Genes Don't Just Predict Intelligence, But Also How Well You Do In School 154
sciencehabit writes: If you sailed through school with high grades and perfect test scores, you probably did it with traits beyond sheer smarts. A new study of more than 6000 pairs of twins finds that academic achievement is influenced by genes affecting motivation, personality, confidence, and dozens of other traits, in addition to those that shape intelligence (abstract). The results may lead to new ways to improve childhood education.
Genes don't just (Score:1)
walk into Mordor.
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"Reducing the number of revolutions per minute," Mr. Foster explained. "The surrogate goes round slower; therefore passes through the lung at longer intervals; therefore gives the embryo less oxygen. Nothing like oxygen-shortage for keeping an embryo below par." Again he rubbed his hands.
[...]
"The lower the caste," said Mr. Foster, "the shorter the oxygen." The first organ affected was the brain. After that the skeleton. At seventy per cent of normal oxygen you got dwarfs. At less than seventy eyeless monst
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Aldus Huxley Brave New World ought to be required reading. Of course, leaving genetics to the chance of birth seems so bourgeoisie and no where near the egalitarian needs of the populace of the twenty-first century.
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Aldus Huxley Brave New World ought to be required reading. Of course, leaving genetics to the chance of birth seems so bourgeoisie and no where near the egalitarian needs of the populace of the twenty-first century.
Hell I'd be happy if they just verified that people raising children have the basic skills and mental stability to do so...
You want to drive a car, we need to know you are capable and will test you. But feel free to raise Jeffrey Dahmer in your living room with no questions asked.
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I would go one step further. Otherwise the less capable will be able to breed as much as they want and the more capable would have to raise those children.
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To an outside observer (with our cultural programming), such as John Savage, Huxley's brave new world is abhorrent. However, people within this theoretical society are consciously engineered to love their station in life. Gammas don't want to be Betas, nor do Betas want to be Alphas. Everyone is happy and fulfilled, as all desires that cannot be fulfilled are eliminated during fetal and childhood development. Further, those random anomalies that don't 'fit in' are not killed, imprisoned, or vigorously re-ed
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Controlling for anomaly means controlling for possibility. Huxley's story is a parable of a society with no horizons. It was a criticism of the "utopia" he witnessed as the objective of his contemporaries.
I know what Captain Kirk would have done, if he beamed down there... Damn the Prime Directive!
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walk into Mordor.
"Gene" isn't even a character from LoTR. He was on the Gong Show.
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So you're saying that there's a dancing gene?
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According to Jaye P. Morgan and Harry Morgan, and Jamie Farr.
Re:The high heritability of educational achievemen (Score:5, Insightful)
...Did they factor in the socio-economic background of the parents, as in children of rich-folk get better education than children of poor-parents, and therefore do better, and are expected to do better, in exams.
Yes they did.
Did you bother to read the article, or did you expect someone to read it for you?
Re:The high heritability of educational achievemen (Score:5, Funny)
...Did they factor in the socio-economic background of the parents, as in children of rich-folk get better education than children of poor-parents, and therefore do better, and are expected to do better, in exams.
Yes they did.
Did you bother to read the article, or did you expect someone to read it for you?
Read the article? You must be new here...
Re:The high heritability of educational achievemen (Score:5, Funny)
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Making a joke about someone not reading an article? You must be old here.
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Educational achievement does not equate to intelligence, does anyone here seriously think management got where they are because they're smarter? I would have thought that a more useful study would be the effects of growing up poor has on educational achievement. Something like the Linda Tirado article and book [amazon.com].
"When studies of separated Monozygotic Twins are examined
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I did read the article and I don't see where the researchers accounted for socio-economic background.
Do you know what a "twin" is? How often do twins have different socio-economic backgrounds?
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How often do twins have different socio-economic backgrounds?
Almost every time they're adopted by different families?
