I was kinda surprised to see IQ as an external factor; my impression is that internal vs. external locus of control is actually personality traits vs. circumstances and environment, and IQ obviously falls into the first category.
If you consider IQ and mental health external factors, what are the internal factors, then? Willpower? But willpower is determined by the brain structure just as IQ and mental health and other personality traits.
Basically, if you assign everything to the “external” category, so that the “internal” is an empty set (or almost empty), then one’s success is determined by “external” factors. No surprise here.
[I’ve seen your follow-up post on discussion. I thought it would be best to reply to both here.]
It may be that everything is determined by prior events all the way to the big bang. So there’s no ‘internal willer’ isolated from previous events that can steer us one way or another. But we can keep talking about ‘internal’ and ‘external’ loci of control on a compatibilist view of free will (which I’d guess is the common view, including amongst those affirming an internal locus of control).
On this sort of view, internal factors are just those our choices can change—external factors, those which our choices cannot. If I want to run faster, how much time I spend training is an internal factor: it influences how fast I can run, and I can choose (in the compatibilist sense) how much time I spend training. If I have a dense hemiparesis secondary to a birth injury, that’s an external factor—it also influences how fast I can run (indeed, whether I can run at all), and can’t choose whether or not to have a hemiparesis.
So I take those with an internal locus of control to think that—in the main—the outcomes that matter are mainly sensitive to factors that in turn are sensitive to our choices (how hard I work, how long I practice, etc.), whilst those with an external locus of control say that these things are primarily determined by factors outside of that person’s control.
It seems clear to me that IQ should be in the ‘external factors’ camp: IQ seems to be set early in life, has a large heritable component, and the non heritable bit is likely due to environmental things that I also can’t change for myself, either at the time or retroactively. The failure of brain training programs suggests that you can’t improve your IQ by any feat of effort. And we know it has all sorts of influences on how our lives turn out. If I have (due to factors outside my control) an IQ more than one standard deviation below the mean, I won’t be able to become a doctor, or a physicist (or, indeed, joining the US armed services) - no matter what else I do. Mutatis mutandis cases where it might not serve as a strict bar but a variable handicap (c.f. evidence that the beneficial effects of IQ have no clear ceiling).
The alternative account you propose for demarcating ‘external’ versus ‘internal’ factors—internal factors are those causally distal to your brain’s neural output—looks too broad: all internal factors need to be downstream of our neural output, but that isn’t sufficient. The hemiparesis case I allude to above would be one example—that I can’t move one side of my body is due to my neural output, but that is because of this insult which wasn’t due to my neural output. I think the same applies for other cases of brain damage and particular types of mental illness: indeed, this is implicitly recognised by the criminal justice system.
(I’ve added remarks to this effect in the body of the post—thanks for this comment!)
Now, I think that the source of our disagreement are diverging intuitions about free will and IQ.
I think that I can boost my IQ to some extent by exerting willpower; the amount of “thought power” in relaxed, normal and extreme-effort states seem to differ quite substantially.
You may see IQ score as the measure of maximal “thought power” (like when one passes IQ test when fully rested with no distractions and making his best effort); it makes IQ more or less constant, but a worse predictor of success, since success is more determined by average cleverness rather than peak cleverness.
The only factor under your control may be to realize that the only factor under your control is to obtain and use better methods and processes to think, gather information, act in the real world, generate feedback and adjust yourself.
Illustratively, no matter how innately intelligent a native English speaker might be, if he never had any experience with Japanese, he won’t be able to read and understand kanji. Is that a failure of intelligence, or a failure of knowledge and method? If you’ve never had any experience in any science, and don’t know the specialized vocabulary, then it is likely you won’t be able to understand a technical paper. Again, is that a failure of intelligence, or is it just that you’ll need some time to grow familiar with the field? A lot of intelligence and rationality is like that. Including understanding your own intelligence and capabilities to better yourself.
You’ll ned to assess where you stand now, then iteratively improve yourself. You’ll need to look outside, for information and help, to get better at it. Depending on your starting point, your incremental improvements may be slow at first, until you learn how to get better at improving yourself. You may have more terrain to cover too.
“I vow to always do my best to make my best become even better.”
Your end point may still be determined by your IQ or working memory, but the starting realization that you can ameliorate yourself, can be as simple as a few words. It’s still an external factor, but one that, depending on your sensitivity to such ideas, you could encounter regularly enough that it will eventually sink in, and start changing you. Frequenting places where such ideas are more prevalent (like here), may help bootstrap this process earlier.
