Is IQ inherited?

francois said:
What do you think?

There are a lot of people who think that IQ/intelligence is not inherited. I think samcdkey is one of them. I think those people are wrong, and that overall, IQ is a very highly heritable trait.

I'm going to add stuff to this later.
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General IQ is not inherited. However, intelligence is inherited. Intelligence, meaning, if you have two parents who went to college and got degrees in math, you are more likely to be able to do the same and get a degree in math. If both your parents are artists, you'll have more of the genes to make you a good artist.

I don't believe in a general intelligence, I believe people inherit talents.
 
Roman said:
Somewhat, yes.
But completely? What sort of fool would say that all your smarts comes from genes?
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All talents come from genes. However it's not so clear cut that genes alone decide success. Genes decide talent.

Michael Jordan was the best basketball player ever because of genetic talents and gifts, but if you practie enough you can still get into the NBA and be a champion, just ask Larry Bird, he did not have all the physical genetic traits, or John Stockton, there are people in the NBA who are physically average, but who practiced so much that they manage to win.

So no, it's not just genetics, it's also a matter of practice.
 
francois said:
Excellent explanation. Thank you for your contribution (?).
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Not a problem.

But... for those who are a little slow, some explication:

IQ is the name of a standardized test, albeit, one far out of date and currently held in much disrepute.

Names of tests, being nothing beyond semantic symbols, cannot of course, be inherited.
 
IQ scores are the single best predictor of a person's ability to perform well in a job. It is also the single best predictor of how much education a person will get. I don't know how much you know about correlations, but if two variables correlate with each other by .5 or more, then there can be said to be a strong relationship. Just take a quick glance at some of these tables.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iq#Practical_validity
If you're bored and want something to read, I'd recommend that you give this whole page a good read. It's interesting stuff.

Anyway, whatever IQ tests measure, it is something that is positively valuable in humans. That cannot be disputed.
 
Also, you should consider that the IQ scores of identical twins are nearly identical. This suggests a strong genetic component. According to some studies, IQ correlations among identical twins is about .86... which is an extremely high correlation. If you took an IQ test twice, chances are the scores wouldn't even correlate 100%. The IQ scores of identical twins correlate VERY highly, even when they are reared separately.
 
francois said:
...

Anyway, whatever IQ tests measure, it is something that is positively valuable in humans. That cannot be disputed.
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Not that Wikipedia is a decent source, but the article basically has the facts right.
However, as you no doubt know, it's the interpretation of the statistics that is always more telling than the statistics themselves.
With respect to the 'whatever it is' that the IQ test measures, and its value, the answer is actually quite clear: the test measures how an individual responds to the test. Whether or not this behaviour is indicative of intelligence is an entirely different question.

Regardless, all of this is off topic: the IQ result is, at best, a meme, not a gene.
It cannot be inherited.
 
It does require a certain leap of faith that 'whatever it is' that IQ tests measure in fact measure cognitive ability. But is it a large leap of faith? Studies show that people with higher IQs train quicker and perform better than people with lower IQs--even when it is a low skill job (although as jobs get more technical and cognitively demanding, the effect of higher IQ is more drastic on job performance).

You're right that IQ tests measure how well people respond to the tests. Well, no kidding, right? :). The point is, those people who respond better to the tests are usually smarter. If you have an IQ of 150, chances are good that you're not stupid. If you're a woman and you have an IQ of 130, you're going to be much less likely to have an illegitimate child than if you're a woman with an IQ of 75, ceteris paribus. A person with a high IQ is less likely to be a criminal. A person with a high IQ is more likely to have a spouse with a high IQ. A person with a high IQ usually has children with high IQs. A person who has a high IQ usually is better educated and does better than other people--even if they grow up in poor socioeconomic conditions. I doubt these things have nothing to do with cognitive ability and the farsight intelligence affords people with. It really does not require a huge leap of faith.

Whether or not you want to admit it, studies show that IQ runs in the family.
 
francois said:
Do you know what general intelligence is?
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General intelligence doesnt exist.
How can you have a general intelligence when there are so many different types of intelligence?

