Oh totally. My albatros has been my piss poor ability to get along with people. Iām generally pretty easy going, but when I see people being weak, lazy or intentionally disregard others I lock in and its going to be to the death. Not actually but somebody is going to stay and somebody is going to go.
Smarts, skill & ability wise, Iām always above expectations. If Iām not, I work on what ever needs brought up to snuff. But damn. My tolerance for certain people is crap.
And where did that status come from?
High IQ disciplined people often end up with higher SES because those traits drive them there. The study blames low SES for poor test performance, itās sidestepping the harsh truth, low-SES families pass down lower IQ or conscientiousness. Itās not just money, itās biology.
Of course it does. A degree in engineering requires higher IQ, which is heritable and predicts success better than SES alone. Kids from high-IQ parents donāt pass the marshmallow test just because theyāve got a stocked pantry they are wired for self-control. The study glosses over this, pushing an SES only angle that skips the genetic factor.
The study does not cover that but, I would bet they do better than dumber kids. The portrayal in movies and media that kids from rich families become lazy or addicted due to neglect is BS. They are more successful by nearly all measurable metrics.
Nurture matters, but nature usually wins.
There will be outliers, but in a study, they wonāt dominate the results.
Then how do you explain the children of uneducated and poor immigrants going on to be highly successful? SES is sometimes a matter of circumstance, not biology.
Ah. Classic nature vs nurture debate. The one which will never be fully cleared up.
Itās interesting how many factors are at play when we define such things as intelligence. Even so narrow peak to human intelligence as IQ seems to be largely affected by various things right from the womb. Even of which genes seem to activate are partly epigenetical/enviromental based.
Itās almost impossible to point out why intelligent people are more intelligent than others.
Itās of course hot topic, since it directly affects on how we should build our societies. Should we have the John Rawls -way, where we think that society should balance these inequalities, or should we just admit that life and world is not a fair place and itās not societyās job to seek fairness.
This is partly due to the modern urban society and hyperspecialization (which also has itās benefits).
If you look European history for example and how Ancient Greek or Renaissance people saw virtuous and intelligent people, they rarely had just one expertise.
I know a lot of people who decided to break this role. You can be academic and a good plumber. Or an politician with a charm and a great woodcrafting skills.
I actually in reality people are much more diverse than we think, specially in rural areas.
I personally try to live up to this rule, and appreciate all aspects human can have. I have academic backround, but I can do stuff with my hands and hunt/fish my own food if needed. I would despise myself if I would be just some dusty philosopher without a broad set of skills and knowledge.
Final outcome is usually the benchmark for achievement.
Some of the most brilliant people in the world canāt apply their brilliance in a meaningful, valuable way. So it becomes a marvel sort of, with the forest lost through the trees.
That is different. The children of immigrants are born to parents that may not know the language and/or came here when they were older with nothing. They had to work hard to provide and lay the foundation for their children. However, if after couple generations they do not escape the ghetto thenā¦
And this is mainly because of biology? Iām not buying it.
The topic is quite complex. Saying that successful people are successful because of some inherited qualities is just as untrue than saying that success is luck based.
The actual study is free to read. That article is BS.
In the study they tested all children at grade 1 and 15 years of age.
Regardless of degree or SES the children who scored higher were more likely to wait. The children whose mothers had a college degree were not only more likely to wait but, they also scored higher than all other children. They also had better behavior scores.
White children were more likely to wait regardless of motherās education level and Black children were less likely to wait (Though the sample was small. There were only 7 in the educated mother group, and they all failed).
Cognitive ability and behavior are much better predictors of delayed gratification, and it is what the actual study showed not SES as the article is trying to push.
Since people are egotistical, in my experience people often emphasize their strong points and dismiss the value of weaker ones. Academics may minimize the importance of practical and social skills; people with high school education may emphasize you do not need academics to succeed and much of what they studied is useless; most successful people discount the role of luck and circumstance.
Even the nature versus nurture debate is a false dichotomy. We used to think genes told the story because it can take generations for changes caused by social and environmental pressures to make a real difference. We now know about epigenetics, that many ādecisionsā of which genes and proteins are expressed very much depend on short-term environmental and emotional effects, so are almost immediate. So nature is nurture, to a pretty significant degree. They say āYou canāt make a silk purse out of a sowās earā, and Iāve never tried. But you could probably still make something.
A comedian jokes (Schlesinger) that most people only really know a lot about three things. I think sheās probably right, if you compare people to some hypothetical average.
Intriguing. Iām with you here, though I lately tend to question the validity of luck and circumstance.
Iām leaning more to the thought that most of what happens (in our lives) follow a predestined thread of events - much based on our previous experiences (as a child). There is no coincidence we make the choices in life we do, choose the partner we have, end up in academic studies or get the job we have.
