Orton's Arm

You're reiterating a point I made earlier: psychometrics can tell us a lot more about human intelligence than can geneticists. But once we start finding the specific alleles that control for intelligence, my response will be, so what? We've known for some time that intelligence was highly heritable, which is more important than knowing the mechanics of how the heritability works. That's sort of like knowing for many years that sex makes babies, but only coming into a recent understanding of sperm cells, egg cells, uterine walls, and so on.

Given that you evidently know nothing about psychometrics, the following should be informative for you. Psychometrics was initially intended to study the field of intelligence, but has since expanded to include the study of a broader range of educational, mental and psychological characteristics. Psychometrics involves not merely the creation of measurement tools, but also the theories behind measurement. Charles Spearman was a leading pioneer.

Of all the people who could possibly be making an accusation like this, you are the last person who has the right to do so. Practically the only tool you ever employ is the argumentum ad hominum.

My comments about height were just an example of how heritability could change if measured at different ages. The example is relevant because the heritability for intelligence is measured at different ages, and that heritability figure rises as children become adolescents. The fact that you think you're special because you've heard about telomeres is truly pathetic. Anyone who read about Geron a few years back has heard of telomeres and their degradation over time. Intelligence is about 80% heritable. This means that, on average, 80% of the intellectual difference between two randomly selected adults can be explained by genetic differences. But that's just an average figure. Someone who incurred a severe head injury or other environmental catastrophe could easily have a far lower I.Q. than the one predicted by his or her genetics. But in the absence of malnutrition, severe head injuries, or other severe environmental problems, a typical person's deviation from the average I.Q. will generally be explained largely by genetics.

More of the same drivel. Thanks for playing.

I'm not sure about any conspiracies myself, but I do think companies act in their own economic self-interest. The fact that an oil company bought up the rights to that new battery technology doesn't exactly please me. The biodiesel generator you mentioned is a good idea on a small scale. It's better to have old cooking oil put to use than it is to throw it away. But ultimately, there's only so much old cooking oil to go around; and our energy needs far exceed what cooking oil can give us. There are four main sources of energy: the sun, nuclear power, tidal energy, and geothermal energy. Wind power is really solar, because the sun provides the energy for the wind to blow. Likewise, all non-tidal hydroelectric power is really solar, because the sun provides the energy for the water cycle. Fossil fuels are really solar, because you're just harvesting solar energy from millions of years ago. What I'm getting at here is that most energy sources are simply a way to convert the sun's energy into something we can use. Biodiesel is no different: corn plants soak up sunlight in order to grow. You turn those plants into cooking oil, and use that oil to power your generator. That's fine, but it's not necessarily the only means we should be employing to turn solar energy into electricity or kinetic energy. What about the corn stalks? Why not burn them to generate more electricity? Why not burn yard waste or other bio-debris? I admit this isn't the cleanest energy source one could hope for, but at least it's renewable. And it doesn't contribute to the greenhouse gas problem, because you're just releasing back into the atmosphere whatever carbon those plants absorbed during their lifetimes.

You honestly don't have the faintest idea of what you're talking about, do you?

If your goal is to produce a treasure of stupidity, the above post is your crown jewel. I'm in an oddly patient mood right now, so I'll take the time to explain just how very dumb you've just been. And believe me, you've just made Britney Spears look something like a genius by comparison. As someone as arrogant as you should already know, "heritability" in the broad sense refers to the amount of variation which can be explained by genetics. Suppose identical twins raised apart had an 80% correlation for height. That would mean that height is 80% heritable. Now imagine that the percentage went up as they got older--70% when they're 12, 80% when they're 15, and 90% when they're 20. In this scenario, the heritability for height increases as children get older. This does not--you dunce--mean than the genetic information children receive changes as they get older. It means that said genetic information explains a changing percentage of overall variation as children get older. The fact that you're surprised that heritability numbers can change over time just tells me you don't understand what heritability actually is.