Most twin studies are done on adopted children for exactly that reason, to check the influence of non-genetic factors (e.g. socioeconomic background). There are a large number of such studies in Sweden, because their policies lead to an especially high number of split-twin adoptions.
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How often do twins have different socio-economic backgrounds?
Almost every time they're adopted by different families?
None of the twins used in this study were adopted by different families.
Re:The high heritability of educational achievemen (Score:5, Funny)
Dude. Not cool. You need to check your literacy privilege.
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Hey, I went to a private school (cause public schools in Tennessee are horrible) and it was $8500 a year to go there. I saw plenty of rich, priviledge kids from very good socio-economic backgrounds who were dumb as sh1t.
This one kid literally had been in the same private school from Pre-K all the way to the end of high school and the first time he took the ACT, he got a 11. He took it 2 more times and got a 16 and a 17, respectively. Some people are just stupid. You can throw them in nice schools and blame
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and sought to learn on their own
I can't wait for the research that tries to separate innate ability because of a "better brain", and interest in a subject increasing exposure. My guess is that someone of "average intelligence" but highly interested in something like math or computer science, will still be "smarter" than someone who is innately "smart", but less interested.
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Re:The high heritability of educational achievemen (Score:5, Informative)
It didn't need to, the study was on twins. Further, testing on both identical and fraternal twins allowed researchers to calculate how much genetics plays into it, because the genetic makeup for both kinds of twins is highly predictable.
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Obviously, difference in lifestyle plays a part
How often do two twins, growing up in the same household, have different lifestyles?
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Of course not, they don't know shit.
Thankfully we have an entire interweb full of unqualified gobshites who specialise in pointing out the methodological flaws of these so-cal
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Just what any parent knows (Score:5, Insightful)
It's reassuring to see a study that so closely reflects what any parent knows. Given the same home and school environments, some kids do much better than others, or excel at different tasks. My own kids appear to have broadly similar abilities in IQ-style tests, but they are very different in their responses to failure, willingness to perform repetitive tasks, level of curiosity or preference for strategic vs detailed thinking. Each child has an area of academic strength that matches his character rather than his intelligence.
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Each child has an area of academic strength that matches his character rather than his intelligence.
What this indicates is that we are grossly misunderstanding intelligence. It has much to do with confidence and interest, but we act as if it were all mechanics. In a way that may be true (matter interacting with matter) but there is clearly a psychological component to utilization of intelligence.
Re:Just what any parent knows (Score:5, Interesting)
The article is misleading as all fuck.
Motivation is hormonal: extra testosterone will lead a man to develop more as a jock, trying to impress women, perhaps going onto the football team, whatever. Different balances of various hormones and different sensitivities of neural receptors will, likewise, lead a man to seek to impress his peers (and women) by feats of intelligence; or lead a man to seek any other thing he wants--not just women--by sheer exertion of effort.
In other words: shit is hard, and your mood-influencing biochemical factors will manipulate how much you value an outcome, and thus how much effort you're willing to invest. More value means more effort, and more effort means better results. That's motivation.
Accepting that and then quickly setting it aside as assumption, we don't get "genetic factors for intelligence". Everyone is exactly as intelligent as a human, unless they're brain damaged by disease or defect. Any child, any adult, properly motivated, with proper practice and effort, can be a genius. It is just that simple.
The human memory works by association. Some folks have obscenely good natural memories; they often develop strategies or possess involuntary synesthesias which associate information in unusual ways--numbers to shapes and ideas, sounds to colors, and so on. Others achieve and even surpass the same memories as these people by employing mnemonics strategies to mimic and improve upon these natural talents and defects (synesthesia can be interesting and useful, but also debilitating--a strong synesthete can get a lot of visual imagery when reading, and thus not understand wtf is being said).
