American IQ scores have rapidly dropped, proving the 'Reverse Flynn effect'

Your first sentence is a complete misread of my comment, so I'm not going to reply. I said exactly the opposite of what you claim I said. Please re-read what I wrote and try again.

Edit:

I read a bit of Ned Block's piece. I believe he more or less immediately dismisses my view as "Extreme geneticism". While I don't agree that different groups in a given country grow up in the same circumstances, I also don't believe this matters much, if at all. If life teaches anything, it's that it's incredibly difficult to construct a machine that absolutely prevents the success of one group or another. Life is diverse and adaptable and finds a way. There are plenty of examples of groups historically facing terrible environments who nonetheless prospered.

Block also complains about a lack of sufficient data on the question of IQ. Fine, but one must immediately ask why there is such a lack of data. And that returns us to the demon-haunted world of quasi-religious opposition to such research.

Bottom line is, if you want to argue for the Rube Goldberg machine of -isms that produce differential outcomes in groups, prove it. I believe that, just as in other areas of human endeavor such as athletics, the prior should be that genetics are the most important input.

You literally just said that you were using "heritability" as a synonym for "genetic determination". No, you can't do that.

We can ask why there isn't evidence of genetic determinism in intelligence, and you can claim it's because of demonic opposition to the research, and I can claim that it's because studies into those genetic connections haven't been productive, but either way, heritability statistics don't give you an answer. It's one thing to suggest that a paucity of results should motivate more studies, but what you're doing is closer to suggesting that a paucity of results is evidence for the claim. Obviously, no.

You should read all of Ned Block's piece. It's very good.

He is not just dismissing your view as "extreme geneticism". He literally explains how fallacious it is to conflate heritability with genetic determination. Using that to make judgments about genetic determination of IQ is therefore methodologically flawed and the only intellectual honest course of action is to dismiss these types of judgments outright.

This is the nth post on this thread where you repeat the argument that because you believe IQ research is suppressed, absence of evidence is in fact evidence of presence.

It is interesting that you apply Occam’s razor now, but not when the question is whether we need IQ at all in our models. In a different post when asked about the utility of IQ you answered:

> In general, the goal is to quantify an individual's mental potential

But IQ researchers have been trying to do that for over half a century, and so far have yielded pretty limited results, especially compared to models from other fields such as cognitive psychology or neuropsychology, neither of which use IQ in their models. The principle of parsimony states that: “Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity”. In modern psychology IQ is a useless entity.

However now you are talking about pedagogy or developmental psychology where IQ and other models of intelligence is still being used (though it is getting more and more fringe). Over there nobody cares about the heritability of IQ, only whether or not they predict certain learning disabilities and (and this is old school) which traits of intelligence predicts which learning outcomes (though I would argue behavioral psychologists that don’t use IQ nor intelligence have better luck with their models). Again, if you insist on Occam’s razor, and believe (IMO wrongly) that IQ is the preferred method then heritability should be left out of the model.

Now there is one more thing I’d like to address:

> I’d love to see such a selective demand for rigor applied to, say, studies that suggest secondary education makes a difference in outcomes.

I encourage you to read a study in developmental psychology or pedagogy. I assure you there is plenty of rigor applied. You won’t find any models that include heritability, because, like I said, scientists in the field don’t need that, so they skip it for the sake of simplicity. But what you’ll find are double blind studies, AB tests, descriptions of metrics to assess quality, descriptions of methods to assess disability, plenty of scrutiny over these methods, experiments that valuate these methods, theories which take into account seemingly successful methods, scrutiny of theories with nuanced evidence, scrutiny of methods with nuanced evidence, meta-analyses where theories are ripped apart, meta-analyses where the same theories are supported. Entering “Secondary education efficacy” actually yields over 5 million hits on Google Scholar. I call that a fairly well studied question.

>I actually think you could use his methodology to basically destroy all social sciences.

You can indeed, which is why I judge peoples sincerity on this subject based on if they reject the social sciences entirely as pseudoscientific drivel or apply this reasoning to IQ heritability specifically because they don't like it.

If I'm being honest, deep down, I have to think "the social sciences are pseudoscientific drivel" is the more sound argument. The science is pretty bad which is why the replication crisis hit the social sciences harder than virtually anything else.

You cannot, in fact, use any of the logic in Ned Block's heritability piece to "basically destroy all social sciences". If you disagree, I'd challenge you to formulate any kind of argument based on what Block actually wrote, which is a straightforward explication of the concept of heritability, and not a philosophical treatise on epistemology.

