Grrrrr.… Ok, I’m definitely shifting to the “the field is complicated and the results are uncertain” meta-position on genetics. Still on the “genes are pretty important” side, but no longer willing to rule out environmental explanations (even shared environment is important, apparently, when comparing between countries).
This seems to me like it’s likely explained by a handful of factors like the following:
Yes, explanations aren’t hard to find. But I would be at least a little bit wary of jumping straight on to “obviously all the economics waffle about externalities and public goods is wrong”. Even with those explanations, this means there are other factors influencing country IQ vs country wealth, implying that we can’t use that comparison to tell us strong facts about the importance of IQ in outcomes.
Grrrrr.… Ok, I’m definitely shifting to the “the field is complicated and the results are uncertain” meta-position on genetics.
I think this is mostly a “small sample size” thing, like with international IQ comparisons. (This specific thing was a case of “the level of A and B are both individually significant, but the difference between A and B isn’t significant,” as I recall.)
Grrrrr.… Ok, I’m definitely shifting to the “the field is complicated and the results are uncertain” meta-position on genetics. Still on the “genes are pretty important” side, but no longer willing to rule out environmental explanations (even shared environment is important, apparently, when comparing between countries).
Yes, explanations aren’t hard to find. But I would be at least a little bit wary of jumping straight on to “obviously all the economics waffle about externalities and public goods is wrong”. Even with those explanations, this means there are other factors influencing country IQ vs country wealth, implying that we can’t use that comparison to tell us strong facts about the importance of IQ in outcomes.
I think this is mostly a “small sample size” thing, like with international IQ comparisons. (This specific thing was a case of “the level of A and B are both individually significant, but the difference between A and B isn’t significant,” as I recall.)