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#61
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IQ and what it means in adulthood
On Nov 10, 7:02 pm, Sarah Vaughan wrote:
Banty wrote: I've always thought that being smart to the degree of ignoring social conventions had more to do with that. Like the math whiz who works as a school custodian, submitting papers to mathematical journals (may be apocryphal story though ...). Heh - I thought that was the plot of 'Good Will Hunting'? ;-) Anyway, it would probably help if I gave the context here - the debate was about the studies showing a correlation between breastfeeding and increased IQ, and - if that association is real and not due to a confounder - what it means in practice. I must say I was never terribly impressed by the kind of numbers I was hearing - in the studies being discussed, the average difference was seven IQ points, which just didn't really sound like that much in practice to me. But the question came up, and it got me wondering whether I was right about that or not. Here is a report on a study saying that breastfeeding does not boost IQ. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5398738.stm Breast milk 'does not boost IQ' Breastfed babies are smarter because their mothers are clever in the first place, not because of any advantage of breastfeeding itself, a study suggests. Researchers found breastfeeding mothers tended to be more intelligent, more highly educated, and likely to provide a more stimulating home environment. However, they stressed that there were still many advantages to breastfeeding. The British Medical Journal study was carried out by the Medical Research Council and University of Edinburgh. Lead researcher Geoff Der said: "This question has been debated ever since a link between the two [high IQ and breastfeeding] was first discovered in 1929. "Breastfed children do tend to score higher on intelligence tests, but they also tend to come from more advantaged backgrounds." The researchers analysed data from more than 5,000 children and 3,000 mothers in the US. They found that mothers who breastfed tended to be more intelligent, and when this fact was taken into account, most of the relationship between breastfeeding and the child's intelligence disappeared. The rest was accounted for by other aspects of the family background. Sibling comparison The researchers also looked at families where one child was breastfed and another was not. This confirmed the earlier results - the breastfed child was no more intelligent than his or her sibling. Putting the results together with other studies that measured the mother's IQ confirmed this pattern. Mr Der said: "This research shows that intelligence is determined by factors other than breastfeeding. "But breastfeeding has many benefits for both mother and child. It's definitely the smart thing to do." Breastfeeding has been linked to a range of health benefits. Just one day of breastfeeding is thought to be enough to stabilise a baby's blood sugar levels, and provide natural antibodies against disease. Breastfed babies have been shown to be less prone to diarrhoea, vomiting, and respiratory infections. Breastfeeding may also have a long impact on reducing blood pressure and obesity. The World Health Organization recommends that babies should be breastfed for at least the first two years. The UK has one of the lowest breastfeeding rates in Europe - almost a third of women in England and Wales never try to breastfeed, compared with just 2% in Sweden. Low rates Rosie Dodds, of the National Childbirth Trust, said the study was not conclusive. She said a study in the Philippines - where, unlike the West, poorer women are more likely to breastfeed - showed that breastfed children were likely to be more intelligent. However, she added: "Women do not breastfeed because of any benefit to their baby, they do it because it feels like the natural thing to do. "It is important that women make a decision that is right for them, and their family, and they should not be pressurised either way, but we would like to see more support for women who do decide they want to breastfeed." The Department of Health said breastfeeding was the best form of nutrition for infants. "We know that the composition of breast milk meets the individual needs of each baby and that, as a result, breastfeeding can make a major contribution to public health." |
#62
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IQ and what it means in adulthood
On Thu, 15 Nov 2007 06:18:20 -0800 (PST), Beliavsky
wrote: Researchers found breastfeeding mothers tended to be more intelligent, more highly educated, and likely to provide a more stimulating home environment. And this study was conducted by looking at only those in Western cultures who breastfed? Would the same be true in developing countries? -- Dorothy There is no sound, no cry in all the world that can be heard unless someone listens .. The Outer Limits |
#63
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IQ and what it means in adulthood
Beliavsky wrote:
Here is a report on a study saying that breastfeeding does not boost IQ. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5398738.stm Breast milk 'does not boost IQ' Breastfed babies are smarter because their mothers are clever in the first place, not because of any advantage of breastfeeding itself, a study suggests. Researchers found breastfeeding mothers tended to be more intelligent, more highly educated, and likely to provide a more stimulating home environment. This is the same study posted before (easily found with a little googling). Again, while it is an interesting study, there are other studies that have controlled for maternal intelligence that have come up with different results. I think the jury is still out on this one. Best wishes, Ericka |
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IQ and what it means in adulthood
enigma wrote:
ya know, i don't give a rat's ass about the economy, since that's a societal construct, but actual *resources* are finite. just because more people makes procuring resources easier & therefore cheaper still doesn't address the issue of what we do when they run out... and they WILL run out. The ones that we have now will run out if that's all we keep on using, but what will also happen during that time is that we'll discover new ways to use things that we wouldn't necessarily think of as resources at the moment (for example, if we were having this debate a hundred years ago, petrol wouldn't even be included as a resource on the list). So looking at the things we can use as resources now only tells us part of the story - we will, effectively, have increasing amounts of resources to draw on as the years go by. I still agree that it's not a good idea to increase population willy-nilly, but going to the opposite extreme can also cause major problems - if the population growth in a given country drops too drastically below replacement levels, then a generation or so down the line you end up with a population that's top-heavy with dependent elderly and not enough people of working age to support them. When I've seen figures (and the ones I saw were some years out of date, so this may have changed), that seemed far more likely to be a risk in Western countries, where population growth rates were consistently at or below replacement levels (almost always below, on the figures I saw). Now, as I say, the details of these may be out of date. But there did seem to me to be a very consistent pattern that, in societies where women are given the option of controlling their fertility safely and of living productive lives of status in ways other than having children, the population replacement levels have dropped to the point where the country is more likely to run into future problems with replacement levels being too low than with them being too high. (None of which is to say that I think it's a great idea to encourage a woman to have more children without taking into account that she might have some preference of her own in the matter, because I don't. I just hold that belief for different reasons.) All the best, Sarah -- http://www.goodenoughmummy.typepad.com "That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be" - P. C. Hodgell |
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IQ and what it means in adulthood
Chookie wrote:
In article .com, Beliavsky wrote: It's not a matter of status, and it would not be mostly for my sake. Since I think more intelligent people create benefits for society, based on the research I have cited, I will try to encourage my kids to marry smart and good people and have lots of kids. I'm not sure how to accomplish that, but I have plenty of time to think about it. On average, less intelligent and responsible people have more kids than their opposites, and that's a bad thing for society. Some people worry about global warming. I worry about this. If you want to get into eugenics, I suggest you try a breed less complex than humans. Budgies, maybe. snort Love that line... ;-) It depends how simplistic Beliavsky wants to be about it. "If my daughter marries a smart man then she'll have smarter children" has holes in the logic that you could drive a truck through. "Marrying a smart man is one of many ways in which my granddaughter can maximise her chances of having smarter children" is a lot more realistic, and I suspect it's a much more accurate statement of his beliefs. Whether marrying a smart man in a calculated attempt to get smarter children is a *desirable* thing to be aiming to get your daughter to do is a completely different matter, of course. All the best, Sarah -- http://www.goodenoughmummy.typepad.com "That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be" - P. C. Hodgell |
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IQ and what it means in adulthood
"Sarah Vaughan" wrote in message ... Chookie wrote: In article .com, Beliavsky wrote: It's not a matter of status, and it would not be mostly for my sake. Since I think more intelligent people create benefits for society, based on the research I have cited, I will try to encourage my kids to marry smart and good people and have lots of kids. I'm not sure how to accomplish that, but I have plenty of time to think about it. On average, less intelligent and responsible people have more kids than their opposites, and that's a bad thing for society. Some people worry about global warming. I worry about this. If you want to get into eugenics, I suggest you try a breed less complex than humans. Budgies, maybe. snort Love that line... ;-) It depends how simplistic Beliavsky wants to be about it. "If my daughter marries a smart man then she'll have smarter children" has holes in the logic that you could drive a truck through. "Marrying a smart man is one of many ways in which my granddaughter can maximise her chances of having smarter children" is a lot more realistic, and I suspect it's a much more accurate statement of his beliefs. Whether marrying a smart man in a calculated attempt to get smarter children is a *desirable* thing to be aiming to get your daughter to do is a completely different matter, of course. And then there's the little thing that not all smart women may be biologically equipped to have children. I'm certainly a child-oriented person, and have made my profession largely working with children while being told on every side that I'm too smart to "waste myself" (how is teaching young children at the time of their lives when they're most primed for learning wasting yourself?)-but it took four years of trying to get pregnant the first time, which ended in a pregnancy loss, three more years to get pregnant again (one of which was recovery), which finally had a healthy child, and after 3 more years, well, no sign of another baby yet! Given my reproductive history, it's a darned good thing that I HAD a career and life goals apart from being a mother and raising children-had I decided that my role in life was to pass on my IQ and genes, it would have been pretty frustrating! I admit that had I the chance to do it over again, and had I known that it would take years to get pregnant, I wouldn't have been so set on getting tenure with the school system, since I probably would have had the 3 years of good evaluations before I got pregnant anyway! |
