[HN Gopher] Comparing linear and nonlinear effects of cognitive ...
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Comparing linear and nonlinear effects of cognitive ability on life
outcomes
Author : doener
Score : 42 points
Date : 2021-11-05 17:45 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (journals.sagepub.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (journals.sagepub.com)
| [deleted]
| mdp2021 wrote:
| The title chosen for the submission is part of the end of the
| abstract, and with the elision seems to miss the point: <<Thus,
| greater cognitive ability is generally advantageous - _and
| virtually never detrimental_ >>.
|
| Actual title: _Can You Ever Be Too Smart for Your Own Good?
| Comparing Linear and Nonlinear Effects of Cognitive Ability on
| Life Outcomes_
| lxe wrote:
| A much more informative title. Maybe replace with the title of
| the article/paper for this one?
| dang wrote:
| We've replaced the submitted title ("Greater cognitive ability
| is generally advantageous") with the article's subtitle.
| Thanks!
|
| Submitters: " _Please use the original title, unless it is
| misleading or linkbait; don 't editorialize._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| bena wrote:
| I've started to see intelligence as a multiplier. Which is why it
| so often correlates to better life outcomes across all other
| factors.
|
| While being intelligent won't make you successful on its own,
| anything you want to do is helped by being intelligent.
| serjester wrote:
| Unpopular opinion but this is complete pseudoscience. Starting
| with the notion that the most complex thing in the universe,
| someone's intelligence (ie high dimensionality), can be
| simplified down to a single number.
|
| This study is cursed by circularity. The only thing IQ tests are
| good for is testing is how you perform on sterile, academic tests
| which unfortunately underpin our current education system. Even
| then it explains at best between 2 and 13% of the performance in
| some tasks. No measure that fails 80-95% of the time should be
| treated seriously.
|
| But let's assume IQ is an accurate gauge of someone's
| intelligence - why do some countries have an average IQ of 70?
| Are we seriously going to assume that entire countries are filled
| with people that could be classified as having an intellectual
| disability in the US? Clearly there's more going on here.
|
| Not to mention the effect of IQ they found is smaller than the
| difference between IQ tests for the same individual. It's a shame
| that epidemiological psychology get's treated as anything
| remotely resembling science.
|
| Edit: Small changes for cohesion.
| throw10920 wrote:
| > Unpopular opinion but this is complete pseudoscience.
|
| There was significantly more research put into this paper than
| thought put into your comment. You dismiss the entire paper
| using a bunch of hand-waving (with a few instances of emotional
| manipulation like "psuedoscience" and "it's a shame" and "are
| we seriously going to assume") and no actual arguments. If you
| cannot actually point to specific flaws with the experimental
| methodology, you _definitely_ shouldn 't accuse the paper of
| "psuedoscience".
|
| > Starting with the notion that the most complex thing in the
| universe, someone's intelligence (high dimensionality), can be
| simplified down to a single number.
|
| That assumption is never made in the paper. The authors use
| various tests (the Henmon-Nelson Test of Mental Abilities, the
| Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, the Edinburgh
| Reading Test, and the Friendly Maths Test) to provide numbers
| that they use as a _proxy measurement_ for intelligence, but
| they never state that the two are equivalent. Moreover, just
| because our cognitive processes are extremely complex does not
| mean that you can 't capture the majority of variance using a
| small number of measurements (which is, uh, how a lot of modern
| statistics works).
|
| > Then throw in the effect of IQ being smaller than the
| difference between IQ tests for the same individual.
|
| The authors do not use IQ as their sole measure of
| "intelligence", so this isn't relevant. There isn't even a
| single "IQ test"!
|
| Moreover, even assuming that what you claim is true (because
| you didn't even provide a source), it's not really relevant -
| "proportion that measured IQ contributes to a specific kind of
| a success" isn't comparable with "variance between different IQ
| measurements for an individual" - operator<() isn't defined on
| those two types. Plus, all you're claiming is that it's hard to
| accurately measure IQ - which isn't relevant if the variance is
| 10% but we're curious about whether the difference between 90
| and 110 IQ is significant.
|
| > why do some countries have an average IQ of 70?
|
| I think of at least two plausible reasons - malnutrition
| stunting intellectual growth at crucial stages in a human's
| development, and lack of education. Throwing a "Are we
| seriously going to assume" out there isn't an argument.
|
| > Clearly there's more going on here.
|
| If there is, you haven't pointed to it.
| serjester wrote:
| I'll comment on two of your points. I'd strongly argue you
| lose most of the salient information when you try to
| represent a highly dimensional system with a single numbers.
| That's the curse of dimensionality. I agree, modern
| statistics does not understand this, causing no shortage of
| issues when applied to complex systems - eugenics, high carb
| diets, 08 recession, etc.
|
| Secondly I'd recommend making an effort to travel to these
| "low IQ countries". I can assure you the average person is
| not much dumber than the average American.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| If IQ tends to correlate with abstract thinking, a person
| who is smart in daily life may still be < 100 points of IQ.
|
| I had classmates who were quite smart in interpersonal
| communication, but really struggled with abstract tasks in
| mathematics or physics. One of them is a fairly successful
| businessman now, but still shudders when someone says
| "Pythagorean theorem" aloud.
|
| Given how heavily do IQ tests lean on geometry and abstract
| pattern matching, he might score rather low.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _malnutrition_
|
| Yes, but
|
| > _lack of education_
|
| of intellectual _stimula_ , really.
| tejtm wrote:
| Runs contrary the recent post on human brain capacity /
| intelligence peaking 70,000 years ago and declining since.
|
| With "extincting all predators" and farming being lesser factors
| than the continual community based purging of more
| aggressive/intelligent individuals.
| pflanze wrote:
| You're probably referring to "Why are our brains shrinking?
| (usfca.edu)"[1]
|
| But that made claims about _size_ , not capacity or
| intelligence?
