[nugget]

Given that IQ seems to be >50% hereditary, wouldn’t we expect legacies to be over-represented in any meritocracy that partially selects for such a trait? I don’t think Harvard is a pure meritocracy, it’s more of a theoretical question.

[lawrenceyan]

> Given that IQ seems to be >50% hereditary,

You're kidding right? That is such a painfully incorrect statement. Intelligence is an incredibly complex hugely conserved trait. Bloodlines and power/intellect passed down through the generations is a great fantasy novel setting, but not so much for reality.

[wycs]

You are just wrong:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

I know it is ideologically uncomfortable but this is a fact you will have to get used to. Cognitive genomics is coming. The undeniable is becoming laughable to deny.

[lawrenceyan]

Have you considered the possibility that confounding variables exist? I have no doubt that coming from a family where your parents have received a good education makes it much more likely for you to personally also go on to get the same education for example. But these are different than the pure genetics by themselves. The Wikipedia article you link to yourself highlights the importance of how it defines the meaning of "heritability" that I think you should take a closer look at.

I'm sure at some point in the future, we will be able to genetically engineer our children to be smarter. Yet this is still a completely different idea compared to the paired mating of people which has currently been proposed. Intelligence is something that is incredibly complex, and humans are likely very close if not already at its peak within some local maxima.

[wycs]

>Have you considered the possibility that confounding variables exist? I have no doubt that coming from a family where your parents have received a good education makes it much more likely for you to personally also go on to get the same education for example.

Yes.

If you read the citations you will see this is based on twin adoption studies, which control for confounding variables almost perfectly.

I assure you, ever single objection you can think of off the top of your head has been raised and overcome.

The heritability of IQ is not a conclusion psychologists wanted to affirm. It is fact the field was forced to come to from the data, despite the ideological drifts of the last 50 years yearning (or in the case of Stephen Jay Gould outright falsifying data) for the opposite conclusion.

[lawrenceyan]

Psychology is a field notorious for being derided against as a soft science particularly because of how little data exists with poor sample sizes and ideology / purposeful tampering coming into the way like you've said.

Any meaningful evidence for a conclusion requires a much better understanding of the brain both biologically and also as a function of general cognition. This will require many more breakthroughs within the fields of biology and computer science. We're definitely getting closer and closer everyday on that front, but as of right now, the tools that we have access to are far too crude in my honest opinion.

Psychology in that respect is akin to the alchemy that was a precursor to chemistry. I'm not saying no real science was done by the alchemists of course, just that it was far and away from what the field of chemistry would ultimately become.

[wycs]

I sense this is a lost cause, but we can already predict ~10 percent of the variance in educational attainment with the genome alone.

Once we get data sets with millions of genomes tagged with their donors IQ, this number will rise. If we can predict, say, 60% of the variance in IQ (based on the genome alone) will you change you mind?

That is, what sort of data would change your mind?

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0147-3

[betterunix2]

Let's assume for the sake of argument that intelligence is hereditary (not nearly as clear cut as you suggest). If Harvard's historical admissions policy was based on an applicant's intelligence, then they could use legacy as a proxy for intelligence in subsequent generations. Of course, if intelligence is only partially hereditary (as you suggested) then Harvard would do better to just apply some uniform standard of intelligence measurements to all applicants, assuming that the goal is to admit the most intellectually gifted students.

Of course it is well known that Harvard's historical admission policy was overtly antisemitic and generally racist, had nothing whatsoever to do with intelligence, and going back far enough was tied to the European Aristocracy. As a result the effect of legacy admissions is actually to perpetuate the effects of those historical policies. Rather than acting as a proxy for intelligence, legacy admissions act as a proxy for membership in a historically privileged class, and basically extends that privilege to the current generation.

[nugget]

>Of course, if intelligence is only partially hereditary (as you suggested) then Harvard would do better to just apply some uniform standard of intelligence measurements to all applicants, assuming that the goal is to admit the most intellectually gifted students.

Isn’t this the role of the SAT?

I’d be interested to see the data for legacy versus non-legacy SAT scores for applicants, admits, and matriculants.

I’m not defending Harvard’s current admissions policies nor their historical admissions policies, which seem indefensible by modern standards. My interest stems more from the theoretical implications of assortive mating for traits that are both very heriditary and very valued by society (or very deterministic of “success”.)

[betterunix2]

The SAT is not an intelligence test; it is a test of a student's educational background and the degree to which they engaged in college prep in the years leading up to the test. The fact that the 2/3 of the test is devoted to some measure of literacy should tell you that (literacy is an absurdly poor proxy for intelligence -- especially when it is confined to a specific language). Even the math section is in part a test of a student's educational background, as you must at least be familiar with the specific field of math and particular notation that the test uses.

There is a reason parents enroll their children in SAT prep as early as middle school and even elementary school. Again, let's assume intelligence is hereditary; then an ideal intelligence measurement would be impossible to prepare for, because it should measure something that a person cannot change about themselves (their genes). The fact that SAT prep measurably improves SAT scores says at least one of two things must be true: the SAT is not measuring an innate property, or that intelligence is not simply inherited.

(Spoiler alert: both of those are true.)

[nugget]

Of course you’re correct that test prep can skew the results, but SAT scores are still one of the best measures available at scale, hence why they are so widely used despite the obvious flaws. Other than a DNA test for IQ, you can prep for any known test, whether it’s the SAT, the WPPSI, the WISC-IV, a Rorschach, or the New York Times crossword. As user wycs hinted at elsewhere, a polygenetic spit test for raw IQ potential - the Gattica scenario - is likely not as far off as we believe; when that hits, it’s a whole new world (from pre-conception.)

[betterunix2]

Again, SAT scores are an extremely poor measurement of intelligence, because at best they only apply to people who (1) speak American English with complete fluency, (2) have literacy in English, and (3) have been taught the syntax, symbols, and particular fields of math tested in math section. Beyond that, since the modern SAT includes a writing section, there is a large subjective component of the score that further reduces its usefulness as a measure of intelligence. The SAT I took had no essay, but even the old test would have done a poor job of measuring the intelligence of someone who did not receive a high school education.

The actual purpose of the SAT is to screen students for a minimum educational background needed to complete a four-year degree at an American college. It only applies to a typical American education, and only to certain specific aspects of that education (there is no section on music, art, history, etc.).

[SamReidHughes]

They removed the writing section from the modern SAT, it's back to 1600 points.

I take it you're saying the SAT math section is a good measure of intelligence for all the kids that went to high school.

[honkycat]

SAT is great at measuring who spent the most money / who goes to the best grade/high school but not a whole lot more than that.