From: atreic

2012-12-15 09:14 am (UTC)

A diversion on English qualifications (Link)



The phrase 'qualify for A-levels' usually just means 'gets 5 A-C grades at GCSE', which means 'does better than average*** in the standard exams for 16 year olds'



[This is all confused by the fact that the government is changing the school leaving age to 18 anyway. And maybe getting rid of GCSEs. But that hasn't happened yet]



* http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/ed ucationnews/9480910/A-level-results-by-n umbers.html



**



*** Oh, OK, my data is out of date. I remember this as being 'about 50% of people get 5 A-Cs', but now it is 69%.



Edited at 2012-12-15 09:15 am (UTC) Nearly everyone in England goes to school until they are 16 (the end of their 11th year of school). At the end of this year, they sit exams called GCSEs. About 85% of students stay in education after their GCSEs, traditionally to do A-levels for two years until they are 18. [A-levels are not 'going away to university/college' - they are commonly done at the same school the GCSEs were sat at, although some students go to 'sixth form colleges', still usually in a nearby town and while living at home with parents.] Not all 17-18 year olds in further education will do A-levels - A-levels are seen as the 'more academic' track, and there are also 'more vocational' qualifications. A quick google suggests about 300,000* do A-levels, and about 80,000 do GNVQs** (the main vocational thing) but this is only a rough rule of thumb as it's perfectly OK to do, eg, one A-level and one GNVQ at the same time. At 18, with good A-levels, students would go off to university.The phrase 'qualify for A-levels' usually just means 'gets 5 A-C grades at GCSE', which means 'does better than average*** in the standard exams for 16 year olds'[This is all confused by the fact that the government is changing the school leaving age to 18 anyway. And maybe getting rid of GCSEs. But that hasn't happened yet]** http://www.independent.co.uk/news/educa tion/education-news/so-whats-a-gnvq-wort h-1257944.html *** Oh, OK, my data is out of date. I remember this as being 'about 50% of people get 5 A-Cs', but now it is 69%. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Ce rtificate_of_Secondary_Education Thread)

From: naath

2012-12-17 01:49 pm (UTC)

Re: A diversion on English qualifications (Link) Heh, I scrolled down halfway through reading this post to make *exactly this comment* :-p



It is an interesting study in cultural hegemony that I know a whole lot more about the American high-school and college system than that remark implies Scott knows about English schooling. Parent ) ( Thread

From: atreic

2012-12-17 02:01 pm (UTC)

Re: A diversion on English qualifications (Link) I couldn't explain it. I have picked up a huge swirl of things like freshmen and seniors and junior high and SATs and ivy league, but I couldn't put it in a coherant order... Parent ) ( Thread

From: xuenay

2012-12-15 10:24 am (UTC)

(Link)



Children born in the first quarter of the year make about 2.38% less than children born in the last quarter. The standard (and very reasonable!) explanation for this revolves around age at school entry and whether you're the oldest or youngest child in your class.



I'm guessing that this applies to kids in systems where you must have turned X years old in order to begin school? In Finland and probably some other countries, you start school on the year when you would turn 7, so the oldest kids in the class would be the ones born in the first quarter.



So I guess the advice should read: move to Finland and have a winter/spring kid, and you'll get the IQ, height, and sociability gains on top of the oldest-in-class benefits! Wow, this is impressively exhaustive.I'm guessing that this applies to kids in systems where you must have turned X years old in order to begin school? In Finland and probably some other countries, you start school on the year when youturn 7, so the oldest kids in the class would be the ones born in the first quarter.So I guess the advice should read: move to Finland and have a winter/spring kid, and you'll get the IQ, height, and sociability gainsthe oldest-in-class benefits! Thread)

From: squid314

2012-12-15 10:28 am (UTC)

(Link) You make a good case for immigration to Finland, but I've been told that you also have positively toxic licorice levels. Parent ) ( Thread

From: (Anonymous)

