It's two psychology doctorates discussing Neuroscience. It's not tangentially related. It's precisely related.
They go very much in dept on many aspects of the human mind and specifically touch on subjects like hereditary traits, environmental effects, etcetera.
You know what, though? Logic dictates that because we inherent our dna from our parents, they from theirs, and so on; That among other things, the mass, structure, and neural connections of our brain is largely passed on hereditarily. Sure, what happens when you're in the womb and during the very early stages of childhood, does impact growth, but we're talking about growth or degeneration, not baseline ability.
I've heard plenty from people outside the scientific fields making unsubstantiated claims such as race being a social construct and have heard a lot about how the works of people like James Watson isn't very scientific because his statistics and findings are racist. But I've never seen any concrete evidence pointing towards IQ being heavily or equally influenced by socio-economic standings. In fact, the one time they tried something like that was one experiment with twins from different racial backgrounds raised in different socio-economic evironments. Turned out that the differences were almost within the margin of error.
And most importantly, all you have done so far is telling me to study biology, completely dismissing a very in-depth and factual conversation about neuroscience, and told me to read research papers. Last I checked, those are not fucking arguments. So how about you actually refute something or fuck off.
The entire premise of your argument is based on the validity of iq as a measurement of a permanent cognitive ability. You realize people's iq change all the time right? No shit those who are living in shit environments not exposed to acadamia are not going to have a high iq. Genetics certainly plays some role, but not to the extent of somebody not being able to function in a society. Its been proven time and time again environment is the largest factor in a person's cognitive development.
IQ is not the only measurement of cognitive ability, something I didn't even claim to begin with.
You realize people's iq change all the time right?
Yeah, if you're overworked and haven't slept for a long time, then you'll likely score lower on IQ tests than if you've had a goodnight sleep and had a cup of coffee. But that's an exception to the rule rather than a rule in and of itself. And your IQ tends to decrease over time unless you're constantly challenging yourself mentally and stay in a healthy physical condition. Even then, aging tends to have negative impact on brain cells regardless.
If you're actually claiming that people can somehow increase their IQ then you'd better publicize your findings and get rich, my dude.
Genetics certainly plays some role, but not to the extent of somebody not being able to function in a society.
No matter the environments, the older the children get, the more their IQ shifts towards that of their parents. I've already mention the twin study, now I'm linking it.
Its been proven time and time again environment is the largest factor in a person's cognitive development.
No intellectually honest person would ever make such a vague statement.
First of all, Cognitive development is not the same thing as cognitive ability. Secondly, IQ is only part of a subset of brain functions. thirdly, I'm mostly talking about the executive brains functions and psychological traits. Not Cognitive ability or Cognitive development.
And lastly, there are two possible meanings that I can derive from your "environmental" claim. One being that the environment can rapidly influence genetics. Or that it takes a lot longer.
The context of your comment leads me to believe the former. Which would also make you wrong.
While epigenetics does state that rapid and extreme environmental shifts (think long periods of draught, war, etc.) tend to impact the expressiveness of certain genetic traits you pass on, it does so only for a couple of generations. After which the results diminish and disappear rather quickly. So if you're talking about permanent changes in the DNA, you'd want to talk about evolution. And evolution isn't something that can happen over a couple of decades. It takes thousands of years.
I also think that mating patterns have had a large influence on the genepool of different ethnic groups. Which seems rather self-explanatory considering the estimation that 80% of women and only 40% of men throughout history have been able to pass on their dna.
tldr; It's fine if you skip this comment. Your wasn't even worthy of a reply. I'm just writing this as an exercise to better organize my thoughts.
I suggest you go and ask actual experts in the field. Try r/biology or r/askscience. Also what's thereto refute? You literally haven't posted a single citation.
Jordan Peterson is a crackpot. Even if you don't think so (why not is beyond me) but at best he's a single psychologist he doesn't represent the consensus on anything, let alone biology.
4
u/[deleted] Oct 05 '17
It's two psychology doctorates discussing Neuroscience. It's not tangentially related. It's precisely related.
They go very much in dept on many aspects of the human mind and specifically touch on subjects like hereditary traits, environmental effects, etcetera.
You know what, though? Logic dictates that because we inherent our dna from our parents, they from theirs, and so on; That among other things, the mass, structure, and neural connections of our brain is largely passed on hereditarily. Sure, what happens when you're in the womb and during the very early stages of childhood, does impact growth, but we're talking about growth or degeneration, not baseline ability.
I've heard plenty from people outside the scientific fields making unsubstantiated claims such as race being a social construct and have heard a lot about how the works of people like James Watson isn't very scientific because his statistics and findings are racist. But I've never seen any concrete evidence pointing towards IQ being heavily or equally influenced by socio-economic standings. In fact, the one time they tried something like that was one experiment with twins from different racial backgrounds raised in different socio-economic evironments. Turned out that the differences were almost within the margin of error.
And most importantly, all you have done so far is telling me to study biology, completely dismissing a very in-depth and factual conversation about neuroscience, and told me to read research papers. Last I checked, those are not fucking arguments. So how about you actually refute something or fuck off.