I feel like a genetic robot after listening to this lecture. It made me feel like there is no room for improvement by my own will. How motivated I am and what I believe is apparently a function of my biology. Worth listening to, but I feel depressed now hahaha.
I don't think that makes any sense. It was always going to be some combination of biological factors outside your control and environmental factors outside of your control. There was never going to be a black box wherein the human soul could have been said to reside pure and uncaused.
statistics describes populations, not individuals. Variance in statistics leaves room for individuals. In the nordic countries, the variance is low, but in the US the variance is high, like 30%.
No what he says is that parenting has very little affect on long-term life outcomes. He understands that non-shared environment may exert effects on life outcomes, but that's not relevant to the thesis of his book. Caplan is not making a sweeping statement about the effects of environment, he's focusing only on the effects of parenting.
Could you provide a specific reference where Cathy Price has debunked the idea that parenting doesn't have lasting effects on intelligence? I've only been able to find articles on how IQ can vary throughout adolescence, which isn't inconsistent with what Caplan is saying. And Caplan has never presented himself as a scientist. He's giving an overview of the findings of behavioural geneticists, he's not conducting his own experiments
Firstly, you are aware the estimated heritability of IQ according to the American Psychological Association is 0.85 for adults? I'm not sure how you can argue that environmental variation has such an enormous effect on life outcomes. Secondly, you haven't understood what Caplan said. Saying "family resemblance is driven entirely by genetics" is not the same thing as saying "life outcomes are driven entirely by genetics." These are two very different things.
Well only if they mate together. A libertarian would only care about the individuals right? So if individuals can choose who they partner up with what does the average IQ matter?
Caplan's claims are highly implausible if you read the labor economics or psychology literature yourself. Identical twins raised apart are typically raised by *similar* families--upper middle class, well educated. The adoption system screens parents for these qualifications. So people who are both genetically similar and raised by similar parents turn out to be similar, but a lot of the work is done by environment. There's a huge amount of experimental evidence about the benefits of smaller class sizes, early childhood education, child nutrition, more resource intensive higher education, etc. All of these things cost money in the United States and are not primarily funded by taxes (unlike in Europe where a lot of support for families is publicly provided). In the US, with smaller family size, you have more resources per kid. Those early jobs and early incomes matter. The interesting question is not whether genes or environment matter more. The only thing you can change is environment. And environment matters a lot. There's a reason Cato is funding this book. Cato exists to shrink government and lower rich people's taxes. If it were true that parental resources and education made no difference, it would seem fairer to spend less on programs for middle class and lower class kids and to have lower taxes for rich people. "Let those 'dumb' millionaires and billionaires waste their money on their progeny while the smart lower middle class people invest nothing and rely on the genetic lottery so that one of their many kids might turn out okay." If you drive up the population, you also reduce wages and increase the returns on capital--good for very rich people again. The book is a great investment in propaganda to help the billionaires who fund George Mason and Cato. But it's a selective summary of the research, and fundamentally wrong about what the research shows where it counts.
MZ twin studies is one of four convergent lines of evidence for a .8-ish heritability of adult IQ. There are theoretical objections to the other three lines as well, but they're all unrelated, and it would be a fantastic coincidence if all four pedigree methods for inferring heritability were all equally confounded for completely unrelated reasons. @Jake White is right about the environmental effects. Childhood IQ is less heritable and more malleable, but effects fade out pretty quickly. College raises IQ, but effects fade out over time. As well, all environmental gains including the Flynn Effect are largely hollow for the general intelligence factor g, which means that they're made of different stuff than the extant within- and between-group hereditary differences. To respond to your ad hominem and well-poisoning, I don't believe that the _tabula rasa_ theorists have the moral high ground at all. If the difference between a dropout drug addict and a physics professor is all shared environment, then society is stupid and evil for not spending an extra $10'000 per capita to increase everyone's net lifetime productivity by a million dollars. Moreover, the high economic and social status of high-functioning groups becomes an unearned luxury enjoyed at the expense of the unfortunate - as indeed you seem to believe. When that accusation is levelled falsely, it is anything but benign. It generates massive waste at every level, and dysgenic effects which a well-informed polit could have forestalled in non-coercive ways, sometimes just by making more informed decisions in their own lives. Worse, it is an eternal _casus bellum_, putting neighbours at eachothers' throats and forestalling any hope of peaceful coexistence. There's nothing about believing some people are smarter or more industrious than others that causes you to hate other people, but revanchism is a bottomless well of hatred and animosity. If you're going to level those sorts of accusations, then you'd damned well better have all your ducks in a row.
