BS: The intelligence gene(s)

Subject: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: Bill D
Date: 04 Sep 11 - 12:00 PM

We have global warming to argue over...we have Middle East strife... we have 'the meaning of folk'...we have Tripoli...we have Bigots...etc.

And now we have science claiming that intelligence is (partially)genetic.

"LOS ANGELES (AP) — Scientists who hunt for "intelligence genes" used to think there were fewer than half a dozen of them.

In recent years, they determined there may be at least 1,000 — each with just a tiny effect on the differences in people's IQ. A study released Tuesday found new evidence that many genes play a role in intelligence, but scientists still couldn't pinpoint the specific genes involved.

"It's been kind of a shock to the system that it hasn't worked," said psychologist Eric Turkheimer at the University of Virginia, who had no role in the study. "We can't find the effects of any individual genes that are large enough to seem worth worrying about."

Previous work involving twins and adopted children has found that genes have a significant influence on differences in IQ scores, producing about half the difference between adults in general. The influence of genes on IQ appears to grow from childhood to adulthood.

Scientists have come to realize that, as with height, differences in intelligence come not from a few genes, but rather the overall effect of many genes, each with only tiny influence. That makes them hard to tease out.".....


   It goes on...with links. I really, really hope that people slowly & gently digest the implications... and NON-implications of these studies. It is information we need to understand....NOT ammunition to label anyone or any group.

Read carefully before you make generalizations.... and then make VERY few generalizations!

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: Stringsinger
Date: 04 Sep 11 - 12:09 PM

There are different intelligences.

Intelligence(s)

Genetic codes will create a potential for developing intelligence(s) but behavior and choices also have to be considered. It's nature and nurture.


There have been cases when levels of intelligence vary with identical twins.

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: Newport Boy
Date: 04 Sep 11 - 12:25 PM

Many discussions of intelligence founder on the fact that intelligence tests are not culture-neutral. Also, intelligence test scores can be improved substantially by training in the particular form of test.

IQ is often treated as some sort of absolute measure, but I don't think this is true.

Phil

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: Don Firth
Date: 04 Sep 11 - 12:45 PM

There is the variable that having a capability does not necessarily mean using the capability. Analogy: two men living side by side. One man has an electric lawn mower with all kinds of accessories. The other man has an old fashioned hand-push lawn mower.

The fellow with the old fashioned hand-push lawn mower has a lawn that looks like a putting green. The fellow with the high-tech electric mower has a lawn that looks like a jungle.

####

Take a group of college students who took the Stanford-Binet I. Q. test as part of their entrance exams. They're all sitting around a table in the Student Union Building cafeteria drinking coffee, and the subject of I. Q.'s comes up, which calls for a bit of personal revelation. Abandon truth, all ye who enter here. As the revelations go around the table, note that I. Q. is like sex life or gas mileage. NO one's I. Q. is EVER lower than the previous person's revelation.

Saw this phenomenon a couple of times. Knowing the level of veracity in a conversation of this kind, I declined to reveal my I. Q. I just smiled smugly.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: bobad
Date: 04 Sep 11 - 12:46 PM

"There have been cases when levels of intelligence vary with identical twins."

It has been shown that there is variation in the genomes of identical twins.

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: gnu
Date: 04 Sep 11 - 12:48 PM

"intelligence tests are not culture-neutral"

Short singular tests are meaningless which is why headhunters take at least two hours to evaluate job seekers with a barrage of tests. Head docs design and invigilate such tests fairly accurately, independently, I believe, of culture. I suggest the research conducted is fairly accurate as well.

I would allow that this has not always been the case.

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 04 Sep 11 - 12:57 PM

The claim that professionally-administered IQ tests are culturally biased enough to make a real difference is far less true than it was forty years ago. The substantive criticisms have been well aired and taken into account.

But that's secondary to the genetic findings reported.

