One of the more entertaining aspects of the genetic age is going to be how the Left reconciles their claim to love of science with the fact that science contradicts most of what they believe. Even funnier is how the soft sciences are finding their authority laughed out of the room by genetics. Here’s a good example.
Genes which make people intelligent have been discovered and scientists believe they could be manipulated to boost brain power.
Researchers have believed for some time that intellect is inherited with studies suggesting that up to 75 per cent of IQ is genetic, and the rest down to environmental factors such as schooling and friendship groups.
But until now, nobody has been able to pin-point exactly which genes are responsible for better memory, attention, processing speed or reasoning skills.
Now Imperial College London has found that two networks of genes determine whether people are intelligent or not-so-bright.
They liken the gene network to a football team. When all the players are in the right positions, the brain appears to function optimally, leading to clarity of thought and what we think of as quickness or cleverness.
However when the genes are mutated or in the wrong order, it can lead to dullness of thinking, or even serious cognitive impairments.
Scientists believe that there must be a ‘master switch’ regulating the networks and if they could find it, they could ‘switch on’ intelligence for everyone.
I doubt you can find anyone in science claiming that only 75% of intelligence is inherited. The general consensus is 90% and there are many who argue it is closer to 98%. But, you have to leave room for the one true faith so we’ll pretend education and parenting have some significant role.
Of course, even if we accept the lower number it means that 90% of education theory is just nonsense. If little Johnny has a native IQ of 85, he’s never going to be college material. The configuration of the school and the efforts of the teacher will not change that enough to make the effort worthwhile.
It also means that all sorts of other cognitive traits are heritable, which is considered heresy by the Cult. Then we have the R word and , well, only Hitler talks about that so science better be careful about how they handle that one. You don’t want to be branded a scientific racist, do you?
All joking aside, much of what we are forced to believe about humanity is under assault by genetics. On the other hand, much of what we used to know is being proved by genetics. People are not blank slates. They are the product of many generations. At some point, it is going to be impossible to be both a Progressive and a scientist.
Even more amusing is that at some point, Progressives will be forced to oppose abortion. After all, if IQ is genetic, so is sex and color and sexual preference. Once parents can test for homosexuality and abort the gay fetus, how long before the Cult moves to stop it? Maybe we will live to see Progressive hipsters picketing Planned Unparenthood.
1. The brain is malleable, experience of a loving family and decent childhood (doesnt have to be perfect, actually better if not perfect) will provide for the best conditions to use IQ base conditions. The most successful is not necessarily the smartest in terms of IQ but a base level of IQ is a critical ingredient to success. Let us start valuing emotion health because we are not logical beings we are emotional beings who rationalise our behaviours after the fact. And our collective emotional health is catastrophic.
2. Men and women make families that create conditions for a strong mental world of themselves and their children – together men and women are a powerful force. However, women’s role and value to a society was for too long dismissed by men as minor or insignificant. And women believed men, so doing what men do would not only increase their status but they also believed it is actually more valuable contribution to society (improving their self image). The consequences have been drastic although the destruction of motherhood is difficult because it is a biological drive. And actually men and women are able to cross task for general non specific activities making a lie of the women can’t do … Fill in the blank.
3. Men and women are not the same they are complements. They moderate each other’s excesses and are essential to each other. Feminists credo is thus, if all women become like men and men become like women, then we will all be equal because there will only be one gender (feminists actually dislike women as they are). Lets end the war between the sexes.
4. Don’t put women on a pedastool, just value what they bring to the equation as a perfect complement but just as flawed, just as serious and capable of potential greatness.
See: Psychology’s “invention” of the terms “spectrum”, and “borderline”.
ALSO SEE: Psychology’s invention of itself, for those under the borderline, in the spectrum, of folks able to invent psychiatry as a venue for rent-seeking, for political “science” wanna-bes and also-rans.
ALSO SEE: As seen on Tee Vee.
The idea that the non-inheritable fraction is due to environment is not entirely correct. It also includes the experimental error, and this may be very much larger than the supposed environmental effect.
My sense is the bitter clingers of the next generation will be those insisting that environment plays a determinate role in human development.
There is an undisbutable Lamarckian component to heredity. Cf. the increase over time in height as the industrial revolution improves agricultural yields and storage technology. For a very visual demonstration, just hang out in a crowded public space in an Asian country and contrast the old folks and youngsters.
Another good example would be the IQ tests administered to Eastern and Southern European immigrant conscripts by the army during WW1 (which provided the scientific basis for ending mass immigration in 1924). Even Ashkenazi peasants scored in the 70’s, on average, IIRC.
The problem with Lamarckian inheritance is that after a few years of bad harvests, it’s back to square one.
