It is primarily a philosophical belief. It can be falsified by criticism. It could in theory be falsified using scientific tests about how brains work, but technology isn’t there yet. It could also in theory be falsified if, say, people were dramatically different than they are. But I’m not relying on any special evidence in that regard, just basic facts of the world around us we’re all aware of. (For example, people commonly hold conversations with each other and partially understand each other. And then learn new languages. And children learn a first language. And so on. These things contradict some views of the mind, but they also allow for many including mine.)
BTW Popper never said all ideas should be (empirically) falsifiable. That’s a myth (which you didn’t say, but perhaps hinted at, so worth mentioning). He said that if they can’t be then they aren’t science, but he did not intend that as an insult, and he himself engaged in a lot of non-science.
In some special cases, saying something is non-science is a good criticism. Those cases are when something claimed to be science as part of its argument for why its right, and part of its way of presenting itself. If it claims to be science, but isn’t, that’s a problem. Popper’s favorite examples of this were ideas of Marx, Freud and Adler, which made specious claims to scientific status.
You’re right—I was only teasing, except that I think there is plenty of suggestive evidence for a meaningful innate G (even though it’s a sum of various types of health, and not only genetic, much less the sum of just a few SNPs). I was thinking of falsifiability because it seems to me that you’d say in response to any study that seems to segregate people by G and measure their outcomes later, you’d just say “they were already on the path toward having a sane+rational set of beliefs+practices”.
I’ve held a tentative version of your view (that nearly anyone could in principle learn to be smart) in the past. I’ve moved away from it as I’ve read more, but I still think there’s a great deal of difference in ability to observe or judge truth, at equal native mental talent, between someone with a workable set of beliefs and skills, and someone who’s tied to enough screwed-up beliefs and practices. (probably everyone sees this)
Your unusual behavior at first made me underestimate your competence. My heuristics usually save me a great deal of time, so I won’t apologize for them, but it was diverting having them tested.
I’ve read a single book of Popper’s (something like Open Society + its Enemies) and took away from it that he was smart and disliked Plato. So I don’t think I understand what it is you like about him, or why it would be useful for me to know more of what he wrote.
I would also say that measuring outcomes is a hard issue—e.g. you have to decide what is a good outcome. And all sorts of stuff interferes. Some people are too smart—in a sense—which can lead to boredom and alienation because they are different from their peers. There may be a sweet spot a little above average but not too far. Sometimes really exceptional people have exceptional outcomes, but sometimes not. I wouldn’t predict in advance that the smartest people will have the most successful outcomes, by many normal measures of good outcomes.
There’s a saying: The B students work for the C students. The A students teach.
The first thing I’d want to know about any potential study is basically: what are you going to do and why will it work? They need philosophical sophistication to avoid all kinds of mistakes. Which is just what the Conjunction Fallacy papers lack, as well as, e.g., many heritability papers.
I’ve read a single book of Popper’s (something like Open Society + its Enemies) and took away from it that he was smart and disliked Plato.
That must have been volume 1 only. Volume 2 criticizes Marx and Hegel.
Popper’s biggest strength is his epistemology. He solved the problem of induction, identified and criticized the justificationist tradition (which most people have been unconsciously taking for granted since Aristotle), and presented a fallibilist and objective epistemology, which is neither authoritarian nor skeptical, and which works both in theory and practice. His epistemology also integrates well with other fields—there are interesting connections to physics, evolution, and computation (as discussed in Deutsch’s book The Fabric of Reality), and also to politics, education, human relationships (in the broadest sense; ways people interact, cooperate, communicate, etc) and morality.
A good place to start reading Popper is his book Conjectures and Refutations. It is a collection of essays, the first of which of which is long and covers a lot of epistemology.
Another good place to start is Bryan Magee’s short book on Popper. And another is David Deutsch’s books which explain epistemology and many other things.
