There is a recent article in The Telegraph linking high childhood IQ to bipolar disorder in young adulthood. The finding is based on a massive study of 1,881 people, and replicates an earlier study showing that among 700,000 Swedish teenagers, those with high grades had nearly four times the risk of adult bipolar disorder as those with average grades, and their increased risk persisted even when controlling for the education and socioeconomic background of their parents. The link was highest for subjects emphasizing verbal and musical abilities, and weaker for math and science.
Daniel Smith, who led the more recent study, is quoted as saying:
There is something about the genetics underlying the disorder that are advantageous.
One possibility is that serious disorders of mood – such as bipolar disorder – are the price that human beings have had to pay for more adaptive traits such as intelligence, creativity and verbal proficiency.
This new research may explain a lot. For example, if intelligence can be defined as the cognitive ability to adapt: to take whatever situation you’re in and turn it around to your advantage, I’ve always wondered how some ridiculously brilliant people can achieve so little wealth an power. But if high IQ folks are more likely to be burdened with a huge emotional problem like bipolar disorder to adapt to, their lack of conventional success is easier to understand.
It’s also evidence for something I would call organic giftedness. One has often heard the term organic retardation to describe people with Downs Syndrome and other genetic mutations that are not part of the normal polygenetic variation in IQ, and thus create a surplus of people with IQs below 50; far more than the normal curve (which is based on biologically normal people) would predict.
Organic retardates are contrasted with familial retardates who can have equally low IQ, but their low IQs are related to normal genetic variation, not any kind of disorder, and thus they physically and behaviorally blend into society; some are even called six hour retardates, because their problems are confined to do the abstract reasoning of school, but they can be perfectly functional when school lets out.
Perhaps a similar organic vs familial dichotomy might apply among the gifted. We might have the organic gifted, whose high IQ is caused by some harmful genetic mutation, and thus are afflicted with burdens like bipolar disorder, and the familial gifted, whose high IQ is just caused by biologically normal polygenetic variation.
This might also explain the popular idea that there is an optimum IQ, usually thought to be anywhere from 125-150, where those above IQ 150 are disproportionately likely to be failures. Indeed a member of Prometheus told me that up to half of all people he knew with IQs above 150 grew up to be what society would consider losers, working in very low status jobs or living off welfare, but those with IQs of 130-140 were almost always successful.
Of course I’ve never seen any scientific evidence to prove this theory, but very few studies have the sample size, or the incredibly high ceiling tests, to meaningfully study folks with adult IQs above 150. The Promethean felt not even the older much harder SAT, which has a ceiling of IQ 170, was actually measuring IQ above 140 because the questions weren’t hard enough.
Most people who believe in the optimum IQ theory (and I’m extremely skeptical of non-linear IQ theories), explain it in terms of high IQ causing social isolation and values and priorities that conflict with what society defines as success. However a more interesting possibility is that IQs above 150 are so rare on the normal curve, that many people who are that brilliant are actually genetic mutants, and it’s the side-effect of their genetic mutations (i.e. bipolar disorder and who knows what else) that is causing their problems, and not the high IQ itself.
The mutation theory would also explain the fact that far more people score above IQ 150 than the normal curve would predict, especially on the older chronological age ratio IQs that were not forced to fit a bell curve the way modern deviation IQs largely are.
On the other hand, I know of no physical abnormality linked to high IQ the way unique physical characteristics in Down syndrome and Williams syndrome are linked to low IQ. I know of no chromosomal abnormalities linked to high IQ the was trisomy 21, Fragile X syndrome, and Turner syndrome are linked to cognitive impairments. As commenter Swank is always saying, intelligence is extremely complex, so genetic mutations are more likely to harm it than improve it.
However while massive genetic abnormalities like having an extra chromosome seem to dramatically lower IQ and create a very different physical appearance, it seems there might be many weaker mutations, that enhance IQ to some degree, and do damage to sensitive traits like personality, yet leave the body and face largely unscathed. Indeed we’ve had people on this blog who claim to have incredibly high test scores, yet don’t seem all that mentally stable. 🙂
”and I’m extremely skeptical of non-linear IQ theories”
Really*****
I did not even notice.
