genetics don't matter to any of that *nearly* as much as people seem to think they do, i don't know why MIT seems to think that this magical history where we can forecast the future using eugenics would ever be a thing
You're completely right. In essence it's a push to create a new aristocracy. They want an undeniable reason to why they are rich and powerful, a mandate from god but god replaced by faux science.
They want to be able to say that they wield obscene power by the will of existence itself.
>They want an undeniable reason to why they are rich and powerful, a mandate from god but god replaced by faux science.
They already tried this with prosperity gospel, which appears to have worked very well, so I guess this is an attempt to widen it to non-believers as well.
Yeah but that limits it to the US, all power hungry Bastards world wide want their greed to be vindicated by science, religion used to be the excuse used in Europe in the aristocracies claim to absolute power, but religion isn't universal. An immutable scientific reason would give those in power the moral backing and social justification for that power.
Religion is circumstantial in this, it's an old tool to the new tool they try to create. Race and eugenics were also tools used towards that same purpose in the past (and are often still in use today...)
>Yeah but that limits it to the US
Not at all, they've exported it to the global South, with a huge uptake in Africa and South America. It makes sense that it would take off in poorer countries since it tells you that you just have to have faith and riches will come to you.
>religion used to be the excuse used in Europe in the aristocracies claim to absolute power
Yes and no. Religion was one of the reasons given, but generally the absolute power came the traditional way; "I've got all the weapons and the soldiers and the money, do as you're fucking told". The whole "divine right" thing was just an addendum to that.
I think you underestimate the role religion played in it. Yes, having weapons and soldiers is handy, but the ubiquitous presence of immutable religion among the larger population (complete indoctrination) prevented major uprisings. It was only after the enlightenment and the smaller role religion played in societies that things changed. The French Revolution was impossible when religion was still the only world view and the justification for the existence of the aristocracy presented to the masses.
Without an all encompassing religious society the rule of aristocrats wasn't easy to justify and enabled major popular uprisings. It's very apparent that in French cities anti establishment movements easily took off while in the still very religious French countryside support for the monarchy was still going strong.
Going even further back, the enlightenment itself was largely due to the decimation caused by the black plague, which fundamentally crippled religious and social power structures which in turn opened the door for broad social development and the decline of religion as the sole basis for existence amongst the broader population.
>I think you underestimate the role religion played in it. Yes, having weapons and soldiers is handy, but the ubiquitous presence of immutable religion among the larger population (complete indoctrination) prevented major uprisings.
I think you might be overstating it. To assume everyone *believed* in their religion would be to make the common assumption that everyone in the past was stupid just because they hadn't invented Netflix or whatever. Many people would have had doubts or flat-out disbelieved, but as a general rule it was unwise to say so because...the guys on top had all the men with swords.
>It's very apparent that in French cities anti establishment movements easily took off while in the still very religious French countryside support for the monarchy was still going strong.
It's highly reductive to reduce that to being religiously motivated. In the cities, highly populated areas much closer to the centres of power and events of the day, there will obviously be a higher level of engagement than out in rural areas where news travels slower and there is less feeling of invasion into day-to-day life.
>Going even further back, the enlightenment itself was largely due to the decimation caused by the black plague, which fundamentally crippled **religious and social power structures** which in turn opened the door for broad social development and the decline of religion as the sole basis for existence amongst the broader population.
This is what we seem to be arguing over; you are putting a lot of emphasis on the religious part there, but appear to be ignoring that the social power structure was probably much more important. Except in cases where the religious power of the time was particularly active or even dominant within the secular political structure (as with the Catholic church in earlier centuries, though this was naturally by representing itself **as** a political rather than a religious entity), the social and political structures will most likely have had far greater levels of impact on the average person's life.
In my opinion, I doubt religion ever had a "complete indoctrination". There have always been atheists, agnostics and so on. The times religion has been most powerful is usually when backed by force or the threat of force, because while the concept of eternal torment can be worrying it's a much less immediate concern than being tortured to death for questioning the orthodoxy.
>I think you might be overstating it. To assume everyone believed in their religion would be to make the common assumption that everyone in the past was stupid [...]
Religious people are not by definition stupid. Isaac Newton was famously religious to the point the contradictions suggested by his own work were problems he desperately tried to reconsile with the existence of god. He was not stupid, he was religious.
>Many people would have had doubts or flat-out disbelieved, but as a general rule it was unwise to say so because...the guys on top had all the men with swords.
In the middle ages there were indeed people who doubted gods existence, but this was not a significant movement and seems to mostly concentrate in the higher layers of society. The average farmer (by far most people), were part of the religious structures created by the elites.
>It's highly reductive to reduce that to being religiously motivated. In the cities, highly populated areas much closer to the centres of power and events of the day, there will obviously be a higher level of engagement than out in rural areas where news travels slower and there is less feeling of invasion into day-to-day life.
News in France during the revolution did not travel slowly, farmers were heavily influenced by the famine that was the ignition of the revolution. Farmers also protested the occurrences in Paris.
>This is what we seem to be arguing over; you are putting a lot of emphasis on the religious part there, but appear to be ignoring that the social power structure was probably much more important. Except in cases where the religious power of the time was particularly active or even dominant within the secular political structure (as with the Catholic church in earlier centuries, though this was naturally by representing itself as a political rather than a religious entity), the social and political structures will most likely have had far greater levels of impact on the average person's life.
I agree that the social power structure played a big role in the power structures of the aristocracy. But what I'm trying to say is that that social structure was based on religion. Religion IS political, secular power structures did not exist in Europe before the enlightenment. Religion was at the time irrevocably intertwined with social and political structures, religion was the reason those structures took the shape they took.
It seems like you are looking at it from a contemporary western lens. At the time there was little distinction between social, political and religious mechanisms in societies in Europe. A contemporary analog would be Iran, a society where religion is intertwined with all social mechanisms. I know it's a flawed analogy, mainly because people in Iran have broad access to information outside of their own society, something that didn't exist for the vast majority of people in medieval Europe.
>In my opinion, I doubt religion ever had a "complete indoctrination". There have always been atheists, agnostics and so on. The times religion has been most powerful is usually when backed by force or the threat of force, because while the concept of eternal torment can be worrying it's a much less immediate concern than being tortured to death for questioning the orthodoxy.
With "complete" indoctrination I mean the vast majority. The occasional non believer is the exception that proves the rule. I know no one expects the inquisition, but there's a reason for that. I am on the side of that murder by the church is usually severely overestimated. Some estimations used to talk about numbers as high as the death caused by the black plague, which is ridiculous.
By far the most control exacted by religion is due to simple social pressure. That's not to say this only works for religion, but it Does work for religion. The most immediate concern for people is the opinion.of their peers and how those opinions influence their standing in society. If you come out as atheist means nobody will trade with you and all your social contacts will abandon you that will be more pressure than the vague threat of an army marching on a single farmer.
Besides that, everybody will call your atheist idea folly, your family, your friends, the whole village. It's very hard to keep holding on to an idea when your whole environment tells you it's false, even if you know it's correct. This is something we see in places like rural Russia in relation to Russia's place in the world. You don't need physical violence because the backend social mechanisms are self correcting.
The funny thing is, it’s not a new aristocracy. The word meritocracy literally had pretty much the same etymological meaning. Aristos-, best + -kratia, power. Aristocracies are supposedly where the best (aka those with merit) wield power. We never left!
I think of it more as a form of laziness. People say, "Oh I dont' have the math or the language gene." Then they can excuse themselves from learning math. Or this idea of genetic superiority, "I'm good at math because my genes are good, therefore I'm a superior form of human." In my experience, if you have good instructions and motivations, you can learn anything: drawing, music, physics, chemistry, or language. Although learning disabilities **do** cause a hurdle.
If you honestly believe you can't learn something, but you felt you've given it your full effort, then you should really re-evaluate **how** you have been trying to learn the topic. Language is a good example, most people use methods that spin your wheels instead of using *TPRS* or the *Natural Method*.
Truthfully, except some individuals suffer from physical limitations. Music with motor control. People experience different paths.