My heuristics usually save me a great deal of time, so I won’t apologize for them
Yes I know what you mean. I’m sure I dismiss some people who are worthwhile (though I use rather different heuristics than you, and I also tend to give people a lot of chances. One result of giving lots of chances is I can silently judge people but then see if my judgment was wrong on the second or third chance). I think the important things are that you have some ability to recognize when they may not be working well, and that after they fail in some respect you look for a way to change them so they don’t make the same mistake again. Changing them not to repeat a mistake, while still saving lots of time, can be hard, but it’s also important.
One thing about G is that it’s extremely difficult to disentangle parenting factors. When you intelligence test people at age 8, or 12, or 20, they’ve already had years and years of exposure to parenting, and often some school too. That stuff changes people, for better or worse. So how are you to know what was innate, and what wasn’t? This is a hard problem. I don’t think any experimental social scientists have solved it. I do think philosophy can address a lot of it, but not every detail.
One thing about G is that it’s extremely difficult to disentangle parenting factors
Right. Thus the obsession with twin studies.
As for your complaint about lack of (philosophical) rigor on the part of psychologists and other scientists, I’m often shocked at the conclusions drawn (by motivated paper authors and hurried readers) from the data. In theory I can just update slightly on the actual evidence while not grasping the associated unproven stories, but in practice I’m not sure I’ve built a faithful voting body of facts in my brain.
But they do not solve the problem. The only seem to at low precision, without much rigor. They are simplistic.
For example, they basically just gloss over and ignore the entire issue of gene-meme interactions, even though, in a technical and very literal sense, most stuff falls under that heading.
What basically happens—my view—is genes code for simple traits and parents in our culture react to those different traits. The children react to those reactions. The parents react to that new behavior. The children react to that. The parents react to that. And so on. Genetic traits—and also trivial and, for all intents and purposes, random details—set these things off. And culture does the rest. And twin studies do not rule this out, yet reach other conclusions. They don’t rule out my view with evidence, nor argument, yet somehow conclude something else. It’s silly.
Sometimes one gets the impression they’ve decided that if proper science is too hard, they are justified in doing improper science. They have a right to do research in the field! Or something.
Disagree? Try explaining how they work, and how you think they rule out the various possibilities other than genetic control over traits straight through to adulthood and independent of culture.
It is primarily a philosophical belief. It can be falsified by criticism. It could in theory be falsified using scientific tests about how brains work, but technology isn’t there yet. It could also in theory be falsified if, say, people were dramatically different than they are. But I’m not relying on any special evidence in that regard, just basic facts of the world around us we’re all aware of. (For example, people commonly hold conversations with each other and partially understand each other. And then learn new languages. And children learn a first language. And so on. These things contradict some views of the mind, but they also allow for many including mine.)
BTW Popper never said all ideas should be (empirically) falsifiable. That’s a myth (which you didn’t say, but perhaps hinted at, so worth mentioning). He said that if they can’t be then they aren’t science, but he did not intend that as an insult, and he himself engaged in a lot of non-science.
In some special cases, saying something is non-science is a good criticism. Those cases are when something claimed to be science as part of its argument for why its right, and part of its way of presenting itself. If it claims to be science, but isn’t, that’s a problem. Popper’s favorite examples of this were ideas of Marx, Freud and Adler, which made specious claims to scientific status.
You’re right—I was only teasing, except that I think there is plenty of suggestive evidence for a meaningful innate G (even though it’s a sum of various types of health, and not only genetic, much less the sum of just a few SNPs). I was thinking of falsifiability because it seems to me that you’d say in response to any study that seems to segregate people by G and measure their outcomes later, you’d just say “they were already on the path toward having a sane+rational set of beliefs+practices”.
I’ve held a tentative version of your view (that nearly anyone could in principle learn to be smart) in the past. I’ve moved away from it as I’ve read more, but I still think there’s a great deal of difference in ability to observe or judge truth, at equal native mental talent, between someone with a workable set of beliefs and skills, and someone who’s tied to enough screwed-up beliefs and practices. (probably everyone sees this)
Your unusual behavior at first made me underestimate your competence. My heuristics usually save me a great deal of time, so I won’t apologize for them, but it was diverting having them tested.
