Reply With QuoteA couple of (possibly) interesting links.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0224132655.htm
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2...ves_on_the.php
Does any feel like being skeptical - or should we take this paper at face value?
Satooshi Kanazawa helpfully provides a link to the full paper on his personal website.
http://personal.lse.ac.uk/Kanazawa/
Kanazawa, Satoshi. 2010. “Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent.” Social Psychology Quarterly. 73: 33-57.
The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease. Voltaire
A couple of (possibly) interesting links.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0224132655.htm
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2...ves_on_the.php
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear
bright, until you hear them speak.
I'm a liberal atheist - I haven't read it yet but am already feeling a sense of warmth, he's obviously a genius and has a proper uni job, not to mention a few publications. I'm thinking positive vibes all the way....
The proposition is that our brains have adapted to deal with problems that have been present for an evolutionarily relvant period of time. That the evidence of real intelligence is that one shows the capacity to deal with problems that are relatively recent.
Thus for example less intelligent people have more children (they cannot understand contraception), die earlier (they cannot comprehend risk factor management) and are more likely to end up in prison (they sort problems using agression and do not understand the consequences of adequate policing).
This background makes me immediately suspicious - it is a new version of Eugencis.
So the proposal is that:
Polygamy is the norm (evidence - some tribal behaviour and size differential between men and women) so polygamy (multiple partners) should be the norm for men - variation from this norm should be evidence of intelligence.
(This to me contradicts his other papers - women are less intelligent than men as mates are chosen for beauty rather than ability, but are more monogamous - his defence is that this was expected througout evolution)
Religiousness is the norm (deduced from effect = cause errors, correctly leading to a paranoid hyperawareness which protects from enemies and wild animals, but incidentally leads to attribution of effect = cause to large random events in nature = supernatural power), thus questioning cause effect relationship and placing trust in probability is evidence of intelligence.
Conservatism is the norm (defined as concern for ones immediate family and friends with little concern for unrelated humans), thus liberalism (concern for all humans) is evidence of greater intelligence.
The study is presented as having only two dependent variables - I have not had a chance to look up previous studies, however he has previously proposed the Savannah hyporthesis and that women are more stupid than men in a time frame consistent with using the same data for trawling purposes.
Data sources include the National Longitudional Study of Adolescent Health which took around 20K adolescents in 1994-1995 did general IQ tests and sampled opinions, in around 7 years later he did a follow up on around 14K of these analysing what he considered to be dependent variables (liberalism, Religiousity and monogamy) and independent variables (Family, children and friends) and compared these across at least 8 variables (including intelligence - using a verbal ressoning score). The second source is the General Social Studies (GSS) - random samples of 1500 - 3000 adult Americans on annual surveys collating data from upto 6 years of studies depending on whether the precise questions (or answers?) he wanted were included. This allowed more age ranges to be included but at the cost of ending up comparing different group sizes for different pieces of information.
Then it all gets very difficult:
Liberalism - he makes up his own definition. When it comes to the GSS cohort he uses only self reported 'liberalism' even though he shows that such people are not truly liberal when questions of ceding power to the government for social policy arise.
He argues that polygamy is the norm evolutionary, but that monogamy is the norm culturally and then that defying the cultural norm is evidence of stupidity!
He argues that the findings in both cohorts is identical even though the association between inetlligence and liberal ideology is 0.238 int the Adolescence study versus 0.0726 in the GSS study and for religiosity -0.182 v -0.061.
No absolute figures are available to check any of his tabulated data, and threshold effects are included but not expalined int he text. Finally there are no co-authors, this amount of work could not have been conducted by one person, so why have none of his co-workers been prepared to join him in this pubication?
As an idea it is superficially appealing, but I think the belief is leading the conclusions rahter than the data forcing the conclusions. Other 'novel' ideas such as homosexuality, chastity should impact on the supposedly stable background evolutionary interest on having children among the intelligensia - but aparently not.
The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease. Voltaire
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2...ves_on_the.php
That's a thumbs down from the bearded squid.
Me I'm just fab in my own right and I need none of you other liberals, atheists, or overweight white middle class males basking in my reflected glory. I'm sorry but if I allow it for you then NIck Griffin is next in the queue and I can't let that happen.
Does any feel like being skeptical - or should we take this paper at face value?
