Not defending the conclusions of his article, but Shalizi does address at least one of the points you say he doesn’t. In the section titled “How to make 2766 independent abilities look like one g factor” he explains why he’s not impressed by correlations between performance on different tests. I don’t know enough to properly judge the quality of his argument, but it is there.
Yes, I read that. The issue is that all the factors we’ve been able to test for turn out to be correlated. If those 2766 independent abilities actually exist, we’ve been totally unable to find them.
(I don’t know when you posted this comment, but shortly after making this post I tried to edit it to make this point clearer.)
Edit: I should add that Robin Hanson’s comments on this issue seem plausible:
Human mental abilities correlate across diverse tasks, but this can result from assortative mating, from task ability complementarities, or from an overall brain chemistry resource parameter. There is little reason to believe high IQ folks have a brain architecture feature that low IQ folks lack.
Still, I think it’s clear that something important is going on with IQ.
I would be equally surprised if there were no individual nervous system differences both general and modular in metabolism, architecture and size since all of those are genetically controlled and different configurations impose different costs and benefits. Why would the brain be any different than other organs in this sense?
Training probably also has both general and modular benefits, and it could begin as early as in the womb.
Consider also that since the brain seems to lack a proper software-hardware distinction, you might not even be able to distinguish some parts of iq and training simply by looking at the brain.
I haven’t had time to read the Geoffrey Miller paper he links to in that section, but based on what I know of reading Miller’s other work, that certainly sounds like a caricature of Miller’s views.
Not defending the conclusions of his article, but Shalizi does address at least one of the points you say he doesn’t. In the section titled “How to make 2766 independent abilities look like one g factor” he explains why he’s not impressed by correlations between performance on different tests. I don’t know enough to properly judge the quality of his argument, but it is there.
Yes, I read that. The issue is that all the factors we’ve been able to test for turn out to be correlated. If those 2766 independent abilities actually exist, we’ve been totally unable to find them.
(I don’t know when you posted this comment, but shortly after making this post I tried to edit it to make this point clearer.)
Edit: I should add that Robin Hanson’s comments on this issue seem plausible:
Still, I think it’s clear that something important is going on with IQ.
I would be equally surprised if there were no individual nervous system differences both general and modular in metabolism, architecture and size since all of those are genetically controlled and different configurations impose different costs and benefits. Why would the brain be any different than other organs in this sense?
Training probably also has both general and modular benefits, and it could begin as early as in the womb.
Consider also that since the brain seems to lack a proper software-hardware distinction, you might not even be able to distinguish some parts of iq and training simply by looking at the brain.
I think Shalizi addresses the other point as well, in the part about “MSICS scores”.
I haven’t had time to read the Geoffrey Miller paper he links to in that section, but based on what I know of reading Miller’s other work, that certainly sounds like a caricature of Miller’s views.