As I read the article, the findings are of tremendous interest to geneticists, but they should be of little significance to anyone else. Put simply, the researchers say they've found a strong genetic component behind all forms of intelligence. Yet it doesn't come from a handful of genes, as was once thought possible. Instead it comes from a thousand or more teeny-weeny influences arising from many, many genes. And just how these influences may effect the intelligence of any individual (not to mention any population group)is unpredictable, because those influences don't all kick in automatically, uniformly, equally, or on schedule. Like many other genetic components, they are crucially influenced by other factors.

In biological terms this sounds like a significant advance in understanding how humans evolved and how individuals develop. In sociopolitical terms (which are more likely to get Mudcatters hot under the collar), the discovery is meaningless.

You still can't tell how smart, talented, competent, etc., a healthy person of any background is, or is going to be, based on any genetic information whatsoever.

Expect, however, that the findings will be distorted and denounced as racist, or as giving aid and comfort to racists.

If the article is accurately reported, that response would be self-serving and absurd.

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: GUEST,999
Date: 04 Sep 11 - 01:05 PM

There I think was the essence of the first post. Either the genes gung ho or the whole thing doesn't work as well. Situations prone to chaos--read situations in which choices multiply at exponential rates--will cause great changes somewhere down the road.

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: pdq
Date: 04 Sep 11 - 01:52 PM

What we call "intelligence" is not one item.

I have heard several people suggest that there are seven different types of intelligence but each "expert" is likely to have differences in the list or different number if items.

My list would be: language, math, physical, higher conceptual, human relation skills, spacial (geometry), short and long-term memory.

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: gnu
Date: 04 Sep 11 - 02:01 PM

"short and long-term memory"

I'm as stunned as me arse.

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 04 Sep 11 - 02:13 PM

In autistic 'savants', a person extraordinarily gifted in, say, maths, may be totally inept at anything else. Also, I've heard that music and maths seem to go together (maybe the 'patterns' involved)
pdq, you don't include artistic ability in your list. Do you reckon it qualifies or not?

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: pdq
Date: 04 Sep 11 - 02:36 PM

As I said, it's my list, not a list from a known expert. I'm just a college-educated biologist.

Some people put musical and artistic intelligence on their main list, either together or separate.

I think that math, logic and music are related and rather hard to separate. Just my opinion.

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: gnu
Date: 04 Sep 11 - 03:15 PM

I agree pdq. Although I have only a gut feeling about it... is that higher conceptual smarts?

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: Bill D
Date: 04 Sep 11 - 03:31 PM

At least Lighter got it...and 999 seemed to.
'General genetic proclivities' are not what is measured by Stanford-Binet or most other tests.....but a host of good or bad genetic markers can probably help explain various extremes on standard tests, and may go a long way toward both treating sub-normal performance and nurturing prodigies.
As Don Firth said, there ARE tendencies to s-t-r-e-t-c-h the truth and rationalize when egos are at stake. The same is true when cultural & ethnic groups feel threatened by 'test scores'. The very fact that brilliant individuals can be found in ALL groups should alleviate that problem, but sadly, discrimination based on false hypotheses is always there.

I got high scores on a number of tests in the 3rd thru 6th grades and on a very early version of the SAT. What it showed was that I read widely and collected a lot of 'information', sort like a flypaper for data. I was quite good at taking tests...especially multiple choice! I 'think' I have some basic skills at analysis and organization, but I'm rather vague about exactly how to apply them. I was the 1st person in ANY of my known family to go to college, though some of them had jobs & careers that needed the ability to **think**.

Of course we all have met people who can't seem to plan past their next beer and who we doubt should be allowed to have matches or operate a motor vehicle. There MUST be reasons for that beyond 'bad training'.

The genetic data should be reviewed and analyzed and revisited...but ONLY (so far) as a broad generalization, not to support various various versions of "see, I told you 'they' were inferior.

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: Amos
Date: 04 Sep 11 - 03:36 PM

Emotional intelligence seems to be getting short shrift here. Any special reason for that.

Those primitives I talked about a few months back who tried to take apart a cell-phone to find out where all the conversations come from made a similar discovery. The stories and conversations that come out of it, they concluded, did not come from any one of the tiny black boxes inside it, but from the interplay of lots of tiny nodes. They still haven't figured out what each of the little boxes does, but they feel they are making progress at discovering how the amazing device manages to put out an infinite array of thoughts and stories. They are applying for a research grant next month.

