One of the things I find most interesting is that the effect seems to be strongest for the rationality community.
I would suggest a sister theory to the intellectual curiosity angle that Scott mentioned. Eldest children spend their formative years without another child in the family to look up to. I would think that this would lead to, on average, a lower acceptance of information from authority.
This comes a bit my personal experience—I had an elder brother whose opinion I would take on as my own, even through my teens. I’d be interested to know if other younger siblings in the community have had a similar experience.
It would explain why the effect is so strong in the rationalist community. In Science and Maths it helps to challenge authoritative sources but this is actively encouraged, so the intrinsic effect needs to be less strong to get you to do it. The rationalist community is often challenging things which, culturally, aren’t supposed to be challenged which would give a higher intrinsic bar to entry.
I would suggest Regression to the Mean instead—we are only interested in this hypothesis because of its unusual high number on the survey in the first place.
I wandered about regression to the mean but with the SSC data being so large there isn’t much room for a big effect—even moving 4SD on the SSC data won’t move the mean much.
I’m afraid I don’t know how to do the maths beyond comparing confidence intervals as I did in the text.
You’re right, I should have double-checked the standard deviations before suggesting regression to the mean. I agree that regression doesn’t plausibly explain the data.
I had a question about how adoption fits in to the picture, so two things come to mind:
A) It still exists for adopted kids.
Since it’s not clear what the effect seems meaningless for single children, maybe it doesn’t exist for them.
Maybe older siblings are trusted with more responsibility or specifically watching out for younger siblings, and that has way more effect than anyone expected. This would be a pain to test, but one might try to check by seeing if the gaps between the ages of kids matter. It’s a pretty specific hypothesis though, so maybe it’d be something else about interacting a lot with younger kids while young (but older).
B) It doesn’t.
That might mean it has something to do with birth, as opposed to differences in how later/earlier children are raised.
I did a search on the first born more intelligent query and go a hit to some article published in late 2016 or early 2017 -- news paper reported on the study in Feb 2017. What the hypothesis seemed to be was that parent interact with the first child differently than the later children and provide a more mentally stimulating environment for that child.
If so any bets on when the first law suit for compensation by the younger siblings will be filed for a great share of any inheritance? (semi-joking...)
I was reading through the comments on “Advances in baby formula” and I noticed 2 claims: babies that are breastfed have higher IQ, and mothers breastfeed less with later children.
If so I wonder if that might not be traced back to immune systems—breastfeeding allows the baby to develop a strong immune system I think given the baby can borrow from mom rather than developing the response alone.
Just asking about the birth order here. What is the implication of the finding—why is this seen? Any thoughts?
One of the things I find most interesting is that the effect seems to be strongest for the rationality community.
I would suggest a sister theory to the intellectual curiosity angle that Scott mentioned. Eldest children spend their formative years without another child in the family to look up to. I would think that this would lead to, on average, a lower acceptance of information from authority.
This comes a bit my personal experience—I had an elder brother whose opinion I would take on as my own, even through my teens. I’d be interested to know if other younger siblings in the community have had a similar experience.
It would explain why the effect is so strong in the rationalist community. In Science and Maths it helps to challenge authoritative sources but this is actively encouraged, so the intrinsic effect needs to be less strong to get you to do it. The rationalist community is often challenging things which, culturally, aren’t supposed to be challenged which would give a higher intrinsic bar to entry.
I would suggest Regression to the Mean instead—we are only interested in this hypothesis because of its unusual high number on the survey in the first place.
I wandered about regression to the mean but with the SSC data being so large there isn’t much room for a big effect—even moving 4SD on the SSC data won’t move the mean much. I’m afraid I don’t know how to do the maths beyond comparing confidence intervals as I did in the text.
You’re right, I should have double-checked the standard deviations before suggesting regression to the mean. I agree that regression doesn’t plausibly explain the data.
Just wild guesses.
I had a question about how adoption fits in to the picture, so two things come to mind:
A) It still exists for adopted kids.
Since it’s not clear what the effect seems meaningless for single children, maybe it doesn’t exist for them.
Maybe older siblings are trusted with more responsibility or specifically watching out for younger siblings, and that has way more effect than anyone expected. This would be a pain to test, but one might try to check by seeing if the gaps between the ages of kids matter. It’s a pretty specific hypothesis though, so maybe it’d be something else about interacting a lot with younger kids while young (but older).
B) It doesn’t.
That might mean it has something to do with birth, as opposed to differences in how later/earlier children are raised.
I did a search on the first born more intelligent query and go a hit to some article published in late 2016 or early 2017 -- news paper reported on the study in Feb 2017. What the hypothesis seemed to be was that parent interact with the first child differently than the later children and provide a more mentally stimulating environment for that child.
If so any bets on when the first law suit for compensation by the younger siblings will be filed for a great share of any inheritance? (semi-joking...)
I was reading through the comments on “Advances in baby formula” and I noticed 2 claims: babies that are breastfed have higher IQ, and mothers breastfeed less with later children.
If so I wonder if that might not be traced back to immune systems—breastfeeding allows the baby to develop a strong immune system I think given the baby can borrow from mom rather than developing the response alone.