Lyman Stone on national average IQ; Jean Twenge issues a correction; Scott Winship on Americans' satisfaction; Jonathan Haidt on a Lancet study of phone-free schools
I don't see any disconnect between 80% saying their lives are satisfactory, and 80% also saying that they are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country. It is simply NOT a contradiction. Believing that it is, is a logical fallacy. If one believes that almost everyone - let's say 98% of people - should be satisfied with their lives, and if one also CORRECTLY knows that only 80% actually are satisfied - why, then that means that the state of the country is UNsatisfactory.
If one wants to compare across questions, one needs to actually ask the right questions...
On Twenge and data, all users of data should give absolute numbers like 14% & 20%, then add the 53% change for more perspective. Had it been 115% change, up to 30%, more folk would have looked for the absolute numbers.
Those who felt that 53% was the new absolute number were deliberately misled, the half-lies possible with statistics.
Tho I’m pretty sure unhappy spoiled rich kids are genuinely unhappy, it’s not clear to me that the safe, secure, supported kids can really grow up to be as resilient, mentally, as the successful kids (like Vance & Rob Henderson) from insecure childhoods. Tho the death rates are also higher among those with bad childhoods. “What doesn’t kill you” can make many stronger, but also break or damage many who are not directly killed.
We don’t know what optimal raising of kids is, and it changes as tech changes. Too much early smart phones are a good target. Too much coddling seems another. “Too much” varies by individual.
I believe there's a similarity between the African IQ Question and the satisfaction question in that they're both based on datasets that, to be as charitable as possible, are very incomplete.
To be less charitable, "satisfaction" is meaningless in the context Winship uses it. As economists, a terrible recession is when, like, 10-15% of people are unemployed. That means that 85-90% of people who want a job have one even during what we'd all admit were generally dire economic circumstances. So perhaps that's not a very good metric to base things on.
Likewise, there's huge variation within African populations. The population of Ghana has very little to do with the population of, say, Botswana or the CAR. Even comparing to the US, how far back does one go. Most African Americans were brought to America before their "source" nations had even been colonized. It just seems like a stupid thing to even try and compare.
One thing that struck me when reading the Lyman article a few weeks back is that he is surprised that a large proportion (somewhere around 30% maybe) of a population wouldn’t be self supporting. My thought was “well, yes… lots of people historically lived with parents or other relatives who gave them constant direction.” Many old (pre-twentieth century) western stories have characters that are clearly mentally challenged but live with their family on the farm requiring direction to do useful work, or are self supporting in very menial jobs. Not being able to support yourself is not a deal breaker for existence, especially in a society with relatively few abstract tasks. If poor Sonny-Jim got kicked in the head by a horse when he was little and now is only really good for physical labor on the farm, well he still earns his keep, he just doesn’t get sent to town to buy things.
I vaguely recall (that it stayed with me is something, my memory is so poor) a piece by travel writer Linh Dinh, that suggested something like that in relation to his finding no homeless people in - I think it was - a city in Vietnam. The idea was that everyone was slotted in somewhere, even if to a western liberal that might not amount to living with a great deal of dignity, or agency.
De Tocqueville made a similar point about rural poor in Britain, along the lines of “everyone who could so much as crawl across the floor was engaged in productive activity.” That was as compared to the cities where able bodied men were idle, he believed because they were on the dole.
I don’t think economists really have room in their mind palace for the fact that pay sometimes comes in the form of room and board, or Harry Potter closet and board, or hang about the porch and board. And that sometimes this does in fact “work”.
I think it is mostly a function of people having very little ability to imagine other people or ways of living different from their immediate experience. From my casual empirics at least, a plurality of Americans think of the rest of the world as Americans with a funny accent, or criminals as regular people in desperate circumstances, etc., with the implication that only behaviors they can imagine (from experience) are possible, without grasping the real differences. The same way that many people, including too many economists, want to ban sweat shops, not realizing that for the people that work there that's their best option, and in fact their own (great) grandparents probably worked in pretty similar conditions.