I’ve read a single book of Popper’s (something like Open Society + its Enemies) and took away from it that he was smart and disliked Plato. So I don’t think I understand what it is you like about him, or why it would be useful for me to know more of what he wrote.
I would also say that measuring outcomes is a hard issue—e.g. you have to decide what is a good outcome. And all sorts of stuff interferes. Some people are too smart—in a sense—which can lead to boredom and alienation because they are different from their peers. There may be a sweet spot a little above average but not too far. Sometimes really exceptional people have exceptional outcomes, but sometimes not. I wouldn’t predict in advance that the smartest people will have the most successful outcomes, by many normal measures of good outcomes.
There’s a saying: The B students work for the C students. The A students teach.
The first thing I’d want to know about any potential study is basically: what are you going to do and why will it work? They need philosophical sophistication to avoid all kinds of mistakes. Which is just what the Conjunction Fallacy papers lack, as well as, e.g., many heritability papers.
That must have been volume 1 only. Volume 2 criticizes Marx and Hegel.
Popper’s biggest strength is his epistemology. He solved the problem of induction, identified and criticized the justificationist tradition (which most people have been unconsciously taking for granted since Aristotle), and presented a fallibilist and objective epistemology, which is neither authoritarian nor skeptical, and which works both in theory and practice. His epistemology also integrates well with other fields—there are interesting connections to physics, evolution, and computation (as discussed in Deutsch’s book The Fabric of Reality), and also to politics, education, human relationships (in the broadest sense; ways people interact, cooperate, communicate, etc) and morality.
A good place to start reading Popper is his book Conjectures and Refutations. It is a collection of essays, the first of which of which is long and covers a lot of epistemology.
Another good place to start is Bryan Magee’s short book on Popper. And another is David Deutsch’s books which explain epistemology and many other things.
Yes I know what you mean. I’m sure I dismiss some people who are worthwhile (though I use rather different heuristics than you, and I also tend to give people a lot of chances. One result of giving lots of chances is I can silently judge people but then see if my judgment was wrong on the second or third chance). I think the important things are that you have some ability to recognize when they may not be working well, and that after they fail in some respect you look for a way to change them so they don’t make the same mistake again. Changing them not to repeat a mistake, while still saving lots of time, can be hard, but it’s also important.
One thing about G is that it’s extremely difficult to disentangle parenting factors. When you intelligence test people at age 8, or 12, or 20, they’ve already had years and years of exposure to parenting, and often some school too. That stuff changes people, for better or worse. So how are you to know what was innate, and what wasn’t? This is a hard problem. I don’t think any experimental social scientists have solved it. I do think philosophy can address a lot of it, but not every detail.
Right. Thus the obsession with twin studies.
As for your complaint about lack of (philosophical) rigor on the part of psychologists and other scientists, I’m often shocked at the conclusions drawn (by motivated paper authors and hurried readers) from the data. In theory I can just update slightly on the actual evidence while not grasping the associated unproven stories, but in practice I’m not sure I’ve built a faithful voting body of facts in my brain.
Thanks for the Popper+Deutsch recommendations.
But they do not solve the problem. The only seem to at low precision, without much rigor. They are simplistic.
For example, they basically just gloss over and ignore the entire issue of gene-meme interactions, even though, in a technical and very literal sense, most stuff falls under that heading.
What basically happens—my view—is genes code for simple traits and parents in our culture react to those different traits. The children react to those reactions. The parents react to that new behavior. The children react to that. The parents react to that. And so on. Genetic traits—and also trivial and, for all intents and purposes, random details—set these things off. And culture does the rest. And twin studies do not rule this out, yet reach other conclusions. They don’t rule out my view with evidence, nor argument, yet somehow conclude something else. It’s silly.
Sometimes one gets the impression they’ve decided that if proper science is too hard, they are justified in doing improper science. They have a right to do research in the field! Or something.
Disagree? Try explaining how they work, and how you think they rule out the various possibilities other than genetic control over traits straight through to adulthood and independent of culture.
There’s other severe methodological errors too. You can read some here: http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/520.html