New take on IQ

[Adrian II]

Yes, that's true, but that's hardly any news afaik. Hasn't that principle been around since at least the mid-20th century?

The notion of a quasi-(pro)active gene has been around since Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene (1976), but only in the sense that genes can be described as if they possess a will of their own, and only to the extent that they use the 'host' organism as a vehicle for their own reproduction.

This concept is now applied in a different way by Flynn, who describes genes as if they actively seek environments in which the IQ faculties of the host organism can thrive. He seems to say that one third of IQ is hardwired and the rest is the result of this interaction between genes and environment. The latter process is radically different from the old notion of the environment determining (some part of) IQ, in which the environment alone was thought to be the active component.

EDIT
Fascinating stuff, many implications. I have said it before: if I had the chance to start my life from scratch, I would go for a career in molecular biology.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Hm, then you're maybe meaning new as in supported by scientifically rigorious experiments. The idea has however been around for a long time afaik. I think I've even been involved in a discussion on this idea here on the .org a while ago, or maybe it was somewhere else... However, this is often the case in science - that scientific proof for a generally believed to be true hypotheses comes long after informal argumentation establishes it to be a reasonable assumption. And the significance of the actual scientific proof isn't worth underestimating, of course. Though, if it is the case that this proof is new or not, I can't tell, since I don't know of the involved publications (primary sources) referred to in the book.

The significance I assign to this, as well as other cases where generally accepted but not yet proven hypotheses later becoming proven, is that it means evolution is such an exact model that it's possible to derive very good hypotheses merely by doing mathematical/economical analyses of benefit. It's of course always necessary to test the hypotheses by the traditional experiments before calling them truths or very reasonable assumptions, but the work of deriving significant and useful hypotheses that are at all worth bothering to do experiments about, can be made efficient - and make the results that the subject can produce far more interesting and with far more significant impact. For instance, the more or less mathematical derivation of altruism which can be seen within the field of game theory, is much later proven to exist among chimps a few decades later (and that particular experiment is perhaps, IMO, the most significant scientific result within the field of molecular biology since Darwin).

[Husar]

Bollox.

[Adrian II]

Bollox.

How drole.

Ah, but it must be beerholder time at your end.

[Papewaio]

So you can do exercise for the mind, and the more stimulating the environment the 'fitter' the mind.

Fairly obvious when you consider the mental problems that happens to children who grow up in extreme isolation/abusive upbringings... they are often socially and mentally retarded.