My counterclaim is that "this proves too much, as it implies all of social science is faulty" is a shallow dismissal based on a presumption about what the article says, rather than a close reading of it. If the previous commenter would like to rebut that argument, they too could come up with any argument based on what Block actually wrote to support their original claim.

I knew nothing at all about that commenter at the start of this discussion, but what I've learned since makes me skeptical of their ability to draw sweeping conclusions from any work on this subject. It's not clear that they understand how cog. psych works, or what the implications of IQ actually are, and it is manifestly the case that they don't understand what heritability means.

I'm repeating it because it's important.

I'm not interested in formulating an argument against, say, the efficacy of secondary education using the same methodology as Ned Block, because to do so would take something like 20,000 words, and then you'd just reject it anyway. What you're doing is just standard trolling. You're making an argument in 100 words that requires 10,000 words to refute (i.e. timewasting). Ned Block's argument is absolutely a selective demand for rigor which at its core just argues that in social sciences nothing is "certain" therefore nothing can be known at all.

I find it sort of amazing that folks will twist themselves into pretzels to argue that IQ's genetic basis shouldn't be the prior. The majority of smart people I've talked to in life had a similar experience to me growing up. Namely, they remember very well just being "better" at school than other kids, even though their environments were similar and they didn't honestly try that hard. I specifically remember teachers lauding me in 2nd grade for how hard I worked, when honestly I was and am pretty lazy. I remember very well sitting in class in 7th grade, watching the same presentations by the teacher that all the other kids watched and then with zero studying getting 100% correct on the test while many of them struggled. And I remember going to many of their houses and seeing that their home environments were either equivalent or superior to mine.

Athletic kids have a very similar experience, by the way, when it comes down to running or jumping or other sports. They're just "better".

At base, the environmental argument boils down to something like this: "Anyone in the world could have beaten Magnus Carlsen to become world chess champion if they'd just had the proper environment." Such an argument is so obviously preposterous that the prior should absolutely be that it's false.

Another point: We already know IQ is genetic. Witness that the housecat and humans have vastly different IQs, and no cat will ever perform better on an IQ test than the median human. Again, the prior obviously should be that IQ is genetic.

And again, note that I'm simply pointing out what the PRIOR should be. Thus, it should be on YOU to provide evidence that the prior is wrong. It is insufficient to simply argue that not enough evidence exists to prove IQ is genetic, because that is the prior. The burden of proof is on YOU.

Your arguments boil down to simply gaslighting smart people that their life experience is somehow completely inaccurate, unrepresentative, or misinterpreted. If you really are making it in good faith, it leaves me wondering what in your life experience leads you to believe the genetic explanation should not be the prior. Did you do poorly in school? Did you grow up in such a privileged environment that you can't believe that people like me exist?

Mostly I just want to make the argument below to see how/if you'll respond. In general, I just don't think you're arguing in good faith. The reason IQ isn't studied isn't because it's "not useful." It's because people who study it are systematically shunned by academia.

But here's the main point I want to make:

I find it sort of amazing that folks will twist themselves into pretzels to argue that IQ's genetic basis shouldn't be the prior. The majority of smart people I've talked to in life had a similar experience to me growing up. Namely, they remember very well just being "better" at school than other kids, even though their environments were similar and they didn't honestly try that hard. I specifically remember teachers lauding me in 2nd grade for how hard I worked, when honestly I was and am pretty lazy. I remember very well sitting in class in 7th grade, watching the same presentations by the teacher that all the other kids watched and then with zero studying getting 100% correct on the test while many of them struggled. And I remember going to many of their houses and seeing that their home environments were either equivalent or superior to mine.

Athletic kids have a very similar experience, by the way, when it comes down to running or jumping or other sports. They're just "better".

At base, the environmental argument boils down to something like this: "Anyone in the world could have beaten Magnus Carlsen to become world chess champion if they'd just had the proper environment." Such an argument is so obviously preposterous that the prior should absolutely be that it's false.

Another point: We already know IQ is genetic. Witness that the housecat and humans have vastly different IQs, and no cat will ever perform better on an IQ test than the median human. Again, the prior obviously should be that IQ is genetic.

And again, note that I'm simply pointing out what the PRIOR should be. Thus, it should be on YOU to provide evidence that the prior is wrong. It is insufficient to simply argue that not enough evidence exists to prove IQ is genetic, because that is the prior. The burden of proof is on YOU.

