Here We Go Again.....Mark Cuban Taking Flack For Saying He's Bigoted In Some Ways

[UpaLoompa]

It should be pretty obvious to anyone that puberty affects boys and girls, both physically and mentally, in different ways.

Absolutely. I'm really not sure what OldGoat is trying to get at though.

 

[OldGoat]

Absolutely. I'm really not sure what OldGoat is trying to get at though.

You are discounting the developmental aspects from being genetically driven. The fact that men and women behave differently is partially due to difference in adult brain structure. How did that difference occur? Magic? God? or physics?

 

[UpaLoompa]

You are discounting the developmental aspects from being genetically driven. The fact that men and women behave differently is partially due to difference in adult brain structure. How did that difference occur? Magic? God? or physics?

No, I'm not. I think I thought you were making a different argument than you might have been. Given the thread you're posting in, I thought you were suggesting sexually discordant selection; i.e. that intelligence wasn't favored similarly in males and females.

I guess I still don't know what your point is.

 

[PrisonOfIce]

That analysis is somewhat interesting, but (in addition to a much longer timeframe) he uses some aggressive variables in favor of weeding out genes associated with violent behavior. Part of the problem I have is that it's not at all clear that violent behavior is a negative, not now and not then. Alphas commonly outbreed Betas, hence Elliot Roger, hence much Sherdog angst. So you usually have a strong pressure in favor of more alpha men, counterbalanced by pro-beta factors. Why would the balance tip so radically that you'd see aggressive selection against alphas for many centuries? And what evidence is there that such selection in fact took place? These are questions worth exploring, but for now there isn't a prima facie reason to think it happened one way or the other.

This seems a peculiar correlation you're drawing between violence, "alphaness" and breeding. All the mass shootings of the last year or two were pretty violent acts but I don't think the perpetrators were breeding at a particularly fast rate. Most corporations are dominated by leadership figures, but they don't neccessarily resort to physical violence. I'm not really sure how you're using alpha here.

On the women in schools one. I don't know but I'll add a couple more plausible explanations. Girls develop faster than boys physically so greater mental faculties between 11-15 would be no surprise. Secondly women to my perspective are extremely socially sensitive and 15 is about the age at which the family stops being the dominant social contruct which they need appease. Instead TV culture etc. start to become percieved as such so they alter their behaviour accordingly, and for many that'll mean study is for nerds.

 

[OldGoat]

No, I'm not. I think I thought you were making a different argument than you might have been. Given the thread you're posting in, I thought you were suggesting sexually discordant selection; i.e. that intelligence wasn't favored similarly in males and females.

I guess I still don't know what your point is.

It's not a difficult point. All the point is is that differences in biological code leads to differences in biological structure which leads to differences in performance/behavior. Why this is even a discussion is merely because of political considerations in spreading liberal mythology.

You are correct in stating that precisely determining what difference in code leads to what difference in outcome is extraordinarily difficult to pin down. Which is what I said when I first opined in one of these threads years ago. And was called racist for doing so. Which is why this current thread is so interesting.

 

[UpaLoompa]

It's not a difficult point. All the point is is that differences in biological code leads to differences in biological structure which leads to differences in performance/behavior.

Okay, within certain limits, I basically agree.

 

[UpaLoompa]

Aside: With humans I love that people don't bat an eye at assertions that most morphological traits have heritabilities less than IQ, aggression, etc.

 

[alexdlrg]

Zankou,
The adoption studies don't really demonstrate that though because they're often complicated by adoptions occurring within classes, races, etc. This results in PE getting conflated with A. Then we have the social environment which again results in PE getting conflated with A. Then we have, etc. etc. etc. And we do know that the environment plays a huge role in IQ. The Flynn Effect, regardless of what the actual cause is, will necessarily be PE. That's not even considering the fact that TE can get conflated with A in a lot of these studies. This is my chief issue, the problem of PE getting conflated with A. It is necessarily happening because of the nature of human studies.

