Retired: 59% of the population having alleles that boost IQ by <10 pts only accounts for part of the gap, and most of the alleles probably have effects substantially <10pts (ITD, at about 10pts, is probably the largest effect). Also, what sort of selective pressures would produce only costly alleles of large effect without boosting the frequencies of cheap alleles of small effect? Actually, that’s my main problem with the Cochran Harpending hypothesis. The impact from the large alleles seems too large compared to the total advantage. Pressure sufficient to boost their concentrations to the observed levels should have boosted average IQ further. Something seems to be going on, but its not clear what. My best guess is some mix of a genetic bottleneck and noise boosting their starting population and the selection being from some trait other than ‘g’ which is much more enhanced by the alleles in question than ‘g’ is and which correlates with ‘g’. The personality trait Openness would be a good candidate for such a trait. Personality trait measures are by self-report, so their real impact and variance are much larger than tests indicate. I wonder if some objective measure of Openness would show huge Ashkenazi differences and huge effects for the alleles in question. Does anyone know of any proposed method for measuring this? You could regress Openness from a function of grades (which it doesn’t boost) and years of schooling (which it does, but which normally correlates with grades).
Lara, Scott: Surely interpersonal utility calculations are always dubious but become much more so when comparing people of greatly differing intelligence. If no altruistic considerations applied, how much money (or other utility-bearing fruit) would you demand (or pay Scott) to take a drug which lowered your IQ by x pts? How relevant is the endowment effect to this decision, e.g. how much would you pay to correct existing brain damage which depresses your IQ by x pts? Actually, lets replace IQ with hypothetical cognitive dimension with the sort of associated correlations that accompany IQ differences near the average, or near the lowest level that you can relate to if average is too low.
As an altruistic GURPS character, I’d probably dump a point of intelligence into single minded and some reaction modifiers, especially reputation. As a selfish GURPS character I definitely wouldn’t be tempted by any other “realistic” point sink (gadgeteer isn’t realistic).
Retired: 59% of the population having alleles that boost IQ by <10 pts only accounts for part of the gap, and most of the alleles probably have effects substantially <10pts (ITD, at about 10pts, is probably the largest effect). Also, what sort of selective pressures would produce only costly alleles of large effect without boosting the frequencies of cheap alleles of small effect? Actually, that’s my main problem with the Cochran Harpending hypothesis. The impact from the large alleles seems too large compared to the total advantage. Pressure sufficient to boost their concentrations to the observed levels should have boosted average IQ further. Something seems to be going on, but its not clear what. My best guess is some mix of a genetic bottleneck and noise boosting their starting population and the selection being from some trait other than ‘g’ which is much more enhanced by the alleles in question than ‘g’ is and which correlates with ‘g’. The personality trait Openness would be a good candidate for such a trait. Personality trait measures are by self-report, so their real impact and variance are much larger than tests indicate. I wonder if some objective measure of Openness would show huge Ashkenazi differences and huge effects for the alleles in question. Does anyone know of any proposed method for measuring this? You could regress Openness from a function of grades (which it doesn’t boost) and years of schooling (which it does, but which normally correlates with grades).
Lara, Scott: Surely interpersonal utility calculations are always dubious but become much more so when comparing people of greatly differing intelligence. If no altruistic considerations applied, how much money (or other utility-bearing fruit) would you demand (or pay Scott) to take a drug which lowered your IQ by x pts? How relevant is the endowment effect to this decision, e.g. how much would you pay to correct existing brain damage which depresses your IQ by x pts? Actually, lets replace IQ with hypothetical cognitive dimension with the sort of associated correlations that accompany IQ differences near the average, or near the lowest level that you can relate to if average is too low.
As an altruistic GURPS character, I’d probably dump a point of intelligence into single minded and some reaction modifiers, especially reputation. As a selfish GURPS character I definitely wouldn’t be tempted by any other “realistic” point sink (gadgeteer isn’t realistic).