Of course intelligence is environmental. Now, armed with that insight, go teach your dog calculus. And after you’ve done that…can you teach me calculus? ‘cause I’d really like to know, and anyone who can teach advanced math to an animal is probably a pretty good instructor…
Each generation generally does better than the previous one for many socio-economic reasons. And you are not 3 or 4 times as smart as your mom. She would have to have an IQ of 30-40 for that to be true, and I am assuming that you are near-genius level just to be conservative with my estimate
My (dated) understanding of the generational improvements in IQ is that it reflects an improvement mainly in the lower-end scores more so than a general increase across the entire strata.
You are perfectly right, but that is not the question here; the question is if IQ is inherited.
1. intelligence does not equal IQ.
2. a trend in inheritance of intelligence over a single generation is not the same as a trend of increased intelligence over a prolonged period of time in the entire population.
Not too concerned about definitions of IQ or inter-generational improvements in IQ scores. I asked how, if not subjected to a myriad of genetic influences, did the human brain evolve into what it is today? Magic pixies?
Evolution demands that favorable traits for intelligence were
selected. Selection is a process where one option is chosen and another is not. “Options” in this case were our ancestors, of which some had to have better brains than others for the process to have occurred.
A woman with perfect genes can give birth to a deformed child if she drinks alcohol during gestation. Again, alcohol is the external factor.
Two women with perfect genes both guzzle large quantities of alcohol during pregnancy. One has an impaired child, the other has one that’s perfectly normal . Both children were subjected to complex biological influences stemming from the influence of alcohol. One was vulnerable, the other was not.
That’s evolution, baby.
The phenotype is a combination of the genotype and environmental influences. Let's get that straight right now. Yes, all of our traits have developed via way of evolution. We are born with a certain aptitude of intelligence. Whether or not we fulfill that aptitude depends on our environment: when, where, and how we are brought up, and what we learn, how we are conditioned and how we are raised.
An environmental model for IQ has to be based upon the laws of evolution. On the surface it seems counter-intuitive to suppose that a valuable trait, evolved from a painstaking and cruel life-or-death process spanning millions of generations, would then permit itself to be “dumbed down” for some arbitrary reason or other. But perhaps there is some sort of tangible cost involved in maintaining a higher IQ which imposed a conditional flexibility into the system. For instance, being smarter than your boss is a good way to get your head lopped off if you’re born into the wrong society. A “dumb down” in that circumstance makes perfect sense. Or maybe higher IQ imposes a tangible cost in daily caloric intake which is a handicap in certain circumstances. That sort of thing.
Genotype = nature
Environmental influences = nurture
There are four types of genetic influence:
1) – Hardwired / preprogrammed
2) – Triggered / conditional
3) – Random variation
4) – External/ foreign (ie, viral, etc.)
“Nurture” = nourishment. Ie, the intervention of benevolent forces with the purpose of some positive enhancement. It is a very specific form of environmental influence, and has nothing to do at all with, for example, the impact upon IQ caused by a mutated form of bird flu.