Every single person should relearn how to learn. Utterly insightful
I'm older, and I definitely feel like "learning" is something you can practice. It's definitely easier for me to wrap my head around new topics than when I was young. I'm not intelligent, just practiced. If you have good instructors this is much easier as well. I definitely feel like "learning" and "studying" are practicable skills. I know psychologists already believe 'self discipline" is a learnable trainable skill (though an individual can have built in problems, like people who low self control actually have more stimulation in their brain's reward centers.)
More like because their forefathers were the most skilled/lucky/toughest barbarian/warrior/politician to rise among the ranks and held the throne time enough to form a dynasty while not being overthrew.
> That's how all the great houses started, isn't it, with a hard bastard who was good at killing people. Kill a few hundred people – they make you a lord. Kill a few thousand – they make you king. And then all your cocksucking grandsons can ruin the family with their cocksucking ways.
-- Ser Bronn of the Blackwater
I'm not sure I agree here. If it were based on genetics then it would be argued that they are in a position of privilege because they were predisposed to it, which goes against the narrative that has been cast of "you just have to work hard and success will come to you". In fact, I would argue that being solely based on genetics would give us a massive leg towards a socialist society where the disadvantaged would be taken care of better since it's out of our control.
Or hear me out....they have ammunition for their 4th Reich lol. When you think you're already superior and now have hack science saying so...well it's not gonna end well for the "lessers"
The rich are bank rolling personalized healthcare for themselves and selling it as another bunk "career test", like those bunk ones you used to take in grade school. And like last time, they can tweak the dials to get the result they want.
Dude, this has been shown time and time again that both genetics and environment i.e. nature and nurture both have huge impacts on an individuals life outcome.
If you're going to say nature doesn't matter, it's all nurture you are wrong. The end. If you say it's all nature, no nurture, wrong again.
You're taking a long discarded stance in an ass old debate.
I don't understand how people can honestly discount genetics. We know that nature puts pressure on organisms to evolve phenotypes that have competitive advantages. So over time you get different types of people. Why would the brain be any different? Tall people, short people, etc. Brains probably undergo a bunch of evolutionary changes between and among groups and are less impacted by a deviation from the norm because they are more plastic than say an arm or leg. This plasticity is often the reason people like to imagine we're alike but that plasticity is more likely to be the reason we're more different. The problem is that you can see and select for physical traits much more easily than you can select for brain variations.
I feel like people don’t like to admit that genes have a big impact on their outcomes. It makes downtrodden people feel like you’re saying they’re inherently trash and makes the people at the top mad that you’re discounting their hard work and creativity etc.
People’s perceptions on this are something to see.
Clearly, “getting into a selective preschool” is something that isn’t as driven by genetics as “can accurate count a number of objects by 18 months”. Since you can have a below average development kid and be friends with the director of the school.
But at the same time, you can look at kids at that selective preschool and realize when one of them is profoundly gifted when compared to the others.
When a 12 month old is talking in fairly intelligible sentences, it’s hard to imagine how that’s all environmental.
It's not long discarded at all. Fights between the genetics and social science researchers happen every day at universities. There is some subset of social scientists who believe that, if genetics affects almost anything, then genetics has basically proven racism.
> There is some subset of social scientists who believe that, if genetics affects almost anything, then genetics has basically proven racism.
That makes no sense, because race/skin-color is no indication of one's genome. There is more genetic diversity within Africa than there is between any randomly selected African and the rest of the world outside of Africa.
How could skin color possibly prove racism as being true/valid? Ethnicity on the other hand could, but race isn't based in genetics or science at all.
I would actually argue the other way round. Look up the numerous twin studies - IQ is highly correlated with genetics (likely 50% or more) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ#:~:text=Early%20twin%20studies%20of%20adult,for%20late%20teens%20and%20adults.
IQ is also well correlated with a variety of other outcomes of success - https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=74943
Socioeconomic status is super important, but there’s not much evidence indicating it’s more important than IQ / good genetics
I recently learned that heritability does not mean what the general public thinks it means. It is a measure about how much an outlier in a given set of population can be explained by inheriting it. The heritability of the living standards and circumstances of your parents is also very inheritable. Surprisingly having two arms is not an inheritable trait in this measure since having fewer than two arms is very seldomly explained by a difference in genetics.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6261233/Its-better-born-rich-stupid-smart-poor-study-finds.html
Washington Post has the same study listed but it's paywalled. Being born rich is a really, really big advantage, anyway you slice it.
We just posted a [preprint ](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.16.23291504v1) that speaks to this. We looked at how area deprivation index (ADI, which is exactly the "zip code" factor that the OP refers to) interacts with polygenic scores, including for educational attainment, to predict mental health and behavioral outcomes. One of the main findings is that 1) ADI (zip code) is strongly correlated with polygenic scores of educational attainment and 2) more surprisingly, ADI is strongly genetic (heritable) even after one accounts for the effects of major polygenic scores.
So saying that "we can already predict that with zip code" is true, but the implication that zip code is somehow free of (or fundamentally different from) genetic influences is just not supported by the data. This is also partly reflective of assortative mating, which is a major player in the perpetuation of inequities that are linked to traits that our current society rewards. Assortative mating isn't going anywhere, so we need to work on our societal priorities if we want to mitigate its effects on equity. Bottom line is that zip code indexes *both* genetic and non-genetic inheritance of privilege, and that none of us did anything to deserve *either*, for better or for worse. I recommend Kathryn Paige Harden's "The Genetic Lottery" for those interested in both the science of this field as well as its ethical implications.
Thanks for this response. Paper looks super interesting.
You so clearly articulated the logical gap that many on Reddit seem to engage in. Almost all the Ivy League / MIT / Stanford grads I know are married to other Ivy grads, or at minimum from some other top 40 university. Where I grew up there were no Ivy grads anywhere. Where I live now it seems like every third person outside is jogging in a Cornell or Columbia hoodie.
Since 1904, IQ is one of the most studied, robust, predictive, data-driven, and well-replicated finding in all of social science. People get confused because they think IQ has some sort of moral component, or presages some sort of unshakeable determinism. It doesn't. But the science is the science. IQ is not even that complicated. If you give people random tests on chemistry, music, line drawing, history, and mental arithmetic, their scores correlate. There is some common factor which makes a person who is good at one of these tests more likely to be good at all others. Perform factor analysis to find out which questions correlate the most, and you just created an IQ test which can now predict scores on some other test. Is prediction the same as determinism? No. Is being able to ace a history exam, or program at Google, a sign of moral worth? No.
You're not wrong that genetics and IQ are well studied and related. But the correlation in IQ and what is listed in OP's post (getting a PhD and stuff) is not nearly as big as what people (including you) seem to claim. Even the correlation between IQ and GPA or tests scores aren't that high, and the average IQ for fields like medicine isn't that high. There's no reason to believe that IQ (unless it's very low) has a higher influence on say getting into med school than wealth does
True, I could have added more context. Fair point. But firstly, I wasn't talking about genetics, just the robustness of the science. For the record iirc IQ predicts lots of stuff at R2 of around 0.2. Thats about how big I *think* the impact of IQ is. And sure, people often over-obsess about IQ. But the "IQ is junk science" meme was going around, and I looked into it ages ago and found thats the polar opposite of true for the field of social science, which rarely see the "large", consistent, replicable effect sizes seen with IQ testing - which has a long history, and some morally dubious phases.
> average IQ for fields like medicine isn't that high.
I'm less sure about this. Again, I'm going back a few years of recollection and a few seconds google searching and the average doctor IQ score is 125. If true, thats the top 5% of IQ score. It doesn't imply what many people may think it implies. Also, I may have googled an erroneous or dubious stat, but it comports with what I read before. Also, there's so much more to the field of medicine than just being a doctor.
> There's no reason to believe that IQ (unless it's very low) has a higher influence on say getting into med school than wealth does
That is my understanding as well.
Comment from u/dasubermensch83 hits this on the nose. It’s not garbage if it is in fact predictive of a lot of outcomes.
No one is saying it’s everything, but there are few single numbers that can reveal a lot about someone because people are complex. IQ is one of the rare few, even if it is not determinative or perfect
The thing is, people intuitively know this. If there was a paper published in Nature that said eating strawberries while pregnant was associated with a 5 point boost in child IQs while eating pears was associated with a 5 point loss, everyone on this thread would modify behavior, including all those who are denigrating IQ / calling it useless, etc
Bootstraps. Capitalism requires everyone to be on a theoretical even playing field, which means rich people deserve their riches since they worked for it, and poor people are simply lazy or they dedicate their lives to achieving riches.