2012-12-15 10:32 am (UTC)

Alternative version? (Link) I enjoyed this article, and it appears more critical than a lot of popular reporting on such studies. However, your direct endorsement of eugenics may trigger some people's political correctness alarms. Would you consider making a version more palatable to such people? Thread)

From: squid314

2012-12-15 10:38 am (UTC)

Re: Alternative version? (Link) What parts exactly would you like me to take out? Parent ) ( Thread

From: hairyears

2012-12-15 11:32 am (UTC)

(Link) Your slightly more realistic scenario



… someone still switches from doing everything wrong to everything right is +46.5, which is around the level that changes the intelligence of the average member of the population into the intelligence of the average Nobel Prize winner.



You'd do better to place this as a symmetric overlay on an 'average' IQ of 100.



So, starting at the average, you can get everything right and your kid goes to medical school or success in the professions with an IQ in the range 120-to-125; or do everything wrong, give them an IQ in the 75-80 range, and they struggle in school, qualify for remedial tuition in reading and maybe don't socialise well, and face a life of casual employment, poverty and (probably) petty crime.



Which is, you know, pretty much in line with the folk wisdom on raising kids. The variation is between 'almost retarded' (as we used to say of children with IQ's of 70 or less) and 'first-class degree'.







Note that a *lot* of support is required to give an effective education to children in that lower range: 'effective' as in very basic literacy, numbers, and a capacity to benefit from simple training in the workplace.



Likewise, socialising children with lower IQ's - the 75-85 range - needs very good 'parenting' indeed, and a good community and school environment - with effective intervention and support available if and when behavioural problems emerge.



Needless to say, very few children in that lower IQ band will get these things in an unequal society. Thread)

From: deiseach

2012-12-17 02:05 pm (UTC)

(Link) Yup. Putting money into schools now when the kids are between four and twelve (and this means everything from free school meals to psychological services as well as resources for the actual book larnin') will save on public expenditure in the future, when you factor in what it costs when they drop out early, become petty criminals, and you have to arrest them, bring them to court multiple times, lock them up in prison, etc. etc. etc.



But of course that means spending public money, which has to come from raising revenue, which is raising taxes, which nobody is going to vote for a political party which says "Vote us in and we'll raise taxes", so... Parent ) ( Thread

From: celandine13

2012-12-15 12:08 pm (UTC)

(Link) this is awesome! thanks!



Also, I don't know if JS Mill's upbringing is as much a role model as a cautionary tale. Thread)

From: williamaryan

2012-12-15 03:53 pm (UTC)

(Link) Wow, I had no idea that Mill was a utilitarian tyke bomb! That's cool. Parent ) ( Thread

From: merchimerch

2012-12-15 03:14 pm (UTC)

(Link) There is a study of a decent size on pubmed that correlates high impact aerobic exercise and higher rates of miscarriage before 20 weeks, if I remember correctly, so exercise needs to be done mindfully. Thread)

From: nomophilos

2012-12-15 03:23 pm (UTC)

(Link)



One interesting claim I've read about is that modern kids don't chew much tough food, and so have underdeveloped jaws (compared to many of our ancestors), in which our teeth get overcrowded ... resulting in the need for orthodontics etc.



For example "Effects of food processing on masticatory strain and craniofacial growth in a retrognathic face" (



Does that seem plausible? Have you heard about such claims before? Does that mean I need to have my kids chew on roots six hours a day? Nice overview, thanks a lot! (We're planning on having a second kid soon ...)One interesting claim I've read about is that modern kids don't chew much tough food, and so have underdeveloped jaws (compared to many of our ancestors), in which our teeth get overcrowded ... resulting in the need for orthodontics etc.For example "Effects of food processing on masticatory strain and craniofacial growth in a retrognathic face" ( http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~skeleton/p dfs/2004b.pdf ).Does that seem plausible? Have you heard about such claims before? Does that mean I need to have my kids chew on roots six hours a day? Thread)

From: williamaryan

2012-12-15 04:00 pm (UTC)

(Link) Having looked over the research with another friend of mine, we concluded that this is the most well-supported theory of malocclusion out there. The rock hyrax study is fascinating because they used the exact same foods, except for dehydrated versus cooked. The same effect has been produced in primates, though their jaw structure is a bit different from ours. Differential stress clearly impacts the human jaw structure, e.g. extended thumb sucking producing a profound outward angle of the teeth.



