Twin study suggests rationality and intelligence share the same genetic roots - the study suggests that being irrational, or making illogical choices, might simply be another way of measuring lower intelligence.

[u/mvea]

https://www.psypost.org/twin-study-suggests-rationality-and-intelligence-share-the-same-genetic-roots/

[u/Sinai]

It doesn't take much reading between the lines to see that the author thought the very suggestion of general intelligence and rationality being anything but highly correlated was absurd, and did this study because of that.

“1) We found that irrationality, far from being what IQ tests miss, is one of the best IQ tests available. 2) We found that irrationality, far from being unrelated to genetics and more of a mindset, is among the most heritable of psychological traits. 3) Irrationality is making mistakes which are unnecessary: wrong decisions when we have all the information we need, and some simple logic means there is no reason for the error. We found that realizing what information is available, and applying some simple logic, is almost all of the cause of cognitive irrationality. 4) Cognitive ability explained nearly all of cognitive irrationality, and much of the overlap was genetic.”

[u/AidosKynee → u/Sinai]

I'm always skeptical of solo authors, particularly when the study is inflammatory. Apparently this author is on the editorial board of the journal, which is also a concern.

[u/Sinai → u/AidosKynee]

This is about as far from inflammatory a study as you can get. This is a orthodox scientist with thousands of citations in the field arriving at the orthodox conclusion.

[u/loidelhistoire → u/Sinai]

This field is an ideological minefield though, isn't it?

[u/RudeHero → u/loidelhistoire]

For sure. Compare it to nuclear research.

Nuclear research is important, but depending on ideology the people in charge could use the results to provide energy, or they could use them to kill a bazillion people

I suppose that applies to a lot of research

[u/randylush → u/RudeHero]

The problem is with physics, things are pretty concrete. You can be right or wrong, and it’s fairly easy to get a consensus on how things work.

With psychology, unfortunately people will push their ideology all the way down to the science. People are very wary to admit that there is a genetic component of intelligence or even just mental health, for fear of being labeled a eugenist.

This would be like being afraid to admit that uranium-235 is fissile because of the implications.

[u/lil_kleintje → u/randylush]

This kind of approach is already delivering some insane results in tech industry environment: rationalists, zizians, yarvinists, Musk/Thiel&Co... who knows what else is brewing.