’d be bet­ter off if peo­ple stopped read­ing a 28 year old book by a pale­on­tol­o­gist who wanted to advance the blank slate the­ory, cre­at­ing a book that essen­tially every­one in the rel­e­vant field thinks is a pile of garbage.

    Go argue about twins stud­ies, trans-racial adop­tion stud­ies, etc, but leave Mr. “IQ tests 80 years ago were biased, so the entire field is junk!” out of it.
16. Alvaro says:

    June 9, 2008 at 5:27

    Side­ways: you are answer­ing your­self… when you don’t con­tra­dict yourself.

    May I sug­gest you spend less time on word gym­nas­tics (i.e. set­ting up your own def­i­n­i­tions of genetic deter­min­ism) and more on com­pre­hend­ing other’s per­spec­tives with a research, not ide­o­log­i­cal, hat (and, yes, that includes Gould’s book), and focus­ing on implications.

    Per­haps, by hav­ing a more mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion, we would both be closer to reach­ing the 100% of our potential.