Scott Alexander discusses a study challenging the idea that childhood abuse lowers IQ, and explores its implications for understanding the effects of child abuse on various outcomes. Longer summary

This post discusses a study by Danese et al. challenging the assumption that childhood abuse lowers IQ. The study found that after adjusting for pre-existing factors, there was no significant difference in IQ between abused and non-abused children. Scott Alexander explores the implications of this study in the context of shared-environment-skeptical psychiatry and discusses other studies showing limited effects of child abuse on various outcomes. He notes that while these findings are interesting, they may understate the dangers of severe abuse due to sample size limitations. The post concludes by suggesting that child abuse likely causes PTSD-like symptoms but may not have effects drastically different from normal PTSD. Shorter summary

Scott shares a diverse collection of interesting links and brief commentary on topics ranging from unusual video games to genetic research and political oddities. Longer summary

This post is a collection of interesting links and brief commentary on various topics. It covers a range of subjects including unusual video games, disease threat research, medical concerns about Tylenol use during pregnancy, questionable online dating sites, car-free cities, the relationship between intelligence and longevity, augmented reality games, historical enigmas, genetic editing techniques, political oddities, social mobility research, and unusual election tactics. The tone is informative and sometimes humorous, with Scott providing his thoughts and observations on each item. Shorter summary