Regarding Lyman Stone's quote, "If you’re really a strong hereditarian, the U.S. environment should not boost IQ very much, which implies that the national IQ data is incorrect."
I think James Flynn would disagree if I am interpreting him correctly. Heritability is measured in a particular population at a particular time. Environmental changes can produce population-level changes in a trait over time, regardless of whether that trait is heritable.
For example, basketball ability is heritable to some extent, as it was in 1950, as it is today. But the skill and development required to become an elite basketball player is much higher today than it was in 1950, due to environmental/cultural changes.
Likewise, Flynn argues that changes in education have produced real gains in IQ, even though IQ is somewhat heritable. It's not that most people in the U.S. in 1900 were dumb by today's standards, but that since then people have been better trained to solve abstract problems, which represents a real gain in intelligence even though population genetics have not changed much.
Yes, most people don't realize that "IQ" is what is measured, at age 6 or 10 or whenever. It is affected by both inherent intellectual potential--what's in the genes--and by life experience. So it is perfectly arithmetically possible that the average potential IQ for Africans is 90 but realized IQ is only 80. And much of that "loss" may be in ability to handle abstractions, not ability to soldier on in daily life.
On perceptions of school quality, a recent article in The Free Press claimed schools are handing out easy As so parents perceive all is good, meanwhile many states are lowering formal standards in the face of declining student achievement. Meadows (2008) claimed "downward goals drift" was responsible for the Ed system's decline, which was a new hypothesis to me. Roll on school choice.
I'm perfectly capable of believing my personal situation is good while feeling other peoples situations are bad.
Example:
1) I own a house with a 1.875% mortgage that has appreciate in value.
2) My nephew doesn't own a house and lives in California. He will NEVER own a house (at least in CA) based on my review of his finances despite being a STEM professional.
I could give a similar review of other people I know and they don't all live in CA.
Many of my neighbors had cushy government email jobs until five minutes ago. If I reported that I think they are doing poorly now, that would be accurate, even though I am unaffected.
There, I just explained how someone can think things are going well for them and not for others.
But why do most people report things are good? I've known lots of people in objectively awful situations that still maintain a positive outlook on life. What are they going to do, tell the pollster they are losers and failures?
I'm reminded about that French trader that made a ton of money betting on Trump. Instead of asking people how they were going to vote (they lied) he asked how their neighbors were going to vote (they told the truth).
I think even strong heredetarians, even if skeptical of the US boosting IQ, should still easily be able to believe there is a lot about Africa that suppresses IQ (inadequate nutrition, poor schooling etc).
This tracks well with the observation that research up to this points has found almost nothing that can reliably boost IQ, but many things which reduce it.
In addition to the nutrition angle, low IQ in a low average IQ society doesn't mean the same thing as low IQ in a high IQ society. A 70 IQ if your white means you're retarded. In Africa it doesn't mean the same thing.
There is a difference between "this society has low ability to do abstract tasks" and "this person is mentally damaged in some way compared to a normal human."
"Globally some 86% of people apparently believe that the political influence of the rich is the biggest source of income inequality."
So the way forward is to take from the well-off and give to the not-so-well-off, with those who do the redistributing being compensated for their pro-social activity. Alas, that is the way Argentina went from First World in the 1800s to almost Third World in the 1900s, and how so many other countries have shot themselves in the foot.
"According to the perversity thesis, any purposive action to improve some feature of the political, social, or economic order only serves to exacerbate the condition one wishes to remedy."
This is so evidently true at least half the time, and in one particularly visible case, all the time - the intersection of the homeless industrial complex, the embrace of urban decay generally, and the effort to legalize, destygmatize, and promote drug use - that if he's suggesting it's a fallacy, he's an utter fool.