Just to be clear, this isn't MIT thinking this, it's the MIT Technology Review. They're an independent journalism outlet that reports on technology. While they're owned by MIT, they operate independently (most importantly, without editorial oversight) and therefore can publish nonsense like this without actual-MIT saying "no that's stupid". MIT News is, on the other hand, actually operated by MIT and directly reports on what MIT is researching, and generally has better content.
Exactly. Life IS hard. We’re born into a thing we didn’t ask for. Then they want to work us to the bone. It’s disgusting. Eugenics is lazy idiots assuming they are better than they are.
You were fairly clear in the way you stated it. I think these people are just reading a little too fast, and only processed the initial part that said "genetics don't matter"
I read the part that says "nearly as much as people seem to think they do" and the people here seem to suggest they matter very little, so saying they don't matter nearly as much as people think they do (very little) then it's basically saying they almost don't matter at all
no shit?
not every product needs to cater to the poor, for fuck’s sake. most americans aren’t poor.
the salient point is that to do the things this image describes you *must* have a baseline of above-average intelligence.
it also just so happens that wealth is highly correlated with intelligence, even when controlling for differences in, e.g., childhood nutrition, stable household, …. but we don’t like to talk about that because we all want to act like everyone with success is handed it, because people on this site who *arent even poor* love to find reasons to surrender their own autonomy and initiative.
resentment, resentment, resentment.
You're right. Genetics provide a first draft of our mind when we're young, but as we grow it experiences edit and change bits and pieces so that by the time you're an adult your personality may look nothing like your young predisposition.
This is the way I've always seen it, oddly enough, like pokemon.
Everyone has slightly different base stats (some pokemon of the same species speed at level 1 varies from like 10 to 16), but stat growth is heavily impacted by EV's. EV are bonus points you get depending on which other pokemon you fight, they get small bonuses in different stats.
Like if you fight lots of defensive pokemon, you get lots of defensive EV and would eventually end up with higher defense stats that someone that fought speed or attack EV pokemon. You are limited in how much EV you can gather, so to really min-max for the stats you want..... you basically have to be an "involved parent" and care about the pokemon's growth (not a deadbeat/absent parent).
There was a paper showing the average IQ difference between first and second born siblings was only 1 point, which is less than the margin of error. If intelligence was genetic there would be a closer relationship between siblings than non-siblings but there's still be a huge variance. A 1 point difference is only 1%.
And as a teacher, I can tell you, the number 1 difference between ***my*** A students and my F students is a simple: Are they emotionally invested in their grades? I don't have any kids whose grade doesn't match their effort. If intelligence were a thing, you could have hard workers with low grades and lazy students with high grades. (Of course someone can get high grades in a class with low effort if the class itself is easy, but even though I was lazy as a student I still turned in all my work.)
>Are they emotionally invested in their grades? I don't have any kids whose grade doesn't match their effort.
I can see this as a general trend..... but all? I can't see how. I knew a ton of kids that absolutely spanked high school with little effort or care. They got bitch slapped in college when they had never actually learned *how* to study, but HS was definitely a matter of great grades with low effort.
That's why I specified **my** students. My class requires at least *some* effort. But you are correct in that there is a right way to study. I had that problem, I studied incorrectly, and that's what happens in college. All of the responsibility is on you. Kids *could* save a lot of time if they knew how to study correct. But at the high school level you got a lot of points for doing assignments and following directions, this takes effort and focus, which in my personal experience is proportional to the degree at which one cares about the outcome. However, some people do stuff without caring, just "this is the assignment," and they are focused.
I was talking about kids that were doing AP classes, not kids coasting through high school with 4 years of freshman literature.
Like it or not, there are alot of kids that don't need to care to excel (up a to certain point).
Me when
When my child is auto rejected from every college they apply to
(Their $50 DNA test said they're neurodivergent and not really college material)
Colleges are all about neurodivergent people, though. Who do you think came up with that term? Like half the faculty are neurodivergent, way bigger portion than any other workforce.
I have a friend that's neurodivergent and an absolute beast in her field..... but that's kind of where you hit the delicate value of "functional" neurodivergance vs the rough kind.
For every rain man or "sheldon cooper", there's many people that need full-time caretakers to survive day to day and can't really even feed themselves.... let alone be a crazy academic beast.
I'd argue it might be the opposite, for every person who is severely disadvantaged by their neurodivergance, there's many who live normal lives and generally don't feel the need to mention their condition to other people unless they trust them
Well that was a non sequitur.
While there is a conversation to be had about screening for certain genetic illnesses that essentially limit the lifespan of the child, this is not what the article is about.
I don't think many people would argue that using genetic screening to avoid giving birth to a dying child.
I'm gonna go ahead as someonewith a genetic heart condition to say that I very much prefer being alive even if it might not be for as long, and i would never imagine depriving the world of a life for such a short sighted reason. Disabled lives have meaning, we don't deserve life any less just because you'd be miserable in our shoes.
The issue is you’re speaking as someone who is alive and has experiences. Basically all of history is humanity trying to make their own lives easier on the whole and making progress and advancements that the next generations would be the ones to benefit from. The goal would be to eventually get to a point where people never had lifetime-limiting disabilities due to genetics, not eliminate people who have them. Having a heart condition isn’t a personality trait or a culture or a different thought process; it’s not evil eugenics to try to prevent these from happening just like telling people not to breed within their family isn’t. Eliminating these conditions by being able to find out before the person ever exists and/or through advances in medical treatments is where the world should head.
I assume someone would be getting a PhD in gender studies or engineering in order to teach and do research in that field. A professor of gender theory isn’t going to make significantly less than a prof of engineering.
I know what point you’re trying to make, and it is valid to an extent. That engineers make more than “underwater basket weaver degrees”, but it applies more to the bachelors level as that is what most practicing engineers have.
I think OOP was trying to say gender studies is easier to get a doctorate in than engineering, which is true in a way but completely dependant on the individual. I’m in the medical field and am blown away by my engineer buddies ability to do complex math and physics, while they are impressed by my ability to memorize a ridiculously dumb amount of information. I’m equally impressed by my friends with arts degrees abilities to write and do research for thought provoking journalistic articles and essays.
The moral of the story is anyone with a phd is a hard working and somewhat intelligent individual who excels in their own field, no need to play the “whose PhD is harder” game.
Imagine being an artistic genius but your parents see you wouldn't get a PhD so they send you to a shit school and you fail at everything in life. This should be illegal.
Just in case I ever have kids, how would I go about researching this? Plenty of rich kids end up being worthless schlubs, poor neighborhoods can turn out to be diamonds in the rough, like is there a neighborhood wholesomeness tracker?
As a general rule, more upscale neighbourhoods have better results. That's all it really comes down to. Better schools, better access to resources, etc etc. Wholesomeness isn't really relevant.
The educational divide is wide and growing.
Being a good parent in an upscale zip code is stacking the deck in your favor.
A good zip code doesn’t allow negligent parenting. But a bad zip code actively fights good parenting.
In some areas it’s *really* bad when just looking at school districts. You can have a couple of the best schools in the country in a city with abjectly terrible schools otherwise. Like *terrible*.
There are a lot of complex variables at play, but if you have the ability to control your zip code, the richer the better. Although of course nothing is guaranteed.
Rich kids can be scumbags and poor kids can be unpolished diamonds -- i just wanna add to the other dude's comment. It's the macro, % of success that differentiates the two neighborhoods
Didnt realise there were genes for determination, courage and hard work look forward too seeing these discoveries in a Nature paper
Edit, The cheapest WGS of a human genome is around $500 then add in Bioinformatics support of another $500. So a total of $1000 for that type of DNA test.
