Steno AI - #302 – Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences - Transcripts
Mõtteid
Intelligentsus minu jaoks väga häguste piiridega osa isikust. Vana hea, et kui palju reduktsiooni saab selle defineerimisel kasutada enne kui see kasutuks muutub (How the World Thinks - global philosophy). AGA kui ma proovin intelligentsust kirjeldada, siis see on võime koguda, mõista, võrrelda (!), seostada (!) ja kasutada informatsiooni ja teadmisi. Informatsioon siis puhtad välised andmed ja meelte tulemused, teamised siis sisemiselt korrastatud, isiklikud tõed, arusaamised, seostatud ja internaliseeritud info sünteesid. Ja kuigi mainin info kogumist ja teadmiste sünteesi, siis tegelikult tunnetan, et intelligentsus on neist sõltuv ja mõjutatav (suurem info, kogemuste ja teadmiste hulk ju tegelikult muudab intelligentsuse kasutamise protsessi kiiremaks ja efektiivsemaks paremate/rohkemate seoste tõttu), kuid siiski erinev. Ka info ja teadmiste puudumisel eksisteerib intelligentsus, millega siis mõista, et infot ja/või teadmisi on puudu. G-factor, üldine intelligentsuse mõõt, samuti justkui toetab seda + minu teada IQ skoor on korrelatsioonis selliste asjadega nagu ajukoore paksus, mis on tugevasti seotud glükoosi ainevahetuse kiirusega ajus. Ehk suuresti on intelligentsus geenides, kehas, bioloogias kinni. Toon eraldi välja esikohale võrdluse komponendi, mis näib tähtsaima osana. Et intelligentsus on diskrimineeriv ja võrdlev olemuselt: mis on tähtis, mis on asja tuum, mis on asja kontrastsed tahtud, kust tulevad vastuolud asjale? Intelligentsust kirjeldab ka teatud eesmärgipärasus. Mulle näib, et see ei ole osa meist, mida kasutame selle enda pärast, vaid selleks, et jõuda mingi eesmärgi või vastuseni? Emotsioonid ja tunded justkui avalduvad iseenesest, ilma tahtliku eesmärgita, intelligentsus mitte - st suures pildis, siiski ka see näib hallides toonides loogilisem kui nii mustvalgelt. Ma isiklikult samastun väga Panchakosha teooriaga, mis kirjeldab inimest viies kihis, millest intelligentsuse komponent sisaldub Vijnanamaya koshas/kihis ja selles sisaldub intellektuaalne kiht, mõtted, analüüs, ego, intuitsioon, tarkus. Et minu arvates see kiht kirjeldab intelligentsust ja sellega tugevalt seotud komponente piisavalt hästi nii, et ei jää tunnet, nagu oleks see liialt palju redutseeritud/lihtsustatud/eraldiseisvaks väänatud. Teooria kohaselt kihi kultiveerimiseks saab meeli treenida, lugeda ja loetut analüüsida, uudishimu ergutamine uute asjade õppimise läbi jne.
Excerpts from podcast
G-factor, the general intelligence measure. Probably the most stable, repeatable result in psychology.
The way you find it is to give a battery of mental tests, what battery you choose, take a battery of any mental tests you want. Give it to a large number of diverse people. And you will be able to extract statistically the common the commonality among all those tests. It’s done by a technique called factor analysis.
Factor analysis? A way of looking at a big set of data and look at the correlation among the different test scores and then find empirically the clusters of scores that go together and there are different factors. So if you have a bunch of mental tests, there may be a verbal factor, there may be a numerical factor. There may be a visual spatial factor but those factors have variants in common with each other and that is the common uh that’s what’s common among all the tests and that’s what gets labeled the G factor.
IQ score is a very good estimate of the G Factor. You can’t measure G directly. There’s no direct measure. You estimate it from the statistical techniques.
There are a number of statistical properties of any tests are called psychometric properties. You have validity, you have reliability, reliability. There are many different kinds of reliability. They all essentially measure stability and IQ. Tests are stable within an individual. There are some longitudinal studies where Children were measured at age 11 and again when they were 70 years old and the two IQ scores are highly correlated with each other. This comes from a fascinating study from Scotland.
There’s a personality test called the Minnesota multiphasic personality inventory MMP, been around for decades. Was used in Depp vs Hears trial. There’s a lot of scientific research on the psychometric properties of the test, including what it predicts with respect to different categories of personality disorder. But what I want to mention is the content of the items on that test. All of the items are essentially true, false items, true or false. I prefer a shower to a bath. True or false. I think Lincoln was a better president than Washington. What have all these, what does that have to do? And the point is the content of these items. Nobody knows why these items in aggregate, predict anything. But empirically they do. It’s a technique of of choosing items for a test that is called Dust Bowl Empiricism that the content doesn’t matter. But there for some reason, when you get a criterion group of people with this disorder and you compare them to people without that disorder.
No conclusion whether G factor comes from nature or nurture. But there it is certain that nature plays a big part and it is not possible at the time of writing to improve someone’s G factor.
We know now in the 21st century that many genes are not deterministic, they’re probabilistic meaning they their their gene expression can be influenced. Now whether they’re influenced only by other biological variables or other genetic variables or environmental or cultural variables, that’s where the controversy comes in.