Forastero- you rat! I was composing the very same post! Not as sophisticated, of course. One thing that interests me about modern education (and I have some knowledge of this, having been a HS teacher for 30 years) is that “blank-slate-ism reigns supreme at the administrative level, but no working teacher really believes it, even the ones that say they do. The phrase I hate the most is “We need to teach kids to think”. My response is “about what?”.
Maybe we will live to see Progressive hipsters picketing Planned Unparenthood.
This is why I’ve always said that today’s blue-haired bicurious vegan slam poet is tomorrow’s obergruppenfuhrer. “Progressives” have nothing going in their lives but their identities as “Progressives.” So they always have to be the most “radical” guys in the room, no matter what the definition of “radical.” With advances in genetics, economic collapse, and the ongoing peaceful antics of the Religion of Peace, the zeitgeist is about to shift bigtime… and when that happens, “Progressives” will have to be more-radical-than-thou about it.
I’ve seen it happen in my lifetime. For un-germane reasons I spent a lot of time around some radical gay activists back in the early 90s. Their position on monogamous, legally-sanctioned gay relationships — “marriage,” if you will — was clear: this is a horrible very bad no good imposition of the hated “breeders;” anyone who suggests anything but all the anonymous unprotected sex one can physically have is a traitor to the movement. Fast forward 15 years, and those exact same people are out there screaming about how gay marriage is a sacred Constitutional right, and all gays everywhere just want to settle down in the suburbs and raise shih tzus together.
The technology didn’t allow for it back then, but pretty soon I imagine we’ll have a fun new party game — capturing on cell phone cameras that ephemeral instant between when the “Coexist” bumper sticker comes off the Prius and the Confederate flag one goes on.
Heh… I just had a great idea. A progressive troll car. Buy a used Prius or Subaru… put a Dixie sticker here… a Gasden flag over here… a NRA sticker… a Molon Labe… heh heh… The go parking at Whole Foods or any University . Heh
You won’t have to. Pretty soon, those stickers will be as mandatory on college campuses as “Coexist” and indie record label ones are now. University types were among the earliest and hardest converts to Hitlerism (and if you really want to hack off a professor, ask them about Heidegger and especially Paul de Man. They were Nazis, sure, but not, you know, Nazi Nazis).
That’s what makes these people so dangerous — they are 100% fanatically committed to whatever position they hold right at this minute, and no amount of indisputable video evidence that they held the exact opposite position yesterday will ever faze them (though it will probably put you at the top of their personal “express delivery to the gulag” list).
And hey, credit where credit’s due — Lenin knew this aspect of his “allies” very, very well. “Shoot all the intellectuals” wasn’t at the top of his priority list for nothing.
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Ignorance can be remedied; stupidity cannot be. No amount of “education”, no matter for how long it is extended, can provide greater intellectual capacity than that which is innate. Intelligence as perceived in the West depends upon two principle factors: memorization capacity (let’s call it ROM) and abstract associative capacity (RAM). The latter trait can be reinforced and strengthened to a degree through copious reading and the increased attention span along with the speedier neural “switching” it provides, but for all practical purposes, the old saw holds true: “If you’re smart, you’re smart, and if you’re not, you’re not”.
The simple truth is that elementary and secondary schools should provide solid basic instruction rather than social-engineering indoctrination, taking as a given that no more than a maximum of 20% or so of students are truly intellectually equipped to benefit themselves and their societies with further education.
Saying that intelligence is something like 75 per cent genetic allows for a lot of wiggle room, and scientists like wiggle room (as opposed to scientists! who are 100 per cent correct and cannot be doubted.)
There may be no sanity clause but it is wise to build in a get out clause.
Also the people saying this may one day stop researching and move into edukashun so they need to say they can “make a difference” (registered TM). In my view, people are always looking for a way out in case things go pear shaped.
The people who value high IQ above all else are the same people who say it does not matter or does not exist. Being a prog requires so much effort to hold metastasizing contradictory opinions together that there is little time or room for much else. Introspection, modesty, regret, and shame are not part the progressive experience.
Didn’t someone at Harvard have to resign for pointing out than on average women will be less likely to excel in mathematics and that this is due to their brain structure? It’s hardly debatable.
Your optimism may be unfounded. Let’s face it, policies aren’t decided by common sense but by political correctness.
Yes. And not just any someone. The most notable Cult Brown-shirting to date.
Zman can retitle this piece: “Larry Summers’ Revenge”.
But new evidence changes nothing. He had all the evidence he needed at the time. No one could dispute what he’d said. He was fired anyway. Evidence doesn’t matter to the politically correct.