Because the human memory works by association, it becomes easier to know more when you know a lot already. If I were to teach your kids hard-core botany, they would be confused as living hell; but I could teach them to grow plants from seed, and teach them the same botanical principles. I could teach them how a plant seed germinates by releasing water-soluble enzymes to break down starch into sugars, illustrating this by breaking open a grain of flour and corn and by growing a seed. I could teach them about the plant's nutrient needs and biochemical processes, showing how it changes colors and becomes sick as I remove various nutrients from its soil or hydroponics feed. They would see and understand the plant, and come to know about its basic processes.
Just as I could use a graphical and demonstrative guide to teach your kids complex biological concepts, I could use their new knowledge of those concepts to teach them deeper and more complex topics. Similarly, I could use your worldly knowledge to teach you much more complex things--they would make sense to you because of all the things you already know. This is how memory works; and learning is memory, for you cannot understand what you don't know, and you cannot know what you don't remember.
The question is: are your kids interested in the growth of seeds? If so, are they interested in all this technical bullshit about amylase enzymes and photosynthesis and the potassium cycle and nitrogen fermentation? If they aren't sufficiently motivated, it will be hard to get them to learn; that doesn't mean they're stupid, but that they don't fucking care.
Building on these base concepts, we have mnemonics (the mind palace, the mnemonic major system, the Person-Action-Object system, acrostics, acronyms) and study methods (SQ3R, SQW3R). By using study methods like SQW3R, a student can strongly learn new textbook information in less time.
The method of SQW3R is to Survey, Question, Write, Read, Recite, Review (would that we could reverse those last two--Survey, Question, Write, Read, Review, Recite; but Recite before Review, or forget what you once knew): survey the topics, headings, the summaries, the graphics; create questions from this material; write down questions and minor notes about what you know and want to know; read, considering the questions as you read;
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This is a great post that I almost didn't read because you dropped an f-bomb in the first line, making it appear to the causal reader like a rant or troll.
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Well, I did just typo casual into causal, so I can hardly blame you.
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Accepting that and then quickly setting it aside as assumption, we don't get "genetic factors for intelligence". Everyone is exactly as intelligent as a human, unless they're brain damaged by disease or defect. Any child, any adult, properly motivated, with proper practice and effort, can be a genius. It is just that simple.
I'm not quite sure that it works that way. We live in a physical world and if you don't believe in something like a transcendent consciousness then you will have to accept that there are physical limitations for everything. Not every brain is exactly the same unless you consider any deviation from some ideal brain structure as "damaged".
For me it sounds a little bit like: Accepting that and then quickly setting aside as assumption, we don't get "design factors for performance". Everything is exactly as per
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Everyone is exactly as intelligent as a human, unless they're brain damaged by disease or defect. Any child, any adult, properly motivated, with proper practice and effort, can be a genius. It is just that simple.
Citation please
The rest of your post describes how memorization works. Are you implying that intelligence is the ability to reproduce facts, rather than the ability to process information and derive abstract representations?
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There is a belief that memorization is bad, and that learning requires understanding. That is to say: school system administrators, educators, and teachers have accepted memorization as a terrible thing, and are determined to make students "learn" and "understand". This goes back to the progressive education movement by John Dewey, which came after faculty learning was debunked--we discovered the brain is not a muscle and cannot be made stronger by exercising the various mental faculties (memory, langua
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Everyone is exactly as intelligent as a human, unless they're brain damaged by disease or defect. Any child, any adult, properly motivated, with proper practice and effort, can be a genius.
have been proven to be true.
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Motivation is hormonal: extra testosterone will lead a man to develop more as a jock, trying to impress women, perhaps going onto the football team, whatever. Different balances of various hormones and different sensitivities of neural receptors will, likewise, lead a man to seek to impress his peers (and women) by feats of intelligence; or lead a man to seek any other thing he wants--not just women--by sheer exertion of effort.
Add to that......kids are one thing; but as an adult, once you learn to 'hack' your motivation, push yourself even when you don't want to.....it's amazing what you can accomplish.
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That would make everyone who is poor and hasn't won a Nobel Prize just a lackluster, lazy bum? Makes sense.