There’s zero evidence that smart people are better with respect to important aspects of life like honesty, even likability, I’m sure, you know, many very intelligent people who are not terribly likable or terribly kind or terribly honest.
There’s a book called the Bell Curve. Written in 1990 for written by psychologist Richard Herrnstein and political scientist Charles Murray. The book is about the importance of intelligence in everyday life. That’s what the book is about. It’s an empirical book. It has statistical analyses of very large databases that show that essentially IQ Scores or their equivalent are correlated to all kinds of social problems and social benefits. And that in itself is not where the controversy about that book came. The controversy was about one chapter in that book and that is a chapter about the average difference in mean scores between black americans and white americans. And these are the terms that were used in the book at the time and are still used to some extent. Um And historically or really for for decades uh it has been observed that uh disadvantaged groups uh score on average lower than caucasians. And On academic tests tests of mental ability and especially on IQ tests and the differences about a standard deviation which is about 15 points. Which is a substantial difference. Um In the book Hern steen and Murray in this one chapter assert clearly and unambiguously that whether this average difference is due to genetics or not, they are agnostic. They don’t know. Moreover, they assert they don’t care because you wouldn’t treat anybody differently knowing that if there was a genetic component or not because that’s a group average finding every individual has to be treated as an individual, you can’t make any assumption about what that person’s intellectual ability might be from the fact of average group difference. They’re very clear about this. Nonetheless people took away, I’m going to choose my words carefully because I have a feeling that many critics didn’t actually read these, read the book. They took away that Herne steen and Murray were saying that blacks are genetically inferior. That was the take home message. And if they weren’t saying it they were implying it because they had a chapter that discussed this empirical observation of a difference. And isn’t this horrible. And so the reaction to that book was incendiary. This was before the federally funded Head start program. Head start had not really gotten under way at the time Jensen undertook his review of what were a number of demonstration programs and these demonstration programs were for young Children who around kindergarten age and they were specially designed to be cognitively stimulating to provide uh lunches, do all the things that people thought would minimize this. This average gap of intelligence tests. There was a a strong belief among virtually all psychologists that the cause of the gap was unequal opportunity due to racism due to all you know all negative things in the society. And if you could compensate for this the gap would go away. So early childhood education back then was called literally compensatory education. Jensen looked at these programs. He was an empirical guy. He understood psycho metrics and he wrote a it was over 100 page article detailing these programs and the flaws in their research design. Some of the programs reported I. Q. Gains of on average five points but a few reported 10 20 even 30 point games. One was called the miracle in Milwaukee. That investigator went to jail ultimately for fabricating data. But but the point is that Jensen wrote an article that said look uh the opening sentence of his article is classic. The opening sentence is I may not quote it exactly right but it’s we have tried compensatory education and it has failed and he showed that these games we’re essentially nothing. You couldn’t really document empirically any gains at all from these really earnest efforts to increase IQ, but he went a step further a fateful step further. He said not only have these efforts failed but because they have had essentially no impact. We have to reexamine our assumption that these differences are caused by environmental things that we can address with education. We need to consider a genetic influence. Whether there’s a genetic influence on this group difference.
16% of the population of the United States is about 51 or 52 million people with IQs under 85. This is not a small issue. 14 million Children have IQs under 85.
The Flynn effect is James Flynn passed away about a year ago. Uh published a uh a set of analyses uh going back a couple of decades when he first noticed this. That IQ scores when you looked over the years, seemed to be drifting up. Now this was not unknown to the people who make the test because they re norm the test periodically and they have to re norm the test periodically. Because what 10 items correct meant relative to other people 50 years ago is not the same as what 10 items mean relative today people are getting more things correct now. The scores have been drifting up about three points IQ scores have been drifting up about three points per decade. This is not a personal effect. This is a cohort effect. and this has presented intelligence researchers with a great mystery. Two questions. First is it effect on the 50% of the variants? That’s the G factor or on the other 50%. And there’s evidence that it is a g factor effect. And second what on earth causes this? And doesn’t this mean intelligence and G factor cannot be genetic because the scale of natural selection is much much longer than a couple of decades ago. And so it’s been used to try to undermine the idea that there can be a genetic influence on intelligence. But certainly it can be the Flynn effect can affect the non genetic aspects of intelligence because genes account for maybe 50% of the variants may be higher. It could be as high as 80% for adults but let’s just say 50% for discussion. Um So the Flynn effect is it’s still a mystery.
And there’s some evidence from from infants that nutrition has has made a difference. And so it’s not an unreasonable connection. But does it negate the idea that there’s a genetic influence? Not logically at all. So but it is very interesting so that if you take an IQ Test today But you normal but you take the score and use the tables that were available in 1940 you’re gonna wind up with a much higher IQ Number. So are we really smarter than a couple of generations ago. No but we might be able to solve problems a little better and make use of our our G. It’s clear that the fact that an IQ Score is correlated to things like thickness of your cortex that is correlated to glucose metabolic rate in in your brain. That that identical twins reared apart are highly similar in their IQ scores. These are all important observations that certainly more than that indicate. Not just suggest but indicate that there’s a biological basis. And does anyone believe intelligence has nothing to do with the brain? I mean it’s so obvious.