Comment by DaveZale
6 days ago
iq is "polygenetic" with the consensus estimates at 50-80% based on genes
success has components of luck as in "right place, right time" for someone with the right qualities and connections, and many of the very successful are quick to admit this
I am a 3rd generation machinist along the paternal line, and although the machines I operate are in expensive labs, those my father and grandfather operated were probably just as challenging. Engineering also seems to often run in the family. How much is nature and nuture? "It varies" is a safe response
Whoah, no, there is definitely not a consensus for 50-80%, and most of what's being published now refutes the 80% end of that range --- the 80% estimates come from underpowered studies like MISTRA that improperly assumed independent environments for twins reared apart.
okay, I saw the paper saying 500 genes are involved. So does a single number for iq mean anything? Does the number depend upon what is tested?
We have essentially no mechanistic understanding of gene/intelligence interactions. Rather, we have cohorts of people tagged with traits (educational achievement, tested IQ, height, etc), all sequenced, and then we can run correlation surveys across all their genomes to identify correlations between alleles and traits. When you do that, you get 10-30% heritability numbers; the gap between that and the range for MZ/DZ twin studies (the 50-80% you often see) is "the missing heritability problem".
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