Your arguments boil down to simply gaslighting smart people that their life experience is somehow completely inaccurate, unrepresentative, or misinterpreted. If you really are making it in good faith, it leaves me wondering what in your life experience leads you to believe the genetic explanation should not be the prior. Did you do poorly in school? Did you grow up in such a privileged environment that you can't believe that people like me exist?

This is a lot of words, none of which use anything Block actually wrote to "destroy all of social science".

You've gone from claiming that the scientific evidence is overwhelming that IQ is genetic (based on your confusion about the term "heritability") to a new claim that we should all just assume it's genetic because, like, common sense or something. You don't get to use the term "gaslighting".

No, I succeeded.

> Your arguments boil down to simply gaslighting smart people that their life experience is somehow completely inaccurate, unrepresentative, or misinterpreted.

So what if I am? Smart people aren’t owed any special place in the theory of cognition. High IQ does not need to be at the center of anything. You shouldn’t be treated as special, because you aren’t (or more accurately, what makes you special is not your intelligence, and certainly not your IQ).

Magnus Carlsen intelligence is not what makes Magnus Carslon special, what makes him special is an extraordinary skill in a very specialized sport. He has spent decades perfecting this skill. Yes, he might have some preconditions which he inherited that makes it particularly easy for him to acquire these skills, skills like the ability to remember a large opening repertoire, to visualize a large number of available positions in a short time, to search among these positions and select which ones are more likely to lead to a favorable positions, etc.

Cognitive scientists study these preconditions, and most assume there is a level of inheritance to many if not all of them. However most (but not all) cognitive scientists don’t group all of these skills together and call it intelligence, they simply study what they see. Also if you search on google scholar you may find somebody looking for the heritability factor of a particular visualization skill, however most of the field simply doesn’t care, because it doesn’t matter in most theories of behavior.

Whatever you call intelligence is bound to be arbitrarily picked from a much larger set of cognitive skills. Now Spearman believed these all correlated in what he called general intelligence, but psychometricians have been trying to prove him right for now a hundred years. The scientific community at large remains unconvinced (although there was a period where his theory was more popular and more accepted).

I think the simpler explanation is true that if there is a correlation, it is superficial, and more likely arises because practicing one skill has implication in others, just like practicing for a 100 m dash, makes you better at long jump, not because there exists this platonic ideal of general intelligence that you are born with and makes you superior to other humans.

EDIT: I also want to prove you wrong in your believe that IQ isn’t studied because IQ research is shunned, it is studied plenty, has been for over a century, it is just that the research—like a b-plot in a bad movie—didn’t go anywhere.

Entering the search term: “IQ Cognitive Psychology” yields over 700 000 results, the top one being a study from 2019 that has been cited 60 times so far.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22113...

IQ studies still get plenty of attention, in my opinion they get too much attention. I’m sure Sabrina Hofstetter feels the same way about string theory.

>Did you do poorly in school? Did you grow up in such a privileged environment that you can't believe that people like me exist?

This is not about you. If you really care, I was rasied by a single-mother in relative poverty. But this is not about me, either. This is about scientific methodology, society, and everyone that participates in it. So the answer to this problem is obviously not going to involve your personal life story or your inner experience of your personal intellect.

>The reason IQ isn't studied isn't because it's "not useful." It's because people who study it are systematically shunned by academia.

Using the absence of evidence as evidence of widespread conspiracy is fallacious. You've been repeating this throughout the entire comment section, but you haven't given any evidence to support the claim that research is suppressed. Searching up "IQ prediction" brings up zillions of hits on Google Scholar.

>I specifically remember teachers lauding me in 2nd grade for how hard I worked, when honestly I was and am pretty lazy. I remember very well sitting in class in 7th grade, watching the same presentations by the teacher that all the other kids watched and then with zero studying getting 100% correct on the test while many of them struggled. And I remember going to many of their houses and seeing that their home environments were either equivalent or superior to mine.

Your main point is anecdata? I certainly had the same experience you had, but the most general claim I can make is that school was a breeze for me, not that I was universally smarter than everyone else. That would be intellectually imprudent, and not very smart at all. A more intellectual prudent approach is to focus on the things that didn't come easy to you, but easy for others. I remember being subject to IQ testing, where I did extremely well. Obviously, I did extremely well in school too. But that correlation should be trivial. Before IQ measures any 'general' intelligence, it first measures test-taking ability. Through what means is most of our success in school determined? Test-taking.

>At base, the environmental argument boils down to something like this: "Anyone in the world could have beaten Magnus Carlsen to become world chess champion if they'd just had the proper environment." Such an argument is so obviously preposterous that the prior should absolutely be that it's false.