I was kinda surprised to see IQ as an external factor; my impression is that internal vs. external locus of control is actually personality traits vs. circumstances and environment, and IQ obviously falls into the first category.
If you consider IQ and mental health external factors, what are the internal factors, then? Willpower? But willpower is determined by the brain structure just as IQ and mental health and other personality traits.
Basically, if you assign everything to the “external” category, so that the “internal” is an empty set (or almost empty), then one’s success is determined by “external” factors. No surprise here.
[I’ve seen your follow-up post on discussion. I thought it would be best to reply to both here.]
It may be that everything is determined by prior events all the way to the big bang. So there’s no ‘internal willer’ isolated from previous events that can steer us one way or another. But we can keep talking about ‘internal’ and ‘external’ loci of control on a compatibilist view of free will (which I’d guess is the common view, including amongst those affirming an internal locus of control).
On this sort of view, internal factors are just those our choices can change—external factors, those which our choices cannot. If I want to run faster, how much time I spend training is an internal factor: it influences how fast I can run, and I can choose (in the compatibilist sense) how much time I spend training. If I have a dense hemiparesis secondary to a birth injury, that’s an external factor—it also influences how fast I can run (indeed, whether I can run at all), and can’t choose whether or not to have a hemiparesis.
So I take those with an internal locus of control to think that—in the main—the outcomes that matter are mainly sensitive to factors that in turn are sensitive to our choices (how hard I work, how long I practice, etc.), whilst those with an external locus of control say that these things are primarily determined by factors outside of that person’s control.
It seems clear to me that IQ should be in the ‘external factors’ camp: IQ seems to be set early in life, has a large heritable component, and the non heritable bit is likely due to environmental things that I also can’t change for myself, either at the time or retroactively. The failure of brain training programs suggests that you can’t improve your IQ by any feat of effort. And we know it has all sorts of influences on how our lives turn out. If I have (due to factors outside my control) an IQ more than one standard deviation below the mean, I won’t be able to become a doctor, or a physicist (or, indeed, joining the US armed services) - no matter what else I do. Mutatis mutandis cases where it might not serve as a strict bar but a variable handicap (c.f. evidence that the beneficial effects of IQ have no clear ceiling).
The alternative account you propose for demarcating ‘external’ versus ‘internal’ factors—internal factors are those causally distal to your brain’s neural output—looks too broad: all internal factors need to be downstream of our neural output, but that isn’t sufficient. The hemiparesis case I allude to above would be one example—that I can’t move one side of my body is due to my neural output, but that is because of this insult which wasn’t due to my neural output. I think the same applies for other cases of brain damage and particular types of mental illness: indeed, this is implicitly recognised by the criminal justice system.
(I’ve added remarks to this effect in the body of the post—thanks for this comment!)
Now, I think that the source of our disagreement are diverging intuitions about free will and IQ.
I think that I can boost my IQ to some extent by exerting willpower; the amount of “thought power” in relaxed, normal and extreme-effort states seem to differ quite substantially.
You may see IQ score as the measure of maximal “thought power” (like when one passes IQ test when fully rested with no distractions and making his best effort); it makes IQ more or less constant, but a worse predictor of success, since success is more determined by average cleverness rather than peak cleverness.
The only factor under your control may be to realize that the only factor under your control is to obtain and use better methods and processes to think, gather information, act in the real world, generate feedback and adjust yourself.
Illustratively, no matter how innately intelligent a native English speaker might be, if he never had any experience with Japanese, he won’t be able to read and understand kanji. Is that a failure of intelligence, or a failure of knowledge and method? If you’ve never had any experience in any science, and don’t know the specialized vocabulary, then it is likely you won’t be able to understand a technical paper. Again, is that a failure of intelligence, or is it just that you’ll need some time to grow familiar with the field? A lot of intelligence and rationality is like that. Including understanding your own intelligence and capabilities to better yourself.
You’ll ned to assess where you stand now, then iteratively improve yourself. You’ll need to look outside, for information and help, to get better at it. Depending on your starting point, your incremental improvements may be slow at first, until you learn how to get better at improving yourself. You may have more terrain to cover too.
“I vow to always do my best to make my best become even better.”
Your end point may still be determined by your IQ or working memory, but the starting realization that you can ameliorate yourself, can be as simple as a few words. It’s still an external factor, but one that, depending on your sensitivity to such ideas, you could encounter regularly enough that it will eventually sink in, and start changing you. Frequenting places where such ideas are more prevalent (like here), may help bootstrap this process earlier.