Does IQ calculate emotional intelligence? No It does not, unless it's specific and is emotional IQ.
 
francois said:
I just watched that movie a while ago. Loved that movie. And I think you're right. Eugenics is inevitable. The parental urge to give their children every advantage possible is too great.
Hell, if I were given the choice between inseminating a woman with my own sperm or some random dude's sperm who was genetically superior (smarter, stronger, better immune system, better social skills, whatever) to me, I would choose the latter. I would want my (yes, it's my child even if not by blood) child to have every advantage possible.
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Don't you remember the movie? There was no need to use someone else's DNA. Remember what the doctor said, "It's still you, it's just the best from each of you." Even idiots occasionally have smart children, and vice-versa. It's just a matter of selecting the correct dna from each parent.

As James pointed out, it may be complicated by things such as gene linkage. But that doesn't mean it won't be done.
 
TimeTraveler said:
All talents come from genes. However it's not so clear cut that genes alone decide success. Genes decide talent.

Michael Jordan was the best basketball player ever because of genetic talents and gifts, but if you practie enough you can still get into the NBA and be a champion, just ask Larry Bird, he did not have all the physical genetic traits, or John Stockton, there are people in the NBA who are physically average, but who practiced so much that they manage to win.

So no, it's not just genetics, it's also a matter of practice.
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I'd say it's clear that genes do not decide success. Imagine a Michael Jordan who as a child decided he didn't like basketball. Imagine an Einstein who was also gifted as a basketball player and so doesn't study science.

How many brilliant kids do you remember from high school who didn't do anything with their gifts? They were too lazy to make something of themselves.

What you are is God's gift to you, what you become is your gift to God.​
 
francois said:
Also, you should consider that the IQ scores of identical twins are nearly identical. This suggests a strong genetic component. According to some studies, IQ correlations among identical twins is about .86... which is an extremely high correlation. If you took an IQ test twice, chances are the scores wouldn't even correlate 100%. The IQ scores of identical twins correlate VERY highly, even when they are reared separately.
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IQ has nothing to do with intelligence. You can have a high IQ and be emotionally retarded. You can have a high IQ and have absolutely no creative intelligence. You can have a high IQ and poor social skills and communication skills. Finally you can have a high IQ and have absolutely no street smarts or book smarts. IQ does not mean you'll work harder, in fact it can cause people to be lazy. A high IQ does not mean a person has social skills, the person can be socially stupid but good at the IQ test.

Just like some people are really good at chess and not good with people. Just like some people are really good with music but not good at drawing. Just like Tiger Woods is a genius at golf, but does this mean he'd score high on the SAT or IQ test? No, because there is no golf section of the IQ test.

The problem with "general" intelligence is, it rewards the most mediocre, it ignores specialization.

The best way to figure out how intelligent a person is, is to just talk to them. Give people your own intelligence test. I think it's stupid if you depend on the experts to decide how intelligent people are, an intelligent person will judge for themselves how intelligent people are.

So the IQ test is just an invention, invented by people who have agendas in a lot of cases, to make them seem like experts on calculating intelligence. The fact that it does not test for specialized talents or ability, in my opinion means it's worth a lot less and has a lot less meaning.

General intelligence is like judging people by their general qualities, what the hell is a general quality?

When you look at an object, if we had a general test to test the value of all objects, could you really tell the difference between a wheel and balloon? Both are somewhat round, if you applied a general test to their properties you'd figure out both are of similar shape. But how will you know which one is better if you don't test them both according to what they are designed for?

A wheel cannot be tested against a balloon, and you cannot learn anything about the wheel or the balloon by a general property like shape, or at least nothing about how either will function when doing what they are designed to do.

There is no general intelligence, all the focus on averages, and generality, is how racists want to view they world. They want to ignore the extremes, the talented, the genius, and focus on the most average mediocre people. So, how is general IQ created?

A group of men, likely white men, decided to create a general intelligence test. They designed the test without consulting anyone else, and without forming any sorta consensus, and if you look up the history of the IQ test you'll see this is true.

After the test was designed, based on what people assumed were general traits and intelligences, or general knowledge, it was tested on people.

