How malleable is IQ?
I reproduce below an enthusiastic summary of a famous study which reported considerable malleability in children's IQ score. Following that report I will offer some remarks about it.
In 1969, UCLA psychologist Dr. Robert Rosenthal did an IQ experiment.
He met with two grade-school teachers. He gave them a list of names from their new student body (20% of the class). He said that each person on that list had taken a special test and would emerge as highly intelligent within the next 12 months.
In reality, those students were chosen totally at random. As a group, they were of average intelligence.
The incredible finding is that, when they tested those children near the end of the year, each demonstrated significant increases in their IQ scores.
The twin studies always point to a large genetic component in IQ -- as high as 80%. That means that IQ is not very malleable. You are stuck with what you are born with.
This is a highly objectionable conclusion to Leftists in particular, who tend to regard people as a blank slate upon whom can be imposed traits desired in some Leftist idea of a good thing. The "new Soviet man" in early Bolshevik thinking is perhaps the best example of that. So various treatments of children have been proposed with the aim of redirecting their growth.
The most decisive test of our ability to change what children become is undoubtedly the long-running American "Head Start" program. It was designed to take children from disadvantaged backgrounds and enrich their early education in various ways. The experiment did give some early hopes of success but the long term conclusion was that the interventions had no lasting effect. "Enriching" the environment did nothing
But what about that 20% which is NOT genetically given? Could that potential be worked on in some useful way? Did the Head Start experiment simply push on the wrong levers?
All the studies so far have not found much that could profitably be changed. Early nutrition is an obvious candidate for change but even in ideal circumstances only about 5% of the variance could be accounted for that way
An interesting possibilty is that people can be made more intelligent by being treated as more intelligent. That unlikely possibilty is in fact the conclusion of the famous Rosenthal study of experimenter expectations above. There are many problems with the study which I will allude to briefly hereunder but what interested me in the study was how large were the differences found. That is not usually mentioned. They were in fact slight.
The results showed that the favoured students' IQ scores (experimental group) had risen significantly higher than the average students (control group), even though these alleged favoured students were chosen at random. They gained an average of two IQ points in verbal ability, seven points in reasoning and four points in overall IQ.
So the effects observed were slight. The two points in verbal ability were especially notable as the verbal ability score is usually the best predictor in an IQ test. So the Rosenthal treatment showed no substantial success in making IQ more malleable.
Wikipedia gives a useful summary of other problems with the Rosenthal study. I reproduce it below:
"The educational psychologist Robert L. Thorndike described the poor quality of the Pygmalion study. The problem with the study was that the instrument used to assess the children's IQ scores was seriously flawed.[6] The average reasoning IQ score for the children in one regular class was in the mentally disabled range, a highly unlikely outcome in a regular class in a garden variety school. In the end, Thorndike concluded that the Pygmalion findings were worthless. It is more likely that the rise in IQ scores from the mentally disabled range was the result of regression toward the mean, not teacher expectations. Moreover, a meta-analysis conducted by Raudenbush[7] showed that when teachers had gotten to know their students for two weeks, the effect of a prior expectancy induction was reduced to virtually zero".
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How a Storied Phrase Became a Partisan Battleground
Juan Ciscomani, a Republican who washed cars to help his Mexican immigrant father pay the bills and is now running for Congress in Arizona, has been leaning on a simple three-word phrase throughout his campaign — “the American dream.”
To him, the American dream, a nearly 100-year-old idea weighted with meaning and memory, has become something not so much to aspire to but to defend from attack.
President Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are, he says in one ad, “destroying the American dream” with “a border crisis, soaring inflation and schools that don’t teach the good things about America.”
For decades, politicians have used the phrase “the American dream” to describe a promise of economic opportunity and upward mobility, of prosperity through hard work. It has been a promise so powerful that it drew immigrants from around the world, who went on to fulfill it generation after generation. Political figures in both parties employed the phrase to promote both their own policies and their own biographies.
Now, a new crop of Republican candidates and elected officials are using the phrase in a different way, invoking the same promise but arguing in speeches, ads and mailings that the American dream is dying or in danger, threatened by what they see as rampant crime, unchecked illegal immigration, burdensome government regulations and liberal social policies. Many of these Republicans are people of color — including immigrants and the children of immigrants, for whom the phrase first popularized in 1931 has a deep resonance.
To politicians of old, “the American dream” was a supremely optimistic rhetorical device, albeit one that often obscured the economic and racial barriers that made achieving it impossible for many. To the Republican candidates embracing it today, the phrase has taken on an ominous and more pessimistic tone, echoing the party’s leader, former President Donald J. Trump, who said in 2015 that “the American dream is dead.” In the same way that many Trump supporters have tried to turn the American flag into an emblem of the right, so too have these Republicans sought to claim the phrase as their own, repurposing it as a spinoff of the Make America Great Again slogan.