The heritability estimates that we have for IQ should be viewed with heavy skepticism for a variety of reasons. This is primarily because some of the methodological and estimation issues I've mentioned. There's another issue which I haven't brought up because it hasn't been particularly relevant and because unlike ColdFront you're actually honest enough to look at. It's also more just opinion rather than something that can be clearly argued. Specifically, we have considerable estimates of heritability across taxa. IQ's estimate is a major outlier. For example, Mousseau & Roff published a meta-analysis in 87 with 570 estimates of morphological trait heritabilities. The median was 0.43. Behavior was at .3 but tentative because of one study over contributing. Subsequent meta-analyses for behavior with different inclusion criteria ranged from 0.13 (me, in review, but a special case so likely biased south) to ~.3 (van Oerrs and Sinn I think, 2013) up to 0.5 (Potsma 2014). Formal follow ups to Roff's 1987 paper find that their morphology median estimate is pretty good.
Then we have IQ, which comes out at ~0.8. That suggests very, very little environmental influence. Aberrant little environmental influence compared to behavior and morphology. This is even more problematic because we also see E/P estimates of 30+%.

It is absurd to pretend that intelligence doesn't have at least a moderate genetic basis. It certainly does. Given the issues clearly occurring with IQ h2 estimates, the general lack of a correlation between CVA and h2, etc., comparing groups becomes very difficult. More so given that environmental effects are sufficient to explain all or most of the differences.

I've been waiting for this post, but I wish you would go further in your explanations of how genetics is universally over-emphasized by studies. It seems to me that estimates for heritability have been made in many different ways, and always arrive at similar conclusions. Obviously it's fallacious to pretend that adopted children enter environments representative of the whole of society. I don't share your implied concern that the prevalence of within-race adoptions skew the numbers, because that's easy to address.

What's your take on studies that compare siblings; specifically siblings of people who are outliers on the IQ distribution? Their siblings are of course closer to the mean more often than not, despite being raised in very similar circumstances. If I recall correctly, estimates for heritability made in this way are consistent with the estimates derived in other ways.

Also, despite your insistence as to the importance of environment, I doubt if you can point me to a reliable method for increasing IQ that lasts until adulthood. Don't you find that troubling? Aside from addressing malnourishment and environmental toxins, is there anything else? I've certainly seen correlations with SES and number of books in the house, but a lot of that can be explained by genes, as high IQ people are more successful and read more, and then have smarter children than their low IQ counterparts.

I understand your concern that heritability of IQ appears to be so high compared to other traits, but isn't that to be expected to some degree? We have free public schools for all US citizens, and we universally favor intelligence over stupidity. Thus the environmental variance for intelligence has potentially been compressed significantly compared to other traits, as parents and society try to move all members in the same direction: to be more intelligent rather than less. In contrast, children raised in some households may be pushed towards introversion, while others are pushed towards extroversion. Thus the environmental variance would likely be greater, and heredity estimates smaller.

I'm glad you're still posting in this thread, and didn't stop like you were apparently contemplating.

 

[UpaLoompa]

I've been waiting for this post, but I wish you would go further in your explanations of how genetics is universally over-emphasized by studies. It seems to me that estimates for heritability have been made in many different ways, and always arrive at similar conclusions.

Sure, there are multiple ways by which to derive these estimates. The problems are largely the same as any wild population estimate of qg parameters. Because you're not controlling the environment and you're not controlling the breeding design you will end up with things like maternal effects and other types of PE and even TE being conflated with A (all of which ignores G x E as well). You can try to ameliorate this conflation through a variety of means, e.g. repeated measures, deeper pedigrees with phenotyping not solely being done at the tips, better coverage of half-sibs, etc. but it is still there. This requires assumptions that differ from lab studies and known to be incorrect. That's fine as long as you recognize the assumptions and acknowledge how that limits your inferences. With improvements in animal model/mixed effects models we can calculate a lot of these things far better than in the past but the conflation issues remain.

That the estimates remain similar isn't surprising because you're not manipulating things and so the same sources of conflation remain. This is a general problem and not specific to just IQ. For example a just released book on quantitative genetic estimates for wild populations makes the point that we do not have good estimates of the contribution of dominance effects and other non-additive effects. In wild populations this often gets rolled into what would be the numerator of h2. A few of the chapters point to ways to deal with this but it is still problematic.

This is not, at all, to say that field QG studies are uninformative. They absolutely are important to conduct. They're simply far more difficult to interpret than, for example, an experimental breeding program that allows you to control PE and estimate parental effects, epigenetic effects, etc.

