Intelligence, Heredity, Culture, and Values

I won't be satisfied with any "hereditarian hypothesis" related to intelligence until some outline of pathways of cause and effect can be drawn between specific points of genomic inheritance/epigenetic effects (we've hardly begun to measure those) and the activation of specific mental faculties and traits. Without that, all you have are various correlative measures using very general criteria (i.e., correlating "measured IQ" with income earnings in adulthood, etc.) Cheap shorthand.

I also think the old-line status quo view that intellectual achievement emerges from some monolithic substrate- i.e., "Spearman's g", or "general intelligence"- has already been discredited by research findings related to ASD, ADD, etc. The educational psychology testing industry just doesn't want to admit it yet, because the credibility of the entire field is discredited if it's acknowledged that Raven's Progressive Matrices and the Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale measure two very different types of what's supposed to be the same General Intelligence potential.

I don't doubt that a large number of specific mental aptitudes are related to biology, but between genomic inheritance, epigenetics, and developmental windows, that's a tricky thing to trace precisely. Some people have a mental aptitude for connecting human faces with their proper names, even with people they've met only once--I'd venture that involves a combination of genetic advantage, epigenetics, and the strngthening of neural connections built by exercise. How much of what where when, no one can say. The possession of that aptitude involves skill sets associated with high intelligence- but that doesn't mean that those of us who lack the ability (raises hand) are necessarily "less intelligent." Then there are the even more dramatic demonstrations of activated mental ability, like the uncanny mathematical facility of so-called "idiot savants".

I hope you're getting the idea, which is that We Don't Know. Mental ability isn't demonstrated with simple measures, the way sprinting prowess is. And while biological research has proven the connection between a high density of fast-twitch muscle fibers and the ability to excel at the 100 meter hurdles, it's still possible to possess those muscle fibers and not be able to run all that fast, because other factors can interfere with optimal performance. Even in that case, It Isn't That Simple.

There’s another confounding factor: no one thinks Intelligent all the time. People are good at what they’re good at, and after that, who knows? A PhD/MBA/MFA/MD/JD does nor confer anyone with expertise on Everything. It’s a considerable achievement, but also a narrow one. Authentic polymaths are very, very rare in my observation, and even they are not infallible. And once Ideology and Identity show up, everyone gets a little more sentimental and stupid than they otherwise would be. When that curdles into Partisanship, stupidity is compounded by an erosion of values.

So maybe we should simply drop all the categorical abstractions about intelligence and credentialing in favor of focusing on reading individuals as individuals- on cold reading skills in personal encounters, and also in the sense of reading someones words. Determining intelligence is something to be done on a case by case basis. Relative to some objective. With someone you don’t know well, be a good cop detective. I know, it doesn’t graph well.

Since these discussions so often boil down to group inferences drawn from anecdotal bullshit ("number of Nobel Prize Winners in Science who are of [ ] ethnicity", and similar listicles, flatteries, calumnies and balderdash, etc.), I might as well add an anecdotal example that recently stuck in my mind. It's about a Jewish immigrant who worked shoveling lard in the Chicago stockyards so that he could afford to expose his young son to the opportunity to develop a love of music, and later to pay for his musical education. The name of the child was Benny Goodman, who later became a jazz clarinet player and bandleader of some renown...at least for a while. (If radio and arts education was worth a damn in this anti-intellectual country, more young Americans might be familiar with his name, and those of his bandmates- like Lionel Hampton, Teddy Wilson, Gene Krupa, Charlie Christian. And, even more importantly, with the American music they played. Benny Goodman had a feel for Mozart, too.)

Now, what is that about? Maybe we should be paying more attention to the "immigrantarian" hypothesis- whatever it is makes that tick. And what gets it to tick so particularly well in United States of America, as a matter of historical record. Whatever that intersection of opportunity and prosocial values represents, in our still youthful polity. Even as a lesson for non-immigrants, like myself. No hard fast rules, hmm?