A man by the name of William Sidis had the highest IQ ever recorded.
William James Sidis (April 1, 1898 – July 17, 1944) was an American child prodigy and mathematician. He initially became famous for his precociousness, and later for his eccentricity and withdrawal from the public eye. He avoided mathematics entirely in later life, writing on various other subjects under a number of different pseudonyms.
Contents
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* 1 Biography
o 1.1 Parents and upbringing
o 1.2 Chronology
o 1.3 Harvard and college life
o 1.4 Teaching and further education
o 1.5 Politics and arrest
o 1.6 Later life and remembrances
* 2 Publications and subjects of research
* 3 Use as an example in educational discussions
* 4 See also
* 5 References
* 6 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Parents and upbringing

Sidis was born to Russian Jewish immigrant parents, Boris Sidis, Ph.D., M.D. and Sarah Mandelbaum Sidis, M.D. on April 1, 1898 in New York City. Boris emigrated in 1887 to escape political persecution, while Sarah's family fled the pogroms about 1889. Boris attended Harvard University and his Ph.D. was finally mailed to him when he refused to submit a thesis and attend the oral examination. He then taught psychology at Harvard, worked as a psychiatrist, and published numerous books and articles. Sarah received no formal education (other than Boris's tutelage), but passed the New York Stateboard examinations with honors, and became one of a handful of women to earn a medical degree in the 19th century. However, she gave up her own medical career to assist in William's education. William was named after his godfather, Boris's friend and colleague, William James.

Instead of the disciplinary punishment so common to education, Sidis's parents believed in nurturing a precocious and fearless love of knowledge, an unusual idea in the early 20th century, for which they received much criticism. Nevertheless, young Sidis could read the New York Times at 18 months, and at the age of five he "knew something of Russian, French and German" (North American Review, 1907, #184, 887-888). By age of eight, he invented his own language, Vendergood. Some of his other early accomplishments supposedly include:

* Started feeding himself with a spoon at eight months.[1]
* Cajoled by Boris, Sidis learned to pronounce alphabetic syllables from blocks hanging in his crib.
* At six months, William said his first word - "door". He later explained to his mother why he liked that word - "Door moves. People come."
* At seven months he pointed to Earth's moon and called it, "moon."
* Learned to spell efficiently by one year old.
* Started reading The New York Times at 18 months.
* Started typing at three. Used his high chair to reach a typewriter. First composed letter was an order for toys from Macy's.
* Read Caesar's Gallic Wars, in Latin (self-taught), as a birthday present to his Father in Sidis's fourth year.
* Learned Greek alphabet and read Homer in Greek in his fourth year.
* Learned Aristotelian logic in his sixth year.
* At the age of four, Sidis learned Russian, French, German, and Hebrew, and soon after, Turkish and Armenian.
* Calculated mentally a day any date in history would fall, at age six.
* Learned Gray's Anatomy at six. Could pass a student medical examination.
* Started grammar school at six. In three days he was moved to the third grade, and he graduated from grammar school in seven months.
* Wrote four books between ages of four and eight. Two on anatomy and astronomy are lost.
* Passed Harvard Medical School anatomy exam at age seven.
* Passed MIT entrance exam at age eight.
* Corrected E. V. Huntington's mathematics text galleys at the age of eight.
* His father attempted to enroll him at Harvard at eight (going on nine).
* Before he was 10 years of age, he was perusing Albert Einstein's theories -- checking for possible errors.
* At age 10, in one evening, corrected Harvard logic professor Josiah Royce's book manuscript: citing, "wrong paragraphs."
* Mastered higher mathematics and planetary revolutions by age 11.
* In 1910, at age 11, lectured Harvard Mathematical club on "Four-Dimensional Bodies."

