IQ

Messy homes 'cause messy minds'
Growing up in a chaotic home may be bad for children's minds, a study suggests.
Researchers studied nearly 8,000 twins born in Britain between 1994 and 1996. Some were identical, others were not. London's Institute of Psychiatry found those living in noisy, disorganised and cramped homes were less intelligent, New Scientist magazine reported. Since the children were twins, the researchers were able to establish that this was caused by their environment and not their genes. Other studies have come up with similar findings. However, it has not been clear until now whether genetics or environment is the biggest factor.
Researchers were able to tease out the answer because the children were a mixture of identical and fraternal twins. This meant that some of the children had exactly the same set of genes while others shared only half their genes. The study found that the homes of wealthier and better-educated parents were slightly more organised. Their children were also slightly more intelligent.
Household chaos
However, when they took genes out of the equation they found that household chaos had a significant impact on intelligence.
Those living in organised homes were more intelligent than those living in chaotic homes.
"It just makes sense," said Professor Robert Plomin, the lead researcher.
"If a kid is in a really chaotic home, it's hard to imagine that they can learn in a normal way.
"Their surroundings just aren't subtle enough for them to tease apart the world."

My comment is
Now I know that what is touted to be intelligence has really, as I have suspected, at least as much to do with Knowledge as Ability. A lot of IQ tests are tests of what you know. I do understand that it is hard to test ability without using reference to knowledge eg in order to give a written test the testeee must be able to read the language proficiently that the test is written in. The more proficient the reader is in the language the higher his IQ because he will be able to pick up the “subtle” things in the questions. Right?
“learn in a normal way” what is a ‘normal’ way to learn? How does that go quoting William “lord what fools these mortals be” We think that we know so much! Like I said it is very amazing that we humans can know that what we know is only a fraction of what there is to know. How do we do that? How are we smart enough to know that when we answer a question there are a dozen more lurking there for us to find and then answer?
It is difficult to run a test that is really really objective. So there is not only more organized but also “wealthier and better-educated parents” (Is that a slur? Poorer parents have messier homes) that might affect the results?
In the long run, Yes I really do like to have an organized place and less cluttered. I would like to be a little wealthier so that we could fix things up. I think of that book about the corvettes in WWII. The author said that those boats that were a mess where the inhabitants claimed that “we are a working boat no time to ‘keep clean’” were fooling themselves. The most efficient boats were the ones that were neat and tidy and organized. But not overly so. The ones that were spit shined were spending to much time cleaning and to worried about keeping clean to get in there and fight.