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Comment by lapcat

13 hours ago

> The question never was about whether or not genetic differences contribute to the spread of intellectual talent—they obviously do. The question always was about the “interesting place” Paul Graham talked about, the meaningful space between genetic potential and actual achievement, and whether or not it really existed. And, at 30% or 50%, this place surely exists.

The author of this piece totally ignored that heritability is only part of the genetic lottery.

  • What do you mean?

    • That heritability doesn't cover all genetic factors. E.g. out of 100% of IQ variation 50% might be inherited, but that doesn't say that the rest is nurture, right? It can still have a huge factor of genetic lottery. E.g. isn't heritability the mean of the genetic effects, but there's also the rest of the distribution (std. dev)?