[edit] Chronology

* 1898- Born on April 1.
* 1908- Enrolled at Tufts College for a year, took mathematics classes.[2]
* 1909- Became the youngest student ever to enroll at Harvard College at age 11. (He was classified as a Special Student until being reclassified as a Senior in 1913.)
* 1910- Began taking a full-time course load at Harvard College.
* 1914- Graduated from Harvard, cum laude, in June at age 16.[3] Shortly after graduation, he granted an interview to a reporter from the Boston Herald, which published his vows to remain celibate and to never marry, and a statement that women do not appeal to him (although he later developed a strong affection for a young woman named Martha Foley[4]). He also told reporters that he wanted to live the perfect life, which to him meant living it in seclusion. Later (in 1914 or 1915) he enrolled at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University.
* 1915- After a gang of Harvard students threatened to beat him up, his parents secured a job for him at Rice Institute (now Rice University) in Houston, Texas as a professor of mathematics. He was also going to work towards his doctorate. He arrived at Rice in December at age 17.
* 1916- Departed Rice after being persistently teased and kidded by the students he was instructing (who were older than he was). Then gave up what may have been a promising career in mathematics and enrolled at Harvard Law School.[5]
* 1919- Withdrew in good standing from Harvard Law School in his last year.[6] Later arrested after a socialist May Day parade turned into a melee.
* 1923- His father died of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 56.
* 1944- Died of a cerebral hemorrhage on July 17 at age 46.[7]

[edit] Harvard and college life

In 1909 he entered Harvard University at age 11, as part of a program to enroll gifted students early (the university had previously refused to let him take the entrance examinations at age eight), and gave a lecture on four dimensional bodies to an auditorium of mathematicians which was well-received. He remains the youngest student ever to enroll at Harvard.

After this lecture, MIT professor Daniel Comstock was quoted as saying that Sidis would become the foremost mathematician of the 20th century. He was the youngest and most prominent of a remarkable experimental group of prodigies who studied at Harvard in 1909, which included Norbert Wiener (the father of cybernetics), Richard Buckminster Fuller, and composer Roger Sessions. Sidis received the degree of A.B. cum laude from Harvard on June 18, 1914, at age 16.

[edit] Teaching and further education

In 1915, Sidis took up a position as a professor of mathematics at Rice University in Houston, Texas. After less than a year, frustrated with the department, his teaching requirements, and his treatment by students much older than he, Sidis gave up his post and returned to Boston. Sidis then enrolled at the Harvard Law School in September of 1916 but withdrew in good standing in March of 1919.[8]

[edit] Politics and arrest

In 1919, Sidis was arrested for participating in a socialist May Day parade that turned into a melee and was sentenced to 18 months in prison under the Sedition Act of 1918 for rioting and assault. Sidis' arrest featured prominently in newspapers, as his early graduation from Harvard had garnered considerable local celebrity; during the trial, Sidis indicated that he had been a conscientious objector of the World War I draft, did not believe in a god, and that he was a socialist (though he later favored a quasi-libertarian system that he invented).[9] His father made an arrangement with the district attorney to keep him out of prison before his appeal came to trial; his parents held him in their sanitarium in New Hampshire for a year, then he was taken to California where he spent another year.[10]

After escaping back to the East Coast in 1921, Sidis was determined to live a private life and would only take work running adding machines or other fairly menial tasks. He devoted himself to his hobby of collecting streetcar transfers, published periodicals, and taught small circles of interested friends his version of American history.

[edit] Later life and remembrances

In 1944, Sidis won a settlement from The New Yorker for publishing an article about him in 1937, which he alleged contained many false statements.[11] He lost an appeal of an invasion of privacy lawsuit at the U.S. Supreme Court in 1940 over the same article; lower courts had dismissed Sidis as a public figure with no right to challenge personal publicity.

Sidis died of a cerebral hemorrhage on July 17, 1944, in Boston, Massachusetts.

Abraham Sperling, Ph.D., director of New York City's Aptitude Testing Institute, said shortly after Sidis' death that according to his computations, he easily had an IQ between 250 and 300 and that there was no evidence that his intellect had declined in adulthood.[12][13] (His father, Boris Sidis, once dismissed tests of intelligence as "silly, pedantic, absurd, and grossly misleading." [14])

[edit] Publications and subjects of research

Aside from mathematics, subjects on which Sidis wrote or lectured included cosmology, psychology, and Native American history. Some of his ideas concerned cosmological reversibility, social continuity and libertarian rights.