So what foods? Good question. Dehydrating food is one answer, have them gnaw on beef jerky for instance. You can also cook vegetables less, and eat some of them raw (carrots anyone?). Some traditional cultures chew certain twigs and stuff as a form of dental hygiene - it's possible we are meant to be munching on random plant matter relatively often... Parent ) ( Thread

From: patrissimo

2012-12-15 09:10 pm (UTC)

(Link)



http://www.facialdevelopment.com/ This stuff just seems to be getting widely known, but there seems to be a fair bit of evidence. Breastfeeding for 2 years helps, chewing hard things, etc. You can always intervene with orthodontics. They have some new orthodontics that help the jaw develop, like: Parent ) ( Thread

From: Joshua Fox

2012-12-15 04:55 pm (UTC)

Rural north? (Link) > so if you're outside the States the northern and rural

> parts of your own country ought to work.



Wha? If you live in Cameroon, Gabon, or for that matter Peru, the rural north has the parasitic load of the south and more. Thread)

From: gwern branwen

2012-12-15 06:11 pm (UTC)

(Link) "Paternal age and intelligence: implications for age-related genomic changes in male germ cells" http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85192141/2005-ma laspina.pdf



Those interested in iodine may find http://www.gwern.net/Iodine useful. Thread)

From: st_rev

2012-12-15 06:24 pm (UTC)

(Link) There are old, old, OLD studies that showed choline supplementation during pregnancy had a huge impact on intelligence into adulthood...on rats. Thread)

From: nancylebov

2012-12-15 08:47 pm (UTC)

(Link) I've read that exposure to noise (living near an airport) has bad effects on school achievement. I don't know whether it affects IQ if the person moves to somewhere quieter.



I've also read that there are ill effects from living near a highway, but I'm not sure whether it was noise or air pollution. Thread)

From: patrissimo

2012-12-15 08:59 pm (UTC)

uh.... (Link) (posted originally as a comment on Eliezer's FB)



I'm really surprised to see Yvain post such a poorly researched article, composed of carefully selected studies showing huge interventional effects. He totally ignores the huge literature on the stability of IQ throughout life, that was one of the major criteria used to develop psychometric intelligence tests.



And he ignores the literature on how interventions in kids fade over time - lots of things have brief effects but almost nothing has a lasting effect. For example, the heritability of IQ increases from 0.4ish in childhood to 0.7ish+ in adolescence - because genetic factors predominate over time.



I looked into this a decade ago or so, and the largest effect I could find was a few points from maternal & infancy fish oil supplementation. There is no way that there are that many +5 interventions. I'm sure there are many -5 interventions (feeding your kid sugar of lead), but optimizing is much harder than breaking.



Parents deciding to optimize their kids IQ is like deciding to optimize their Big 5 personality score, or their height, instead of their taste in music, or literature, or childhood experience, and all the other things you can actually influence. Yes it's super important and worth doing the few things that can have an impact, but this article WILDLY overstates the possible impact.



I'll give you 10:1 odds that 2 parents who do 5 of those positive interventions have a kid who, at age 10, is less intelligent than we'd predict from those studies and parental intelligence. You think 130 parents are going to have a 150 kid by eating fish but not licorice? Please. Thread)

From: gwern branwen

2012-12-15 09:18 pm (UTC)

Re: uh.... (Link) > ...composed of carefully selected studies showing huge interventional effects. He totally ignores the huge literature on the stability of IQ throughout life, that was one of the major criteria used to develop psychometric intelligence tests.