If you had not said that, I would not have noticed.
I wish that you’d do a post on atheism, IQ and whether the Flynn effect has caused the concurrent growth in atheism.
I know of no physical abnormality linked to high IQ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myopia#Education
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The study is also consistent with the GE correlation theory. If certain types of knowledge are privileged, then one would expect that kids who manage to learn the knowledge but who do not come from ostensibly ‘privileged’ backgrounds to have some kind of social malfunction: if you are excluded from the social group, you will find more reward in reading, etc. acquiring knowledge and playing a ‘different game.’
The experiment I suggested could go a long way toward settling this.
”The mutation theory would also explain the fact that far more people score above IQ 150 than the normal curve would predict, especially on the older chronological age ratio IQs that were not forced to fit a bell curve the way modern deviation IQs largely are.”
What** But Cockran said ”high iq people” tend to have lower mutational load (less ashkenazis)…
What kind of ”high iq people” you are talking about**
”It’s also evidence for something I would call organic giftedness.”
That does not exist. There are mutational load distribution among ”gifted” people (as well in every iq-slayer), where some subgroups will have higher mutational load, today they are called as ”twice exceptional”.
Iq 50 is also, part of ”normal” distribution.
anomalous lateralization, which is considered as a biological marker for giftedness (right hemisphere dominance) can affect the thymus gland, responsible for the immune system. I read once that children with poor health tend to become intellectually bright in adulthood.
”Perhaps a similar organic vs familial dichotomy might apply among the gifted. We might have the organic gifted, whose high IQ is caused by some harmful genetic mutation, and thus are afflicted with burdens like bipolar disorder, and the familial gifted, whose high IQ is just caused by biologically normal polygenetic variation.”
Perhaps no, everyone are little bipolar, the difference between bipolar people and non (or less) bipolar people is a ”size” of mutational load. (my theory)
”Indeed a member of Prometheus told me that up to half of all people he knew with IQs above 150 grew up to be what society would consider losers”
Society or you**
”Of course I’ve never seen any scientific evidence to prove this theory, but very few studies have the sample size, or the incredibly high ceiling tests, to meaningfully study folks with adult IQs above 150. The Promethean felt not even the older much harder SAT, which has a ceiling of IQ 170, was actually measuring IQ above 140 because the questions weren’t hard enough.”
The genius is one that does not depend on your score in IQ tests to be bright and to know who is.
”On the other hand, I know of no physical abnormality linked to high IQ the way unique physical characteristics in Down syndrome and Williams syndrome are linked to low IQ.”
Tesla had a lot of characteristics that relate to autism. Schopenhauer was half-bipolar. Your favorite genius, Einstein, it seems that he had dyslexia….. abundant examples of ”tortured” geniuses. Cesare Lombroso in his, ” The Man of Genius ”, reported that Western geniuses (among other eminent) historically recognized, had mental and physical abnormalities, because the disorder of the mind is often a disorder of the body as well.
Some common features in these men
Facial deformities (and cranial … very large or very small skulls)
floppy ears,
failure facial beard,
irregular teeth,
low stature or disproportionate body,
left-handedness,
stuttering,
skeletal deformities (rickets), (deficience in D vitamin),
Tuberculosis (and syphilis),
spasms and repetitive movements,
epilepsy,
suicide and megalomaniac tendencies,
alcoholism,
double personality,
hallucinations,
pallor,
amnesia,
originality,
moral ” insanity ”
sexual precocity …
” Anyone who has the privilege of having lived with the men of genius will notice that they tend to judge people’s biased way or in the heat of emotion, feel persecuted and are emotionally unstable ”. Lombroso
Lombroso also reported that people with spinal cord injuries also tended to be more intelligent.
Lombroso said that the ” insane ” men of genius, were those who gave the greatest contributions to society. He also said that sane men of genius, also showed physiological and mental defects, less aberrant in relation to the insane genius.
This is one of the central points of disagreement in relation to Hbd. Because, just as with every branch of psychology, we started to consider the relationship between genius and mental disorders as a ” romantic myth ”, the hbdsphere does exactly the same.