This may indicate Iām in favor of nurture, as it shapes the development of an individual - no matter what nature has presented us with (though exceptions exist in terms of various vulnerabilities/illnesses - but most people are born ānormalā). I may be heavily inspired here, by my recent experiences in working with PTSD. Even mild trauma may lead to certain survival strategies.
The problem is that most people just feel some way about whatever, and are very good at coming up with (or simply parroting) the reasons why after they already have the belief (which is probably often related to early imprinting). Smart people are often especially susceptible to this fallacy or error of logic (post hoc ergo propter hoc if you want to get all pretentious about it).
Major life decisions are not a random thing, as you say, but neither are your values or even some of your recent purchases. āThe heart has its reasons of which reason
knows nothingā, as Blaise Pascal put it.
Take 10,000 businesses or stockbrokers or whatever. Some will be wildly successful. Some of these successes āmake their own luckā through applied skills. Some successes are just lucky, for a time, through simple statistics.
Very well said. The whole post did cut right to the point.
Yes. People have tendency of thinking they have much more control than they actually do.
Would you define temporary financial gain via āluckā a success, though? There is a big difference between hitting a casino jackpot and consistently applying skills, as you summarize, for sustained and deliberate reward.
I see nature vs nurture through the same lense. We are all conditioned to respond to input to a degree, but we are also capable of analysis and free thought and can break habits and patterns for observably better outcomes, which I would place in the ānatureā category. Fluid intelligence is something we are born with, and use observation and experience to operate.
If you won a million dollars in the lottery, would you consider that ticket purchase successful?
The thing is the numbers are big, and so is the bell curve. Being in the top 0.3% (3 in 1000) is only three standard deviations from average. So you can be very lucky for a very long time. And success makes it own luck and success. People invest with the mutual fund manager who has been mostly right for the last ten years.
Iām not dismissing fluid intelligence and nature (though I would call it general intelligence and think genetics a major and obvious cause). I largely agree with you. But people will mostly attribute to grit and genius what actually happened due to luck and circumstance (which accounts for a moderate fraction of success). How many self-made men had silver spoon parents? How many politicians really came from lower middle class backgrounds, despite what they all claim?
Multiple studies have proven otherwise. On adopted children, twins, children who got scholarships based on SES, affirmative action college students, and many more.
-Kidsā IQs and traits match their biological parents, not the ones raising them.
-Twin studies show identical twins raised apart have very similar IQs and personalities, despite different upbringings
-Students from lower SE households tend to perform worse.
But, yeah keep blaming the environment and not the unfortunate truth.
Those are some woke/equity talking points. The āBlank Slateā does not exist.
Nobody here is claiming it does. Youāre the one who over-emphasises the other side of the equation.
Could you give some sources for these studies? They are probably part of the current paradigm, which is that biology and enviroment are not separate actors when talking about success in life.
If it would be just biology, the eugenicists would have been right.
There are problems with this. Yes, certain things are determined by genes however, if the environment doesnāt help someone reach the potential set by their genetics (and in fact is a hindrance), then nature is irrelevant. Think of that all the Irish who came to the US during the Famine. I donāt think they would have scored very high on IQ tests had they existed back then. Iām sure the Americans who saw them getting off ships probably thought they were a bunch of morons who were mentally deficient. But their descendants arenāt all dumb Red Sox fans with annoying accents.
The same with Southern Italians who came here. Over in Italy, they were considered uneducated and intellectually inferior by Northerners. They were poor and violent. But the truth is, they were poor because of conditions that had been imposed upon them by colonizers and feudalists. The descendants of those who immigrated, who didnāt have the same conditions imposed upon them, managed to become doctors, lawyers, politicians, scientists, etc. The same thing has happened in Italy as Southerners have more access to public education and arenāt starving. Of course not all people will have high IQs and a high SES, but the point is, you canāt dismiss access to opportunity. You also have things like nutrition to factor in. Having ādumbā parents is not everything. Just look at JD Vance. Heās a hillbilly from a shitty home and upbringing but where is he now?
I donāt believe in a blank slate, and my experience teaching tells me itās not true, but I do know that there are a lot of kids out there who have the potential to do more than their circumstances will allow.
Nutrition, values, bases of the worldview, way of speaking, amount of stimulus in early childhood etcā¦
Also:
Iām not even closely convinced that most successful/influential people are always the most intelligent ones.
An nescis, mi fili, quantilla prudentia mundus regatur ? āDo you not know, my son, with how very little wisdom the world is governed?ā - Axel Oxenstierna
There are limits to twin studies. You are correct quite a bit of IQ and personality depends on the actual parents. Not all of it - Iāve seen studies suggesting correlations from 0.2-0.4 depending on specifics; certainly important and significant but far from a perfect (1.0) correlation.