I dig the irony of the fact Caplan is supposedly an anarchist who is against the government... yet has had, and encourages people to have children, which the state is dependent on to grow and stay alive. Way to stick it to the man, Caplan!
+Dark Wolf The government is also dependent on people working in order to pay their taxes, does that mean we should advocate not working? Should we take that logic to its fullest conclusion and pull off some sort of "Atlas Shrugged"?
ebbergemann People, not taxes, are the greatest resource of a government. The last thing they want is for there to be less of that to the point they are forced to lose power. Not giving birth as well as educating and getting others to do the same to deliberately deprive governments of more people to exploit is an even greater act of defiance than not paying taxes. There's going to be a hell of a lot less wage slaves, less police, less military, less money, pretty much less of everything it needs to stay large and healthy. That said, yes, I would encourage that. A refusal to work is the ultimate middle finger to the elite who depend on wage slavery. Anything that undermines or puts a monkey wrench into the state and the elite who depend upon it is absolutely warranted.
+MRCKify Never said that. I'm not arguing for suicide. Way to miss the point. My argument is that if people like Caplan hate the state and wants it ended, then the last thing people like him should be doing at the moment is breeding more people to help maintain it. So why isn't he instead saying people should be adopting over breeding? He should be advocating instead people be "selfish" in having children via adoption whether through official and counter-economic methods.
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Great video! Two of my favorite people in one place.
I feel like a genetic robot after listening to this lecture.
It made me feel like there is no room for improvement by my own will. How motivated I am and what I believe is apparently a function of my biology.
Worth listening to, but I feel depressed now hahaha.
I don't think that makes any sense.
It was always going to be some combination of biological factors outside your control and environmental factors outside of your control. There was never going to be a black box wherein the human soul could have been said to reside pure and uncaused.
statistics describes populations, not individuals. Variance in statistics leaves room for individuals. In the nordic countries, the variance is low, but in the US the variance is high, like 30%.
No what he says is that parenting has very little affect on long-term life outcomes. He understands that non-shared environment may exert effects on life outcomes, but that's not relevant to the thesis of his book. Caplan is not making a sweeping statement about the effects of environment, he's focusing only on the effects of parenting.
Could you provide a specific reference where Cathy Price has debunked the idea that parenting doesn't have lasting effects on intelligence? I've only been able to find articles on how IQ can vary throughout adolescence, which isn't inconsistent with what Caplan is saying.
And Caplan has never presented himself as a scientist. He's giving an overview of the findings of behavioural geneticists, he's not conducting his own experiments
Firstly, you are aware the estimated heritability of IQ according to the American Psychological Association is 0.85 for adults? I'm not sure how you can argue that environmental variation has such an enormous effect on life outcomes.
Secondly, you haven't understood what Caplan said. Saying "family resemblance is driven entirely by genetics" is not the same thing as saying "life outcomes are driven entirely by genetics." These are two very different things.
Both are top draw scientists
His view is this is not on net problem.
WOW, Bryan Caplan is one of the dorkiest guys on youtube.
A dorky libertarian? A dorky economist? Well I never.... :-P
13:40 lol
No problem here.
Same. I ship it.
Bryan needs to talk more slowly.
Well only if they mate together. A libertarian would only care about the individuals right? So if individuals can choose who they partner up with what does the average IQ matter?
Caplan's claims are highly implausible if you read the labor economics or psychology literature yourself.
Identical twins raised apart are typically raised by *similar* families--upper middle class, well educated. The adoption system screens parents for these qualifications. So people who are both genetically similar and raised by similar parents turn out to be similar, but a lot of the work is done by environment.
There's a huge amount of experimental evidence about the benefits of smaller class sizes, early childhood education, child nutrition, more resource intensive higher education, etc.
All of these things cost money in the United States and are not primarily funded by taxes (unlike in Europe where a lot of support for families is publicly provided). In the US, with smaller family size, you have more resources per kid.
