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More than 500 genes associated with intelligence have been identified in the largest study of its kind.
Researchers used data from the UK Biobank, comparing DNA variants from more than 240,000 people. Their analysis identified 538 genes linked to intellectual ability, and 187 regions of the human genome that are associated with thinking skills. Some of these genes are also linked to other biological processes, including living longer.
However, even with all these genes, it's still difficult to predict a person's intelligence from their genomes. When they analysed the DNA of a group of different people, the team were only able to predict 7 per cent of the intelligence differences between those people.
Source: Found: more than 500 genes that are linked to intelligence
A combined analysis of genetically correlated traits identifies 187 loci and a role for neurogenesis and myelination in intelligence (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41380-017-0001-5) (DX)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @05:58AM (12 children)
"Intelligence" is one of those terms (some) people talk about as if they know what it means. It's one of those things that everyone thinks they know, but asked to define, or even just describe concretely, shit goes all over the place and nowhere.
I sure hope somebody can enlighten me what it actually means.
(Score: 4, Touché) by captain normal on Monday March 19 2018, @06:05AM (3 children)
I think that part of it is being able to construct a coherent sentence.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @06:11AM
Keep thinking. Reading is fundamental.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 19 2018, @06:28AM (1 child)
You've seen some of the things they can do with coherent light? The hell with coherent sentences, those could be DEADLY!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday March 19 2018, @06:39AM
Not if you eliminate the death sentence. I mean, the entire civilized wor(l)d can do without, why can't you?
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @06:24AM (6 children)
No, it's not like Maxwell's equations, but it doesn't need to be. We're measuring humans.
We have tests that largely agree with human assessment of who is and isn't intelligent. This is strongly correlated with all sorts of things in life, which helps to make the measurement valuable. The measurement can be very effectively used to predict other things, and those things can be used to predict the measurement.
It all works fine.
Likewise, we can measure beauty. Oh sure, you may disagree with a specific assessment, but that doesn't mean we can't usefully assign numbers based on typical human response. We can even train a computer to evaluate beauty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @06:32AM
So, intelligence is like beauty. Ok.
"I
Like
Big Butt and can't deny
other fellas cannot lie..."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @09:22AM (2 children)
So rote memorizing information? Because to most people, that seems to qualify as "intelligent".
Oh, you must have been referring to some other assessment. So, we have tests that largely agree with a vague human assessment of who is and isn't intelligent. Wow. That might be impressive if the definition was even remotely clear.
Things like doing well in school systems and making money. You'll have to forgive me for not being impressed, since that too is arbitrary.
Come back when we have a concrete understanding of intelligence, and then we might be able to call it scientific. Until then, it's just social 'science' rubbish, just like most of the tripe that comes from those fields.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @09:40PM
I think there's probably a very large correlation between ability to memorize information and effective intelligence. Information needs context to be processed, and without knowledge, there is no context.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 20 2018, @01:57AM
Too bad the use of the term rote memorization sans irony correlates highly with low intelligence and poor academic performance.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 19 2018, @11:26AM (1 child)
It's pretty easy to make some vague, passing definition of "intelligence", so long as it is confined to people who have matured within your own culture, your own economic system, your own nation, your civilization. Consider, please, a shipwreck. A bunch of "successful" people are on the ship when it is wrecked, and they become castaways on some island. Maybe some island in the Sunda chain. They arrive on shore, to be met by some hungry komodo dragons. How will your "successful" Americans fare? There is a story of one who simply disappeared. Investigators found his high-dollar camera on it's tripod, with photos of komodo dragons - but he was gone, gone, gone. Sumbitch wasn't very smart after all! He either knowingly allowed the dragon to get within striking range, OR, he forgot to look over his shoulder now and then.
We can come up with all sorts of scenarios in which "intelligent", "successful" Americans will fail at alarmingly high rates.
Funny - when we read of someone being devoured by a grizzly bear, it's usually some attractive, successful city boy or girl. That stuff doesn't seem to happen very much to ignorant inbred hillbillies and plain old rednecks.
I don't think that you do have a decent definition for intelligence. And, if you did have one, it isn't certain that intelligence equates to survival. Wouldn't it be a helluva thing if all the most intelligent people died off because intelligence is one of the less important survival requirements?
Oh yeah. Low fertility rates and immigration - that kinda shit will get those smart sumbitches! Islam will rule Europe, and Aztlan will take over America. Think about it, LOL!!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday March 19 2018, @12:52PM
Its funny how if is an amateur sets up a scientific experiment designed to test trivia knowledge, experience, or wisdom, randomly testing something else won't correlate well with observed intelligence, but if scientific professionals run something like Raven's Progressive Matrices even though its "merely" pattern matching strange shaped graphs, it correlates ridiculously well with all kinds of OTHER intellectual skill (even seemingly weird stuff like abstract music skills) and positive life outcomes. Therefore if you test for X by testing for Y and it doesn't correlate, then the only possible interpretation allowed is X must not exist, but if you test for X by testing for X and it correlates extremely well thats just racism and must be ignored. Now if you'll excuse me while I return to my task of measuring the height of a building using a barometer...
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by VLM on Monday March 19 2018, @12:41PM
Its not very hard, LOL:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) [wikipedia.org]
"intelligence" means someone has enough scientific integrity to put science and statistics above personal political beliefs. Its utterly undeniable statistically and scientifically, and utterly unacceptable to political leftists.
Its interesting that very superficially both left and right are both creationists. The right generally speaking has a thing about religious/cultural systems where some magical being created everything (it had to come from somewhere, didn't it?) and the left has a thing about religious/cultural systems where magically genetics exist for every living thing but humans, every body organ except the brain is genetically determined, races don't exist especially whites unless we're talking about affirmative action or handout programs or anti-white immigration policies in which case races totally exist, all because something in the Talmud says it was created that way by a volcano god or something equally ridiculous to base a belief system on. Generally speaking right wing people should be laughed at when they talk about origins, and left wing people should be laughed at when they talk about biology, especially genetics or human anatomy.