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: gnu
Date: 04 Sep 11 - 03:40 PM

"Emotional intelligence seems to be getting short shrift here. Any special reason for that."

Calm down man!

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: Amos
Date: 04 Sep 11 - 03:48 PM

Sometimes a touch of righteous annoyance is a highly intelligent response to circumstances! :D

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 04 Sep 11 - 04:25 PM

Who decides what is intelligent in the first place? Is it measured in academic standardility? Is it measured in grammotical ethikss, or mathematical numerical logistical appropriation? Is it about scientific factual non-evident evidence, or Newton's Theory on Falling Apples in the Autumn?

Maybe my dog is more intelligent than I? ("Yes, YES!" they all shout in unison)

But..then again, maybe I is more intelligent than U, except after C, of course...


Emotional intelligence can't be measured by those who love to measure, as they don't DO emotions in the first place, have no understanding of it whatsover, other than it is a highly unnecessary piece of baggage to be thrown out of the humanoid aeroplanes of existence....

I have bagloads of intelligence in my jeans, just not the same type of intelligence those who regard themselves as The Intelligent Ones, may want me to have...

But then, Jeans or Genes, is all relative in the theroticising of theories, when it all boils down the most basic components of geneticism....



And nope, I've not a clue what I've just written either, but my brain seemed to get a little carried away...Mayhap this is because an apple hath fallen on MY head, thus giving me a whole new vision on the Genetics of Genius!


PS: The short version of this is when John Taylor Gatto said that in his mind the State of Genius is actually VERY commmon, but sadly it is schooling itself which turns this off, producing so many dumbed down 'once upon a time' geniuses who have become simply 'like everybody else'....just as they're supposed to be.

Power to The People! :0)

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 04 Sep 11 - 04:47 PM

Oh Jesus

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: Bill D
Date: 04 Sep 11 - 05:05 PM

Jesus can only do so much...;>)

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: GUEST,999
Date: 04 Sep 11 - 05:48 PM

Well, I ain't gonna knock Lizzie's position on that. I would point out however, that some people are smarter geniuses than others.

For example:



If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize.

Richard P. Feynman

(The Nobel Prize in Physics 1965 was awarded jointly to Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, Julian Schwinger and Richard P. Feynman "for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles".) From the www


Mozart--and imo nothing more need be said about him.

Hawking, Da Vinci, Tesla, Galileo, Fermi, Hannibal, Van Gogh, Rodin, Newton and many others. There is/was something very special about all of them. They weren't put together like most of us, no offense to a few geniuses who frequent this forum. The info in the first post is encouraging, because it holds the potential for humans to finally discover about their thinking processes and some of the whys connected with how we turn out.

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: Bill D
Date: 04 Sep 11 - 06:03 PM

Yep... I agree, If all this research helps to make more people able to access their full potential, it will all be worth it.

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: Amos
Date: 04 Sep 11 - 10:46 PM

As long as they don't go around telling fish they should be able to climb trees.


A

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 04 Sep 11 - 11:17 PM

I am a little amazed that this finding seems like news to anyone.

If you include those possessing genius in field other than science, you might conclude that Shaekspeares abilities probably didn't come form the same genes as Newton's or Charlie Parker's.

I don't have a natural talent for math but my language and other skills compensate for that so that I did fine in university level math.

Some people can memorize a whole page of text in a second. Some people have perfect pitch, Others can win spelling bees and other can find their car keys.

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: ripov
Date: 04 Sep 11 - 11:50 PM

Lizzie you know full well that intelligence is measured by parents when talking aout their kids.
And if intelligence wasn't genetic, then any partner would do to have/sire your kids! (see other thread)

But we've been breeding animals, particularly horses and dogs, with specific traits, for centuries. Why should we assume humans are any different. It would be more surprising if characteristics weren't inherited.

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 05 Sep 11 - 02:25 PM

I don't think there are intelligence genes. Intelligence is too variable. It varies within families and it varies in the same person from time to time.

