tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post6753892482651126682..comments2024-03-27T03:19:11.216-04:00Comments on Assistant Village Idiot: China And Social DarwinismAssistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-46635415730790306852013-03-30T12:36:23.891-04:002013-03-30T12:36:23.891-04:00I believe that I shouldn't actually have quali...I believe that I shouldn't actually have qualified (on the general, not the 4D math one), but I did on paper and am hoping for a free genome sequencing.<br /><br />I was intrigued with the emerging concept that you can't teach or increase g-factor very well, but it is .3 - .4 of life outcomes anyway - and you can teach many of the other qualities such as conscientiousness and perseverance. This was exactly what they were doing when I was goofing off in school. They were right and I was wrong. My son also pointed out this morning, as I was bemoaning all the effort I put in reading LOTR out loud three times, for example, that it may not have increased intelligence one whit, but it created a culture.<br /><br />It would be interesting if our educational systems were reconfigured around the idea that the only thing they can accomplish are culture and the non-cognitives.<br /><br />I have also encountered the theory of autism being more common in math, science, and engineering families, and represents a hyper-male response to the world and its objects. That would make it something like Tay-Sachs or the other brain diseases more common in Ashkenazi Jews, where there is some advantage to having a little, but a lot is destructive.Assistant Village Idiothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-86683745381512484912013-03-30T11:56:50.467-04:002013-03-30T11:56:50.467-04:00Breeding for particular traits, deliberately or in...Breeding for particular traits, deliberately or inadvertently, sometimes has <a href="http://www.grandin.com/inc/animals.make.us.human.ch7.html" rel="nofollow">unexpected side effects</a>. I'd think that a complex phenomenon like intelligence would be linked to many other things, and not have bright line tradeoffs.<br /><br />But, at the simplest level, energy devoted to brainpower isn't used for other things, so we could expect generalized tradeoffs such as slower maturity, less disease resistance, maybe more cancers; that sort of thing.<br /><br />As a kind of primitive example, Aspergers seems to correlate with high intelligence in your heredity. If this proves true, then we can expect such a "breeding program" as China's to trail off at some level when the increase in number of children from having money hits the higher percentage of kids who don't find spouses.<br /><br />It gets pretty complicated, since China gets hit with famines and the traits that help you survive those can be different from IQ. And long periods of civil disturbance would select for people who hung together tightly against outsiders (hdb-chick and cousin marriage?).<br /><br />Incidentally, I don't qualify for their high-math ability testing program. I did OK, but not <i>that</i> well. (I looked through some old <a href="http://www.math.niu.edu/~rusin/problems-math/" rel="nofollow">Putnam exams</a> the other night. Good for practice in humility.)jameshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01792036361407527304noreply@blogger.com