People really do not know how to use the words and their meanings consciously and correctly. How can it be possible that this correlation is a myth, if we have a lot of famous geniuses who suffered and who suffer from these conditions ***** And we’re not just talking about famous names, but big names.
In your head, conservative, mainstream (like that of Oprah et cia) and linear, the evolution of human intelligence is an entirely natural event, expected and that is based on logic, if it’s good then it can not be pathological. I agree that, from a logical context, it should be so. But it is not.
Human intelligence is already very complex, more complex, for sure that will have a greater chance of errors (which are very subjective, the legendary chastity Newton, for example) than hits.
But who defines Oprah as a genius, well, it’s a little tricky debate because we are not speaking the same language. Even she, in my opinion, is not a genius, but surely, it has a great talent, even corroborate the theory that I follow, based on Lombroso ” et al ” than in Terman.
Obese, left-handed, which seems to have signs of fetal alcohol syndrome as yourself speak. According yourself, a large head (and I disagreed because I believe that your hair interferes in a more correct analysis). Oprah was never a beautiful woman, ignoring the make up, in his youth.
My theory to explain these differences is that the higher the ‘real’ intelligence, regardless of scores on IQ tests, still to believe that the majority of highly intelligent, they should point at least above average (british Standard), the greater the mutations generally heterogeneous in nature, i.e. that will not be large enough to cause marked changes in biological characteristics, but which is sufficient to produce novel behavioral phenotypes and various physiological punctual (and not generalized) defects.
It make sense. During the hypomanic and manic episodes the brain must be hyperactive which could explain why bipolar individuals have higher average IQ, but because not all the brain is involved in intelligence, bipolar individuals feel more intense emotions during these episodes. This brain hyperactivity is apparently linked to anomalies in the production and exchanges of neurotransmitters.
But we could think that these positive effect on IQ are negated by depressive episodes in which brain is less active. I dont think so, depressive episodes dont happened all the time because they are an indirect effect of this condition. Indeed, depression is caused by the fact that people may have did thing they regret during a manic episode because of their intense emotionnal activity.
I saw somewhere that Bill Clinton, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg may have bipolar disorders.
Btw, do you think that Ashkenazi Jews could have develop a lot of genetic diseases which cause high IQ and thats why they dont develop more the biological caracteristics which are normally linked with intelligence like more cerebral cells (brain size) and a thicker myelin sheath ( some genetic diseases like bipolar disorders might increase reaction time by increasing brain activity during some episodes thats why I prefer to not mention reaction time as a normally linked with intelligence caracteristic) ?
Ashkenazi Jews may have develop this genetic conditions rather than bigger brains and thicker myelin sheaths because these diseases were more rapidly leading to an IQ increasing than the conventionnal way. But the increasing of brain size and myelin sheath thickness occured during human intelligence evolution because genetic mutations which were rapidly causing high intelligence were often also causing mental illness which is deadly when you dont live in a civilised world.
I read that poverty can lower your score on the SAT by 400 points and the SAT can be used as an IQ test. If I am 108 that is a score of 1000 on the SAT. If I was not poor and had parents that made me study for that test I would score 1400 which is an IQ of 137. What I have learned recently is that emotional stability is the cause of high fluid intelligence. I am very unstable yet I believe my Crystallized Intelligence could be as high as 155. (Facebook – NSA) The ability for a human being to understand reality is determined by how well they self regulate and that is determined by social modulation / cybernetics. Terence Tao got a perfect score on the SAT when he was 9 I think? His parents were college professors and he grew up in a university. Social reinforcement is powerful. I remember crying sometimes in school because I did not understand what I was learning and I could not communicate with my peer group. Sometimes I stop what I am learning because it makes me feel to sad.
http://www.amazon.com/Developing-Mind-Second-Edition-Relationships/dp/146250390X
Tao also almost failed his general exams at Princeton.
He had several potential setbacks along the way but people continued to encourage him.
People become smarter by asking questions and finding the answers to those questions. If people assume you are stupid for asking questions you will stop asking them. If people assume you are smart, you will keep asking them.