Satooshi Kanazawa helpfully provides a link to the full paper on his personal website.
I haven't read his paper. He could be a genius,or simply another academic unable to distinguish between correlation and causation.
I also have problems with the terms ' atheist' and 'liberal' used in such a narrow sense. If the hypothesis is correct,one would expect to find a highly disproportionate number of atheists and Liberals within a group of people with high measured IQs. Has this been done?
My own position is that I remain unconvinced that intellect has much to with the formation of our strongest beliefs and attitudes.[as a species]. That those things are inculcated uncritically pretty much before the age of 6 and do not change for the majority of people.
I remain skeptical but open minded.
The latter not the former. He gives the impression that he actually structured the follow up questionaire for the National Longitudional Study of Adolescent Health follow up study, but wan not one of its authors, further in at least three other of his papers the same data is used to 'assess' other dependent variables. In essence he is data trawling, looking for data that supports his beliefs, and has no understanding of the statistical implications of using multiple variables - redeifned at will until they produce the outcome he desires.Originally Posted by Drop Bear
The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease. Voltaire
It seems the deal is done so I'll be very unskeptical and not bother with the article in full. I must admit that after a passing glance I didn't get any kind of excited rush over the prospect of reading it!
One issue it does raise though is intelligence and I would quite like to hear what people have to say about that. I have a vested interest I suppose because I have a very low IQ, seriously, it's appallingly bad, yet at the same time appear to have none of the life markers of a low IQ. From educational level to relationships and being an older mum I seem to buck the trend substantially. The contrast makes me curious and I don't have any hang ups about it, I think of myself as of average intelligence but someone who played the dealt hand fairly well. Regardless of opinion about IQ it seems interchangeably used for intelligence and in the real world it is as likely people will refer to IQ as intelligence without distinction (unsurprising I don't!). It's also heavily represented in research so I think it does warrant more than mere dismissal despite it's flaws.
You've said that before. I found it difficult to believe then and I still do.
Firstly I find it hard to come to terms with the fact that I am talking to 2 very intelligent dogs.
@Floppit
I do not know what tests you have taken but they must be seriously flawed.
IQ tests measure certain abilities, the point is do you use those abilities in everyday life.
Clearly you use all your abilities and we all see a very intelligent and beautiful human being, who we would happily take advice from.
Some people have high IQ and don't bother using it (cue names of certain journalists), the point being that IQ on it's own is not a perfect indication of being sensible.
Last edited by polomint38; 11th March 2010 at 10:17 AM. Reason: spacing
______________________________
You need an excuse? Just drink
skbuncks
her cheese slid off her cracker many moons ago
floppit
low IQ =/= low intelligence.
I would find it similarly hard to believe that Floppit had appalling low intelligence but if she doesn't score well on IQ tests then maybe that says more about the ability of these tests to measure intelligence than it does about the diaphanous quality they're attempting to quanty.
I honestly have a very low IQ, I've scored as low as 80 and never as high as 100, mostly between 80 and 90. The reason it doesn't bother me in the slightest is that I don't really care on an emotional level, especially as I have avoided all associated life problems. Whatever my intelligence level is it is what matters more to me is how I use whatever I have and in that respect, while I have a way to go, I figure I do ok in the larger scheme of things. The reality is that I know I don't have sub normal intelligence, I would have to deny reality to buy that - if I scored average it would probably be more unsettling to me as that's actually likely!
It does interest me academically though and as a matter of personal curiosity. My other half is convinced it's because I think I can't do IQ tests, plausible except that the first result shocked me completely and there have been times since when I've thought that my education level has improved and have expected better results but then found the same low IQ score at the end. The second idea is that IQ tests test something associated (normally) with certain life consequences, relatively stable in individuals over time (me too) but not what most people who know me think of as intelligence. The other thing I've wondered about is that my mother is dyslexic, father has tourettes and my brother mild autism, the latter I know has a sex link, I think the tourettes does too - luckily I'm female! Perhaps I inherited non disabling differences that perversely don't effect every day life but have a heavy effect on IQ tests?
Intelligence is interesting because it's one of those things used consistently, undeniable as an entity and yet incredibly elusive to pin down.
