It seems I didnât get brigaded [tap on wood], but I still feel uneasy answering this. You got some downvotes on this comment initially which means the karma system pushes you to not reply, in the same way it pushed me to not reply to the HBD-proponents I was debating. This voting-power-by-popularity system doesnât incentivize having conversations, so feel free to answer in the comment section on your substack instead. I will edit in a link to it at the end of this comment if you do so. This comment is going to be shorter anyway.
Firstly, I wanted to say that I also didnât downvote your post because while I disagree I do sympathize with the amount of effort that went into it, and this karma system would punish future unrelated posts and comments in a guilt-by-association-fashion, not just this post (although I did give it a disagreement vote since that influences nothing):
Secondly, to clear up any confusion I donât think a journal being made by horrible people allows you to conclude that their conclusions are false, but I do think it allows you to not give them any money.
Thirdly, I think we run into the same issue with g as we do with intelligence. If g is just correlation between different cognitive tasks, then the natural question is, which tasks? And which tasks are considered âcognitive tasksâ? Because the results will differ based on what you choose.
Fourthly, I think the difference with linking a video and linking the mankind quarterly is primarily money, one costs 75 dollar and the other is free. For the record I have watched the video in itâs entirety and am not just throwing something at you while I myself donât know of any counterarguments. I couldâve typed them out, but I just donât think I have much to add both in terms of information nor presentation. For those who are familiar with the subject you can skip to 1:02:11 of the video at which point he really starts diving into their methodology instead of giving a general overview. Which ties into...
Fifthly, I think the video points out a general pattern of Lynn and his colleagues using a clearly cherrypicked dataset then being called out on it, at which point they switch to another slightly less clearly cherrypicked dataset which people then call them out on etc. Now maybe this latest dataset they use is genuinely good but I think this is a âboy who cried wolfâ scenario where I just no longer think itâs prudent to trust them or trust that reading their work is a productive use of time.
Lastly, maybe at some point we run out of good environmental interventions (like iodine) and maybe then (assuming some premises) it becomes prudent to switch to genetic interventions. But until that time we should focus on those environmental interventions, not just because of their immediate cost effectiveness but also because of one of my points you didnât address, namely that those environmental interventions are way more egalitarian/âemancipatory, which produces better results in the longterm.
I will respond here because itâs important for everyone to see.
You donât need to give the journal money. I am offering to email you the pdf if you are that interested.
Cognitively demanding tasks. These require puzzle-solving, reasoning, drawing on past knowledge, connecting ideas, etc. As long as the test has a wide range of tasks like this, estimates will be similar. Provided they are cognitively demanding and diverse, results are not particularly sensitive to the actual content of the test for native speakers. Spearman called this the âindifference of the indicator.â You can read more in Chapter 7 of Rusell Warneâs book In The Know.
Another interpretation of what Lynn is doing is improving his estimates when people critique him. As I mentioned in the article, many other researchers estimating national averages on mental ability tests produce moderate to highly correlated estimates with Lynnâs. Why do you think that is? And who do you think has more accurate estimates? If you have a specific objection to the scores, I can respond with estimates of correlations after making adjustments. Ee can use the ViewOnIQ data to drop scores/âsamples from countries you find are bad. Or we can Winsorize the scores and check the strength of the relationship. Or we can look at Rindermannâs estimates.
What do you think, in your view, is the correlation between average cognitive ability and log(GDP/âc)? What are you basing this estimate on, and why is it better than Lynn, Becker, Rindermann, Angrist, etc?
Iodine deficiency will not work for everyone, only those who are iodine-deprived. Where people are iodine deficient, we should try to help them. I focus on genetic enhancement because it is under-considered. The possible returns from genetic enhancement will be unevenly distributed but have the potential to be absolutely massive. Since parents will adopt it voluntarily and IVF is largely legal worldwide (and hopefully IVG will be), there is a plausible means of improving humanity immensely merely through funding research in a narrow area to accelerate certain discoveries.