So?



> And he ignores the literature on how interventions in kids fade over time - lots of things have brief effects but almost nothing has a lasting effect. For example, the heritability of IQ increases from 0.4ish in childhood to 0.7ish+ in adolescence - because genetic factors predominate over time.



Again, so?



> I looked into this a decade ago or so, and the largest effect I could find was a few points from maternal & infancy fish oil supplementation. There is no way that there are that many +5 interventions. I'm sure there are many -5 interventions (feeding your kid sugar of lead), but optimizing is much harder than breaking.



Fish oil is specifically one of the things he criticizes.



> Parents deciding to optimize their kids IQ is like deciding to optimize their Big 5 personality score, or their height,



One difference being that it's not clear that any particular change in Big Five is a benefit, aside from Conscientiousness. Height doesn't have many known interventions besides general health, although it seems useful.



> instead of their taste in music, or literature, or childhood experience, and all the other things you can actually influence.



I would be interested in any studies showing that you can influence their taste in music reliably, as opposed to failing epicly like all the parents who try to get their kids to like classical music and drive them to misogynistic rap music.



> I'll give you 10:1 odds that 2 parents who do 5 of those positive interventions have a kid who, at age 10, is less intelligent than we'd predict from those studies and parental intelligence. You think 130 parents are going to have a 150 kid by eating fish but not licorice? Please.



I don't think Yvain would disagree, if you actually read what he wrote. Parent ) ( Thread

From: xuenay

2012-12-15 10:06 pm (UTC)

Re: uh.... (Link) Yes it's super important and worth doing the few things that can have an impact, but this article WILDLY overstates the possible impact.



I don't think that an article that's peppered with various kinds of caveats of all of these studies being unreliable, Yvain not being an expert on this, and the whole thing basically being entertainment rather than serious science, can be said to massively overstate the possible impact. Especially since the third-to-last paragraph of the article itself says that even a 17 point increase from parents switching over from "everything wrong" to "everything right" would be a "a ridiculous overestimate of actual gains" and explains why that's just being silly. Parent ) ( Thread

From: patrissimo

2012-12-19 09:14 pm (UTC)

Re: uh.... (Link) Right, so in the third-to-last paragraph, after pages of talking about huge impacts, the piece pulls back and gets more conservative. While it's great that he stated that, I think the piece will tend to leave most readers with an overall inaccurate impression of the power of these interventions.



I don't think "entertainment" is much of an excuse, the article doesn't read like a parody, it reads like it is trying to be informative, so I think it is fair to criticize it for accuracy. Parent ) ( Thread

From: squid314

2012-12-19 10:54 pm (UTC)

Re: uh.... (Link) It's not just the third-to-last paragraph, it's also the entire Introduction, and much of the Summary. And pretty much every effect I talk about is given commentary saying "but this probably isn't real, or isn't causal".



I am trying to review the papers I found in this field. As such, I've reported what the papers say. At the beginning I said "but the papers I review here probably shouldn't be taken at face value". At the end I say "the papers you just saw shouldn't be taken at face value". With each paper, I give reasons the paper shouldn't be taken at face value.



Other than lying and claiming the papers don't exist, I can't think of how I could have reviewed these more fairly. Parent ) ( Thread

From: squid314

2012-12-16 06:54 am (UTC)

Re: uh.... (Link) "You think 130 parents are going to have a 150 kid by eating fish but not licorice? Please."



Um, no. That's why I specifically said the 17 point number "is still a ridiculous overestimate of actual gains".



And why I said "epidemiological research of the sort being discussed here is almost always low-quality, and as soon as it starts involving IQ it becomes a hundred times worse".



And why I said "Please take this document entirely as entertainment and a pointer to interesting areas for your own investigation, not as ultimate truth"



And why I said "different effects probably are non-additive" and "causation cannot be established".



