Consider using strength as an analogy to intelligence.
People debating the heredity or realism of intelligence sometimes compare intelligence to height. I think, however, “height” is a bad analogy. Height is objective, fixed, easy-to-measure, and basically invariant within the same person after adulthood.*
In contrast intelligence is harder to determine, and results on the same test that’s a proxy for intelligence varies a lot from person to person. It’s also very responsive to stimulants, motivation, and incentives, especially on the lower end.
I think “strength” is a much better analogy, if you want a non-politicized analogy to think about intelligence more clearly. It’s clear that strength has both environmental and genetic factors, and that strength is real.
It’s obviously possible to make a composite measure of strength if we wanted to do so. Further, singular tests of strength (eg dead lifts or something) would correlate well with other tests of strength, so you can cheaper proxies, while also being clearly limited in both normal and edge cases.
However, believing that there’s a single objective and unambiguous measure of strength would be just as silly as believing that some people cannot be stronger than others.
Strength is clearly valuable for getting through life, while not being enough by itself to solve most problems. A good composite measure of strength should have predicative validity. Being stronger is usually better.
Most people don’t build their identities or moral worth upon believing that stronger people are morally superior, though of course some people do.
*(you decline by maybe an inch between 20 and 60, but otherwise it’s completely unchanging over time barring having your legs cut off or something).
My impression is that genetic variability in intelligence is much closer to strength than in height!
Why do you think intelligence is much more rigid? I don’t think this is true, especially at the lower end.
I also think people’s popular conceptions of strength training are swamped by “beginner gains” which I expect would be applicable to intelligence as well if we didn’t have a public schooling system.
Consider using strength as an analogy to intelligence.
People debating the heredity or realism of intelligence sometimes compare intelligence to height. I think, however, “height” is a bad analogy. Height is objective, fixed, easy-to-measure, and basically invariant within the same person after adulthood.*
In contrast intelligence is harder to determine, and results on the same test that’s a proxy for intelligence varies a lot from person to person. It’s also very responsive to stimulants, motivation, and incentives, especially on the lower end.
I think “strength” is a much better analogy, if you want a non-politicized analogy to think about intelligence more clearly. It’s clear that strength has both environmental and genetic factors, and that strength is real.
It’s obviously possible to make a composite measure of strength if we wanted to do so. Further, singular tests of strength (eg dead lifts or something) would correlate well with other tests of strength, so you can cheaper proxies, while also being clearly limited in both normal and edge cases.
However, believing that there’s a single objective and unambiguous measure of strength would be just as silly as believing that some people cannot be stronger than others.
Strength is clearly valuable for getting through life, while not being enough by itself to solve most problems. A good composite measure of strength should have predicative validity. Being stronger is usually better.
Most people don’t build their identities or moral worth upon believing that stronger people are morally superior, though of course some people do.
*(you decline by maybe an inch between 20 and 60, but otherwise it’s completely unchanging over time barring having your legs cut off or something).
But strength can be strongly increased through training, while intelligence seems to much more rigid, perhaps similar to height.
My impression is that genetic variability in intelligence is much closer to strength than in height!
Why do you think intelligence is much more rigid? I don’t think this is true, especially at the lower end.
I also think people’s popular conceptions of strength training are swamped by “beginner gains” which I expect would be applicable to intelligence as well if we didn’t have a public schooling system.