That is such a ridiculous straw man. I'm seriously questioning your apparent intelligence if you are going to be straw manning views, as oppossed to steel-manning them.

The point of contention is that between-group (i.e. racial) heritability of IQ is not explained by genetic factors, not that people are born 'tabula rasa'. The other point of contention is that heritability and genetic determination are separate concepts, and that it was a methodological error by Charles Murray to conflate the two to draw conclusions about between-group heritability of IQ.

>Another point: We already know IQ is genetic. Witness that the housecat and humans have vastly different IQs, and no cat will ever perform better on an IQ test than the median human. Again, the prior obviously should be that IQ is genetic.

So after straw-manning the arguments, you make the sweeping claim that IQ is genetic. Actually, we have mountains of evidence that show income and socioeconomic status affect IQ; the widely cited Turkheimer (2003) study showed that in impoverished families, 60% of variance in IQ was accounted for by family environment, genes contributed next to 0%, while the reverse was found in rich families. Is that surprising, that if one is struggling, that they would not be less likely to reach the 'genetic potential' of their intelligence, the same way that a malnourished child is less likely to reach the 'genetic potential' of their athleticism?

The problem with your arguments is that they are riddled with bizarre leaps of logic, and seem to be motivated by your incessant belief in predestined intellectual superiority of other people. It is obviously the case that some people, by nature or nurture, are generally brighter than others, there's no disputing that.

But what is to be done about it? If we follow the science, which almost unanimously shows that environmental and societal factors play a huge role in 'IQ gaps' -- perhaps more so than molecular genetics -- the right kind of 'solution' is one that ought to be plural, and ought to be inclusive. We are dealing with society after all, which was the point of contention in The Bell Curve. That is, if we want smarter people, and we want people to reach their innate potential, then we should make our society more egalitarian, where families struggle much less than they do today. Charles Murray reaches the opposite conclusion. Why do you think that is? There is probably a parsimonious account that explains both his choice in using flawed methodology and exclusionary policy proposal of cutting welfare. I'll let you guess at what is, and it ends in -ism.

I appreciate that I think you've acknowledged that genetic factors play a role in mental abilities. Debating the question of whether there's a single factor at play or multiple factors is a reasonable thing to do. Regardless of the truth there, it's pretty clear the factor or factors show significant overlap, as skill in one area of mental ability tends to predict skill in other abilities.

As for your argument about IQ studies going nowhere, you're not arguing in good faith. IQ research is a third rail because it's been tied by the left to eugenics and racism. This is the same reason colleges are (at their great peril) abandoning use of the SAT.

You're advancing a theory that it's not genetic. I've offered a counterexample. I can offer others. For example, Kim Peek. Are you seriously going to argue that any person could be like him if they were just raised in the right environment? You're absolutely gaslighting.

So ultimately, after all this spilled ink, the argument boils down to a debate about left-wing vs. right-wing politics. Sure, we’ve gone this far, why not continue.

I just want you consider one thing: Is it really “the left’s” fault that eugenics have been tied to IQ research, or should we perhaps blame the number of eugenicists which promoted this construct. I’ll let you decide on that. But also remember that known eugenicist and disgraced psychologist Richard Lynn was on the editorial board for the science journal Intelligence until 2018, they very same journal that published the paper OP posted some 30 parent posts ago about the supposed evidence for the Reverse Flynn effect. But I’m sure you can find a way to blame that on left wing politics as well.

The point of my anecdata isn't to prove a theory. It's to demonstrate that the burden of proof should be on those claiming intelligence is environmental. If that's your theory, then how do you explain my experience?

I agree that IQ measures test-taking ability. If you agree with that and agree with it being genetic, then all that's left is seeing that IQ correlates strongly with life outcomes like income. If you want to disagree with IQ being "intelligence" then fine. Who cares what you call it. What matters is there is this genetic factor that correlates with life outcomes.

Magnus Carlsen isn't a straw man. He's a demonstration of genetic determination apart from environmental factors you're lumping in as "heritability." His abilities are genetic, not environmental. Same with someone like Kim Peek. What _is_ ridiculous is for you to argue such things aren't genetic, and that extraordinary claim requires proof.

The point about the housecat is strong. It shows that we already know that the brain is "programmed" by genetics. It's a simple point, of course, but it's one you seem not to understand or to ignore. On Turkheimer's study, yes you can lower people's IQ by various means (a simple one is lead poisoning). That doesn't mean there isn't a genetically determined IQ ceiling for each person.