Politicians have long warned that the American dream was slipping away, a note struck from time to time by former President Barack Obama, former President Bill Clinton and other Democrats. What has changed is that some Republicans now cast the situation more starkly, using the dream-is-in-danger rhetoric as a widespread line of attack, arguing that Democrats have turned patriotism itself into something contentious.
“Both parties used to celebrate the fact that America is an exceptional country — now you only have one that celebrates that fact,” said Jason Miyares, a Republican and the child of Cuban immigrants. The American dream was a part of his successful campaign to become Virginia’s first Latino attorney general.
In Texas, Representative Mayra Flores, a Mexican immigrant who became the state’s first Latina Republican in Congress, ran an ad that declared, “Democrats are destroying the American dream.” Antonio Swad, an Italian-Lebanese immigrant running for a House seat in the Dallas suburbs, said in an ad that he washed dishes at the age of 15 before opening two restaurants, telling voters the American dream does not “come from a government handout.”
Television ads for more than a dozen Republican candidates in statewide, House and Senate campaigns — more than half of whom are people of color — cite the phrase, according to AdImpact, the ad-tracking firm. Several other House hopefuls, many of them Latinas, frequently cite the words in social media posts, digital ads, campaign literature and speeches.
“In Congress, I will fight to defend the American dream,” said Yesli Vega, a former police officer who is the daughter of civil-war refugees from El Salvador and who is running for a House seat in Virginia, posted on Twitter.
“The American dream” was a marquee theme in two winning Republican campaigns in Virginia last year: the races by Winsome Earle-Sears, a Jamaica-born Marine veteran who is now the first woman of color to serve as the state’s lieutenant governor, and Mr. Miyares, the attorney general.
“On the campaign trail, I used to say, if your family came to this country seeking hope there is a good chance that your family is a lot like my family, and it would be the biggest honor of my life to be your attorney general,” said Mr. Miyares.
The Republicans relying on the phrase show the extent to which the party is diversifying its ranks and recruiting candidates with powerful come-from-behind stories. But historians and other scholars warn that some Republicans are distorting a defining American idea and turning it into an exclusionary political message.
“The Republican Party is using it as a dog whistle,” said Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University. “They are saying here is the potential of what you can have, if we can exclude others from ‘stealing it’ from you.”
Republicans dispute that their references to “the American dream” promote exclusion and say they are using the phrase the same way politicians have used it for decades — to signal hope and opportunity. “I think the left is far more pessimistic than Republicans are about the American dream,” said Representative Yvette Herrell, a New Mexico Republican who is Cherokee and the third Native American woman ever elected to Congress.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/us/politics/republicans-american-dream.html
**************************************************The gender debate is getting nastier
It is the latest outlet for furious Leftist hate
By Debbie Hayton (who is trans)
Elaine Miller is one of the grown-ups. She is a Fellow of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, with a specialism in pelvic health. She also jokes about it. Her comedy show, Viva Your Vulva: The Hole Story is currently playing at the Edinburgh Fringe. It’s a good one: the production has won awards and a five-star review. Miller is forthright – her audiences are warned about ‘strong language and swearing’ – but her performance is more than mere entertainment. In Miller’s words,
The aim of the show is that the audience leave knowing what a pelvic floor is, what it does and where to take theirs if they think it is a bit broken. It is evidence based, and so counts as CPD – possibly the funniest thing about it.
Surely her ‘laugh while you learn’ approach is something we could all support, even if her comedy is not our style? Not according to the LGBTQIA+ brigade, apparently. Miller claims that she has been subjected to abuse – even ‘spat at on the street’ – while her posters have been obscured by rainbow stickers, presumably to limit attendance.
Miller’s crime, it seems, is to promote women’s health. That is the health of human people with female bodies. While she has been clear that includes trans men and (certain) non-binary individuals, she does not mention trans women like me because we are ‘not relevant to the topic of female biological anatomy’. Quite right! We have male anatomy, even those of us who have had surgery to modify it.
But to the gender identity ideologues, this is heresy. To them trans women are women, and those who think differently can be subjected to all kinds of abuse, presumably in an attempt to shut them up. It is juvenile behaviour; Miller described it as ‘very like high school’, and she is right. She told The Spectator
I am a mother and I have dealt with toddlers and teenagers, and this is very familiar. It is intolerant, bad behaviour.
Children can and do behave badly. As a teacher, my job is to educate young people to listen to other opinions and respect them even if they personally disagree with them.
What is shocking is that other adults have caved into this bullying, even perpetuating it themselves. Miller reported that she has been shunned by fellow comics and staff, some of whom she has worked with for years. This is far more than social media defriending. As Miller told the Scottish Daily Express, ‘It’s the strangest thing for grown… adults. I go into a room and they turn their back on me. This is not appropriate behaviour from an adult.’
It isn’t. But, sadly, exposing the behaviour does not make it stop. It will only stop when those adults become sufficiently self-aware to recognise it and do better. Perhaps it is mere coincidence that Miller’s experience has happened in Edinburgh, but Scotland is home to an SNP government that seems to have made a habit of avoiding inconvenient truths about biology.