And why I said "I have specifically used a non-scientific tone and peppered this document with corny jokes in order to signal that you should not take it seriously"



And why the table predicts that those two interventions would have a +3.2 point effect on the average reader, not a 20 point effect (almost entirely from the fish, which was one of the strongest effects I found; the licorice only adds +0.22 to the total).



I seriously have no idea how I could have possibly made it more clear that I do not think 130 parents are going to have 150 kids by eating fish but not licorice.



I am a bit suspicious you didn't actually read the document.



Edited at 2012-12-16 06:57 am (UTC) Parent ) ( Thread

From: xuenay

2012-12-16 08:19 am (UTC)

Re: uh.... (Link) I suspect that there's a psychological thing where, no matter how many disclaimers about unreliability that you throw up, if you have a long list of links to various studies or other authoritative-sounding claims, people are going to take it seriously anyway.



I heard a story once of one old scientist/philosopher writing what was basically a medical textbook whose first chapter was a long plea for the reader to not take any of this as gospel and to investigate reality for themselves. Then others took the book and basically worshiped it as Unquestionable Authority for hundreds of years, completely ignoring the first chapter. (Don't have a reference for this, so might not be true, but it certainly sounds very plausible.) Parent ) ( Thread

From: (Anonymous)

2012-12-16 01:35 am (UTC)

(Link) So does the disadvantage of father age imply that I should get some sperm frozen now in case I decide I want to become a father later? Presumably father age is an issue because their sperm becomes lower and lower quality. Or would freezing it cause it to deteriorate enough that it wouldn't help? Thread)

From: gwern branwen

2012-12-16 03:25 am (UTC)

(Link) Yes, that's one of the actionable suggestions. Freezing sperm is both a lot cheaper and a lot easier than freezing eggs, which is not a particularly controversial suggestion for career-minded women. The problem is, of course, is that it requires you to take the research seriously, have a low discount rate, and correctly predict whether your preferences about having kids will remain stable; hence it is quite rare.



(Some useful reading is in http://www.gwern.net/Ethical%20sperm%20d onation although I'm afraid I don't know of any really good or authoritative treatments of the topic.) Parent ) ( Thread

From: printf.net

2012-12-16 03:25 am (UTC)

(Link) atreic



In Britain, summer-born children are 3% less likely to qualify for A-levels (I think this is a sort of advanced college prep class?) than the autumn born.

They are college prep, but they're universal rather than advanced. Everyone applying to university takes them, nationwide. The universities all use them to make (usually) conditional offers to students, listing a target set of A-level grades that you have to meet to get a place with them. You start studying for them at age 16, and take them at age 18, and then go to university, so in that sense they're perhaps like SATs.



But the study's talking about qualifying to *start* studying A-levels, which depends on other national exam results from age 14-15. The study's saying that summer-born children are 3% less likely to meet the (fairly low) minimum standard that allows you to continue in school past age 15 and prepare for university. Maybe the US equivalent would be that summer-born children were 3% less likely to graduate from 10th grade.



Edited at 2012-12-16 03:27 am (UTC) (Sorry, I missed's response above.)They are college prep, but they're universal rather than advanced. Everyone applying to university takes them, nationwide. The universities all use them to make (usually) conditional offers to students, listing a target set of A-level grades that you have to meet to get a place with them. You start studying for them at age 16, and take them at age 18, and then go to university, so in that sense they're perhaps like SATs.But the study's talking about qualifying to *start* studying A-levels, which depends on other national exam results from age 14-15. The study's saying that summer-born children are 3% less likely to meet the (fairly low) minimum standard that allows you to continue in school past age 15 and prepare for university. Maybe the US equivalent would be that summer-born children were 3% less likely to graduate from 10th grade. Thread)

From: (Anonymous)

2012-12-17 06:36 am (UTC)

dk (Link) The breastfeeding study is not fully randomized, but only cluster-randomized (n=31). I find the confounding correlations more convincing. Thread)

