Merged Book: "Why Everything You've Been Told about Genetics, Talent and IQ is Wrong"

[mike3]

Also, I found this response on a blog:

http://www.melvinkonner.com/index.php?option=com_wordpress&p=512&Itemid=72

One of the comments there (by the blog author!) was:

I think it hurts either way. But your point is very, very well taken. I remember I once was a guest on a popular local radio show with an African-American host and a predominantly African-American audience. It so happened that I followed a segment about the sports aspirations of African-American boys. Well, this talk show host read the riot act to all those who encourage those boys to give up all other aspirations in order to nurture vain hopes of huge success in professional sports. He said in no uncertain terms that not one in a thousand of those who give up so much for those goals will reach them. Who is doing those 999 boys a favor? The coach who says, “Reach for the stars, you might be an NBA star even at 6′2″? Or the math teacher who says, “Back up your sports dreams with a decent math grade. You have the real potential to be an accountant or math teacher”? In my travels, I’ve seen “You can be anything you want to be” do a lot of harm to a lot of kids. How about, “Let’s talk about how to make what you have a good chance to be meet up with some of your dreams.”?

Note the underlined bit well. It suggests that working your ass off like crazy is far from a guarantee of success, at least in certain types of ventures. Truth is indeed not black and white at all.

 

[Kuko 4000]

But when you have two people training equally well in similar environments and getting much more unequal results, what does that imply?

Intuitively, to me, that says that the differences come from genetics. Although this much referenced study that Shenk points out in the book made me think again and wanting to learn more:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10356397
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/284/5420/1670.abstract

Shenk, on pages 108-109 (my bold):

To say that there is much we don’t control in our lives is a dramatic understatement, roughly on the order of saying that the universe is a somewhat large place. To begin with, there are many influences we can’t even detect. In 1999, Oregon neuroscientist John C. Crabbe led a study on how mice reacted to alcohol and cocaine. Crabbe was already an expert on the subject and had run many similar studies, but this one had a special twist: he conducted the exact same study at the same time in three different locations (Portland, Oregon; Albany, New York; and Edmonton, Alberta) in order to gauge the reliability of the results. The researchers went to “extraordinary lengths” to standardize equipment, methods, and lab environment: identical genetic mouse strains, identical food, identical bedding, identical cages, identical light schedule, etc. They did virtually everything they could think of to make the environments of the mice the same in all three labs.

Somehow invisible influences intervened. With the scientists controlling for nearly everything they could control, mice with the exact same genes behaved differently depending on where they lived. And even more surprising: the differences were not consistent, but zigged and zagged across different genetic strains and different locations.

...

Something else stood out in Crabbe’s three-city experiment: gene-environment interplay. It wasn’t just that hidden environmental differences had significantly affected the results. It was also clear that these hidden environments had affected different mouse strains in different ways — clear evidence of genes interacting dynamically with environmental forces.

But the biggest lesson of all was how much complexity emerged from such a simple model. These were genetically pure mice in standard lab cages. Only a handful of known variables existed between groups. Imagine the implications for vastly more complex animals — animals with highly developed reasoning capability, complex syntax, elaborate tools, living in vastly intricate and starkly distinct cultures and jumbled genetically into billions of unique identities. You’d have a world where, from the very first hours of life, young ones experienced so many hidden and unpredictable influences from genes, environment, and culture that there’d be simply no telling what they would turn out like.

Such is our world. Each human child is his/her own unique genetic entity conceived in his/her own distinctive environment, immediately spinning out his/her own unique interactions and behaviors. Who among these children born today will become great pianists, novelists, botanists, or marathoners? Who will live a life of utter mediocrity? Who will struggle to get by? We do not know.

What we do know is that our brains and bodies are primed for plasticity; they were built for challenge and adaptation. This is true from life’s earliest moments. According to neuroscientists Mark H. Johnson and Annette Karmiloff-Smith, “Recent reviews of pre- and postnatal brain development have come to the conclusion that brain development is not merely a process of the unfolding of a genetic plan.”

Intelligence is not fixed but waiting to be developed. Athletic prowess is not preordained but awaits training. Musical ability lies dormant in all of us, calling for early and sustained incantation. The potential for creativity is built into the architecture of our brains. All of these are a function of influence and process — far from fully controllable, but also quite the opposite of fixed and predetermined.

Back to your question, the thing is, when do you ever have a situation even close to anything like those mice had in real life and between people?