If you think the person who wins the Nobel Prize is always the smartest, most motivated, then you don't know much about the Nobel Prize.
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>Everyone is exactly as intelligent as a human, unless they're brain damaged by disease or defect. Any child, any adult, properly motivated, with proper practice and effort, can be a genius. It is just that simple.
This is false on its face. It does not matter how much some people try, or study, or work hard - they will never be a genius in anything and it's not because they have brain damage. There are variations in how our brains work, just as with how the rest of our bodies work, that are heritable and
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Categorically false. Peoples's abilities demonstrably change with interest and motivation. Stephen Hawking wasn't some genius kid until he became disabled; he decided he didn't want to be a useless lump, and that the only tool he had was his mind, and that he wanted to use it in the most spectacular way possible because anything mundane would fail to set him apart, so he took the big subject: quantum physics and the pioneering study of the universe itself at the most basic level. Hard work and determin
If the genes predict it, why bother with change? (Score:3, Insightful)
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bonus points if you can kickstart my metabolism, while you're at it.
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I think this concerns more the 2050's primary school, where education could be better tailored for different genetic profiles.
Academic school, they have their tuitions and entrance exams that determine if the person has the necessary preliminary knowledge and if they can solve entrance level problems. Most universities will retain an attitude of, everyone can try, but supposedly some private school will include a genetic screening an make it a prestige thing.
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What you describe is very similar to the future in Gattaca, a nice sci-fi movie worth watching.
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Wasting time? Son, we only need so many ditch diggers. The kids who don't just pick up this stuff naturally need TWICE as much schooling to get up to the basic level of competence we as a society need you to have to a functional member of our group.
Maybe we're just miscommunicating about the different levels of schooling. You see, highschool is (supposed to be) what you need to just be functional. If you don't have a highschool level education, going through life is going to be hard. The naturally stupid k
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Oh man! I can't believe I missed this one! It was right over the plate:
Couldn't they do something more pleasant and productive with their time?
No, that just makes for more less-then-stellar kids running about.
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What do you mean? That the questions on the 1984 GED/A-Levels/Bac are harder than the ones in 2014? Or does it mean that if you gave today's kids a paper from 20 years ago they'd ace it?
I'm not sure if the bar's being raised or if standards are being lowered. But the serious mismatch between the number and type of graduates on one hand an
Re: Inclusion vs. exclusion (Score:2, Insightful)
Why not? Society should have the means to allocate ever scarcer resources to the individuals who have an actual chance to succeed and, therefore, to contribute. Most societies already find acceptable to screen for defects and terminate pregnancies which would result in burdening the collective with a deficient individual. It's only reasonable.
Intelligence (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think this is entirely unexpected; there has long been controversy over what intelligence is or indeed whether it is a meaningful concept at all. It has certainly proved difficult to construct a practical test that doesn't depend on things like cultural context etc.
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That's because cultural context is impossible to escape, not because intelligence is a meaningless concept. It is, for instance, very very difficult to compare the Euro and the Dollar in value terms: one Euro will buy more in some countries than in others, one Dollar will buy more in some states than in others, and the quoted international exchange rate is subject to major fluctuations that have nothing to do with the relative value of the currencies per se. But that doesn't make "money" a meaningless con
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There is a test where who score high are very likely to be able to do more of those things better than those with lower scores.
It's called an IQ test.
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What this demonstrates very clearly is you should choose your mate(s) carefully, as you can dramatically alter their probable success through selection.
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Well, I suppose it is because we want to find an universal measure of 'mental ability'. When we look at people across populations, we find that there seems to be at least some element of 'mental ability' or 'intelligence' that is universal - some individuals seem very good at learning, thinking, others seem less so - across cultures. (As you can already see, I am not an expert, and others will no doubt have more insight) The big question as I see it is whether this 'intelligence' is all context or not; it p
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I don't think this is entirely unexpected; there has long been controversy over what intelligence is or indeed whether it is a meaningful concept at all. It has certainly proved difficult to construct a practical test that doesn't depend on things like cultural context etc.
