The mutable and the immutable

From Nobody is a Prisoner of Their IQ by Rob Henderson.  The subheading is The preoccupation with intelligence undermines personal agency.

If you live in a developed country, studies indicate that there is a simple and highly effective formula for avoiding poverty:

1. Finish high school.

2. Get a full-time job once you finish school.

3. Get married before you have children.

This has come to be known as “the success sequence.” Ninety-seven percent of people who follow these steps do not live in poverty. In contrast, seventy-six percent of those that did not adhere to any of these norms were poor.

My model has been that there are six key elements involved in personal success.  Two are relatively immutable and highly subject to heritability - IQ and general morbidity (more specifically, general health and physical capability, with good looks as an added element).  Four are more under direct personal control 1) What are your life goals?, 2) What are acceptable strategies in pursuit of those goals?, 3) What are acceptable behaviors in attaining those goals? (this is also heritable though more weakly), and 4) What are appropriate attitudes to adopt?

Of the six, IQ is probably the most heritable and the least mutable.  Outside conditions of privation, any person with normal access to social connection, food and adequate diet, and health treatment won't move the dial more than IQ points regardless of intervention.

General morbidity, health, and appearance are also reasonably heritable and while marginally more mutable than IQ, there is a limit to how far the bounds might be stretched beyond those inherited.  

The opportunity for improvement is primarily among the latter four elements.  And this is especially true for those at the bottom of the income quintiles.

Life goals, acceptable strategies, appropriate behaviors, and general attitude tend to be strongly shaped by external forces such as culture, religion, social class, social networks, and geography/historical context.  

While shaped, they do ultimately represent a choice by the individual.  You choose to be narrowly selfish in financial terms or consider others and seek rewards beyond just the financial.  You choose to be ruthless, throwing anyone not conducive to your goals under the bus or you choose to be magnanimous and have friends that are not instrumentally utilitarian.  You choose to be diligent and hard working or to be sloppy and lazy.  You choose to be optimistic and open with others or to be pessimistic and closed.

All those choices can be appropriate under particular circumstances but there are patterns of goals and behaviors which tend to be more appropriate, more often, in a broader range of contexts.

The norms established by culture, religion, class, networks and context either effectively cultivate and transmit appropriate choices by the individual or they do not.  It is a complex interweaving but there are none-the-less obviously effective mechanisms greater than others.  

Henderson makes similar points in a different way but it is ultimately a similar analysis.  We are dealt some cards which are hard to change but highly influential.  But we have access to other cards ar our choosing.  How well we play the hand is up to us.