In The Animate and the Inanimate (1925), Sidis predicted the existence of dark matter (not black holes as is often mistakenly stated). This work on cosmology, based on his theory of reversibility of the second law of thermodynamics was the only book published under his name.[15]

Sidis' The Tribes and the States (ca. 1935) employs the pseudonym "John W. Shattuck," giving a 100,000-year history of North America's inhabitants, from prehistoric times to 1828.[16] In this text, he suggests that "there were red men at one time in Europe as well as in America."

Sidis was also a "peridromophile," a term he coined for people fascinated with transportation research and streetcar systems. He wrote a treatise on streetcar transfers under the pseudonym of "Frank Falupa" that identified means of increasing public transport usage only now gaining general acceptance.[17]

In 1930, Sidis was awarded a patent for a rotary perpetual calendar that took into account leap years.[18] Also, in his adult years, he was estimated as capable of speaking more than forty languages.

[edit] Use as an example in educational discussions

The difficulties Sidis and other exceptionally young students encountered in dealing with the social structures of a university setting at a very young age helped to shape opinion against allowing precocious children to advance too rapidly through higher education. The debate over gifted education continues today, and Sidis remains a topic of discussion. Cast in modern standards, scholars usually classify Sidis as a profoundly gifted individual, and some critics use Sidis as the most vivid example of how gifted youth often do not achieve corresponding success as adults - in either material or creative terms.

Many of these depictions rely on Sidis' negative image in the press of the day, which refused to acknowledge that Sidis' intellect could be attributed to anything but monotonous cramming — precisely what his parents argued against. In fact, his mother later noted that newspaper accounts of her son had little or nothing in common with William himself.
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The birth of the IQ test

In 1905, the French psychologist Alfred Binet published the first modern intelligence test, the Binet-Simon intelligence scale. His principal goal was to identify students who needed special help in coping with the school curriculum. Along with his collaborator Theodore Simon, Binet published revisions of his intelligence scale in 1908 and 1911, the last appearing just before his untimely death. In 1912, the abbreviation of "intelligence quotient" or I.Q., a translation of the German Intelligenz-Quotient, was coined by the German psychologist William Stern.

A further refinement of the Binet-Simon scale was published in 1916 by Lewis M. Terman, from Stanford University, who incorporated Stern's proposal that an individual's intelligence level be measured as an intelligence quotient (I.Q.). Terman's test, which he named the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale formed the basis for one of the modern intelligence tests still commonly used today. They are all colloquially known as IQ tests.
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The reduction of intelligence to a single score seems extreme and unrealistic to many people. Opponents argue that it is much more useful to know a person's strengths and weaknesses than to know a person's IQ score. Such opponents often cite the example of two people with the same overall IQ score but very different ability profiles.[citation needed] As measured by IQ tests, most people have highly balanced ability profiles, with differences in subscores being greater among the more intelligent.[citation needed] However, this assumes the ability of IQ tests to comprehensively gauge the wide variety of human intellectual abilities.

There are different types of IQ tests. Certainly the information described on this topic relates to a generic IQ test—against a general population, and therefore the results obtained are consistent across the population. However the results do not tell a full story, and are slanted towards 46,XX, and 46,XY candidates.[citation needed]

Candidates with Klinefelter's Syndrome, have a decreased frontal lobe, so for the most part have a reduced IQ when measured against the normal population (46,XX, and 46,XY candidates), but have an enhanced parietal lobe. If measured against IQ tests that are based on matching (patterns, shapes, colors, mathematical series, puzzles), some klinefelters measure into the genius level.[citation needed]

The creators of IQ testing did not intend for the tests to gauge a person's worth.[citation needed]

For information on how IQ is culturally constructed consider Marvin Harris's "Theories of Culture in Post-modern Times" chapter 6 "Biologizing Inequality" and Chapter 7 "IQ is not forever".
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The controversy over IQ tests (also called cognitive ability tests[citation needed]), what they measure, and what this means for society has not abated since their initial development by Alfred Binet.