Not a huge controversy though. Interestingly enough, it seems that everyone has fallen into the trap of assuming that how well one does in school is in lockstep with success.
Ain't necessarily so!
In academic environments, there are those we would call "professional students". The 4.0 average person who might be in their late 30's, early 40's, and still attending college. Often these folks won't do work for a living until their parents pass away, and they have to to survive.
They are damn good at taking
Re:Intelligence (Score:4, Insightful)
Early IQ tests involved knowledge about a specific culture, but those questions have been eliminated in most tests and they are easy to spot.
Let's take something less contentious. Let's say we want to test whether people are good lugers, so you put them on a sled and measure their times. Now, I may have a kick ass genetic potential for luging, but if I've never done it before because I grew up in a culture where people don't value luging, I'm not going to be very good at it. Objectively, my luge performance is low. It's the same with IQ.
IQ tests test actual IQ, not potential IQ. Actual IQ depends on your culture and how you were raised. And those interact in non-linear ways. Primarily, your genetic potential limits how high your actual IQ can go: environment can turn an Einstein into a moron, but it can't turn every moron into an Einstein.
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You must be new here. We use car analogies, not luge analogies.
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There isn't much controversy in the actual sciences about whether or not IQ tests are relevant. They are. Whatever they measure is highly correlated with positive life outcomes.
And this is why designer babies will come (Score:3, Insightful)
No matter whether we try to legislate against that. When you're a parent, and you have a means within reach to avoid your kids doing bad in life, you will use it. It would be immoral not to. (I've also read an article this morning that said that tall people and blondes do better career-wise, so there's even more room for genetic improvement there.)
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nuance, he didn't say "ensure success" he said "avoid a bad life". If you had the choice of spending $5,000 to remove a 5% risk of having a mentally retarded baby, would you spend it?
How about a baby that was just a little slow?
How about a baby that was merely average?
Gataca (Score:2)
Yet "intelligence" genes have little effect (Score:5, Insightful)
"'Smart genes' prove elusive - Study of more than 100,000 people finds three genetic variants for IQ — but their effects are maddeningly small." http://www.nature.com/news/sma... [nature.com]
This twins study shows that general intelligence and academic achievement are affected by many different "aptitudes", not just "smart." Taken together with the Nature commentary, suggests that intelligence is just a part, maybe even a small part, of achievement.
If only this could seep into the general consciousness of the masses, then we might not have so many students think they cannot do something because they are not "smart enough."
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then we might not have so many students think they cannot do something because they are not "smart enough."
Instead, they will be not "good enough". Same thing. People have genetic differences that play a major role in what is ultimately achievable, and how much effort it takes. Pretending that those differences don't exist ("you can do anything you want, my precious snowflake") isn't actually helping us. Instead, recognize that there are differences between people, and then give each person what they need to meet their potential is a much better way.
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Yeah. And as I remember the twin tests from a decade ago, they did show genetics played a large role in how well the kids did in early school, but by the time they twins were 18, the environment was a much bigger factor. In other words the article here has it backwards. Genes doesn't predict intelligence in adults very well, upbringing does, but what genes do predict is how easy a time you will have in early school, which may help you if you have bad school. However, if you don't have an easy time early in
Genes set the bounds (Score:2)
Genes set the bounds. Environment determines how close to either end of those bounds you end up.
A person with genes for being tall will fall between a range of 5'10" and 6'4" tall. If the environment for that person provides good food and nutrition the person will tend towards the far end of the range. If the environment does not provide good food and nutrition the person may fall towards the shorter end of the range.
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When people talk about "intelligence" in a scientific context, they generally talk about the "g factor", the correlation between many different aptitudes. That correlation is a real, measurable phenomenon; it is strong, heritable, and a strong deter
Big fat genius (Score:2)
"You get a high BMI if you enjoy eating, and you get a high IQ if you enjoy thinking"
And if you enjoy both,you are a big fat genius!