What's your take on studies that compare siblings; specifically siblings of people who are outliers on the IQ distribution? Their siblings are of course closer to the mean more often than not, despite being raised in very similar circumstances. If I recall correctly, estimates for heritability made in this way are consistent with the estimates derived in other ways.

See above. Those types of studies sometimes also produce estimates of VPE/VP that are greater than 1-h2.

Also, despite your insistence as to the importance of environment, I doubt if you can point me to a reliable method for increasing IQ that lasts until adulthood. Don't you find that troubling? Aside from addressing malnourishment and environmental toxins, is there anything else? I've certainly seen correlations with SES and number of books in the house, but a lot of that can be explained by genes, as high IQ people are more successful and read more, and then have smarter children than their low IQ counterparts.

Except that this isn't quite true. For example, the Flynn Effect, whatever actually drove it, is necessarily environmental and damn near has to be a permanent environmental effect. We also know that the populations being considered in these sorts of comparisons have been differently effected by the Flynn effect in modernized countries (and likewise haven't benefited from economic growth at the same rate during the same period) and that the Flynn effect hasn't occurred (yet) in non-modernized countries whether you're talking about SE Asia or Africa.

I understand your concern that heritability of IQ appears to be so high compared to other traits, but isn't that to be expected to some degree? We have free public schools for all US citizens, and we universally favor intelligence over stupidity. Thus the environmental variance for intelligence has potentially been compressed significantly compared to other traits, as parents and society try to move all members in the same direction: to be more intelligent rather than less. In contrast, children raised in some households may be pushed towards introversion, while others are pushed towards extroversion. Thus the environmental variance would likely be greater, and heredity estimates smaller.

This actually highlights the problem with comparing groups.

Further, the coefficient of variation of additive effects has a correlation of about 0 with h2. That's something that isn't widely appreciated--it's actually something I only came across a few weeks ago when working on a meta-analysis. That may not matter as much for IQ because of how it is scaled but it presents an important problem generally.

I'm glad you're still posting in this thread, and didn't stop like you were apparently contemplating.

I stated that I wasn't interested in continuing to post responses to Cold Front who is a massively dishonest poster.

 

[Cold Front]

Herr Dochter's explanations always come back to the same dumb point: deriving genetics effects for group differences are really, really hard, but deriving environmental effects for group differences are really, really easy.

The reality is that the only way to ignore genetic differences between populations is to set a torch to the same methods used to understand environmental differences.

 

[Cold Front]

This is why I generally support affirmative action, as you can read in those threads, subject to it being applied in a relatively moderate and pragmatic way. It's really not a world-ending crisis if a Latino guy gets an extra bump when it comes to considering management positions at X corp., on the presumption that he may have had things harder growing up. As long as you aren't freezing other groups out, or making it incredibly difficult for them.

Is it a world crisis if a Latino guy doesn't get that job at Google?

One might agree that it's not a world-ending crisis when Hispanics are less than 10 percent of the population. It's going to be much more problematic when they are 30 percent of the population, and still lag significantly behind whites and Asians in skills, and many of the Latinos getting the bump up are lazy white Hispanics.

The changing demographics of the U.S. will force Americans to either ignore race and learn to accept group differences. Or it will force the kind of government regulation of large institutions that will make the Jim Crow Era look provincial and liberal.

On the other hand, can that be taken to excess, absolutely, which is why it calls for sensible realistic programs rather than insistence on quotas and absolute end equality. No doubt. But current American law doesn't allow the latter anyways, wisely so.

There's no sensible middle ground. If you start allowing mismatches to take place for racial considerations, the levels will be decided by political strength and nothing else. There is no principle for the middle ground.

 

[Cold Front]

That analysis is somewhat interesting, but (in addition to a much longer timeframe) he uses some aggressive variables in favor of weeding out genes associated with violent behavior. Part of the problem I have is that it's not at all clear that violent behavior is a negative, not now and not then. Alphas commonly outbreed Betas, hence Elliot Roger, hence much Sherdog angst. So you usually have a strong pressure in favor of more alpha men, counterbalanced by pro-beta factors. Why would the balance tip so radically that you'd see aggressive selection against alphas for many centuries? And what evidence is there that such selection in fact took place? These are questions worth exploring, but for now there isn't a prima facie reason to think it happened one way or the other.