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IQ and what it means in adulthood
Donna Metler wrote:
Given my reproductive history, it's a darned good thing that I HAD a career and life goals apart from being a mother and raising children-had I decided that my role in life was to pass on my IQ and genes, it would have been pretty frustrating! And how much more frustrating it would have been if your own father's opinion was that your primary value lay in your ability to procreate! If your family can't stand behind you for who you are rather than whom you can produce, who will? Best wishes, Ericka |
#68
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IQ and what it means in adulthood
On Nov 16, 6:22 am, Sarah Vaughan wrote:
If you want to get into eugenics, I suggest you try a breed less complex than humans. Budgies, maybe. snort Love that line... ;-) It depends how simplistic Beliavsky wants to be about it. "If my daughter marries a smart man then she'll have smarter children" has holes in the logic that you could drive a truck through. "Marrying a smart man is one of many ways in which my granddaughter can maximise her chances of having smarter children" is a lot more realistic, and I suspect it's a much more accurate statement of his beliefs. It is, although I would replace "one of many" with "the primary". From what I have read, there is little one can do to boost a child's intelligence beyond its natural limits, but bad enough parenting can certainly stunt or even kill a child. Whether marrying a smart man in a calculated attempt to get smarter children is a *desirable* thing to be aiming to get your daughter to do is a completely different matter, of course. What's undesirable about it? It would apply to sons too, since AFAIK the IQs of the two parents matter equally Of course, there are other characteristics, such as looks, character, athletic ability etc. that also have some heritability and that someone would consider. Of course you would want a spouse that is smart, good-looking and kind for your own sake, too. When looking for a spouse, I was not looking for someone whose interests were very similar to mine. I'd probably still be single if I had held out for a right-wing, stock-market-following, chess-playing, computer programming, atheist Asian Indian woman. In fact my wife is uninterested in politics, is not an avid chess player, does not program, and is Hindu. She likes to paint and garden. I did not give her an IQ test, but dummies don't become physicians, and she seemed smart in general. To sum up, I don't believe in the "soul-mate" or "I want someone just like me" approaches to mate selection but rather in looking for qualities that are more objectively desirable (and likely to be passed on). |
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IQ and what it means in adulthood
On Nov 16, 6:18 am, Sarah Vaughan wrote:
I still agree that it's not a good idea to increase population willy-nilly, but going to the opposite extreme can also cause major problems - if the population growth in a given country drops too drastically below replacement levels, then a generation or so down the line you end up with a population that's top-heavy with dependent elderly and not enough people of working age to support them. When I've seen figures (and the ones I saw were some years out of date, so this may have changed), that seemed far more likely to be a risk in Western countries, where population growth rates were consistently at or below replacement levels (almost always below, on the figures I saw). Yes, especially in continental Europe -- there are statistics at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...rtility_rat e .. European whites are largely secular and socially liberal, two qualities negatively correlated with fertility. One can debate the intellectual merits of socially liberal atheism, but demographically it is a failure. Europe will become Muslim and more socially conservative because Muslims have higher birth rates. |
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IQ and what it means in adulthood
On Nov 15, 3:14 am, Chookie wrote:
On average, less intelligent and responsible people have more kids than their opposites, and that's a bad thing for society. Some people worry about global warming. I worry about this. If you want to get into eugenics, I suggest you try a breed less complex than humans. Budgies, maybe. I suggest you read the newspaper. We are learning what genes are responsible for various individual differences, as discussed in a New York Times article http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/17/us/17dna.html My Genome, Myself: Seeking Clues in DNA by Amy Harmon November 17, 2007 and 'Nonscientists are already beginning to stitch together highly speculative conclusions about the historically charged subject of race and intelligence from the new biological data. Last month, a blogger in Manhattan described a recently published study that linked several snippets of DNA to high I.Q. An online genetic database used by medical researchers, he told readers, showed that two of the snippets were found more often in Europeans and Asians than in Africans. No matter that the link between I.Q. and those particular bits of DNA was unconfirmed, or that other high I.Q. snippets are more common in Africans, or that hundreds or thousands of others may also affect intelligence, or that their combined influence might be dwarfed by environmental factors. Just the existence of such genetic differences between races, proclaimed the author of the Half Sigma blog, a 40-year- old software developer, means "the egalitarian theory," that all races are equal, "is proven false."' http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/us/11dna.html The DNA Age: In DNA Era, New Worries About Prejudice By Amy Harmon November 11, 2007 I would change the title to "Egalitarian dogmatists worry the truth is coming out". |
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