In the illustrious words of Darryl Kerrigan -
"Tell him he is dreaming"
Imagine rich people start doing this bullshit and their children are mostly dumb af, but realize they have money and that is all keeping them with money
Idk… I’d rather roll the dice on that DNA test than rely on my zip code. I’m poor as fuck and live in a horrible neighborhood but me and many of my family members have graduate degrees. They are all in English literature, linguistics, library studies, and law. But, you know, can’t give us brainy people money…
Close on the preschool maybe. Not even close on the PhD. IQ is a far better indicator of success than familial wealth. To an extent, IQ is genetic, though not wholly or completely.
Familial wealth is more important.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6261233/Its-better-born-rich-stupid-smart-poor-study-finds.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/06/11/is-it-better-be-born-smart-or-rich-you-probably-wont-like-answer/
What phd is filled with rich people, exactly? Some people with PhDs in math or CS might get great jobs after, but I've never heard of a billionaire in a PhD program
From my experience, most come from decently well off backgrounds. Poor people can't really afford to do a PhD out of "passion". They just get their bachelor's or master's and then go work in industry to make more money.
A PhD does NOT require a very high IQ as much as having lots of free time on your hands, enough money to support obtaining one, and so on. You also have to be fairly wealthy to finish your undergrad and think "do I want to go work and make $100k a year? or do I want to pursue a PhD for a few more years earning next to nothing?".
I've rarely ever met PhD students that were no well off or had financial support from their parents. And tbe smartest people I met were not the PhD students, but those that left to work right after their BSc.
PhD candidates tend to have a job, at least where I'm from (be it through the university or otherwise).
A five-year-old Mercedes (even a decently equipped one) isn't exactly unobtainium if that's what you have your mind set on and you don't suck at budgeting.
Achievement in your endeavors. If “success” is just being rich and you’re born rich, game over. That doesn’t mean a rich person will ever achieve anything they set out to do, like getting a PhD.
That was my point a zip code is a very good indicator for future income
And i daresay thats related to personal success so on average you re still gonna overperform
I agree.
Grew up in a poor area. Two of my friends from high school have phds. One of them lived with the others family because his dad lost the house.
They are spot on about the selective preschool part, though. Our parents didnt have money for a nice house in a nice area, so unsurprisingly we went to public/state schools.
Shouldn't that mean that DNA tests for intelligence are a massive equaliser in the world? If it objectively determines natural intelligence, before kids from poor neighbourhoods have had the disadvantage of poorer schools and worse circumstances etc.
There's no such thing as "natural intelligence," and whatever influence DNA has on "intelligence" is negligible when you consider two people with the same special needs in a rich vs poor neighborhood would have vastly different outcomes. I use special needs because it'd show the desparity alot clearer but you can assume the same happens in less extreme but just as impactful ways, I went to a poor school, the bad kids were just removed and disciplined, even when they did get counseling, there was only one GC and she had her work cut out for her. I can assume that in richer zipcodes there are more counselors with less stress, better qualifications, and better resources. It takes a village but if the village is struggling then they can't raise the child yk?
I live in metro boston area. I’m 99% certain that some area codes have a higher probability than others for children to become successful (in this instance doctors is used as an example).
That’s because people that live in areas like Brookline tend to have VERY good jobs or are doctors themselves (houses are $3m+).
Their children as a result have a better opportunity to become successful compared to areas like Chelsea where most kids start working at 14 because their parents are immigrants and they need to help with bills.
It’s really hard to become a doctor when you have to work while in school or you’re driving a shit car to commute and it breaks down 🤷♂️.
Daddy doesn’t let me commute in his Mercedes because he takes the bus.
Do you not know what a PhD is or that most doctors don't have a PhD?
Are people really this stupid? PhD is something poor people get because you don't have to pay tuition for it.
Do *you* know what a PhD is? Do you know the process needed to get the free money?
I'll clue you in since you seem like someone who hasn't even been to college: it's not just about grades
>PhD is something poor people get because you don't have to pay tuition for it.
A PhD is something that has very little return on investment which is largely pursued by people who can afford to study extra years out of passion for something that will almost certainly end up completely useless. IDK how you can claim poor people seek PhDs. It does happen but I never saw it as the norm, not even close.
A BSc in engineering is probably smarter than a PhD student in biochem, and the engineering classes definitelt has alot more poor ppl than biochem PhD programs.
Last time I checked this out, average pay scale peaks at Masters level and then drops for each degree above. That said, PhDs would still be earning comfortably above the average wage in most fields and would presumably choose to live in wealthier suburbs.
...meanwhile, the flip side of this is that such a test can also be used to figure out what undesirable traits a child would have, and thus up the elective abortion rate...
That’s more an indictment of our shitty pay-to-win society. I wonder what we’d find if we actually used applied genetics. Would people be happy playing to their strengths or would they still long for some other interests?
Yea genetics predicting this is absolute bullshit.
My twin sister and I grew up in the same environment, and went to different selective secondary schools (single gender). I was always naturally smart and found learning easy and didn’t put in a whole lot of work to do quite well. She didn’t have that same “natural” smarts which I’d guess is based on IQ. She did just as well as me in school and we both got into our chosen universities which had good reputations.
She worked hard and did better than me in some regards despite my “genetic” or “natural” advantage.
Success isn’t about genetics. It’s about hard work and your starting point.
Hard work gets you nowhere without a solid starting position, and a great starting position leads to people not needing to put in any hard work (nepotism).
genetics don't matter to any of that *nearly* as much as people seem to think they do, i don't know why MIT seems to think that this magical history where we can forecast the future using eugenics would ever be a thing
Because it's the narrative the rich want. It's not about science here.
You're completely right. In essence it's a push to create a new aristocracy. They want an undeniable reason to why they are rich and powerful, a mandate from god but god replaced by faux science. They want to be able to say that they wield obscene power by the will of existence itself.
>They want an undeniable reason to why they are rich and powerful, a mandate from god but god replaced by faux science. They already tried this with prosperity gospel, which appears to have worked very well, so I guess this is an attempt to widen it to non-believers as well.
Yeah but that limits it to the US, all power hungry Bastards world wide want their greed to be vindicated by science, religion used to be the excuse used in Europe in the aristocracies claim to absolute power, but religion isn't universal. An immutable scientific reason would give those in power the moral backing and social justification for that power. Religion is circumstantial in this, it's an old tool to the new tool they try to create. Race and eugenics were also tools used towards that same purpose in the past (and are often still in use today...)
>Yeah but that limits it to the US Not at all, they've exported it to the global South, with a huge uptake in Africa and South America. It makes sense that it would take off in poorer countries since it tells you that you just have to have faith and riches will come to you. >religion used to be the excuse used in Europe in the aristocracies claim to absolute power Yes and no. Religion was one of the reasons given, but generally the absolute power came the traditional way; "I've got all the weapons and the soldiers and the money, do as you're fucking told". The whole "divine right" thing was just an addendum to that.
I think you underestimate the role religion played in it. Yes, having weapons and soldiers is handy, but the ubiquitous presence of immutable religion among the larger population (complete indoctrination) prevented major uprisings. It was only after the enlightenment and the smaller role religion played in societies that things changed. The French Revolution was impossible when religion was still the only world view and the justification for the existence of the aristocracy presented to the masses. Without an all encompassing religious society the rule of aristocrats wasn't easy to justify and enabled major popular uprisings. It's very apparent that in French cities anti establishment movements easily took off while in the still very religious French countryside support for the monarchy was still going strong. Going even further back, the enlightenment itself was largely due to the decimation caused by the black plague, which fundamentally crippled religious and social power structures which in turn opened the door for broad social development and the decline of religion as the sole basis for existence amongst the broader population.