Einstein is credited with the saying that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. The way I interpret this is that over a very large range of measured intelligence, the effort any individual puts in to a much greater extent than natural ability determines the outcome. There are the outstanding few who are naturally gifted and driven, who achieve amazing things, but for the rest of us the underlying ability to resolve three dimensional objects into two dimensional repesentations or to understand metaphors doesn't really matter.
The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease. Voltaire
Do you mean the outcome of the measure of intelligence? In other words that effort determines the score? Or the outcome in terms of life chances independent of the test score?Einstein is credited with the saying that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. The way I interpret this is that over a very large range of measured intelligence, the effort any individual puts in to a much greater extent than natural ability determines the outcome.
Yet it does seem to at some level. I've lost full journal access so apologise in advance for just going from abstracts but here are a few I would find hard to explain in terms of it just not mattering (across large numbers - I'm quietly confident I'm not going to pop my clogs any earlier than expected!):...but for the rest of us the underlying ability to resolve three dimensional objects into two dimensional repesentations or to understand metaphors doesn't really matter.
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retri...47279706001967
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/...e2=tf_ipsecshaConclusions
In all studies, higher IQ in the first two decades of life was related to lower rates of total mortality in middle to late adulthood. Some plausible mechanistic pathways exist, but further examination is required. The precise nature of the IQ–mortality relation (particularly in ethnic minorities and women) and the link between IQ and disease-specific outcomes also warrants further research.
I picked on death as it doesn't have too much 'subjective grey' in terms of measurement! Perhaps the above and the similar studies they refer to are just fundamentally flawed pieces of science.Tests of psychometric intelligence (IQ-type tests), introduced about a century ago, have traditionally been used in educational and workplace settings. Only in the past decade has their predictive capacity for non-psychiatric health outcomes been examined in the rapidly evolving field of cognitive epidemiology. The health outcome most commonly examined in relation to people's differences in measured intelligence is all cause mortality. Cohort studies of older people indicate that those with higher intelligence scores experience a lower risk of mortality.1 A problem with examining the association between IQ and mortality in these age groups is the cognition lowering effect of comorbidities, which might explain the apparent protective effect of high intelligence scores against premature mortality.
To address the comorbidity issue, investigators have recently started to link results from intelligence tests taken in early life with adult mortality. Findings are highly consistent—people with a higher IQ in childhood live longer.2-8 In studies that report comparable statistics,4 6-8 the hazards ratios for total mortality, comparing the groups with the lowest and highest intelligence scores, range from 1.4 (95% confidence interval 0.9 to 2.0)7 to 1.9 (1.4 to 2.6).4 Moreover, the association between IQ and mortality seems to be incremental, not solely generated by the typically poor later health outcomes of people with learning disabilities, who represent a sizeable proportion of the groups scoring lower for intelligence.4 6 8
I found this very interesting and it wetted my personal curiosity:
http://www.iapsych.com/articles/hale2007.pdf
The authors of the above advocate a move away from global IQ measure and towards more complex models using the variance within rather than between subjects.If practitioners move beyond global IQ interpretation, and methods for objective
idiographic interpretation are established, the practice of intellectual assessment will be
once again valued and respected among those in clinical and educational practice.
Something I've never had personal access to is a measure of variability within a test result - I know which bits feel like they flummox me but nothing more (it's the bits without context, the bits where using life experience/knowledge is about as much help as a chocolate fireguard!).
What I mean is that in terms of practical intelligence and realising ambitions intelligence is only one aspect, probably relatively easily compensated for over a substantial range.
In respect of IQ and its association with liongevity one must first address the causes of IQ variation then its potential associations. i have not tried to get up to date with all the literature, so just generalities.
Causes of IQ - are sickly/malnourished/materially/educationally disadvantaged children likely to have a lower IQ and would these factors also predict death?
Do current social arrangements favour those who fit our prespecified notions of what intelligence is, thus create artificial advantages for those who happen to do well in IQ tests?
What I wonder if whether the predictive nature is either itself an association (between IQ and the true reason) or whether the odds are subsequently stacked in favour of those who have a higher IQ. Unravelling this would be very difficult, since epidemiology cannot resovle small biases with large effects. Thus if for example 20% of children with significant childhood illnesses had their IQ affected by this but not the rest, and this reduced the average life expectancy by 20 years in the entire group - there would be a disproportinate effect on the 'low IQ' group that would be almost invisible unless the study was very carefully constructed to look at this precise question.
The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease. Voltaire
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