Benny Goodman was Jewish, of course, and I am not. I'm a garden variety whitey who grew up thinking--somewhat to the dismay of my parents--that the clarinet was a corny instrument for old people, until I wised up a couple of decades back and realized that the Benny Goodman Quarter plays some of the finest music ever. I don't know how exactly how to explain that expansion of my ears and mind, either, except that I don't think that the answer is to be found in a "hereditarian hypothesis."

As I noted above, I acknowledge a role for genetics as a basis for intellectual aptitudes- I’m not a “blank slate” adherent. That said, it always rankles me when I hear of someone using “DNA” as a metaphor, like “cultural DNA”, etc. That isn’t the way DNA inheritance works. But I can’t say I reject the biological transmission and inheritance of specific aptitudes entirely; I just think that if it exists, the pathway is unlikely to be DNA. On the other hand, RNA- now that is an intriguing avenue for more research. RNA seems to encode specific memories that are transmissible from organism to organism. As such, RNA might help to ease a learning curve in regard to building memory-related skill sets and abilities. The popular notion that musical ability, facility with mathematics, etc. “runs in families” may possibly have some basis in fact, and the advantage may be more than that achieved by nurture alone. If so, it’s possible that someone who pushes through obstacles to build a skill set unfamiliar to their family and social network may be encoding an advantage that could conceivably be passed on to their offspring- not as a result of DNA mutation, but through transmission of RNA encoding. Which implies that increases in intellect-related abilities may be inherited within the span of only one generation. The big leap is the first one, from complete unfamiliarity to the incorporation of memory details passed on to offspring.

As applied to humans, this hypothesis is untested. But the role of RNA in transmitting memories from one organism to another continues, and at least one recent study shows that it may have some basis in fact. I know, snails. But when the topic is the basic building blocks of animal existence, the “rootstock” is the same. To draw on a different biochemical example, serotonin is a compound that’s found ubiquitously in every animal species with enough complexity to exhibit “bilaterality” i.e., from worms and insects, on out. Serotonin performs many more functions for higher organisms like mammals—including primates, and the human species—than it does for flatworms. But what serotonin does for flatworms, it also does for every more complex animal. Just something to think about. RNA memory encoding and transmission is definitely a research direction that’s getting more attention. I’m skeptical that we’ll ever be able to simply inject instant facility with Calculus into every human, or what have you. But it may be possible to find some means of transmitting some intellect-related advantages via RNA induction.

That said, we haven’t even achieved the dawn of that research at the human level. So let’s not get carried away.* More pressing matters command our attention, like how to sustain the global human population in balance with the rest of the natural realm of the planet. Otherwise, we’re in for some nasty surprises. We may be in for some of them anyway, at this point in the human adventure. But we need to strengthen the things that remain, instead of capitulating to entropy and implosion.

[*There’s a popular misconception that the mapping of the human genome has put humanity on the immediate verge of solving Everything. Speaking as someone with a friend who has recently received a stem cell transplant to treat her lymphoma and found her condition complicated by serious side effects resulting from the therapy, I can attest to the reality that the state of medicine is a long way from achieving complete success in that regard. Don’t get me wrong—it’s too soon to know how well it’s worked for my friend, but she’s glad to have the stem cells. She’s up and around, not bedridden. It isn’t her first round, and she’s holding up well. Medical progress definitely is a thing. My point is that it’s easy to think that research is on the verge of some medical therapy that cures everything instantly, and to judge from the record, the path is not that smooth. There’s a tendency in popular culture to concentrate on science fiction narratives—imaginary exercises—instead of researching science fact.

I want to believe Ray Kurzweil’s prognostications about the achievement of The Singularity by 2029- that Ultimate Upside to Everything, for Everyone and Everything. Attaining Ultimate Universal Consciousness, through Technology? I’d be okay with that. After all, if it happens, it happens. But I also suspect that Kurzweil is indulging in wishful thinking. This project has a relatively more modest ambition, and I give it better odds of happening. Eventually. Not any time especially soon. I’m not going to allow myself to get carried away on that score, either.]