Nature vs. Nurture: "Rationality"

==Pro's Case==R1: Pro completely ignores my argument about the differing quality of schools within the U.S.—“ Surely, we can agree that whatever the overall state of education in the United States, it is good in some schools and bad in others. And yet, twin studies find that shared environment—which would include which school your parents send you—doesn’t matter that much. If schools were important, then family environment would certainly matter, because it affects what school you’re sent to.”R2:If the genetic advantage was slight and that slight advantage resulted in different experiences that then caused variance in IQ, then twin and adoption studies would not show what they show. If this were the case, children with different genetic parents adopted into the same family would be much more similar than they are. Their genetics would give them slight differences, but surely being raised in the same family would have some noticeable effect, if Pro’s argument was correct. Pro’s argument implies that slight genetic differences make these children seek out environments that are so radically different, and the parents treat their adopted children so radically differently, that their IQs don’t end up being correlated at all. This is absurd.If these results can’t be measured, then they aren’t important to this debate. They could work—but then again, they could prove just as ineffective as ‘brain-training’ exercises.I did provide evidence showing that IQ changes don’t last. There’s a lower correlation between twins IQs during childhood, when shared environment has a measurable effect, then the correlation goes back up when they’re adults, and the effect of shared environment drops to nothing.The jury most certainly is not “still out” on the effects of ‘brain-training’ exercises. I showed why his single study was flawed, and provided a study that didn’t have those flaws that found that these exercises have no effect.R3: I do not think that the experimental group with the higher IQs “just happened” to have better graduation rates, I said that the higher IQs caused the higher graduation rates and other life outcomes. My point was that it is implausible that the intervention caused the higher IQs, since the difference showed up after 1.6 months and then stayed the same for the rest of the intervention.I don’t understand Pro’s argument that “even if the improvement did fade, hat would suggest an even larger improvement than the measurement.” It most certainly would not—it would suggest no improvement if the higher IQs faded away.R4:Pro fails to address my argument. My point was that the part of the lifetime studied includes childhood. I conceded that environmental influences can cause a large amount of variance in childhood IQs, but then the environmental influence stops. This isn’t inconsistent with the study Pro cites. ==My Case==C1:I have no doubt that Deary’s work is careful, my concern is that I don’t see how he possibly could find the genetic influence of intelligence if we haven’t found all of the genes coding for intelligence yet. Pro is sure that he takes my concerns into account, but fails to explain how exactly he does so. Given that Pro failed to explain exactly why the heritability found by twin studies is wrong or how Deary accounted for the problems I mention, he has failed to meet his burden of proof.C2:See C3 about shared vs unique environment.C3:I asked Pro to delete the term 'acquired traits' from his definition of environment, because it would include everything that isn't genetics, during our previous attempt to do this debate that bugged out and had to be deleted. Pro says that by environment, he meant “everything that isn’t genetics, i.e. experience.” But my argument is that ‘experience’ isn’t the only possible non-genetic factor—there is personal choice. No reasonable definition of ‘environment’ includes free will. To repeat my argument from last round: “A school (or parents) instilling values in the child that makes them more conscientious—teaching responsibility, for example. This is an environmental influence. A person choosing to save money rather than spend it as soon as they get it? This is not an environmental influence—and yet, it would be included under ‘unique environment’ because ‘unique environment' simply means ‘not genes or family environment.’ Identical twins raised in the exact same environment could still make different choices—have different levels of conscientiousness.”Pro argues that this is the way a source he cited meant 'unique environment' when talking about IQ--but this is irrelevant. I conceded that the 'unique environment' measured in IQ studies could be actual environmental influences, because you can't choose to have a higher IQ. My point was that conscientiousness is different, and could be chosen.