A moral dilemma

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


Are you actually claiming that there is no inheritable component of intelligence, or are you going to admit that comment was stupid?

There is an inheritable component of intelligence based on IQ testing. Now, knowing that the stretch between 'talent' and IQ is immense at best, imagine what is that between talent and actual 'success'.

[Kuciwalker]

Er, I don't believe I said anything about success. Now consider that it's fairly obvious that this vague term "talent" has some relation to intelligence; and it's also fairly well established that IQ is a decent, though imperfect, measure of intelligence. So, are you going to admit that your comment was stupid? You've already admitted that there is a corellation.

FYI on the relation between talent and IQ, from wiki:

According to Schmidt and Hunter, "for hiring employees without previous experience in the job the most valid predictor of future performance is general mental ability."[32] The validity of cognitive ability for job performance tends to increase with job complexity and varies across different studies, ranging from 0.2 for unskilled jobs to 0.6 for the most complex jobs.[33]

A meta-analysis (Hunter and Hunter, 1984)[34] which pooled validity results across many studies encompassing thousands of workers (32,124 for cognitive ability), reports that the validity of cognitive ability for entry-level jobs is 0.54, larger than any other measure including job tryout (0.44), experience (0.18), interview (0.14), age (−0.01), education (0.10), and biographical inventory (0.37). This implies that, across a wide range of occupations, intelligence test performance accounts for some 29% of the variance in job performance.

[Fake Boris]

1) Read again. The point of my original post wasn't to say that there is no connection whatsoever between talent and genes.
2) I'm curious, how do you evaluate "job performance" ?

[Fake Boris]

If anyone has any doubt about the utter vagueness of the link between competence and genetics, he can find overwhelming evidence in the stories of royal families throughout history.

[Kuciwalker]

Surprise, surprise, one-bathroom-per-sibling wonder boy is defending talent as being inheritable.

If you think there is a connection between talent and genes then this comment is stupid.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
If anyone has any doubt about the utter vagueness of the link between competence and genetics, he can find overwhelming evidence in the stories of royal families throughout history.

Why would you assume they'd started off with particularly good stock in the first place?

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

Surprise, surprise, one-bathroom-per-sibling wonder boy is defending talent as being inheritable.

If you think there is a connection between talent and genes then this comment is stupid.

I have boldened for you the meaningful part of my post. It was meant to be a corollary of Spiffor's comment:

As an example, there was a paper in The Economist some monthes ago, that showed the US society being increasingly unequal-opportunity, and the overclass not being aware of it (and thus thinking they were overclass only thanks to their work and smarts). And the US is one of the most equal-opportunity countries on the planet.
In France, which is much worse in this regard, I've also witnessed this kind of attitude many times.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


Why would you assume they'd started off with particularly good stock in the first place?

Precisely. Some of them began with good stock that degenerated, others with bad stock that produced great kings or emperors a few generations later.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
I have boldened for you the meaningful part of my post.

I recognized at the start that your post had no meaningful content beyond a gratuitous insult. I've been trying to get you to admit this fact.

[Kuciwalker]

I wonder be hugely surprised either at intelligent people believing things that are true

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


I recognized at the start that your post had no meaningful content beyond a gratuitous insult. I've been trying to get you to admit this fact.

I was observing that you coming from the upper part of the upper-class explained your skewed perspective.

You consider simple mention of your social upbringing as an insult? Interesting twist of affairs.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris


I have boldened for you the meaningful part of my post. It was meant to be a corollary of Spiffor's comment:

As an example, there was a paper in The Economist some monthes ago, that showed the US society being increasingly unequal-opportunity, and the overclass not being aware of it (and thus thinking they were overclass only thanks to their work and smarts). And the US is one of the most equal-opportunity countries on the planet.
In France, which is much worse in this regard, I've also witnessed this kind of attitude many times.

For reference, here's the article:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=4401791#post4401791

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
I was observing that you coming from the upper part of the upper-class explained your skewed perspective.

Correct = skewed?

You consider simple mention of your social upbringing as an insult? Interesting twist of affairs.

[Kuciwalker]

You know, this is all pretty funny since I've been arguing for everyone to have the opportunity to receive the quality of education I did (at a public school!)

[Spiffor]

Kuci, your analysis would be immensely more interesting, and you would look much less as a self-righteous spawn of the overclass, if you wondered about the extent to which inherited traits affect one's social success.

And if you compared that extent with the figures quoted in the article.