It seems I didnât get brigaded [tap on wood], but I still feel uneasy answering this. You got some downvotes on this comment initially which means the karma system pushes you to not reply, in the same way it pushed me to not reply to the HBD-proponents I was debating. This voting-power-by-popularity system doesnât incentivize having conversations, so feel free to answer in the comment section on your substack instead. I will edit in a link to it at the end of this comment if you do so. This comment is going to be shorter anyway.
Firstly, I wanted to say that I also didnât downvote your post because while I disagree I do sympathize with the amount of effort that went into it, and this karma system would punish future unrelated posts and comments in a guilt-by-association-fashion, not just this post (although I did give it a disagreement vote since that influences nothing):
Secondly, to clear up any confusion I donât think a journal being made by horrible people allows you to conclude that their conclusions are false, but I do think it allows you to not give them any money.
Thirdly, I think we run into the same issue with g as we do with intelligence. If g is just correlation between different cognitive tasks, then the natural question is, which tasks? And which tasks are considered âcognitive tasksâ? Because the results will differ based on what you choose.
Fourthly, I think the difference with linking a video and linking the mankind quarterly is primarily money, one costs 75 dollar and the other is free. For the record I have watched the video in itâs entirety and am not just throwing something at you while I myself donât know of any counterarguments. I couldâve typed them out, but I just donât think I have much to add both in terms of information nor presentation. For those who are familiar with the subject you can skip to 1:02:11 of the video at which point he really starts diving into their methodology instead of giving a general overview. Which ties into...
Fifthly, I think the video points out a general pattern of Lynn and his colleagues using a clearly cherrypicked dataset then being called out on it, at which point they switch to another slightly less clearly cherrypicked dataset which people then call them out on etc. Now maybe this latest dataset they use is genuinely good but I think this is a âboy who cried wolfâ scenario where I just no longer think itâs prudent to trust them or trust that reading their work is a productive use of time.
Lastly, maybe at some point we run out of good environmental interventions (like iodine) and maybe then (assuming some premises) it becomes prudent to switch to genetic interventions. But until that time we should focus on those environmental interventions, not just because of their immediate cost effectiveness but also because of one of my points you didnât address, namely that those environmental interventions are way more egalitarian/âemancipatory, which produces better results in the longterm.
I will respond here because itâs important for everyone to see.
You donât need to give the journal money. I am offering to email you the pdf if you are that interested.
Cognitively demanding tasks. These require puzzle-solving, reasoning, drawing on past knowledge, connecting ideas, etc. As long as the test has a wide range of tasks like this, estimates will be similar. Provided they are cognitively demanding and diverse, results are not particularly sensitive to the actual content of the test for native speakers. Spearman called this the âindifference of the indicator.â You can read more in Chapter 7 of Rusell Warneâs book In The Know.
Another interpretation of what Lynn is doing is improving his estimates when people critique him. As I mentioned in the article, many other researchers estimating national averages on mental ability tests produce moderate to highly correlated estimates with Lynnâs. Why do you think that is? And who do you think has more accurate estimates? If you have a specific objection to the scores, I can respond with estimates of correlations after making adjustments. Ee can use the ViewOnIQ data to drop scores/âsamples from countries you find are bad. Or we can Winsorize the scores and check the strength of the relationship. Or we can look at Rindermannâs estimates.
What do you think, in your view, is the correlation between average cognitive ability and log(GDP/âc)? What are you basing this estimate on, and why is it better than Lynn, Becker, Rindermann, Angrist, etc?
Iodine deficiency will not work for everyone, only those who are iodine-deprived. Where people are iodine deficient, we should try to help them. I focus on genetic enhancement because it is under-considered. The possible returns from genetic enhancement will be unevenly distributed but have the potential to be absolutely massive. Since parents will adopt it voluntarily and IVF is largely legal worldwide (and hopefully IVG will be), there is a plausible means of improving humanity immensely merely through funding research in a narrow area to accelerate certain discoveries.