Virtuously irrational
I have a review of The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t up over at Quillette. The book begins with the Dreyfus affair, and I […]
The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 23: The Ape That Understood The Universe
The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 23: The Ape That Understood The UniverseThis week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and Google Podcasts) we discuss the “evolutionary psychology” with Steve Stewart-Williams. The author of The …
An evolved mind
Imagine a human. We are a terrestrial, bipedal, and hairless mammal. This is very atypical in comparison to our relatives the apes and monkeys. These physical differences present us with a question: why?Why do humans lack the fur that is generally comm…
A blueprint in our genes for behavior?
Since the emergence of the field of genetics over a century ago the question of “nature vs. nurture” has loomed large over the field when it comes to the nature of “human nature.” The very term “human nature” is a tell as to its origins and early conno…
Judith Rich Harris, 1938-2018
Sad to learn of the death of a major influence and dear friend, the brilliant and witty psychologist Judith Rich Harris. Too early for an obit, but the NYT review of her magnum opus may be found here: https://t.co/nrqZyHJqMc — Steven Pinker (@sapinker) December 30, 2018 With hindsight, I judge Steve Pinker’s The Blank Slate: […]
The Insight show notes: episode 30, Genetics and educational attainment
This week Razib and Spencer discussed the relationship between educational attainment and genetics on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Play) with James Lee, lead author of Gene discovery and polygenic prediction from a genome-wide assoc…
The genetics of education
Yale UniversityIn the modern world, obtaining an education is a rite of passage. Not only does education provide one with skills useful for the modern economy, but it also helps to form one’s values and socializes one with peers who go through the same…
The “g” in genes
What’s next?Intelligence, or smarts, is once of those words which has many meanings. That’s why we say “street smart” or “book smart.” When psychologists speak of intelligence, however, they are usually referring to something more precise and specific….
The rich can afford to not steal
Pardis Sabeti has an op-ed in The Boston Globe, For better science, call off the revolutionaries. In it, she contrasts and compares the changes in social psychology and genetics over the past 15 years. In the former, you have had the replication crisis, while in the latter you saw the confirmation that many candidate-gene studies […]
Motivated reasoning in “science journalism.”
The “reproducibility crisis” has really benefited some sectors of science journalism, as there is less credulous amplification of spurious results. That being said, motivated reasoning is powerful. They “want to believe.” So when I saw this piece in Quartz, Highly motivated kids have a greater advantage in life than kids with a high IQ, I […]
The backlash against social psychology was pent up demand
Both Slate and When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy, have pieces deconstructing the fall from grace of an idea like “power posing.” This is all obviously wrapped up in the “replication crisis”, which is impacting most sciences which use some statistics and are generally characterized by modest and complex causal effects (social and biological […]
The coming reign of the Baby Boomer gerontocracy
From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life is one of my favorite books. It’s one of those works whose breadth and depth is such that I would recommend it to anyone. Jacques Barzun began writing this work when he was 84, and it was published in his 93rd […]
Which results from cognitive psychology are robust & real?
A paper on the psychology of religious belief, Paranormal and Religious Believers Are More Prone to Illusory Face Perception than Skeptics and Non-believers, came onto my radar recently. I used to talk a lot about the theory of religious cognitive psyc…
Who believes in I.Q.?
There are many things that a given individual believes which are ‘heterodox’ in their social circle. For example, I have long thought that intelligence tests are predictive of life outcomes, and somewhat heritable in a genetic sense (these …
Cousin marriage can reduce I.Q. a lot
In light of the previous post I was curious about the literature on inbreeding depression of IQ. A literature search led me to conclude two things:
– This is not a sexy field. A lot of the results are old.
– The range in depression for first cousin mar…
Reason: the God that fails, but we keep socially promoting….
One point which I’ve made on this weblog several times is that on a whole range of issues and behaviors people simply follow the consensus of their self-identified group. This group conformity probably has deep evolutionary origins. It is often m…
Reason: the God that fails, but we keep socially promoting….
One point which I’ve made on this weblog several times is that on a whole range of issues and behaviors people simply follow the consensus of their self-identified group. This group conformity probably has deep evolutionary origins. It is often m…
Bias in psychology
Ed Yong has a piece in Nature on the problems of confirmation bias and replication in psychology. Yong notes that “It has become common practice, for example, to tweak experimental designs in ways that practically guarantee positive results.̶…
The “sex difference factor”?
There’s a new paper in PLoS ONE, The Distance Between Mars and Venus: Measuring Global Sex Differences in Personality*, which suggests that by measuring variation of single observed personality traits researchers are missing larger underlying patterns of difference. The Distance Between Mars and Venus: Measuring Global Sex Differences in Personality: In conclusion, we believe we […]
Too smart to be a good cop
Several readers have pointed me to this amusing story, Court OKs Barring High IQs for Cops: A man whose bid to become a police officer was rejected after he scored too high on an intelligence test has lost an appeal in his federal lawsuit against the city. … “This kind of puts an official face […]