Distribution of IQs of offspring

[Palpatine]

c = correlation between the IQs of parents and children
s = standard deviation for IQs of the group the parents are sourced from
m = mean IQ of the group the parents are sourced from


Assume the distribution of IQs for the group the parents are pulled from is normal.

What is the formula for the distribution of the IQ of the child if the IQ of the parents is q ?

 

[chiro]

With regards to offspring IQ, I have noticed in different cases that the children do seem to inherit different types of creativity that the parents seem to possess.

I'll give a few examples:

Terry Tao, professor at UCLA had parents who were very quantitative: his mother was a math and physics graduate and his father was a pediatrician.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozarts family had backgrounds of professions in music, which should come as no suprise.

Nikola Tesla had a mum who was an inventor which does not really surprise me in the least.

There are a lot of other examples and I'm sure there are dozens of counter examples, but it seems that at least genetically, there might be some sort of "genetic compression" that passes information that encodes skill and talent in offspring that allows them to have developed brains in some specialty from the moment they are born.

Logically, this makes quite a lot of sense especially biologically.

With regard to IQ itself, I think a better measure would be to focus on the most abstract form of creativity. In each of the above examples, there is a specific form of creativity. The standard IQ tests don't really focus as much as they should on the notion of creativity.

With an IQ measurement that measures creativity effectively, it would be interesting to see if a strong correlation exists (and I'm conjecturing that there indeed would be some connection), but yeah if you did it with IQ tests as they are now, you wouldn't really gauge a connection that is as specific.

 

[The Investor]

How do you distinguish 'genetic compression' and simple upbringing/influence.

I find it very doubtful that highly specific skills (music, art) that are not directly related to survival would be passed on genetically at all.

 

[chiro]

How do you distinguish 'genetic compression' and simple upbringing/influence.

I find it very doubtful that highly specific skills (music, art) that are not directly related to survival would be passed on genetically at all.

Do you honestly think that the only relevant information that is passed on to offspring is purely related to survival?

Are you one of those people who takes Darwinism too seriously?

 

[mack_10]

"Do you honestly think that the only relevant information that is passed on to offspring is purely related to survival?"


Depends on how the information is passed on, if you are talking genetic information then some pattern of genes must exist for that information. Humanity probably hasn't evolved much in the last 6000 years, only pre-existing genes would have an influence.

The genes that predipose an individual to musical talent would include genes that affect hearing, manual dexterity and that abstract understanding of patterns that seems to underly the thing we call intelligence.

Since most of these traits are polygenic it is doubtful that a simple statistical distribution will produce a nice bell curve between parents and offspring.

But if the information being transmitted from generation to generation is cultural and passed semantically then I would expect a strong correlation.

 

[The Investor]

Not really chiro, I was deliberately taking an extreme view to get the point across.

I do believe that generally speaking, too much emphasis is placed on what people call 'natural born talent'. If you have a parent (or another person during childhood with a very strong influence on you) who is very good at something and you follow the same interest/profession, and are highly successful, I believe it will more likely be due to learning than something you were born with.

I also believe intelligence to be far less rigid than is commonly assumed.

 

[chiro]

I also believe intelligence to be far less rigid than is commonly assumed.

Absolutely. To me if I were to define intelligence, I would define it through the use of creativity.

What I mean by that is that you test peoples ability to create something under time pressure.

With all the kinds of intelligence that people have like musical, math, emotional blah blah blah, something that seems to unite a lot of these is creativity.

I saw a documentary that was on some british channel that bought in I think five people with very strong intelligence in a particular area, one was a fighter pilot, one was an artist, one had a career in drama, one was the worlds best female chess player, and there were others but I can't remember.

What they did is they tested intelligence by giving each one problems that did not require specific learned intelligence (ie a kid could understand the problem straight away) but tested each persons ability to creatively solve problems.

Personally I think these psychologists that designed the tests have the right idea of what intelligence is.

 

[mack_10]

"What I mean by that is that you test peoples ability to create something under time pressure."

So if someone like Newton or Einstein took years to produce their theories they are not genius (what is the plural of genius? genii?) by your definition? Don't think so.

 

[chiro]

"What I mean by that is that you test peoples ability to create something under time pressure."

So if someone like Newton or Einstein took years to produce their theories they are not genius (what is the plural of genius? genii?) by your definition? Don't think so.

Time pressure does not limit time to be a brief period like hours, days, or weeks.

Your examples of Newton and Einstein are still valid because the kind of problem they were solving was orders of magnitudes higher than a lot of problems in terms of complexity and creativity required to solve it.

To put it into perspective, you need to have some kind of reference point for the creativity and complexity of the problem. If you asked most people to do what Newton and Einstein did back when the problem was unsolved and asked them to solve it, you would get a sense of the intelligence of Newton and Einstein.

If a monkey takes 10,000 days to write a Shakespearean novel, chances are you won't be impressed. If a man writes hundreds of Shakespearean novels in his lifetime, chances are you will be more impressed with him than the monkey.

But if you are going to have some objective quantifier of intelligence, time would certainly be an important measure. Theoretically if we had infinite time we could probably accomplish anything, but that wouldn't really be that impressive now would it?

 

[mack_10]

If a monkey takes 10,000 days to write a Shakespearean play I would be impressed. I've never written a Shakespearean play. Genius is noticing something that no one else has, how many people before Newton saw an apple fall and thought no more about it.

 

[Jupiterx5]

Time pressure does not limit time to be a brief period like hours, days, or weeks.

Your examples of Newton and Einstein are still valid because the kind of problem they were solving was orders of magnitudes higher than a lot of problems in terms of complexity and creativity required to solve it.

To put it into perspective, you need to have some kind of reference point for the creativity and complexity of the problem. If you asked most people to do what Newton and Einstein did back when the problem was unsolved and asked them to solve it, you would get a sense of the intelligence of Newton and Einstein.

If a monkey takes 10,000 days to write a Shakespearean novel, chances are you won't be impressed. If a man writes hundreds of Shakespearean novels in his lifetime, chances are you will be more impressed with him than the monkey.

But if you are going to have some objective quantifier of intelligence, time would certainly be an important measure. Theoretically if we had infinite time we could probably accomplish anything, but that wouldn't really be that impressive now would it?

Your right but when it comes to testing someone, If your going to time someone who has axiety issues, that person might be extremely intelligent but will screw up there solution and take longer to solve the problem, than if they weren't being timed. So I suggest if your going to test your theory don't let your group know your testing them. I just felt like adding that.