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suggests that intelligence is just a part, maybe even a small part, of achievement.
In life, perhaps. But this study is looking specifically at school achievement, where intelligence is by far the biggest factor.
They were also looking at other less important but less studied heritable traits, which is the interesting part.
Well, it's time for people to accept the truth (Score:1)
That genes and family background (education too) basically decide what we are and what we will be, including all the decisions we do.
Some people are hard-working, smart and rich because they're made and taught that - you might say you could get all that too if you just work as hard as them - except the "if" is not a matter of choice, because the choice is already made for you by yourself, decided by your genes and background. Nothing you can do to change that, since you cannot possibly change yourself.
Freed
heh (Score:2)
But we can't we find the genes (Score:2)
This is one of a gzillion studies that have come to this conclusion. But note that we are still unable to isolate any of those genes. [slashdot.org]
It's true (Score:2)
It's true. Good genes lead to academic performance. For example: if you have genes that make you a great football player, you will have no trouble getting good grades.
Hear that ladies? (Score:2)
Want smart kids? Marry the geeks and the nerds.
Bell Curve anyone? (Score:1)
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There are differences among populations, sorry if that bothers your PC police state mentality. You wouldn't use a poodle as a guard dog would you?
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So.... by how much? (Score:2)
Maybe I'm a lazy SOB for not RTFA, but how much do genes factor into intelligence? News like this is hardly startling. I mean, people are born mentally retarded and don't do as well in school. So obviously genes impact performance, Duh. And I imagine there is a massive sliding scale from complete retard to a fantastic set of genes that will hopefully be utilized and go on to make the next Hawking. But hopefully without the ALS. The slider is for intelligence, not general health.
But anyway, HOW MUCH do genes
It is going to be like GATTACA (Score:2)
"Bad" genes and you will be refused financial aid or even admission to universities.
in other news (Score:1)
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Just in case you aren't aware: You can block all that if you use Firefox and a few add-ons: AdBlock Plus, AniDisableHacked and NoScript. They allow me to block out video, among other things.
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Just in case you aren't aware: You can block all that if you use Firefox and a few add-ons: AdBlock Plus, AniDisableHacked and NoScript. They allow me to block out video, among other things.
You don't even need any of that. Just go to Tools -> Add-ons, find Shockwave Flash, and change "Always Activate" to "Ask to Activate". Works for every website all the time.
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@-moz-document domain(slashdot.org) { .adwrap, #bottomadspace, embed, object {
display: none !important;
}
}
I thought everyone know basic CSS here....
Re:STOP THE VIDEO ADS SLASHDOT! (Score:5, Funny)
"STOP THE VIDEO ADS SLASHDOT!"
If you are unable to stop them yourself, you should be on Digg instead.
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Get an account and when you log in you have the option to disable ads. I also find it unusable before I log in, with too much video and endlessly piggy scripts. I have no problem with advertising (something's got to pay the bills) if it doesn't half-trash my machine.
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Why don't you just use AdBlock?
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Also on who your parents are. Abusive, not abusive, supportive, not supportive. My partner's mother always told her that she didn't need to know maths, because girls don't need to know it. Now my partner spends all her time thinking she's stupid and doesn't need to know anything about how the world, or anything in it, works.
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RTFA. It doesn't say those aren't factors, just that there are also genetic factors.
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Yes, genetic factors, like who your parents are... For example Bankers, Engineers...
The problem with such a study, is that when looking at genetics it is almost impossible to divorce them from the socio-economic circumstances. The obvious problem being that the socio-economic circumstances are in most cases literally hereditary... though not genetically.
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Yes good points, but that means that you have very few data points, as this does not occur that often. Although an interesting subject, it is clear that is becomes really hard to get good data.
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Neckbeard of the Year award to this AC for implying that being with a "women" is a reward to them for good behaviour.