From: amuchmoreexotic

2012-12-17 12:15 pm (UTC)

(Link) You should write a book of evidence-based parenting advice. Title idea: DON'T STARVE THEM OR BEAT THEM. Thread)

From: squid314

2012-12-18 08:22 am (UTC)

(Link) But...but...it wouldn't be evidence-based without randomized controlled trials comparing starved and beaten children to a controlled group! Parent ) ( Thread

From: deiseach

2012-12-17 02:01 pm (UTC)

(Link) Month of conception/birth data - astrology, dude :-)



A lot of this sounds like the common sense ideas from way back when. Do prospective parents nowadays really have to be told "Feed your new born baby when it cries with hunger"? That's more alarming to me than the notion of fluoride in the water.



Though going by this list of recommendations, I should be a Nobel-prize winning genius (born in the country, raised beside the sea on a plentiful diet of fish every Friday as a Catholic when the Friday abstention from meat was in force, good iodine levels because traditionally people ate seaweed that they gathered from the beach and dried - I like to joke that I was reared on goat's milk and sea air - ate what would nowadays be called organic food because that was what everyone ate, when they grew their own vegetables and potatoes and let the chickens roam around etc., drank spring water because we didn't have running water and so on and so forth).



If only I had not been born in May! Drat that summer birth date! Thread)

From: Randy Miller

2012-12-17 02:59 pm (UTC)

(Link) "A lot of this sounds like the common sense ideas from way back when. Do prospective parents nowadays really have to be told "Feed your new born baby when it cries with hunger"? "



No, trouble is, they are/were told the opposite. (I don't think by doctors right now.)

Parent ) ( Thread

From: naath

2012-12-17 03:09 pm (UTC)

(Link) My understanding of Fluoride is that "they" put it in the water so our teef don't all fall out. Am I talking out my arse? Or if not how do I balance "keeping my teeth" with "not damaging my brain"? Thread)

From: squid314

2012-12-18 08:22 am (UTC)

(Link) Yes, your understanding is right. Fluoride is very useful for protecting teeth, and although there are theoretical concerns about very high dosages for children, US dosages for adults don't show any evidence of brain toxicity that I know of. Parent ) ( Thread

From: (Anonymous)

2012-12-17 07:48 pm (UTC)

dk (Link) an RCT (n=46) showed that exercise increased birth weight (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11120515); that increased birthweight is probably a good thing; and that adult brain and head size is correlated with IQ (http://www.govrel.vcu.edu/news/Releases/2005/june/McDaniel-Big%20Brain.pdf).



184-185:



Bigger babies grow up to be smarter adults than do smaller babies.

We do not know whether size at birth causes higher intelligence

or is merely correlated with it. But why take a chance when there

is something you can do to increase the size of the baby? Namely,

exercise. Women who exercise on a treadmill twenty minutes a

day a few times a week have bigger babies, and bigger babies are

certainly healthier and may well grow up to be smarter because

of some variable associated with their size. That variable could

be brain size. The babies born to exercising mothers have larger

heads. We know that people with larger brains are more intel-

ligent on average.



Exercise is good for the baby, for mothers-to-be, and for

everybody else. Exercising large muscle groups actually increases

growth of neurons, and exercise, at least in animals, adds to the

blood supply of the brain. Even introducing exercise relatively

late in life is good for intelligence. Experiments show that elderly

people who are encouraged to exercise maintain good problem-

solving skills longer than people who are not encouraged to exer-

cise. The effect of exercising thirty minutes or more per day on

fluid intelligence-based tasks is .50 SD across all studies. Strength training plus cardiac training is better than cardiac training alone.

People who exercise regularly in middle age are one-third as likely

to get Alzheimer's disease in their seventies as people who do not

exercise. You can even start exercise in your sixties and reduce the

likelihood of Alzheimer's by half.