IQ tests rely largely upon Symbolic Logic[citation needed] as a means to scoring, and as Symbolic Logic is not inherently synonymous with intelligence[citation needed], the question remains as to exactly what is being measured via such tests. For instance, it is feasible that someone could possess a prodigious wealth of emotional intelligence while being simultaneously unable to comprehend the significance of sequentially arranged shapes[citation needed]. Additionally, someone who cannot read would be at a significant disadvantage on an IQ test[citation needed], though illiteracy is not indicative of being unintelligent. Measurements of other forms of "intelligence" have been proposed to augment the current IQ Testing Methodology, though such alternative measurements may also be a subject of debate.

IQ tests vary in the width of their measurements. Some tests, like Raven's Progressive Matrices, use only symbolic logic puzzles, while others test, for example,

* 2-dimensional geometry
* 3-dimensional rotations
* Mathematical or numerical abilities
* Verbal abilities
* Concentration
* Memory

and various other abilities or combinations of the above. There is no clear definition of whether, for example, the result of a memory test is a valid contribution to the measurement of the IQ. Popular knowledge makes a difference between memory and intelligence. (A highly intelligent person with a poor memory is conceivable.) On the other hand, there may be some correlation between memory and other test results, justifying the inclusion of a memory test. For these reasons the results of different IQ tests vary to some extent
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How an IQ test works

A typical IQ test requires the test subject to solve a fair number of problems (usually 30 to 60) in a set time under supervision. Some tests have a total time limit, others have a time limit for each group of problems, and there are a few untimed, unsupervised tests, typically geared to measuring high intelligence.

Typically the raw result is simply the number of solved problems. This number, along with the age of the subject, is looked up in a table by the test supervisor and yields the IQ. (The IQ is age-corrected.)

When an IQ test is designed, one method for the calibration of these tables is to try it on groups of testees and make sure the tables yield a Gaussian normal distribution when applied to groups that are representative of the entire population.

However, each IQ test is designed and valid only for a certain IQ range. Tests for extreme IQs, like above 145, are obviously difficult to calibrate, because it is impossible to establish representative groups for that range, and are therefore rare and less precise than tests discriminating around IQ 100.
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As you can see here, there are many errors in the IQ test. The fact that the IQ test takes age into account, or that it does not test all forms of intelligence, I think it's easy to see that the IQ test itself, is flawed because the humans who invented the test itself were flawed. If you want to know how intelligent a person is, you can usually figure it out best by watching how they interact with people, and talking to them. A person can come with a 150+ IQ, but if they are always doing stupid shit, and saying stupid shit, etc, will that number make a difference?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient
 
francois said:
It does require a certain leap of faith that 'whatever it is' that IQ tests measure in fact measure cognitive ability. But is it a large leap of faith? Studies show that people with higher IQs train quicker and perform better than people with lower IQs--even when it is a low skill job (although as jobs get more technical and cognitively demanding, the effect of higher IQ is more drastic on job performance).

You're right that IQ tests measure how well people respond to the tests. Well, no kidding, right? :). The point is, those people who respond better to the tests are usually smarter. If you have an IQ of 150, chances are good that you're not stupid. If you're a woman and you have an IQ of 130, you're going to be much less likely to have an illegitimate child than if you're a woman with an IQ of 75, ceteris paribus. A person with a high IQ is less likely to be a criminal. A person with a high IQ is more likely to have a spouse with a high IQ. A person with a high IQ usually has children with high IQs. A person who has a high IQ usually is better educated and does better than other people--even if they grow up in poor socioeconomic conditions. I doubt these things have nothing to do with cognitive ability and the farsight intelligence affords people with. It really does not require a huge leap of faith.

Whether or not you want to admit it, studies show that IQ runs in the family.
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Usually isnt a fact, and smarter how?
 
francois said:
I think those people are wrong, and that overall, IQ is a very highly heritable trait.
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IQ is a measurement of intelligence; intelligence is inherited, but requires healthy living and education to develop. However, intelligence cannot be developed where the raw potential is missing, so I think you're correct.

An excellent book on this topic is Stephen Pinker's The Blank Slate.
 
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