People usually start their training at 6-10 years old, they have already lived very complex lives for 6-10 years, so they automatically start training from VERY different starting points, and usually the training they are going to get is not even close to what people like Mozart, Phelps or that football kid in the previous video I posted are exposed to. And they all train differently.

And again, still, the "early on" still keeps biting: this critical period theory, so if your naivete and/or other outside-your-personal-control factors cause you to miss this, you're capped and thus a good chunk of maximum success is still seen to rest on factors that are outside your personal control. Genes are just one of them. So the thrust of my point -- that you shouldn't just go judge someone as "lazy" merely because of your perception of them having general "success" or lack thereof -- still holds quite strong. If they did train harder the parents, etc. then must have been able to get them to do it, i.e. overcome the naivete barrier. Thus if someone did not have that barrier overcome by having the fortune to get those kind of parents, then they are not so personally responsible for failing to succeed as much as someone who did.

Just to be clear, I'm not judging here, merely describing. I am very attracted to scientific naturalism. In essence: there was no way for any person to do things differently than what they did. This leads me to judge less, and understand and emphatize more. It also leads me to appreciate the importance of education.

To your point, there a some abilities like for example the absolute pitch, that are thought to be available for all, but there is a small time period early on in ones life when it's possible to aquire it if the circumstances are right. After that, it could be impossible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_pitch

Then there are other kinds of abilities, like for example relative pitch (which the experts say is way more important than the absolute pitch when it comes to being a musician) that anyone can learn and develop to amazing heights at almost any time in their lives through training.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_pitch

These are just a couple of examples from the book, I would like to know more about this stuff. What kind of abilities are dependend on critical period and what kind of skills can be learned almost whenever.

And I'd still like to hear you answer yes or no to: Do you think that, without any sort of genetic changes or genetic engineering or whatever, that in theory, one could have a society in which 90% of the people have the genius of Albert Einstein or Nikola Tesla or other famous scientific geniuses, and the musical talent of Mozart, all in one? And how much do you think could be done by an "average" person who missed out on the critical childhood period? Like someone starting at something in their late teens or even their 20s?

I just can't answer yes or no, because it's not clear to me and I am not an expert on these issues, I don't know. My understanding of the issue is that we just can't know beforehand. I also feel very symphatetic to the idea in Shenk's book that many people find it easier to blame genes for average skills rather than their own parenting or environments or quality of training or self discipline, etc.

One other thing to note is that nowadays it's getting more and more usual that people can play instruments at a young age better than Mozart did at the same age. To me this clearly seems to be about better training earlier on in life, see the Suzuki school of music, etc. I have no good reasons to doubt that we would see more and more composers as well if they started to practice composing as early as Mozart did and with exceptional teachers (as was the case with Mozart) rather than in their late teens or early 20's like they do today.

Btw. Chapter nine in the book is titled: How To Foster a Culture of Excellence

You might find it interesting, I hope to find enough time and motivation next weekend to post some of the main points over here. I'm also aiming to collect some of the more controversial sounding quotes / claims from the book to hear opinions from the more knowledgeable here.

 

[mike3]

Intuitively, to me, that says that the differences come from genetics. Although this much referenced study that Shenk points out in the book made me think again and wanting to learn more:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10356397
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/284/5420/1670.abstract

Shenk, on pages 108-109 (my bold):




Back to your question, the thing is, when do you ever have a situation even close to anything like those mice had in real life and between people?

People usually start their training at 6-10 years old, they have already lived very complex lives for 6-10 years, so they automatically start training from VERY different starting points, and usually the training they are going to get is not even close to what people like Mozart, Phelps or that football kid in the previous video I posted are exposed to. And they all train differently.





Just to be clear, I'm not judging here, merely describing. I am very attracted to scientific naturalism. In essence: there was no way for any person to do things differently than what they did. This leads me to judge less, and understand and emphatize more. It also leads me to appreciate the importance of education.

Though this seems to suggest "deterministic" universe. This gets hairy (so discussion would be off topic of this thread).

To your point, there a some abilities like for example the absolute pitch, that are thought to be available for all, but there is a small time period early on in ones life when it's possible to aquire it if the circumstances are right. After that, it could be impossible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_pitch

Then there are other kinds of abilities, like for example relative pitch (which the experts say is way more important than the absolute pitch when it comes to being a musician) that anyone can learn and develop to amazing heights at almost any time in their lives through training.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_pitch

These are just a couple of examples from the book, I would like to know more about this stuff. What kind of abilities are dependend on critical period and what kind of skills can be learned almost whenever.