You sound suicidal, GET HELP
”capacity to adapt” = machiavelian or social intelligence.
= cognitive empathy, but not affective empathy
none who’ve commented here are anywhere near as unstable as the blog’s author, an inveterate and likely congenital liar
there are no genes for IQ or for bipolar disorder. they don’t exist. get over it.
I agree. Anyone who says HBD is true is a congenital liar. As you have stated, HBD = Jew worship. All the HBD bloggers are competing to see who can kiss the most Jewish ass. So far JayMan’s winning.
All the races are equally smart at the genetic level. Some may look more advanced than others but its only because the face evolves much faster than the brain because it’s much less complex. I defend the white race just like Afrosapiens defends the black race. I respect Afrosapiens because he, like me, defends his people. His mother must be proud.
its only because the face evolves much faster than the brain because it’s much less complex
The latest to repeat something that I have said verbatim after having called me a name. Get bent.
I’m not defending my people, I defend the scientific truth or at least scientific rigor against HBD mythology.
If you knew my story, you would understand why I’m not seeing the world in black and white and agree with your statement that races are equally smart at the genetic level especially since the contrary has not been proven and is not even reflected by the current and historical reality of the different “races”.
Swank, if I recall it was Videla, not you, who claimed that even though blacks were more ape-like in the face, they were just as human in the brain because there’s been much less recent evolution in the mind than the face.
I thought that was an insightful point, but as i recall, it was Videla’s insight, not yours.
What is actually ape-like in a black person’s face ?
I thought that was an insightful point,
I did not say it about faces. I said it about simple traits like eye color, skin color, noses, versus complex traits. I do know that I came to the conclusion independently. And I do know that I said it about a month before you told me that you had searched through all my posts and hadn’t found anything useful.
Either way, you lied about something.
http://i.livescience.com/images/i/000/017/983/i02/640px-Chimpanzee-Head.jpg?1310589242
Chimpanzees, our closest ape-relatives. More black-looking or white-looking ?
Sooo sweeet…
The latest to repeat something that I have said verbatim after having called me a name. Get bent.
Awww, why are the anti-HBD white nationalists arguing with each other? You need to join forces, not self-immolate.
I prefer this one bro.
It’s a movie ape man, true chimps look like hairy old white dwarfs. Look at these ones:
Well, they may look more Asian actually.
or maybe i should have said:
none who‘s commented here…
but it sounds wrong.
Have you missed all the GCTAs and Visscher’s paper identifying that additive genes explain the heritability for IQ, or Chabris’s paper in which he proves that complex traits like for mental diseases and intelligence it’s hard to find the genes because they’re polygenic?
How do you explain regression to the mean then? Like if a set of parents are above average for a trait, but are from families which are way above average, their children will regress up, this trend proven by the breeder’s equation?
Every cognitive trait has hhigh heritability: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0093934X15001662
Genes for polygenic traits have many effects, like how genes for intelligence increase lifespan http://digest.bps.org.uk/2015/08/why-do-more-intelligent-people-live.html
Another good paper about phenome genome interactions http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/mp2015126a.html
all meaningless.
1. many genes of small effect entails a small effect so far undetectable.
2. there’s no way to select for traits which result from many genes of small effect except artificially, like animal breeding. therefore evopsych is bullshit.
but early environment has the largest effect. my mother was in labor for 19 hours and my heart stopped several times during delivery. and this because my head was so large. i can imagine it had deleterious effects.
Then how come we’re finding the genes again and again? For example here, for high intelligence:
http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/mp2015108a.html
Is that undetectable? And important too, for example the genes causing intellgeince are additive, and obviously also raising lifespan:
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/07/24/ije.dyv112.long
And there’s plenty of evidence to think that gene culture coevolution has had a hand in different population IQ differences
i didn’t mean to dismiss “lookism” swank, but hereditist DO dismiss it, so it’s an argument best left in the locker room, so to speak.
lookism is REAL and, perhaps like IQ, it’s not monotonically increasing, so to speak, if that’s the right term…
that is, both ugly people and very good looking people WILL be discriminated AGAINST, just as non-whites will be discriminated against in a white society.
the tall nail gets the hammer.
