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No, intelligence is not like height (theinfinitesimal.substack.com)

It earned its "flagged off HN" badge in under 2 hours

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41366609

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[-] slopjockey@awful.systems 18 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

In particular, two semantic tricks are used. First, the fact that current genetic markers aren't a good prediction for IQ heritability is used as an argument against it. The other likely explanation that our understanding of those markers is widely incomplete is not explored.

Unlike our understanding of IQ, the game of matching shapes where the loser gets a teen pregnancy. That's been fully explored.

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 31 points 3 months ago

Science: “our current understanding of genetics leads us to believe IQ is not heritable”.

This fucking guy: “IQ is heritable and you just haven’t proved it yet. Citation: I belong to a race with good genetics, unlike you”

[-] bitofhope@awful.systems 14 points 3 months ago

Honestly, I'm really surprised to hear that IQ is not even a little bit heritable, given that IQ test performance correlates with level of education, which correlates with wealth, which is heritable.

True, wealth is not genetic, but heritability has an interesting definition which leads to some unintuitive cases of heritability abd non-heritability. For instance, wearing earrings is heritable while having ears is not.

[-] graydon@canada.masto.host 13 points 3 months ago

@bitofhope @swlabr One of those quiet little scientific revolutions; cheap genetic testing let biologists realise that insects they had classified as different species were not, they were different morphs using the same genes. This let in the idea of developmental plasticity and the current consensus is that a whole lot of stuff is developmental, not genetic.

In humans, almost everything brain-based (sexuality, identity, language, symbol manipulation…) is likely significantly developmental.

[-] graydon@canada.masto.host 13 points 3 months ago

@bitofhope @swlabr This completely messes with the idea that you can use "good genes" as a guarantee of a desirable outcome.

It also hauls in the idea of environment as the arbiter in more-difficult-to-ignore ways. Even if you're using Origin and nothing since, you should be aware that "fitness" means "in some specific environment and moment in time", only there's this drive to ditch that. Recognising how much developmental plasticity matters breaks any concept of inherent quality of organisms.

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this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2024
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SneerClub

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