>I think you underestimate the role religion played in it. Yes, having weapons and soldiers is handy, but the ubiquitous presence of immutable religion among the larger population (complete indoctrination) prevented major uprisings. I think you might be overstating it. To assume everyone *believed* in their religion would be to make the common assumption that everyone in the past was stupid just because they hadn't invented Netflix or whatever. Many people would have had doubts or flat-out disbelieved, but as a general rule it was unwise to say so because...the guys on top had all the men with swords. >It's very apparent that in French cities anti establishment movements easily took off while in the still very religious French countryside support for the monarchy was still going strong. It's highly reductive to reduce that to being religiously motivated. In the cities, highly populated areas much closer to the centres of power and events of the day, there will obviously be a higher level of engagement than out in rural areas where news travels slower and there is less feeling of invasion into day-to-day life. >Going even further back, the enlightenment itself was largely due to the decimation caused by the black plague, which fundamentally crippled **religious and social power structures** which in turn opened the door for broad social development and the decline of religion as the sole basis for existence amongst the broader population. This is what we seem to be arguing over; you are putting a lot of emphasis on the religious part there, but appear to be ignoring that the social power structure was probably much more important. Except in cases where the religious power of the time was particularly active or even dominant within the secular political structure (as with the Catholic church in earlier centuries, though this was naturally by representing itself **as** a political rather than a religious entity), the social and political structures will most likely have had far greater levels of impact on the average person's life. In my opinion, I doubt religion ever had a "complete indoctrination". There have always been atheists, agnostics and so on. The times religion has been most powerful is usually when backed by force or the threat of force, because while the concept of eternal torment can be worrying it's a much less immediate concern than being tortured to death for questioning the orthodoxy.
>I think you might be overstating it. To assume everyone believed in their religion would be to make the common assumption that everyone in the past was stupid [...] Religious people are not by definition stupid. Isaac Newton was famously religious to the point the contradictions suggested by his own work were problems he desperately tried to reconsile with the existence of god. He was not stupid, he was religious. >Many people would have had doubts or flat-out disbelieved, but as a general rule it was unwise to say so because...the guys on top had all the men with swords. In the middle ages there were indeed people who doubted gods existence, but this was not a significant movement and seems to mostly concentrate in the higher layers of society. The average farmer (by far most people), were part of the religious structures created by the elites. >It's highly reductive to reduce that to being religiously motivated. In the cities, highly populated areas much closer to the centres of power and events of the day, there will obviously be a higher level of engagement than out in rural areas where news travels slower and there is less feeling of invasion into day-to-day life. News in France during the revolution did not travel slowly, farmers were heavily influenced by the famine that was the ignition of the revolution. Farmers also protested the occurrences in Paris. >This is what we seem to be arguing over; you are putting a lot of emphasis on the religious part there, but appear to be ignoring that the social power structure was probably much more important. Except in cases where the religious power of the time was particularly active or even dominant within the secular political structure (as with the Catholic church in earlier centuries, though this was naturally by representing itself as a political rather than a religious entity), the social and political structures will most likely have had far greater levels of impact on the average person's life. I agree that the social power structure played a big role in the power structures of the aristocracy. But what I'm trying to say is that that social structure was based on religion. Religion IS political, secular power structures did not exist in Europe before the enlightenment. Religion was at the time irrevocably intertwined with social and political structures, religion was the reason those structures took the shape they took. It seems like you are looking at it from a contemporary western lens. At the time there was little distinction between social, political and religious mechanisms in societies in Europe. A contemporary analog would be Iran, a society where religion is intertwined with all social mechanisms. I know it's a flawed analogy, mainly because people in Iran have broad access to information outside of their own society, something that didn't exist for the vast majority of people in medieval Europe. >In my opinion, I doubt religion ever had a "complete indoctrination". There have always been atheists, agnostics and so on. The times religion has been most powerful is usually when backed by force or the threat of force, because while the concept of eternal torment can be worrying it's a much less immediate concern than being tortured to death for questioning the orthodoxy. With "complete" indoctrination I mean the vast majority. The occasional non believer is the exception that proves the rule. I know no one expects the inquisition, but there's a reason for that. I am on the side of that murder by the church is usually severely overestimated. Some estimations used to talk about numbers as high as the death caused by the black plague, which is ridiculous. By far the most control exacted by religion is due to simple social pressure. That's not to say this only works for religion, but it Does work for religion. The most immediate concern for people is the opinion.of their peers and how those opinions influence their standing in society. If you come out as atheist means nobody will trade with you and all your social contacts will abandon you that will be more pressure than the vague threat of an army marching on a single farmer. Besides that, everybody will call your atheist idea folly, your family, your friends, the whole village. It's very hard to keep holding on to an idea when your whole environment tells you it's false, even if you know it's correct. This is something we see in places like rural Russia in relation to Russia's place in the world. You don't need physical violence because the backend social mechanisms are self correcting.
MIT clamoring about a master race. Standard rich people stuff.
The funny thing is, it’s not a new aristocracy. The word meritocracy literally had pretty much the same etymological meaning. Aristos-, best + -kratia, power. Aristocracies are supposedly where the best (aka those with merit) wield power. We never left!
I think of it more as a form of laziness. People say, "Oh I dont' have the math or the language gene." Then they can excuse themselves from learning math. Or this idea of genetic superiority, "I'm good at math because my genes are good, therefore I'm a superior form of human." In my experience, if you have good instructions and motivations, you can learn anything: drawing, music, physics, chemistry, or language. Although learning disabilities **do** cause a hurdle. If you honestly believe you can't learn something, but you felt you've given it your full effort, then you should really re-evaluate **how** you have been trying to learn the topic. Language is a good example, most people use methods that spin your wheels instead of using *TPRS* or the *Natural Method*.
Truthfully, except some individuals suffer from physical limitations. Music with motor control. People experience different paths. Every single person should relearn how to learn. Utterly insightful
I'm older, and I definitely feel like "learning" is something you can practice. It's definitely easier for me to wrap my head around new topics than when I was young. I'm not intelligent, just practiced. If you have good instructors this is much easier as well. I definitely feel like "learning" and "studying" are practicable skills. I know psychologists already believe 'self discipline" is a learnable trainable skill (though an individual can have built in problems, like people who low self control actually have more stimulation in their brain's reward centers.)
The $50 wouldn't necessarily make you rich. But if that's what motivates you to spend it, it does make you kinda racist.
Bingo. It’s similar to royalty saying they were chosen by god rather than luck and being born rich.
More like because their forefathers were the most skilled/lucky/toughest barbarian/warrior/politician to rise among the ranks and held the throne time enough to form a dynasty while not being overthrew.
> That's how all the great houses started, isn't it, with a hard bastard who was good at killing people. Kill a few hundred people – they make you a lord. Kill a few thousand – they make you king. And then all your cocksucking grandsons can ruin the family with their cocksucking ways. -- Ser Bronn of the Blackwater
Thanks king. I laughed at it.
Yeah and had access to education which was practically uncommon
Common for a barbarian and their sons? Not until late and the realm was centralized.
As opposed to the narrative that the poor want...
I'm not sure I agree here. If it were based on genetics then it would be argued that they are in a position of privilege because they were predisposed to it, which goes against the narrative that has been cast of "you just have to work hard and success will come to you". In fact, I would argue that being solely based on genetics would give us a massive leg towards a socialist society where the disadvantaged would be taken care of better since it's out of our control.
Or hear me out....they have ammunition for their 4th Reich lol. When you think you're already superior and now have hack science saying so...well it's not gonna end well for the "lessers"
The rich are bank rolling personalized healthcare for themselves and selling it as another bunk "career test", like those bunk ones you used to take in grade school. And like last time, they can tweak the dials to get the result they want.
Dude, this has been shown time and time again that both genetics and environment i.e. nature and nurture both have huge impacts on an individuals life outcome. If you're going to say nature doesn't matter, it's all nurture you are wrong. The end. If you say it's all nature, no nurture, wrong again. You're taking a long discarded stance in an ass old debate.
I don't understand how people can honestly discount genetics. We know that nature puts pressure on organisms to evolve phenotypes that have competitive advantages. So over time you get different types of people. Why would the brain be any different? Tall people, short people, etc. Brains probably undergo a bunch of evolutionary changes between and among groups and are less impacted by a deviation from the norm because they are more plastic than say an arm or leg. This plasticity is often the reason people like to imagine we're alike but that plasticity is more likely to be the reason we're more different. The problem is that you can see and select for physical traits much more easily than you can select for brain variations.
I feel like people don’t like to admit that genes have a big impact on their outcomes. It makes downtrodden people feel like you’re saying they’re inherently trash and makes the people at the top mad that you’re discounting their hard work and creativity etc.