Hmm.

I just can't answer yes or no, because it's not clear to me and I am not an expert on these issues, I don't know. My understanding of the issue is that we just can't know beforehand. I also feel very symphatetic to the idea in Shenk's book that many people find it easier to blame genes for average skills rather than their own parenting or environments or quality of training or self discipline, etc.

But since you can't change your parenting any more than you can change your DNA, why would it matter so much? The question is how much rests on "controllable" factors vs. "uncontrollable" ones (though I presume if you accept the "deterministic" view of reality nothing is truly "controllable" but this gets into meta-physics and when I use this term I usually refer to the idea of what "seems" controllable, as there certainly does seem to be a "feel" of free will regardless of whether or not any "really" exists and to me meta-physics distracts from the point I'm trying to get at.). Namely, the former category would include the last two on your list, while the latter would include the first two, and genes.

One other thing to note is that nowadays it's getting more and more usual that people can play instruments at a young age better than Mozart did at the same age. To me this clearly seems to be about better training earlier on in life, see the Suzuki school of music, etc. I have no good reasons to doubt that we would see more and more composers as well if they started to practice composing as early as Mozart did and with exceptional teachers (as was the case with Mozart) rather than in their late teens or early 20's like they do today.

Btw. Chapter nine in the book is titled: How To Foster a Culture of Excellence

You might find it interesting, I hope to find enough time and motivation next weekend to post some of the main points over here. I'm also aiming to collect some of the more controversial sounding quotes / claims from the book to hear opinions from the more knowledgeable here.

In other words, very much of it indeed depends on that "critical" period, so if you miss that, then it's effectively like having a gene. You can't go back and change it any more than you can do that with your DNA. Thus, why should it be harder to accept than a gene as the cause? You still might never going to get much more than "average" skills in that regard no matter what you do.

 

[mike3]

I also think that to create a culture of "excellence" will require the elimination of poverty. That is, there must be no people too poor to realize the full level of abilities.

 

[Paulhoff]

Though this seems to suggest "deterministic" universe. This gets hairy (so discussion would be off topic of this thread).

The bottom line, who the hell would know the different.

Paul

 

[mike3]

Does this mean what I think it means? Genetics not important?

Hi.

I saw this:

http://www.babble.com/dispatches/no-nature-nurture-distinction-genius-in-all-of-us/

What do you think? Is this really true, that genetics hardly matters when it comes to abilities? That, in _theory_, the majority of people could have had IQ over 170 if they only had the right "environmental" factors? How come I hear in discussions about athletic "muscle"-based stuff like body building or power lifting, "GENETICS" getting hyped so much? Is this actually a myth? And genetics has little to do with it?

And what about stuff like behavior -- could it be that if this is true, we could have more capacity for peace than we think we do?

 

[bobc]

Yes, I think you misread it. The current view of the nature/nurture debate is roughly that genetics provides a capability for the organism, but whether that capability is utilised depends on the environment of the developing organism. Without knowing exactly how the full genome works, it is uncertain where the line between nature/nurture lies, and probably specific to each trait, or interactions between various traits.

The article suggests that the interaction between nature/nurture may be quite subtle, and small differences in environment lead to large differences in expression. This sounds like a classic chaotic system.

I have seen other research suggesting that genetic expression has an element of randomness, and this is useful rather than detrimental. There is also the question of epigenetics, where environment seems to have an effect on genetic expression, which is more like the Lamarckian view of evolution.

The picture we are looking at is a highly complex feedback loop between genes and environment.

 

[jayh]

i might add that the current view of inherited capacity is so strongly backed by evidence that some study that flatly contradicted it is very likely wrong.

 

[mike3]

i might add that the current view of inherited capacity is so strongly backed by evidence that some study that flatly contradicted it is very likely wrong.

And this would "flatly contradict" the current view?

 

[Gytu]

If anyone is interested in how genetics and environmental factors affect an individual, read the book Outliers: The Story of Sucess by Malcolm Gladwell.

 

[Nihilianth]

Not just genetics, no, but sometimes... like if you're born without legs, your chances of becoming a long distance runner in the olympics will be severely undermined. And how did mozart get an instrument to play in the first place? It seems that you need to be born with certain priveleges or parents that will help drive you from a young age to be ultimately good at something by adulthood. Tiger was given golf everything and lessons and a chance to play all the time.
An example from my local area is Wayne Gretzky. His dad made him play hockey in the backyard (he watered down the lawn in winter to create a place to skate) with a ball instead of a puck. It's much harder to control a ball on ice than a puck. He played constantly as a kid from a young age.

