For full clarity: I didn't flag your comment (at least, not intentionally, as I never even thought about doing that)
Now the substance:
"The alleged “suppressed control group” does not turn the result into “no heritability”."
=> Of course not, did anyone claim there was no heritability? But
1/ It's not "alleged", it's printed black on white in the paper.
2/ There is no excuse for suppressing control group data (it's like suppressing the placebo arm of a drug study).
3/ It does turn the result into "junk", and it does establish a definite case of scientific malpractice among people arguing that IQ heritability is 0.70.
As for later analyses, they weren't the topic of my post, but that doesn't mean they're casher.
As for this snide comment that you posted behind your flagged comment:
"I don't care if you find it fair. If you can't accept that genetics determines the entire organism (stress: entire) and does not stop at the neck, then you'd perceive my later criticisms as much worse than - gasp! oh great heavens! my pearls! - unfair. It is a bitter pill to swallow that some people were simply born with better hardware than yourself, one you are obviously railing against. Now, rush on and down vote this comment as well to lighten the burden of your cognitive dissonance. I'm also finding it difficult to reconcile your use of the flag/report on the parent comment versus the rules dictating and describing what is disallowed content. Disagreement is not against the rules. Perceived "fairness" is not in the rules."
Sorry to inform you that you don't understand the meaning of the verb "determine", as "genetics determines the entire organism" is scientifically wrong for obvious reasons: "influences", yes; "encodes proteins for", yes; but "determines", no.
And, no, I'm not railing against anyone's hardware as I'm pretty satisfied with mine.
In contemporary human populations living in typical modern environments, a large share (roughly half or more in adulthood) of the differences in IQ between individuals is associated with genetic differences.
The evidence is overwhelming in that direction:
Twin & family designs: h² ~0.4–0.8, often ~0.7–0.8 in adult samples like MISTRA.
Adoption: people resemble their biological relatives more than their adoptive relatives in IQ, despite strong environmental differences.
Molecular genetics: polygenic scores and GCTA show real, replicable genetic signal for intelligence.
What it does not mean is that:
1. IQ is fixed at birth in a way that cannot be influenced by environment.
2. IQ differences justify any sort of discrimination or moral ranking.
Those two points are where people tend to clutch their pearls and panic. Just because we have noticed an uncomfortable truth does not mean that it is valid to use it in a discriminatory manner; the issue becomes that people will inevitably do so, thus those "in power" cripple the theory in the crib so as to avoid the fearful and uncomfortable implications.
This literally doesn't say anything. It's a lot of words, but you've managed to reproduce the exact position the author of the article has. For those wondering what the trick was here: this comment forwards the 40-80% h2 numbers from twin studies, then says "molecular genetics show real, replicable genetic signal for intelligence", rather than showing the 10-30% h2 numbers those studies generate.
It's practically nobody's position that there's no linkage between genetics and intelligence (that would be weird indeed), but it's important for this comment for you to believe that's the counterargument --- otherwise the comment doesn't make sense.
For full clarity: I didn't flag your comment (at least, not intentionally, as I never even thought about doing that)
Now the substance:
"The alleged “suppressed control group” does not turn the result into “no heritability”."
=> Of course not, did anyone claim there was no heritability? But
1/ It's not "alleged", it's printed black on white in the paper.
2/ There is no excuse for suppressing control group data (it's like suppressing the placebo arm of a drug study).
3/ It does turn the result into "junk", and it does establish a definite case of scientific malpractice among people arguing that IQ heritability is 0.70.
As for later analyses, they weren't the topic of my post, but that doesn't mean they're casher.
As for this snide comment that you posted behind your flagged comment:
"I don't care if you find it fair. If you can't accept that genetics determines the entire organism (stress: entire) and does not stop at the neck, then you'd perceive my later criticisms as much worse than - gasp! oh great heavens! my pearls! - unfair. It is a bitter pill to swallow that some people were simply born with better hardware than yourself, one you are obviously railing against. Now, rush on and down vote this comment as well to lighten the burden of your cognitive dissonance. I'm also finding it difficult to reconcile your use of the flag/report on the parent comment versus the rules dictating and describing what is disallowed content. Disagreement is not against the rules. Perceived "fairness" is not in the rules."
Sorry to inform you that you don't understand the meaning of the verb "determine", as "genetics determines the entire organism" is scientifically wrong for obvious reasons: "influences", yes; "encodes proteins for", yes; but "determines", no.
And, no, I'm not railing against anyone's hardware as I'm pretty satisfied with mine.
In contemporary human populations living in typical modern environments, a large share (roughly half or more in adulthood) of the differences in IQ between individuals is associated with genetic differences.
The evidence is overwhelming in that direction:
Twin & family designs: h² ~0.4–0.8, often ~0.7–0.8 in adult samples like MISTRA.
Adoption: people resemble their biological relatives more than their adoptive relatives in IQ, despite strong environmental differences.
Molecular genetics: polygenic scores and GCTA show real, replicable genetic signal for intelligence.
What it does not mean is that:
1. IQ is fixed at birth in a way that cannot be influenced by environment.
2. IQ differences justify any sort of discrimination or moral ranking.
Those two points are where people tend to clutch their pearls and panic. Just because we have noticed an uncomfortable truth does not mean that it is valid to use it in a discriminatory manner; the issue becomes that people will inevitably do so, thus those "in power" cripple the theory in the crib so as to avoid the fearful and uncomfortable implications.
This literally doesn't say anything. It's a lot of words, but you've managed to reproduce the exact position the author of the article has. For those wondering what the trick was here: this comment forwards the 40-80% h2 numbers from twin studies, then says "molecular genetics show real, replicable genetic signal for intelligence", rather than showing the 10-30% h2 numbers those studies generate.
It's practically nobody's position that there's no linkage between genetics and intelligence (that would be weird indeed), but it's important for this comment for you to believe that's the counterargument --- otherwise the comment doesn't make sense.
The real question is whether genetics is a substantial or a negligible influence on intelligence (or proxy measures like IQ).
If genetics is less than 5 percent I would consider that something worth ignoring.
If it is 10 percent it is substantial enough to make a difference at the extremes.
If it is 20 percent that is real serious business.
Anything higher means we should really sit up and take notice of this fact.
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