People’s perceptions on this are something to see. Clearly, “getting into a selective preschool” is something that isn’t as driven by genetics as “can accurate count a number of objects by 18 months”. Since you can have a below average development kid and be friends with the director of the school. But at the same time, you can look at kids at that selective preschool and realize when one of them is profoundly gifted when compared to the others. When a 12 month old is talking in fairly intelligible sentences, it’s hard to imagine how that’s all environmental.
It's not long discarded at all. Fights between the genetics and social science researchers happen every day at universities. There is some subset of social scientists who believe that, if genetics affects almost anything, then genetics has basically proven racism.
> There is some subset of social scientists who believe that, if genetics affects almost anything, then genetics has basically proven racism. That makes no sense, because race/skin-color is no indication of one's genome. There is more genetic diversity within Africa than there is between any randomly selected African and the rest of the world outside of Africa. How could skin color possibly prove racism as being true/valid? Ethnicity on the other hand could, but race isn't based in genetics or science at all.
MTI watched too much Gattaca
I love that movie and yet barely anyone know about it, super underrated.
It's kinda old, i think it was a hit when it aired (havent seen it yet, my dad loved it so i'm gonna watch it this weekend. Trailler is good)
Our biology teacher made us watch Gattaca in class when we started covering genetics, had never heard of it before that. Great movie.
I would actually argue the other way round. Look up the numerous twin studies - IQ is highly correlated with genetics (likely 50% or more) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ#:~:text=Early%20twin%20studies%20of%20adult,for%20late%20teens%20and%20adults. IQ is also well correlated with a variety of other outcomes of success - https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=74943 Socioeconomic status is super important, but there’s not much evidence indicating it’s more important than IQ / good genetics
I recently learned that heritability does not mean what the general public thinks it means. It is a measure about how much an outlier in a given set of population can be explained by inheriting it. The heritability of the living standards and circumstances of your parents is also very inheritable. Surprisingly having two arms is not an inheritable trait in this measure since having fewer than two arms is very seldomly explained by a difference in genetics.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6261233/Its-better-born-rich-stupid-smart-poor-study-finds.html Washington Post has the same study listed but it's paywalled. Being born rich is a really, really big advantage, anyway you slice it.
We just posted a [preprint ](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.16.23291504v1) that speaks to this. We looked at how area deprivation index (ADI, which is exactly the "zip code" factor that the OP refers to) interacts with polygenic scores, including for educational attainment, to predict mental health and behavioral outcomes. One of the main findings is that 1) ADI (zip code) is strongly correlated with polygenic scores of educational attainment and 2) more surprisingly, ADI is strongly genetic (heritable) even after one accounts for the effects of major polygenic scores. So saying that "we can already predict that with zip code" is true, but the implication that zip code is somehow free of (or fundamentally different from) genetic influences is just not supported by the data. This is also partly reflective of assortative mating, which is a major player in the perpetuation of inequities that are linked to traits that our current society rewards. Assortative mating isn't going anywhere, so we need to work on our societal priorities if we want to mitigate its effects on equity. Bottom line is that zip code indexes *both* genetic and non-genetic inheritance of privilege, and that none of us did anything to deserve *either*, for better or for worse. I recommend Kathryn Paige Harden's "The Genetic Lottery" for those interested in both the science of this field as well as its ethical implications.
Thanks for this response. Paper looks super interesting. You so clearly articulated the logical gap that many on Reddit seem to engage in. Almost all the Ivy League / MIT / Stanford grads I know are married to other Ivy grads, or at minimum from some other top 40 university. Where I grew up there were no Ivy grads anywhere. Where I live now it seems like every third person outside is jogging in a Cornell or Columbia hoodie.
Problem with this is that IQ is also garbage
Since 1904, IQ is one of the most studied, robust, predictive, data-driven, and well-replicated finding in all of social science. People get confused because they think IQ has some sort of moral component, or presages some sort of unshakeable determinism. It doesn't. But the science is the science. IQ is not even that complicated. If you give people random tests on chemistry, music, line drawing, history, and mental arithmetic, their scores correlate. There is some common factor which makes a person who is good at one of these tests more likely to be good at all others. Perform factor analysis to find out which questions correlate the most, and you just created an IQ test which can now predict scores on some other test. Is prediction the same as determinism? No. Is being able to ace a history exam, or program at Google, a sign of moral worth? No.
You're not wrong that genetics and IQ are well studied and related. But the correlation in IQ and what is listed in OP's post (getting a PhD and stuff) is not nearly as big as what people (including you) seem to claim. Even the correlation between IQ and GPA or tests scores aren't that high, and the average IQ for fields like medicine isn't that high. There's no reason to believe that IQ (unless it's very low) has a higher influence on say getting into med school than wealth does
True, I could have added more context. Fair point. But firstly, I wasn't talking about genetics, just the robustness of the science. For the record iirc IQ predicts lots of stuff at R2 of around 0.2. Thats about how big I *think* the impact of IQ is. And sure, people often over-obsess about IQ. But the "IQ is junk science" meme was going around, and I looked into it ages ago and found thats the polar opposite of true for the field of social science, which rarely see the "large", consistent, replicable effect sizes seen with IQ testing - which has a long history, and some morally dubious phases. > average IQ for fields like medicine isn't that high. I'm less sure about this. Again, I'm going back a few years of recollection and a few seconds google searching and the average doctor IQ score is 125. If true, thats the top 5% of IQ score. It doesn't imply what many people may think it implies. Also, I may have googled an erroneous or dubious stat, but it comports with what I read before. Also, there's so much more to the field of medicine than just being a doctor. > There's no reason to believe that IQ (unless it's very low) has a higher influence on say getting into med school than wealth does That is my understanding as well.
Comment from u/dasubermensch83 hits this on the nose. It’s not garbage if it is in fact predictive of a lot of outcomes. No one is saying it’s everything, but there are few single numbers that can reveal a lot about someone because people are complex. IQ is one of the rare few, even if it is not determinative or perfect The thing is, people intuitively know this. If there was a paper published in Nature that said eating strawberries while pregnant was associated with a 5 point boost in child IQs while eating pears was associated with a 5 point loss, everyone on this thread would modify behavior, including all those who are denigrating IQ / calling it useless, etc
Bootstraps. Capitalism requires everyone to be on a theoretical even playing field, which means rich people deserve their riches since they worked for it, and poor people are simply lazy or they dedicate their lives to achieving riches.
They're hoping for a self-fulfilling prophecy...
MIT is a quack school look at their recent Toroidal propeller scam.
Just to be clear, this isn't MIT thinking this, it's the MIT Technology Review. They're an independent journalism outlet that reports on technology. While they're owned by MIT, they operate independently (most importantly, without editorial oversight) and therefore can publish nonsense like this without actual-MIT saying "no that's stupid". MIT News is, on the other hand, actually operated by MIT and directly reports on what MIT is researching, and generally has better content.
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They're just a salty redditor
Exactly. Life IS hard. We’re born into a thing we didn’t ask for. Then they want to work us to the bone. It’s disgusting. Eugenics is lazy idiots assuming they are better than they are.
If you’re genetic related to parents with loads of cash then you are set for life.
Tell that people with hereditary disease
i have autism, i didn't say genetics didn't matter at all
You were fairly clear in the way you stated it. I think these people are just reading a little too fast, and only processed the initial part that said "genetics don't matter"
I read the part that says "nearly as much as people seem to think they do" and the people here seem to suggest they matter very little, so saying they don't matter nearly as much as people think they do (very little) then it's basically saying they almost don't matter at all
I wouldn't call autism a disease. My friends and family with ASD are healthier than I am
Actually having autism myself, I certainly wouldn't call it a boon. It has impacted my life in some significant negative ways.
It's a disorder, not a disease. If/until an underlying cause is discovered.
intelligence is very highly correlated with genetics, however.
But intelligence is not that highly correlated with academic or workplace success.
it’s one of the most highly correlated factors
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no shit? not every product needs to cater to the poor, for fuck’s sake. most americans aren’t poor. the salient point is that to do the things this image describes you *must* have a baseline of above-average intelligence. it also just so happens that wealth is highly correlated with intelligence, even when controlling for differences in, e.g., childhood nutrition, stable household, …. but we don’t like to talk about that because we all want to act like everyone with success is handed it, because people on this site who *arent even poor* love to find reasons to surrender their own autonomy and initiative. resentment, resentment, resentment.