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 05 Sep 11 - 02:36 PM

Judith Kearins' 'Visual and Spatial Memory in Aboriginal and White Australian Children' is a fascinating study which demonstrates that, although performing very badly in IQ tests for whites, Aboriginal children have a remarkable talent for recall of large numbers of objects and their position in a 'Kim's Game' type of exercise. The study tried to decide whether this was an innate (ie genetic) or learned skill, but (and here is the part pertinent to this thread) she found this almost impossible to ascertain. Their parents encouraged these traits, even when living as white people and not 'in the Bush'. I think the Nature/Nurture factor will always cloud any so-called IQ testing.

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: gnu
Date: 05 Sep 11 - 03:17 PM

9... "no offense to a few geniuses who frequent this forum..."

None taken.

JtS... "Others can win spelling bees and other can find their car keys."

Can you help me find my car kies?

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: GUEST,999
Date: 05 Sep 11 - 03:31 PM

You're wearin' them, Gnu.

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: gnu
Date: 05 Sep 11 - 03:49 PM

I am wearin them out at a rapid pace 9. >;-)

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 05 Sep 11 - 04:03 PM

Nikola Tesla.....ahhhh yes. I bet he'd have *loved* one of THESE! :0)

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: Penny S.
Date: 05 Sep 11 - 05:32 PM

It is fascinating observing "intelligent" behaviour in other creatures. I watched a Cabbage White butterfly looking for cabbages or similar in my garden, where there are none. It flew between the peas, the leeks, and a sedum, all the same sort of colour as cabbages, but decided they weren't what it wanted. It settled on the radishes (same family) but rejected them, too. Went round again to check, and then left. (My intelligent decision was to continue not growing brassicas, except the winter sort.) It didn't need much brain, so probably not many genes, to do what it was doing, but it did it very well. I can think of people who show less intelligence.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: gnu
Date: 05 Sep 11 - 05:37 PM

"I can think of people who show less intelligence."

I resemble that remark!

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 06 Sep 11 - 10:21 AM

Here's a common modern scene.

I'm at the airport, waiting to collect my luggage at the end of a trip. Around me are people doing the same. These are people who have the money and brains to manage an airplane trip for the entire family. Kansas City is a center for engineering, government and medicine, so presumably these people have education and skills.

Yet many of them allow their small children to step up to the baggage carousel and put their fingers on the moving parts.

Are they intelligent?

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 06 Sep 11 - 01:13 PM

leeneia, my old neighbour used to laugh at me. She'd say "Yew hev got a yewnivarsity degree, yet yew hint got a happorth er sense gal!" I think common sense and intelligence are not necesarily found in the same brain!

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: Stringsinger
Date: 06 Sep 11 - 02:14 PM

It makes sense that people who do well on Stanford Binet IQ tests often devise those tests.

"My list would be: language, math, physical, higher conceptual, human relation skills, spacial (geometry), short and long-term memory."

Yeah but would that help you to change a flat tire, fix a u joint in plumbing or take apart and put together a car motor? There are plenty of those with the attributes that you just mentioned that can't do what I just mentioned.

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: Stringsinger
Date: 06 Sep 11 - 02:20 PM

There is the story of the sperm bank that wanted to capture a well-known scientist's genes. The scientist said, "If you want my genes determining me to be a famous scientist, you would have to capture my parent's genes, my father being a poor immigrant from Europe and my mother, an ordinary housewife. My sons, however, all turned out to be guitar players."

I'm paraphrasing but you get the idea.

BTW, Charlie Parker and Louis Armstrong were all musical geniuses, like Mozart.
I wonder how well they would have done on IQ tests?

It is a known fact that Einstein was considered a moron in his younger days.

Could it be that intelligence like beauty is in the eye of the beholder?

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 06 Sep 11 - 02:44 PM

There's a columnist (Marilyn somebody) who appears in Parade Magazine every Sunday. She said that studies have shown that we learn common sense from our families, esp. when young.

(Clearly some families are better at this than others.)