This quote is visible on google books. My links at the beginning are from the endnotes on page 255, which is not on google books. Nisbett does not say that maternal exercise increases IQ by 7 points. That number refers to elderly exercise. What he says about babies is that(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11120515); that increased birthweight is probably a good thing; and that(http://www.govrel.vcu.edu/news/Releases/2005/june/McDaniel-Big%20Brain.pdf).184-185:This quote is visible on google books. My links at the beginning are from the endnotes on page 255, which is not on google books. Thread)

From: squid314

2012-12-18 08:21 am (UTC)

Re: dk (Link) Random Internet web pages failed me then. Thanks for the correction. Parent ) ( Thread

From: Julia Wise

2012-12-18 12:01 pm (UTC)

(Link) In the licorice paragraph, it's not immediately clear (except from the study title) which direction the relationship goes. For a moment there I was wondering if I should develop a taste for licorice.



In Scandinavia, they eat a terrifying salty licorice with ammonium chloride, which I would totally believe is bad for adults and/or fetuses. But I assume the test was on regular licorice and not the ammonium chloride kind. Thread)

From: sniffnoy

2012-12-18 07:51 pm (UTC)

(Link) I agree that this is a little unclear. Parent ) ( Thread

From: (Anonymous)

2012-12-19 06:51 pm (UTC)

dk (Link) The study was in Finland, so confounding by ammonium chloride is a serious concern.



The study determined what brands the mother consumed and so measured glycyrrhizin, not just pieces of candy. So it could have measured ammonium chloride, but it didn't. Questions that don't require access to the study data: does salty licorice has more or less glycyrrhizin than normal licorice? Do Finns eat much licorice without ammonium chloride? Parent ) ( Thread

From: fitfool

2012-12-19 03:52 am (UTC)

(Link) This was a really entertaining post. Thanks for compiling all of those links. I am amused by some of the things that were investigated. Licorice? Who even thought to look into that?

Thread)

From: rlpowell

2012-12-19 07:27 pm (UTC)

About parasites (Link)



I'm a bit worried about the parasite thing, because



The state of the research here is just *terrible*; it's quite confusing to me that given a real possibility for fixing basically all of the diseases of affluence at once (including maybe autism and diabetes for fuck's sake!!), we as a culture haven't basically dropped everything to work on that, but there it is.



Assuming the research you're referencing is correct, and assuming the old friends hypothesis is correct, one is left with picking between an at *most* 10 point IQ boost and rolling the dice against asthma, bad allergies, celiac, etc.



If that's the actual decision, I'll take the IQ hit, personally, but of course we have no idea because as you said "yay tree shrews!".



I am now officially cranky. -_-



-Robin Got here from EY's FB post.I'm a bit worried about the parasite thing, because http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helminthic _therapy (and related links, that's just a starting point). I've actually been going to some lengths to expose my infants to situations that other parents might consider icky (i.e. badly unhygienic) because I know lots of people who have all sorts of bad autoimmune problems and it *really* sucks.The state of the research here is just *terrible*; it's quite confusing to me that given a real possibility for fixing basically all of the diseases of affluence at once (including maybe autism and diabetes for fuck's sake!!), we as a culture haven't basically dropped everything to work on that, but there it is.Assuming the research you're referencing is correct, and assuming the old friends hypothesis is correct, one is left with picking between an at *most* 10 point IQ boost and rolling the dice against asthma, bad allergies, celiac, etc.If that's the actual decision, I'll take the IQ hit, personally, but of course we have no idea because as you said "yay tree shrews!".I am now officially cranky. -_--Robin Thread)

From: (Anonymous)

2012-12-21 12:50 am (UTC)

dk (Link) A-levels (I think this is a sort of advanced college prep class?)



I've seen several people criticize you for not knowing what A-levels are. But I applaud you for admitting your ignorance! I've seen several people criticize you for not knowing what A-levels are. But I applaud you for admitting your ignorance! Thread)

From: (Anonymous)

2012-12-22 12:32 am (UTC)

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