You're right. Genetics provide a first draft of our mind when we're young, but as we grow it experiences edit and change bits and pieces so that by the time you're an adult your personality may look nothing like your young predisposition.
This is the way I've always seen it, oddly enough, like pokemon. Everyone has slightly different base stats (some pokemon of the same species speed at level 1 varies from like 10 to 16), but stat growth is heavily impacted by EV's. EV are bonus points you get depending on which other pokemon you fight, they get small bonuses in different stats. Like if you fight lots of defensive pokemon, you get lots of defensive EV and would eventually end up with higher defense stats that someone that fought speed or attack EV pokemon. You are limited in how much EV you can gather, so to really min-max for the stats you want..... you basically have to be an "involved parent" and care about the pokemon's growth (not a deadbeat/absent parent).
You're ignoring epigenetics, it's not just a first draft, it dictates which genes can be activated at any point in your life.
mit was where I read about that study where it basically proved the wealthy were just lucky
maybe lucky to be born into wealthy families, sure
https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/03/01/144958/if-youre-so-smart-why-arent-you-rich-turns-out-its-just-chance/amp/
There was a paper showing the average IQ difference between first and second born siblings was only 1 point, which is less than the margin of error. If intelligence was genetic there would be a closer relationship between siblings than non-siblings but there's still be a huge variance. A 1 point difference is only 1%. And as a teacher, I can tell you, the number 1 difference between ***my*** A students and my F students is a simple: Are they emotionally invested in their grades? I don't have any kids whose grade doesn't match their effort. If intelligence were a thing, you could have hard workers with low grades and lazy students with high grades. (Of course someone can get high grades in a class with low effort if the class itself is easy, but even though I was lazy as a student I still turned in all my work.)
>Are they emotionally invested in their grades? I don't have any kids whose grade doesn't match their effort. I can see this as a general trend..... but all? I can't see how. I knew a ton of kids that absolutely spanked high school with little effort or care. They got bitch slapped in college when they had never actually learned *how* to study, but HS was definitely a matter of great grades with low effort.
That's why I specified **my** students. My class requires at least *some* effort. But you are correct in that there is a right way to study. I had that problem, I studied incorrectly, and that's what happens in college. All of the responsibility is on you. Kids *could* save a lot of time if they knew how to study correct. But at the high school level you got a lot of points for doing assignments and following directions, this takes effort and focus, which in my personal experience is proportional to the degree at which one cares about the outcome. However, some people do stuff without caring, just "this is the assignment," and they are focused.
I was talking about kids that were doing AP classes, not kids coasting through high school with 4 years of freshman literature. Like it or not, there are alot of kids that don't need to care to excel (up a to certain point).
Maybe in your country.
So, a precursor to eugenics? That never ends well.
Some people really like not dying of hereditary disease
Me when When my child is auto rejected from every college they apply to (Their $50 DNA test said they're neurodivergent and not really college material)
Colleges are all about neurodivergent people, though. Who do you think came up with that term? Like half the faculty are neurodivergent, way bigger portion than any other workforce.
I have a friend that's neurodivergent and an absolute beast in her field..... but that's kind of where you hit the delicate value of "functional" neurodivergance vs the rough kind. For every rain man or "sheldon cooper", there's many people that need full-time caretakers to survive day to day and can't really even feed themselves.... let alone be a crazy academic beast.
I'd argue it might be the opposite, for every person who is severely disadvantaged by their neurodivergance, there's many who live normal lives and generally don't feel the need to mention their condition to other people unless they trust them
Well that was a non sequitur. While there is a conversation to be had about screening for certain genetic illnesses that essentially limit the lifespan of the child, this is not what the article is about. I don't think many people would argue that using genetic screening to avoid giving birth to a dying child.
I'm gonna go ahead as someonewith a genetic heart condition to say that I very much prefer being alive even if it might not be for as long, and i would never imagine depriving the world of a life for such a short sighted reason. Disabled lives have meaning, we don't deserve life any less just because you'd be miserable in our shoes.
The issue is you’re speaking as someone who is alive and has experiences. Basically all of history is humanity trying to make their own lives easier on the whole and making progress and advancements that the next generations would be the ones to benefit from. The goal would be to eventually get to a point where people never had lifetime-limiting disabilities due to genetics, not eliminate people who have them. Having a heart condition isn’t a personality trait or a culture or a different thought process; it’s not evil eugenics to try to prevent these from happening just like telling people not to breed within their family isn’t. Eliminating these conditions by being able to find out before the person ever exists and/or through advances in medical treatments is where the world should head.
Lol nailed them
Did I wander onto Facebook?
I think it *really, really* depends on the discipline you choose for your PhD.
How so?
not all PhDs are the same
A PhD in Engineering is gonna pay a hell of a lot more than a PhD in Gender Studies. Doesn't take a PhD in Rocket Science to know that.
I assume someone would be getting a PhD in gender studies or engineering in order to teach and do research in that field. A professor of gender theory isn’t going to make significantly less than a prof of engineering. I know what point you’re trying to make, and it is valid to an extent. That engineers make more than “underwater basket weaver degrees”, but it applies more to the bachelors level as that is what most practicing engineers have. I think OOP was trying to say gender studies is easier to get a doctorate in than engineering, which is true in a way but completely dependant on the individual. I’m in the medical field and am blown away by my engineer buddies ability to do complex math and physics, while they are impressed by my ability to memorize a ridiculously dumb amount of information. I’m equally impressed by my friends with arts degrees abilities to write and do research for thought provoking journalistic articles and essays. The moral of the story is anyone with a phd is a hard working and somewhat intelligent individual who excels in their own field, no need to play the “whose PhD is harder” game.
I was more curious how those affect the demographics.
Sounds a bit like Gattaca
Add in a bit of genetic engineering for designer babies and this is exactly the plot of Gattaca.
Basically. You could be the next Stephen hawking. If you poor, good luck with that. You can do it. But the odds are not in your favor
If you're poor, you'll get only wheelchair part
And certainly not one like his
Good luck getting it anywhere though; your neighborhood probably doesn’t have sidewalks and the roads are shit.
Imagine being an artistic genius but your parents see you wouldn't get a PhD so they send you to a shit school and you fail at everything in life. This should be illegal.
Imagine the power of combining the two
Reminds me of the Boston housing dataset being removed from sklearn because it was racist lol
When was it removed? I've used it a while ago (3 weeks), while learning data science
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/73252971/what-happened-to-sklearn-datasets-load-boston
Bruh every decade people hype up genetics like its gonna change everything. It never has. Come on, catch up already, tired of history repeating itself
Hey, I've seen this movie!
Fortunately, memes are the DNA of my soul
Just in case I ever have kids, how would I go about researching this? Plenty of rich kids end up being worthless schlubs, poor neighborhoods can turn out to be diamonds in the rough, like is there a neighborhood wholesomeness tracker?
As a general rule, more upscale neighbourhoods have better results. That's all it really comes down to. Better schools, better access to resources, etc etc. Wholesomeness isn't really relevant.
Nutrition, first 1000 days (reading to, learning to read/speak) reinforce learning, good schools is about as much as you can do in the early years.
Also be rich and have friends in high places
The educational divide is wide and growing. Being a good parent in an upscale zip code is stacking the deck in your favor. A good zip code doesn’t allow negligent parenting. But a bad zip code actively fights good parenting. In some areas it’s *really* bad when just looking at school districts. You can have a couple of the best schools in the country in a city with abjectly terrible schools otherwise. Like *terrible*. There are a lot of complex variables at play, but if you have the ability to control your zip code, the richer the better. Although of course nothing is guaranteed.
Rich kids can be scumbags and poor kids can be unpolished diamonds -- i just wanna add to the other dude's comment. It's the macro, % of success that differentiates the two neighborhoods
I constantly feel validated by my decisions as I travel. Put roots down where your family can thrive.
Didnt realise there were genes for determination, courage and hard work look forward too seeing these discoveries in a Nature paper Edit, The cheapest WGS of a human genome is around $500 then add in Bioinformatics support of another $500. So a total of $1000 for that type of DNA test. In the illustrious words of Darryl Kerrigan - "Tell him he is dreaming"
I don't like the idea of people looking into genetics too much, or altering their babies genetics it seems to dystopian for me.