Those early jobs and early incomes matter.
The interesting question is not whether genes or environment matter more. The only thing you can change is environment. And environment matters a lot.
There's a reason Cato is funding this book. Cato exists to shrink government and lower rich people's taxes.
If it were true that parental resources and education made no difference, it would seem fairer to spend less on programs for middle class and lower class kids and to have lower taxes for rich people. "Let those 'dumb' millionaires and billionaires waste their money on their progeny while the smart lower middle class people invest nothing and rely on the genetic lottery so that one of their many kids might turn out okay."
If you drive up the population, you also reduce wages and increase the returns on capital--good for very rich people again.
The book is a great investment in propaganda to help the billionaires who fund George Mason and Cato. But it's a selective summary of the research, and fundamentally wrong about what the research shows where it counts.
Links to any youtube videos?
MZ twin studies is one of four convergent lines of evidence for a .8-ish heritability of adult IQ. There are theoretical objections to the other three lines as well, but they're all unrelated, and it would be a fantastic coincidence if all four pedigree methods for inferring heritability were all equally confounded for completely unrelated reasons.
@Jake White is right about the environmental effects. Childhood IQ is less heritable and more malleable, but effects fade out pretty quickly. College raises IQ, but effects fade out over time. As well, all environmental gains including the Flynn Effect are largely hollow for the general intelligence factor g, which means that they're made of different stuff than the extant within- and between-group hereditary differences.
To respond to your ad hominem and well-poisoning, I don't believe that the _tabula rasa_ theorists have the moral high ground at all.
If the difference between a dropout drug addict and a physics professor is all shared environment, then society is stupid and evil for not spending an extra $10'000 per capita to increase everyone's net lifetime productivity by a million dollars. Moreover, the high economic and social status of high-functioning groups becomes an unearned luxury enjoyed at the expense of the unfortunate - as indeed you seem to believe.
When that accusation is levelled falsely, it is anything but benign. It generates massive waste at every level, and dysgenic effects which a well-informed polit could have forestalled in non-coercive ways, sometimes just by making more informed decisions in their own lives. Worse, it is an eternal _casus bellum_, putting neighbours at eachothers' throats and forestalling any hope of peaceful coexistence.
There's nothing about believing some people are smarter or more industrious than others that causes you to hate other people, but revanchism is a bottomless well of hatred and animosity. If you're going to level those sorts of accusations, then you'd damned well better have all your ducks in a row.
I know this is an old comment but I just wanted to say you raise a very good point about adoption agencies screening for couples with similar genes.
Makes me wonder what is the extent of cognitive dissonance that most hereditarians live with.
I dig the irony of the fact Caplan is supposedly an anarchist who is against the government... yet has had, and encourages people to have children, which the state is dependent on to grow and stay alive.
Way to stick it to the man, Caplan!
+Dark Wolf The government is also dependent on people working in order to pay their taxes, does that mean we should advocate not working? Should we take that logic to its fullest conclusion and pull off some sort of "Atlas Shrugged"?
ebbergemann People, not taxes, are the greatest resource of a government. The last thing they want is for there to be less of that to the point they are forced to lose power.
Not giving birth as well as educating and getting others to do the same to deliberately deprive governments of more people to exploit is an even greater act of defiance than not paying taxes.
There's going to be a hell of a lot less wage slaves, less police, less military, less money, pretty much less of everything it needs to stay large and healthy.
That said, yes, I would encourage that. A refusal to work is the ultimate middle finger to the elite who depend on wage slavery.
Anything that undermines or puts a monkey wrench into the state and the elite who depend upon it is absolutely warranted.
The extreme argument of +Dark Wolf seems to be "If we all kill ourselves, we can't be exploited by government hahaha."
+MRCKify
Never said that. I'm not arguing for suicide. Way to miss the point.
My argument is that if people like Caplan hate the state and wants it ended, then the last thing people like him should be doing at the moment is breeding more people to help maintain it.
So why isn't he instead saying people should be adopting over breeding?
He should be advocating instead people be "selfish" in having children via adoption whether through official and counter-economic methods.
Imagine thinking you're sticking it to the state... By letting them bully you into having no kids lol.