It was Nicola Sturgeon’s government that passed the Gender Representation on Public Boards Bill, that enshrined in law the concept of processes that people can undergo, ‘for the purpose of becoming female.’ The country of a government that seems determined to reform the Gender Recognition Act to allow anyone over the age of 16 to self-identify as a woman, whatever the impact on women’s sex-based rights and boundaries.
Joanna Cherry, the SNP MP for Edinburgh South West plans to be in the audience on Sunday evening. If Sturgeon is genuinely clueless about what it means to be female, then maybe she should also book a seat and listen to what Miller has to say.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/08/the-gender-debate-is-getting-nastier/
****************************************************My beef with QR code menus and other digital stomach turners
I quite agree with Helen Pitt's rant below. I walk out of a restaurant if they refuse to take my order in person. Doing things on the net is usually murderous. I am using the net right now but I am using a process that I am very familiar with. Doing any unfamiliar task on the net is to subject yourself to great frustrations, without any guarantee of eventual success.
I of course sound like an old cumudgeon in saying all that and perhaps I am, given that I am pushing 80, but I wrote my first computer program in 1967 so I am not unfamiliar with computers. It is just that some tasks are not really fit to be computerized. The programs I wrote were to do statistical analysis and computers are brilliant for that. But for dealing with government departments? Not so much
Permit me if you will a moment to share my beef about a dining trend: the QR code menu.
It’s the COVID-19 hangover that annoys me most. I’ve seen it in restaurants all over Sydney – most of them high-end – which like everyone in the hospitality game may be struggling to return to post-pandemic profitability; but this is not the way to do it.
I understand why the QR code gained traction during these past few years because of the need to minimise points of contact between patrons and restaurant professionals. Yes, I get that a paperless restaurant provides a more sanitary alternative to physical menus, and means waiters don’t need to touch potentially germ-laden credit cards. But for me, ordering from a digital waiter is dehumanising and disconnecting.
Not only do I not like ordering this way, but I am appalled that after you use the app to order, it asks for a tip. Really?! They should be giving ME a discount for moonlighting as my own waiter.
Surely I’m not the only one to feel that the joy of restaurant dining comes from the personal touches: the interaction with the waitperson who can recite the menu like a piece of poetry, or the sommelier who can explain the slope of a valley where a wine comes from and why it goes with a particular dish.
I still get misty-eyed at the memory of some of the best meals of my life in France and California, and it has not just been the food, wine and setting, but the wait staff that have made them special. I’m happy to tip for the part people play in creating the ambience. But to tip an app? That’s a bit rich.
Not only that, I can’t help but hear myself as a parent insisting the phone, like any screen, should not be a dining table utensil. I find it loathsome in my home, so why should I feel differently at a dining establishment? Not to mention elderly people who don’t have a mobile phone or know how to use it, or others who simply refuse to use it for such purposes.
As we know too well, technology often lets you down. Often the app doesn’t work, or you are asked for a PIN that has to be entered and re-entered on your phone and has you going around in digital circles. Surely getting up and walking to the bar and ordering from a real bar tender is quicker in this case.
I’m equally miffed by self-checkouts at supermarkets, especially during COVID-19 lockdowns when a trip to the grocery store was as close as it got to a fun outing. I’ll still queue up in a long line at my local Woollies to have a real-life exchange (and say hi to Di and Deidre) rather than the impersonal checking of every item yourself, which invariably doesn’t work and requires a staff member to come help anyway.
Any mental health expert will tell you it is these small but meaningful daily exchanges with people in real life in your own community that help as much as authentic honest intimate relationships with family and friends, fulfilling work and an optimistic outlook.
As for other digital discourtesies, don’t get me started with Uber. Have you noticed it defaults to not just rating your trip and driver, but adding a tip? This is deceitful carpetbagging and enough to make me want to go back to using taxis and tipping if I have a good experience.
I’m also finding the latest update to Google maps most frustrating. Perhaps it is a user fail but I’ve found myself lost so often lately because of incorrect directions. It’s enough to make me retreat to the reliable old Gregorys’ I still keep sentimentally in the back seat of the car.
And have you tried to book an airline ticket other than online lately? It’s enough to make me waltz to the local shopping centre and walk into a Flight Centre just to talk to a real-life travel agent (those who still have jobs) and pay them handsomely to sit on the telephone to the airline for me.
As for online banking – now we have banking apps I wonder what must have happened to the legions of bank managers. They already take their own form of compulsory tipping in the ridiculous fees they charge to keep our money.
I lost interest in Wordle a few months back because, despite joining an online community to humble-brag results with, it wasn’t real. It was a digital creation. I’d rather return to an old-school crossword or paper quiz where you can ask your coffee companion, or waiter or barista at your local cafe for input in real life.
Try asking that of a QR code.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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