I don't see any disconnect between 80% saying their lives are satisfactory, and 80% also saying that they are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country. It is simply NOT a contradiction. Believing that it is, is a logical fallacy. If one believes that almost everyone - let's say 98% of people - should be satisfied with their lives, and if one also CORRECTLY knows that only 80% actually are satisfied - why, then that means that the state of the country is UNsatisfactory.
If one wants to compare across questions, one needs to actually ask the right questions...
On Twenge and data, all users of data should give absolute numbers like 14% & 20%, then add the 53% change for more perspective. Had it been 115% change, up to 30%, more folk would have looked for the absolute numbers.
Those who felt that 53% was the new absolute number were deliberately misled, the half-lies possible with statistics.
Tho I’m pretty sure unhappy spoiled rich kids are genuinely unhappy, it’s not clear to me that the safe, secure, supported kids can really grow up to be as resilient, mentally, as the successful kids (like Vance & Rob Henderson) from insecure childhoods. Tho the death rates are also higher among those with bad childhoods. “What doesn’t kill you” can make many stronger, but also break or damage many who are not directly killed.
We don’t know what optimal raising of kids is, and it changes as tech changes. Too much early smart phones are a good target. Too much coddling seems another. “Too much” varies by individual.
I believe there's a similarity between the African IQ Question and the satisfaction question in that they're both based on datasets that, to be as charitable as possible, are very incomplete.
To be less charitable, "satisfaction" is meaningless in the context Winship uses it. As economists, a terrible recession is when, like, 10-15% of people are unemployed. That means that 85-90% of people who want a job have one even during what we'd all admit were generally dire economic circumstances. So perhaps that's not a very good metric to base things on.
Likewise, there's huge variation within African populations. The population of Ghana has very little to do with the population of, say, Botswana or the CAR. Even comparing to the US, how far back does one go. Most African Americans were brought to America before their "source" nations had even been colonized. It just seems like a stupid thing to even try and compare.
One thing that struck me when reading the Lyman article a few weeks back is that he is surprised that a large proportion (somewhere around 30% maybe) of a population wouldn’t be self supporting. My thought was “well, yes… lots of people historically lived with parents or other relatives who gave them constant direction.” Many old (pre-twentieth century) western stories have characters that are clearly mentally challenged but live with their family on the farm requiring direction to do useful work, or are self supporting in very menial jobs. Not being able to support yourself is not a deal breaker for existence, especially in a society with relatively few abstract tasks. If poor Sonny-Jim got kicked in the head by a horse when he was little and now is only really good for physical labor on the farm, well he still earns his keep, he just doesn’t get sent to town to buy things.
I vaguely recall (that it stayed with me is something, my memory is so poor) a piece by travel writer Linh Dinh, that suggested something like that in relation to his finding no homeless people in - I think it was - a city in Vietnam. The idea was that everyone was slotted in somewhere, even if to a western liberal that might not amount to living with a great deal of dignity, or agency.
De Tocqueville made a similar point about rural poor in Britain, along the lines of “everyone who could so much as crawl across the floor was engaged in productive activity.” That was as compared to the cities where able bodied men were idle, he believed because they were on the dole.
I don’t think economists really have room in their mind palace for the fact that pay sometimes comes in the form of room and board, or Harry Potter closet and board, or hang about the porch and board. And that sometimes this does in fact “work”.
Well, not ALL economists, empirically speaking :D
I think it is mostly a function of people having very little ability to imagine other people or ways of living different from their immediate experience. From my casual empirics at least, a plurality of Americans think of the rest of the world as Americans with a funny accent, or criminals as regular people in desperate circumstances, etc., with the implication that only behaviors they can imagine (from experience) are possible, without grasping the real differences. The same way that many people, including too many economists, want to ban sweat shops, not realizing that for the people that work there that's their best option, and in fact their own (great) grandparents probably worked in pretty similar conditions.
Re: Scott Winship
Putting Scott Winship in the search bar at Marginal Revolution is a worthwhile endeavor. https://marginalrevolution.com/?s=scott+winship
One I have gone back to many times over the years:
"Is the middle class shrinking?"