I find it is the same with music, the gifted kids get instruments at a young age and are encouraged to practice practice practice.

Privelege or opportunity, mixed with a chance to do it all the time makes one great. Genetics or physical ability makes it possible too. One can sing every day and be good, but not always the best. Mix opportunity/privelege and practice with the genes to actually be good at singing or sports or anything else, and you will get that chance to be the ultimate super at whatever right?

I didn't read past this post, and this thread was linked to me from another thread about education.

I would like it comment on this:

It is not necessary to start a young age and be "privileged" enough to have the proper equipment to be "great" at something. I have observed this first-hand.

My twin brother and I have played baseball since the age of 5. Started out with T-ball, and obviously worked my way up. We worked hard, and practiced every day as a kid. I would hit up the batting cages every chance I got, several times a week during the winter months.

We were both pretty solid players all the way up through high school and college. Tried out for some professional minor league teams, and could never make any of the cuts. The other players were mostly much better than either of us.

There was this one kid who decided to try out for college. He never so much as touched a ball in his life. Never picked up a glove, or swung a bat. But he always wanted to play baseball. Just never had the chance to do so. He was a very good buddy of mine in college, came from the inner city, and was clearly underprivileged. But he was a great guy, fun to be around, and funny as hell.

Well, he went out for the team in our Freshman year. Failed to make the team, and was not terribly enthusiastic with his experience. I will say, for someone who never touched a bat, he had a pretty sweet, natural swing. Something which I have had to work hard at, and concentrate on swinging correctly. I was not a "natural" hitter, but I was a GREAT middle infielder.

My brother and I would drag him to the cages during our sophomore year, before the new baseball season started. We would practice fielding, and so forth. He made great leaps and bounds, despite missing more than half of our private practice sessions. But he developed as a hitter very well.

By the time tryouts started, he made the cut, but was a bench player who would be called in as a pinch hitter, then placed at first base.

Despite his lack of training and experience, and despite his laziness, by our junior and senior years, he was the best hitter on the team. Indeed, he was the HR and RBI leader in the D2 Division! He ended up getting drafted by the Arizona Diamondbacks, and is going back and forth between AA and AAA.

Reading a scouting report on him now, the scouts report on him:

"He is a very laid back player, nearly to the point of laziness. Usually the last one to the field, and the first to leave. Despite that personality flaw, he has natural talent to swinging the bat, and can hold his own on the field. He is a great joy to be around, and a member of the team that makes quick friends with everyone around him. He is very slow to anger."

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind whatsoever, that combined with his natural talent, and had he grown up around the game and worked hard to his fullest potential, he could be a very famous player, making millions a year right now. As it is, he is merely a mediocre minor league journeyman, who may make a September call-up now and then.

As for myself, I grew up with the game, and worked VERY hard, and was VERY persistent. I couldn't even make the cut for a Rookie league or low-A ball club.

You hear those kinds of stories all the time. Some people do just "have it," while others do not seem to.

 

[Nihilianth]

Any relevant data on identical twins? Separated or not? Where one has excelled?

I am an identical twin myself. We have pretty much opposite personalities. He's a stereotypical type A personality, with leadership qualities. I am pretty opposite from him, thought I do show Type A traits sometimes.

(I know that the personality types are probably thought of as being bogus around here. It's just easier to describe our separate personalities in this manner.)

He worked much harder, and was far more intense at winning and playing baseball. I was the better contact hitter, base runner, and fielder. I nearly made a pro baseball team 2 years ago. Thinking of trying out again in May and June, before the Rookie draft, and before the Rookie and Low A leagues begin play. At the age of 27, I am now in the best shape of my life, and I know I have a pretty killer swing. My brother will also be trying out as well.

Probably what made me the "better player," was not my work ethic or extreme concentration or anything like that. But probably my relaxed attitude. My mind is always clear, and I never over think myself.

But Michael Jordan, as pointed out earlier in this thread, was different. He was even more intense, and an even harder worker than my twin. He ended up with great success in the NBA, whereas, my brother is the lesser of identical twin ball players in skill, despite working harder than me.

 

[Paulhoff]

Genes do not tell how to connect every nerve cell to every other nerve cell, genes are general instructions, not detail ones.

Paul

 

[blutoski]

Genes do not tell how to connect every nerve cell to every other nerve cell, genes are general instructions, not detail ones

The analogy I use is "A recipe; not a blueprint."