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29031999
| [deleted]
| ggambetta wrote:
| You don't say!
| ggambetta wrote:
| My comment doesn't make much sense now that the title has
| changed :(
| sharemywin wrote:
| I don't really understand the point. It's probably true there's a
| correlation but, that's not causation. so, unless your betting on
| other people's success on a large scale and only on that factor
| not sure what do to with that information.
| dr_kiszonka wrote:
| Based on reading this article, do you think that cognitive
| ability has no impact on life outcomes?
|
| Although the study is not an RCT (how would we design one?), I
| find it convincing that cognitive ability is partially
| responsible for, e.g., educational attainment, even if this
| effect is often adulterated by other factors like parental
| income.
|
| The paper focused on being "too smart." On the other side of
| the spectrum are folks with dementia. Those who experienced
| dementia in their lives can attest to how devastating of a
| condition it is.
| ubercore wrote:
| I haven't read the paper, but why is comparing to dementia
| relevant at all?
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| Because it represents significant cognitive decline, which
| is a good comparison against those with significant
| cognitive advantage.
| zardo wrote:
| I don't think the greatest genius has anywhere near the
| cognitive advantage over an average person that an
| average person has over a dementia patient.
| dr_kiszonka wrote:
| I think it is relevant because dementia is "a decline in
| thinking skills, also known as cognitive abilities, severe
| enough to impair daily life and independent function."[0]
|
| If a decrease in cognitive abilities leads to impaired
| independence (and consequently life outcomes), then it
| would make sense that an increase in cognitive abilities
| leads to improved life outcomes. Here, I am assuming that
| this effect is monotonic across the whole range of
| cognitive abilities, which the submitted article seems to
| confirm.
|
| Of course, I am comparing individuals having a medical
| condition (dementia) with, as far as I understand,
| cognitively intact study participants, but I think it
| doesn't meaningfully weaken my argument. If you disagree,
| I'd love to understand why.
|
| 0. https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/what-is-dementia
| ubercore wrote:
| > Of course, I am comparing individuals having a medical
| condition (dementia) with, as far as I understand,
| cognitively intact study participants, but I think it
| doesn't meaningfully weaken my argument.
|
| This is exactly why.
|
| Because dementia has specific non-global effects on
| cognitive ability. It's a disease. The impairments caused
| by dementia aren't a linear projection down from a non-
| diseased state. Even if outcomes in terms of how the
| study defined them end up in a similar place, dementia
| isn't actually supporting evidence in any meaningful way.
| dvh wrote:
| If you want to hear what everybody knows, ask behavioral
| psychologist.
| bvaldivielso wrote:
| At the same time, there's plenty of things that people "know"
| that turns out to be false when examined closely. It's good
| that someone tries to verify things using as robust a
| methodology as possible.
| ssivark wrote:
| More likely, "surprising facts" that every behavioral
| psychologist knows, which turn out false when examined
| closely :-)
| throw10920 wrote:
| There are a lot of people who either don't believe the argument
| supported by the submission, or don't _want_ to believe it -
| e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29124142
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Did I miss it or did they not really address the claims in the
| section that quotes: "For example, Gladwell (2008) wrote that
| "once someone has reached an IQ of somewhere around 120, having
| additional IQ points doesn't seem to translate to any measurable,
| real-world advantage" (pp. 78-79)."
|
| They quote a bunch of people who say, basically that IQ above 120
| hits diminishing returns hard, but they very quickly shift to a
| different argument, instead proving that rising IQ doesn't
| actually make things worse. Which is a different thing. So, are
| they trying to pull a fast one?
|
| I've no great love for Gladwell, I just think that seems a
| reasonable claim that they could have blown out the water if they
| had data to disprove it, but they appear to have shied away from
| it.
| me_im_counting wrote:
| If this is true, it's interesting that we didn't evolve toward a
| higher median intelligence.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| What I've read is that these big brains are very expensive and
| we don't necessarily select for intelligence. Being hardier, or
| more reproductive can often result in more babies of the
| hardier or more reproductive than smarter does.
| xyzelement wrote:
| There was a thread here a few weeks ago where someone
| mentioned a specific group that does select for intelligence
| and consequently has statistically above-average IQ.
|
| That thread was shouted down because people basically said
| "even if that's true, we don't want to talk about it because
| it's close to scientific racism." That may be fine and I can
| see how that topic is counter productive sometime but in this
| case I think it goes to the parent's point, that some
| populations DID evolve a higher mean intelligence and are
| reaping the rewards.
| tejtm wrote:
| the Cagots perhaps?
|
| [] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cagot
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Aren't Ashkenazi Jews famous for valuing scholars more than
| the rich?
| lelanthran wrote:
| Link to the thread? Not that I don't believe it, but I
| think that the arguments might be more nuanced than it
| sounds.
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