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/01/is-the-middle-class-shrinking.html
Regarding Lyman Stone's quote, "If you’re really a strong hereditarian, the U.S. environment should not boost IQ very much, which implies that the national IQ data is incorrect."
I think James Flynn would disagree if I am interpreting him correctly. Heritability is measured in a particular population at a particular time. Environmental changes can produce population-level changes in a trait over time, regardless of whether that trait is heritable.
For example, basketball ability is heritable to some extent, as it was in 1950, as it is today. But the skill and development required to become an elite basketball player is much higher today than it was in 1950, due to environmental/cultural changes.
Likewise, Flynn argues that changes in education have produced real gains in IQ, even though IQ is somewhat heritable. It's not that most people in the U.S. in 1900 were dumb by today's standards, but that since then people have been better trained to solve abstract problems, which represents a real gain in intelligence even though population genetics have not changed much.
Yes, most people don't realize that "IQ" is what is measured, at age 6 or 10 or whenever. It is affected by both inherent intellectual potential--what's in the genes--and by life experience. So it is perfectly arithmetically possible that the average potential IQ for Africans is 90 but realized IQ is only 80. And much of that "loss" may be in ability to handle abstractions, not ability to soldier on in daily life.
On perceptions of school quality, a recent article in The Free Press claimed schools are handing out easy As so parents perceive all is good, meanwhile many states are lowering formal standards in the face of declining student achievement. Meadows (2008) claimed "downward goals drift" was responsible for the Ed system's decline, which was a new hypothesis to me. Roll on school choice.
I'm perfectly capable of believing my personal situation is good while feeling other peoples situations are bad.
Example:
1) I own a house with a 1.875% mortgage that has appreciate in value.
2) My nephew doesn't own a house and lives in California. He will NEVER own a house (at least in CA) based on my review of his finances despite being a STEM professional.
I could give a similar review of other people I know and they don't all live in CA.
Many of my neighbors had cushy government email jobs until five minutes ago. If I reported that I think they are doing poorly now, that would be accurate, even though I am unaffected.
There, I just explained how someone can think things are going well for them and not for others.
But why do most people report things are good? I've known lots of people in objectively awful situations that still maintain a positive outlook on life. What are they going to do, tell the pollster they are losers and failures?
I'm reminded about that French trader that made a ton of money betting on Trump. Instead of asking people how they were going to vote (they lied) he asked how their neighbors were going to vote (they told the truth).
Would your nephew say he’s doing great if he was polled?
I think even strong heredetarians, even if skeptical of the US boosting IQ, should still easily be able to believe there is a lot about Africa that suppresses IQ (inadequate nutrition, poor schooling etc).
This tracks well with the observation that research up to this points has found almost nothing that can reliably boost IQ, but many things which reduce it.
In addition to the nutrition angle, low IQ in a low average IQ society doesn't mean the same thing as low IQ in a high IQ society. A 70 IQ if your white means you're retarded. In Africa it doesn't mean the same thing.
There is a difference between "this society has low ability to do abstract tasks" and "this person is mentally damaged in some way compared to a normal human."
"Globally some 86% of people apparently believe that the political influence of the rich is the biggest source of income inequality."
So the way forward is to take from the well-off and give to the not-so-well-off, with those who do the redistributing being compensated for their pro-social activity. Alas, that is the way Argentina went from First World in the 1800s to almost Third World in the 1900s, and how so many other countries have shot themselves in the foot.
"According to the perversity thesis, any purposive action to improve some feature of the political, social, or economic order only serves to exacerbate the condition one wishes to remedy."
This is so evidently true at least half the time, and in one particularly visible case, all the time - the intersection of the homeless industrial complex, the embrace of urban decay generally, and the effort to legalize, destygmatize, and promote drug use - that if he's suggesting it's a fallacy, he's an utter fool.