But your last paragraph is where you showed your real stripes. I get it. You desperately want everyone to have the same genetic IQ so you can rev up the Rube Goldberg machine of woke machinery to argue everything is implicit bias and racism.

The truth is, on average you can't make it so families struggle less and poverty disappears, because both of those concepts exist in reference to a distribution. Compared to families in, say, 1500 Poland, NO American families struggle or live in poverty. There will always be a distribution of outcomes around a median, and a key determinant of those outcomes will always be genetic factors, among which are physical strength, speed, endurance, dexterity and, yes, IQ.

It must have been a hoot playing D&D with you as a kid. "OK I'm fine rolling for Strength, Dexterity and Constitution but if you insist on rolling for Intelligence I'm going home and putting up a poster on your house saying you're a racist!"

I'm in fact not doing that, and have said so repeatedly. My position in this thread is that you are wrong, and have produced faulty evidence for your arguments. It's not that I have a countervailing argument. I don't care about the rest of your theories.

Ok. I'm comfortable about what this thread says about our respective arguments. Thanks!

Fine. I think the prior should be it's genetic. You (I think) think it shouldn't. I think we can probably leave it there.

Just to be crystal clear what I mean by "prior": I'm talking about the null hypothesis. So, if you were an ancient Greek studying physics, the prior should be that gravity is a force/acceleration pointing downward, not upward. Yes, someone could argue gravity points upward, but such a claim would require evidence. Arguing it points downward imposes no such requirement, because it's obvious to any casual observer. IQ is obviously genetic, because cats have lower IQs than humans and cats have significantly different genetics than humans.

I don't know much about Richard Lynn, but I like your use of the notion that he's "disgraced." It reminds me of Mao's China.

A point I'd make is this: It's obvious from what you wrote that you're left wing. I think you've admitted as much. You're now I think assuming I'm right wing, but the thing is I'm not. I'm pro-choice, voted for Biden and both Clintons, support universal health care, support repeal of the 2nd amendment, support generalized income assistance, etc. My position on IQ is actually at odds with my political compatriots. That should tell you something. Yours is not, and that's one of the reasons I know you're not arguing in good faith. It's just a religion to you.

It says I know not to feed trolls, and you're a troll.

You should probably learn about Richard Lynn if you want to be an advocate for IQ. It is healthy—although not strictly necessary—to know the history of the construct you are pushing, particularly if said construct comes with dubious policy proposals.

No, Richard Lynn is truly a disgrace. He has been found manipulating research data, cherry-picking, and purposefully misinterpreting results in a way to favor his political agenda. This has resulted in him being stripped of his emeritus professor title. His racist and eugenicists talking points have also landed him on a Southern Poverty Law Center list of known white nationalists. A true disgrace if there ever was one. Also note that Richard Lynn has been cited many times by supporters of IQ (including multiple times in The Bell Curve). I know this us guilt by association, but when it comes these kind of people, I for one am willing to judge associates along with main offenders.

Perhaps this is religion to me, and perhaps I’m arguing in bad faith, if that’s what it takes to argue against racist believes, than so be it. It is worth it.

But consider this. Perhaps I’m not just a dogmatic anti-racist, but also informed by a university education in psychology, and by the scientific literature in the field of psychology. Even fellow anti-racist Albert Einstein always admitted his dogma about his believes in the universe, and he was not wrong about any of it (with few exceptions; notably that quantum entanglement could be explained with localized hidden variables).

Reading about the latest racist is sort of boring. It's like reading about how MLK was a philanderer and a plagiarist or how Michael Jackson may or may not have been a pedophile. It's beside the point. I'd rather focus on people's useful contributions. Well, except for Elizabeth Holmes. I make an exception there.

I actually appreciate your candor. I believe strongly in equality of opportunity. I do not believe accepting falsehoods as fact or drowning those seeking truth in frivolous arguments is likely to get us there.

I do actually think it is possible to have a world where we accept that IQ is genetically heritable and yet people treat each other kindly.

I am convinced that a refusal to accept IQ as a genetic trait is the cornerstone of the belief system underlying claims of systemic racism and the like. In fact, if I believed IQ were largely environmental, I would immediately join in that chorus. The problem is, IQ is genetic, and what society is actually doing is demonizing large groups of people in a fashion that resembles the Salem Witch Trials for being "racists" when in fact most situations can be explained in a far more pedestrian way by simply acknowledging that some people just aren't all that smart.

None of this is to say that zero racists exist in the world. Of course they do, and they should be vigorously combatted. But to suggest that racism is a founding principle of western culture or that it is the basic reason for differential outcomes between groups just isn't true. Not in 2023.