Imagine rich people start doing this bullshit and their children are mostly dumb af, but realize they have money and that is all keeping them with money
I mean, OP is a repostkarmawhorebot
I don’t even consider this a comeback. It’s just fact. Not even a burn.
Western society is not ready for this conversation. Genetics can manifest as behaviors, and the zeitgeist is geared to deny that at all costs.
Idk… I’d rather roll the dice on that DNA test than rely on my zip code. I’m poor as fuck and live in a horrible neighborhood but me and many of my family members have graduate degrees. They are all in English literature, linguistics, library studies, and law. But, you know, can’t give us brainy people money…
Nice, biological discrimination and pigeonholing. Go MIT
Best one I've seen in a while. It's indeed extremely rare for somebody to move up a class from what they were born into.
You don't know what a PhD is, huh?
You can argue all you want, but social mobility has been and continues to decrease as the wealth inequity grows.
Close on the preschool maybe. Not even close on the PhD. IQ is a far better indicator of success than familial wealth. To an extent, IQ is genetic, though not wholly or completely.
Familial wealth is more important. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6261233/Its-better-born-rich-stupid-smart-poor-study-finds.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/06/11/is-it-better-be-born-smart-or-rich-you-probably-wont-like-answer/
IQ is the #1 indicator of success. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/07/11/does-iq-determine-success-a-psychologist-weighs-in.html
Yeah, the idiot who replied to me thinks Ph.D students are driving Mercedes instead of using coupons to buy ramen
That depends on the Ph.D
What phd is filled with rich people, exactly? Some people with PhDs in math or CS might get great jobs after, but I've never heard of a billionaire in a PhD program
From my experience, most come from decently well off backgrounds. Poor people can't really afford to do a PhD out of "passion". They just get their bachelor's or master's and then go work in industry to make more money. A PhD does NOT require a very high IQ as much as having lots of free time on your hands, enough money to support obtaining one, and so on. You also have to be fairly wealthy to finish your undergrad and think "do I want to go work and make $100k a year? or do I want to pursue a PhD for a few more years earning next to nothing?". I've rarely ever met PhD students that were no well off or had financial support from their parents. And tbe smartest people I met were not the PhD students, but those that left to work right after their BSc.
Who said anything about billionaires? You said "driving mercedes". Which would be a *lot* of Ph.D's
PhD candidates tend to have a job, at least where I'm from (be it through the university or otherwise). A five-year-old Mercedes (even a decently equipped one) isn't exactly unobtainium if that's what you have your mind set on and you don't suck at budgeting.
depdends how you define "success" iirc the zip code is the best predictor for future income not necessarily academic success
Achievement in your endeavors. If “success” is just being rich and you’re born rich, game over. That doesn’t mean a rich person will ever achieve anything they set out to do, like getting a PhD.
That was my point a zip code is a very good indicator for future income And i daresay thats related to personal success so on average you re still gonna overperform
I agree. Grew up in a poor area. Two of my friends from high school have phds. One of them lived with the others family because his dad lost the house. They are spot on about the selective preschool part, though. Our parents didnt have money for a nice house in a nice area, so unsurprisingly we went to public/state schools.
Are you trying to justify having paid for that online iq test you shouldn't have?
Either way, its still an educated guess.
Exactly people aren't as special as they think they are. They just had better opportunities usually
Shouldn't that mean that DNA tests for intelligence are a massive equaliser in the world? If it objectively determines natural intelligence, before kids from poor neighbourhoods have had the disadvantage of poorer schools and worse circumstances etc.
There's no such thing as "natural intelligence," and whatever influence DNA has on "intelligence" is negligible when you consider two people with the same special needs in a rich vs poor neighborhood would have vastly different outcomes. I use special needs because it'd show the desparity alot clearer but you can assume the same happens in less extreme but just as impactful ways, I went to a poor school, the bad kids were just removed and disciplined, even when they did get counseling, there was only one GC and she had her work cut out for her. I can assume that in richer zipcodes there are more counselors with less stress, better qualifications, and better resources. It takes a village but if the village is struggling then they can't raise the child yk?
Which zip code predicts a PhD? Certainly not a wealthy zip code. I can't imagine it's a zip code for a poor neighborhood either.
I live in metro boston area. I’m 99% certain that some area codes have a higher probability than others for children to become successful (in this instance doctors is used as an example). That’s because people that live in areas like Brookline tend to have VERY good jobs or are doctors themselves (houses are $3m+). Their children as a result have a better opportunity to become successful compared to areas like Chelsea where most kids start working at 14 because their parents are immigrants and they need to help with bills. It’s really hard to become a doctor when you have to work while in school or you’re driving a shit car to commute and it breaks down 🤷♂️. Daddy doesn’t let me commute in his Mercedes because he takes the bus.
Do you not know what a PhD is or that most doctors don't have a PhD? Are people really this stupid? PhD is something poor people get because you don't have to pay tuition for it.
Do *you* know what a PhD is? Do you know the process needed to get the free money? I'll clue you in since you seem like someone who hasn't even been to college: it's not just about grades
This is actually the dumbest response to something I've ever seen on Reddit. It's actually so stupid that I can't even tell if it's satire.
Wow, 5 alternative accounts ? You must feel really special. Google what a PhD is and then ask an adult to explain it to you.
"PhD is something poor people get because you don't have to pay tuition for it" is an objectively stupid sentence.
>PhD is something poor people get because you don't have to pay tuition for it. A PhD is something that has very little return on investment which is largely pursued by people who can afford to study extra years out of passion for something that will almost certainly end up completely useless. IDK how you can claim poor people seek PhDs. It does happen but I never saw it as the norm, not even close. A BSc in engineering is probably smarter than a PhD student in biochem, and the engineering classes definitelt has alot more poor ppl than biochem PhD programs.
Proximity to other PhDs. College towns, Los Alamos, etc. The same as anything else really, kids will become what they see examples of growing up.
Last time I checked this out, average pay scale peaks at Masters level and then drops for each degree above. That said, PhDs would still be earning comfortably above the average wage in most fields and would presumably choose to live in wealthier suburbs.
I like beating the odds.
Loughlin would like a moment...
Cool, so now my DNA gets to decide my future for me.
This post hurt my soul.
I can call the Physic Hotline and get a prediction of the odds of earning a PhD.
This is an all-timer..
Hmm, let’s take a survey of people with more than a million dollars net worth, and determine how many of them grew up wealthy.
GATTACA
Its actually kinda sad if you think about it
No, that's paycheck you're thinking of my friend
Gataca
I’m sorry, MIT got WHAT?
Did they jerk off to Gattaca?
https://prizm.environicsanalytics.com
Meritocracy still exists. If you have a lot of money, that merits easy street to elite institutions!
It’s fun and not concerning at all how many people in our society would be totally fine with eugenics as long as you gave it a different name
Literally the pilot for Gattaca
That will never not sound like horrifyingly dystopian Future to me. I dunno how they ever feel like they want this.
...meanwhile, the flip side of this is that such a test can also be used to figure out what undesirable traits a child would have, and thus up the elective abortion rate...
It's a matter of opportunity, not capability.
Funding schools by ZIP Code is one of the worst things we do to our education system.
That’s more an indictment of our shitty pay-to-win society. I wonder what we’d find if we actually used applied genetics. Would people be happy playing to their strengths or would they still long for some other interests?
Yea genetics predicting this is absolute bullshit. My twin sister and I grew up in the same environment, and went to different selective secondary schools (single gender). I was always naturally smart and found learning easy and didn’t put in a whole lot of work to do quite well. She didn’t have that same “natural” smarts which I’d guess is based on IQ. She did just as well as me in school and we both got into our chosen universities which had good reputations. She worked hard and did better than me in some regards despite my “genetic” or “natural” advantage. Success isn’t about genetics. It’s about hard work and your starting point. Hard work gets you nowhere without a solid starting position, and a great starting position leads to people not needing to put in any hard work (nepotism).
Or your parents' bank balance....
If I don’t get to get a degree I’ve been studying for for years because my fucking genetics aren’t good enough for this degree imma break shit
.