Richard Feynman’s intelligence
Interesting interview of Steve Hsu. I’ll reproduce the part about Feynman: 3. Is it true Feynman’s IQ score was only 125? Feynman was universally regarded as one of the fastest thinking and most creative theorists in his generation. Yet it has been reported-including by Feynman himself-that he only obtained a score of 125 on a […]
The aliens among us
Amy Harmon has a very long piece in The New York Times, Navigating Love and Autism. It’s about a couple who both have been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. Like cancer I suspect that this term brackets a lot of different issues into one catchall label, not to mention the acknowledgment that it’s a spectrum. When […]
Most Reported Genetic Associations with General Intelligence Are Probably False Positives
The title says it all, and I yanked it from a paper that is now online (and free). It’s of interest because of its relevance to the future genetic understanding of complex cognitive and behavioral traits. Here’s the abstract: General intelligence (g) and virtually all other behavioral traits are heritable. Associations between g and specific […]
The New York Times on violence and Pinker
The New York Times has a short piece on Steven Pinker up. Nothing too new to long time followers of the man and his work. I would like to point readers to the fact that Steven Pinker has a F.A.Q. up for The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. He links to my […]
The problem of false positives
False-positive psychology: undisclosed flexibility in data collection and analysis allows presenting anything as significant: In this article, we accomplish two things. First, we show that despite empirical psychologists’ nominal endorsement of a low rate of false-positive findings (≤ .05), flexibility in data collection, analysis, and reporting dramatically increases actual false-positive rates. In many cases, a […]
Social psychology: like medical science (except it doesn’t kill you)
I was warned off social psychology years ago by a friend (who was a research psychologist) because of the field’s propensity for ‘sexy’ results which get a lot of media play. As a lay person he doubted I could tell the fake from the reliable, the one off from the replicable. Later someone else told […]
Like modestly attracts like
I saw this link posted on twitter, IQ and Human Intelligence: An interesting finding from genetic research, which Mackintosh mentions, only in passing, as posing a problem in the estimation of the heritability of g, is that there is greater assortative mating for g than for any other behavioral trait; that is, spouse correlations are […]
God is intuitive
Update: An ungated version of the paper. I used to spend a lot more time talking about cognitive science of religion on this weblog. It was an interest of mine, but I’ve come to a general resolution of what I think on this topic, and so I don’t spend much time discussing it. But in […]
There would have been a Plato without Plato
In the comments of my post “Platonism is useful only when it’s useful” several people made a few references to Plato, as well as Platonism. That is fair and makes sense. And there’s a deep strain of anti-Plato sentiment amongst resp…
Half the variation in I.Q. due to variation in genes
A new paper in Molecular Psychiatry has been reported on extensively in the media, and readers have mentioned it several times in the comments. I read it. It’s titled Genome-wide association studies establish that human intelligence is highly her…
Blank slate when you want it that way
Tim Pawlenty debates Lady Gaga’s ‘Born This Way’ idea:
Gregory pressed, asking “Is being gay a choice?”
Pawlenty ultimately said, “I defer to the scientists in that regard.”
Again, Gregory pressed: “So yo…
A mismeasured Mismeasurement of Man
I would say The Mismeasurement of Man is one of the most commonly cited books on this weblog over the years (in the comments). It comes close to being “proof-text” in many arguments online, because of the authority and eminence of the autho…
Let a thousand Thiel fellows bloom!
Now that the Thiel Fellows have been announced the media has been pouncing. If you don’t know, Peter Thiel is giving a bunch of bright-young-things some money to drop out of college (or not go to college). Here are the details:
As the first membe…
Fixing science, in part
The GiveWell Blog has some suggestions for “Suggestions for the Social Sciences”. Here is the big one:
Our single biggest concern when examining research is publication bias, broadly construed. We wonder both (a) how many studies are done,…
I.Q. and genomics
In my experience most scientists are not too clear on the details of intelligence testing, perhaps because the whole area is somewhat in ill repute (except when you want to brag about your own SAT/GRE score!). This despite the fact that the profession …
Love is not a hardwired battlefield
Judging by some of the amusing search queries I find every Friday people have a wide range of tastes and fetishes when it comes to pornography. From what I can tell the realized phenotypic interval in mate choice is less varied and eye-opening, but exi…
Beware the hungry judge!
This is a datum which you can dine out on, The Bias You Didn’t Expect:
It turns out that legal realism is totally wrong. It’s not what the judge had for breakfast. It’s how recently the judge had breakfast. A a new study (media covera…
The excitement of clothed porn stars
Porn Stars, Clad? They Seem to Appeal to Indonesian Filmgoers:
Ms. Aoi, and others like her, are the secret of a winning formula stumbled upon by Maxima Pictures, the production house where Mr. Hidayat is an executive producer. For two years, Maxima ha…
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Short comment: Every college student should read this book. It’s a modern classic.
Descartes’ Baby: How The Science Of Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human
Link to review: Inducing Disgust