The field of psychometrics is a subset of psychology. If your goal is to design good intelligence tests, observe their g-loading, and to observe the correlation of these tests to real-world results, you must turn to psychometrics. The geneticist can tell us (or fail to tell us, as the case may be) which particular genes are responsible for the correlations observed on intelligence tests. It's typically much easier to determine whether a trait is heritable, than it is to determine the genes responsible for the trait. In the 1800s, Mendel's experimented with 28,000 pea plants. He found plants pass their traits onto their offspring, long before anyone knew what a gene even was.

I naturally trusted that the average reader would be able to read the quote with some level of intelligence and understanding. Based on the responses I've gotten--and I'm not just talking about your own--I was being unduly optimistic. Let me spell this out very clearly. The observed level of heritability for intelligence increases as children get older. The reason this is so is because adopted children develop a stronger correlation with the I.Q.s of their biological parents. Meanwhile, the American Psychological Association had this to say about c^2 Then there's this quote, also from the same document: Shared environmental factors--such as the I.Q. of the adoptive mother, the particular school adopted children attend, etc.--make little or no difference in determining adult-level I.Q.s

Fine. Here's a quote from the American Psychological Association's Report: "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns." Again, the things I've been writing about intelligence and heritability are pretty standard stuff. Unfortunately, the information researchers have worked so hard to gather has generally failed to be absorbed into popular culture.

Learn about this topic before commenting on it. Please. For all of us.

It's amazing to me that simply reiterating scientific fact--which is what I did in that earlier post--can elicit this kind of response. My earlier post wasn't expressing an opinion, it was reiterating the result of rigorous studies. I suggest you look up the relevant studies before making your next comment on this topic.

If you feel the need to apply your very own combination of stupidity and incomprehension to my posts, please do so in the thread that's there for the three of us.

It's subtle, but I see the direction you're taking this thread. And to think that a thread like this might possibly be hijacked by a bunch of name-calling. Oh, the humanity!

Well, here it is. Our thread.

Fine. My point is there's nothing in the article that says the study is exclusive of new capacity, or that the study doesn't consider the costs of capital improvement. If you're dragging the board through two pages of this to make some point about my reading comprehension, you've failed. If on the other hand you're unexpectedly more interested in the study than in your vendetta against me, then I'm willing to let this go.

Did someone drop you on your head when you were young?

Ah, silly me to suppose any community might want to begin buying back its own bonds early.

Not only does the g-loaded test correlate highly to g, but g itself strongly correlates to a lot of other things--divorce rate, income level, chance of being in jail, etc. g is meaningful. It's not that those kids are getting dumber, it's that their intelligence is increasing at a much slower pace than that of their peers. Let's say a kid named Tom had stupid parents, but a great environment. In first grade, he might be close to the average of his peers. And by adulthood, he might have the same level of intelligence his peers had when they were in fifth or sixth grade. His poor genes doom him to fall behind.

@ JSP: I apologize for giving Tom more attention than he deserved. I'll make up for my mistake by trying to turn this discussion back into a debate about electric cars, instead of just another feces-slinging contest between Tom and I. Having seen the movie "Who Killed the Electric Car?" I've learned that electric cars have very few moving parts. This means they don't need oil changes, or have most of the heat/dirt-related problems gasoline cars do. Hey, electric cars don't even have transmissions or engines! There's a lot less stuff to go wrong with an electric car. That said, the main problem is the battery. Lithium ion batteries have a memory effect. On the other hand, they're working to make new, better batteries. Not only for electric cars, but for their smaller cousins electric golf carts. And for laptops. I'm hopeful that with all the money being put into new battery research, something useful will emerge within the next ten years.

You know what? This is the last time I'll reply to you in this thread. You obviously don't care about electric cars, or future fossil fuel availability, or anything other than your own petty crusade against me. And that crusade is ruining what ought to have been a perfectly good thread.

Are you really this ignorant of the last century of biological and genetics research?

Your statement #2 is mistaken. A well-designed intelligence test is almost synonymous with a highly g-loaded intelligence test. And the more g-loaded a test is, the more its results correlate with g. Studies of adopted children show that, in childhood, their I.Q.s do tend to correlate with their adoptive mothers. But as they get older, that correlation disappears, while the correlation with their biological mothers becomes stronger than ever.

You can't let this go, can you?