The reasoning goes something like this:

All H-G tribes and other kinds of tribal groups have much higher rates of violence than all modern societies, even when you include large wars like WW2. They even have much higher rates when compared against the states of earlier historical periods.

Napoleon Chagnon's field work shows that the Yanomam

 

[UpaLoompa]

Herr Dochter's explanations always come back to the same dumb point: deriving genetics effects for group differences are really, really hard, but deriving environmental effects for group differences are really, really easy.

What you call a dumb point is actually a regularly acknowledged reality.

 

[alexdlrg]

Sure, there are multiple ways by which to derive these estimates. The problems are largely the same as any wild population estimate of qg parameters. Because you're not controlling the environment and you're not controlling the breeding design you will end up with things like maternal effects and other types of PE and even TE being conflated with A (all of which ignores G x E as well). You can try to ameliorate this conflation through a variety of means, e.g. repeated measures, deeper pedigrees with phenotyping not solely being done at the tips, better coverage of half-sibs, etc. but it is still there. This requires assumptions that differ from lab studies and known to be incorrect. That's fine as long as you recognize the assumptions and acknowledge how that limits your inferences. With improvements in animal model/mixed effects models we can calculate a lot of these things far better than in the past but the conflation issues remain.

That the estimates remain similar isn't surprising because you're not manipulating things and so the same sources of conflation remain. This is a general problem and not specific to just IQ. For example a just released book on quantitative genetic estimates for wild populations makes the point that we do not have good estimates of the contribution of dominance effects and other non-additive effects. In wild populations this often gets rolled into what would be the numerator of h2. A few of the chapters point to ways to deal with this but it is still problematic.

You say the IQ studies aren't controlling for environment, but the ones I mentioned are comparing siblings raised in the same house, birthed by the same woman. Its not perfect, but to me that constitutes pretty good control of the environment. It's possible you can convince me otherwise, though. I'd be interested to see how you think that compares to the control you can accomplish. Obviously there are potential G x E issues at play.

I would really like to know your best guess as to the actual heritability of IQ (for different populations if you think that's important). How far off do you think the current estimates are. Do you think the right answer is 0.6 instead of 0.7, or 0.2 instead of 0.7?

Except that this isn't quite true. For example, the Flynn Effect, whatever actually drove it, is necessarily environmental and damn near has to be a permanent environmental effect. We also know that the populations being considered in these sorts of comparisons have been differently effected by the Flynn effect in modernized countries (and likewise haven't benefited from economic growth at the same rate during the same period) and that the Flynn effect hasn't occurred (yet) in non-modernized countries whether you're talking about SE Asia or Africa.

The Flynn Effect does not constitute an environmental intervention known to permanently raise IQ. As you said (and I bolded) you don't know what's driving it. It may constitute evidence that some intervention would work, if only we could figure out what that intervention would consist of.

This actually highlights the problem with comparing groups.

I think I know why you're saying that, but maybe you could be more explicit before I make a false assumption.

 

[Cold Front]

What you call a dumb point is actually a regularly acknowledged reality.

Searching for environmental causes in humans is very bit as hard as searching for genetic causes. That you're too stupid to see that the two are inversely related says a lot about how blinkered your insights are.

 

[DangDaGawd]

Nearly every white guy I knew growing up (I'm white so I knew a lot) wore hoodies. I really don't understand how they're associated with gang culture.

 

[VulgarSnaps]

I would really like the left/feminist/negro/alternate sexuality establishment(s) to just release a thought and speech handbook. As well as their desired racial/gender/other label quotas.

This shit has never, ever been about equal opportunity, work or treatment. It's about equal outcomes.

 

[Anabolistair]

I would really like the left/feminist/negro/alternate sexuality establishment(s) to just release a thought and speech handbook. As well as their desired racial/gender/other label quotas.

This shit has never, ever been about equal opportunity, work or treatment. It's about equal outcomes.

Hilarious but that is what they wish they could do... We live in a psycological prison anyway. Go on the record saying the cold hard truth, ruffle feathers and msnbc will run a train on you and claim heroic restrain.