REALLY. it DOES!
Lookism is plausible (to me at least) until you read this:
http://www.unz.com/gnxp/no-two-look-alikes/
Obviously I don’t need to be convinced of its plausibility.
And yes, extremes or deviations from expectation get hit hardest.
Slut magazine about ”jewish intelligente”, a ”moderate” narrative…. 😉
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2007/11/jewgenics.html
New Study finds psychology, as expected, is mostly bullshit.
“Now, a painstaking yearslong effort to reproduce 100 studies published in three leading psychology journals has found that more than half of the findings did not hold up when retested. The analysis was done by research psychologists, many of whom volunteered their time to double-check what they considered important work. Their conclusions, reported Thursday in the journal Science, have confirmed the worst fears of scientists who have long worried that the field needed a strong correction.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/28/science/many-social-science-findings-not-as-strong-as-claimed-study-says.html?_r=0
Hi swank, read this:
Is psychology a science ? Obviously, it’s not and this article brightly shows why it is just waiting room entertainment.
http://www.arachnoid.com/psychology/
PS: I’m sorry I forgot to show up on the other blog, I told you it was not really a place for me.
Well, and if psychology is not even science, let’s not even talk about psychometrics…
But I must admit I have some kind of on and off trust in the value of psychometrics. Due to my heavy exposure to HBD and its theories that overstate the importance of IQ, I’m sometimes inclined to think it reflects some acquired aptitudes that may reflect some forms of cognitive well being. But I’m very easily convinced by the multitude of studies that relativize the accuracy and validity of psychometric testing.
But I think we’re at the dawn of neurometrics and that the near future will allow us to measure cognitive performance and potential in biologic terms and we will have a better understanding of what happens in the brain during cognition and how genes may influence different functions, if they do.
Psychometrics is the only field in psychology with any scientific basis.
Scientific measurements apply to palpable matter, psychometrics do not. IQ tests are not measures, IQ points are not quantitative units but reflect a ranking according to a man-made changeable standard. They are not more scientific than GDP, HDI or Grade points average.
In a recent New York Times piece author Gareth Cook points out that one of the greatest mathematicians, Fields Medalist Terry Tao, “defies all the Hollywood tropes about mad genius”. Quoting colleagues who call him “supernormal,” Cook contrasts Tao with ‘misfits’ like Gauss and Newton and troubled souls like the late John Nash and Grigori Perelman. It’s a wonderful article that does a good job of humanizing the young mathematician and you can read it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/magazine/the-singular-mind-of-terry-tao.html?_r=0
It’s noteworthy that John Harsanyi, the guy who won the Nobel with John Nash (whose fight with schizophrenia was captured by Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind) was a well-liked and affable professor with no obvious psychological issues. And one of the greatest theoretical physicists ever, Richard Feynman, happened to be one of the most popular professors at Caltech, loved as much for his pranks and penchant for bongo drumming and appearing in student plays as he was for his scientific brilliance. Ed Witten, considered the greatest living physicist, studied languages and history and campaigned for McGovern and other politicians before settling into physics-not the typical picture of the misfit genius.
It may still be true that mental illness is slightly more common among geniuses, particularly those with verbally-based talents, but not nearly as common as is often believed. It seems there’s a little recall bias here: the public tends to remember and fixate on the ‘crazy’ ones. That’s where the drama is, literally-hence the movies about Nash and Van Gogh and Sylvia Plath. There will probably be no movies made about Harsanyi or Witten or Tao or their brilliant colleagues because they’re “super-normal.” Other than their being much smarter than us, of course.
http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2013/09/20/is-creative-ability-determined-by-our-dna/
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“Bi-Polar” as in “Bi-Polar depression”, the Depression-Anxiety spectrum is highly, highly correlated with higher intellect, specifically more verbal things, since women suffer much more than men (women represent 2/3 of patients for 50% of pop. while men 1/3 for 50% of pop).
One study, I saw, showed the average person on the Depression spectrum had an IQ of +2.34 SDs from the median! But that seemed like too much, especially because the ailments are associated with significant more SDs above the median in weight/being overweight.