I'd like to learn more about that, but don't know how to research it.

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 06 Sep 11 - 02:52 PM

That's Marilyn vos Savant.

She used to be recognized by Guinness as having the highest IQ ever measured on planet Earth.

Theory: she is the direct descendant of the space aliens who mated with humans and taught the Egyptians how to build the Great Pyramid of Gizah.

Hence her genes and odd surname. Does any other theory makes sense?

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: GUEST,999
Date: 06 Sep 11 - 03:04 PM

Marilyn vos Savant (nee Mach). Her maternal grandmother's maiden name was Savant. (Info from Wikipedia)

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 06 Sep 11 - 09:04 PM

Well, having just arrived at this thread after a long weekend camping, all I can say is of COURSE it's genetic, how do you think we got to be human fa crying out loud. This is like saying How surprising, life seems to have a genetic basis, it runs in families. And we should not use this knowledge to label people.

Sorry, bigots and non-bigots like, some people are alive and some are dead. You can call them "passed away" if you like to but that doesn't make them any less dead.

Replace most of that with statements about intelligence and it's still true.

Evidence shows that that poor nurture can, in many many many ways, *decrease* the degree to which a person can USE their native intelligence, or decrease that native intelligence itself (Pb poisoning, boring childhoods, etc).

There is no good evidence that good nurture can increase it, though. You get served your cup as full as it gets.

For instance, there is evidence that monolinguism decreases intelligence, or at least performance on intelligence tests. Simply having your child learn more than one language before starting school makes that child less unintelligent than they would have been without that second language.

Anything that *seems* to increase intelligence may, instead, be reducing the degree to which life dumbs you down.

Illegitemi non carborundum!

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 07 Sep 11 - 01:46 PM

Oops, just because it's genetic doesn't mean there is a gene, or are genes, directly FOR it. It's more that the way our bodies and brains are shaped in embryology, which IS directly genetic, makes us be the way we are, including having the ability to be other than the way we were made.
Other animals don't have it so lucky.

But then again, as the old song says,

(If I were a duck and I lived on the water
I'd swim 'round the pond and go Quack
I'd swim just as far as I wanted to go
And then I would turn and swim back

If I were a cow and I had a fine pasture,
I'd eat lots of grass and go Moo
And then I'd go home to the barn to be milked
And give a whole gallon or two...)

If I were a squirrel and I lived in an oak tree
I'd eat lots of nuts and grow fat
Then lie on the limb of the tree in the sun
O what could be nicer than that?

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: GUEST,999
Date: 07 Sep 11 - 04:59 PM

Where is that lyric from, Mrrzy?

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 07 Sep 11 - 05:32 PM

Ain't that a great song?? I have it on a children's record by Ed McCurdy, who had the most wonderful baritone, sorry for the thread creep but the song fit so perfectly!

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: GUEST,999
Date: 07 Sep 11 - 06:28 PM

It's really good. Do you know the title? I tried to google a few lines and couldn't find it. I'd love to learn it to do if I sing to kids, or even adults.

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 07 Sep 11 - 07:21 PM

I'm pretty sure I own it. Now, if I were truly intellligent, I'd know, right?

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 07 Sep 11 - 07:26 PM

It's If I were a duck, and starts If I were a duck and could swim on the water...

You can listen to it at MOG (Millions Of sonGs) dot com, seek Ed McCurdy in the drop-down and it's the children's songs AND STORIES one.

Guess I should do a Lyrics Add...

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: catspaw49
Date: 07 Sep 11 - 09:18 PM

I've been sitting here reading this thread while also watching the Republican Debate and I can't seem to make the two gel...........


Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 08 Sep 11 - 08:44 AM

I'm not sure. There has been the odd exception in history of people who struggled from nowhere and got to the top without the nuture just self determination perhaps the gene is an inner strength that others might not have.

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: GUEST,999
Date: 08 Sep 11 - 11:28 AM

hank you, Mrrzy.

Subject: RE: BS: The intelligence gene(s)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 08 Sep 11 - 12:27 PM

Hey spaw check out the thread on politics and the brain, that might work better!