Comment by lapcat
3 days ago
> This shouldn't be controversial. Height is well-known to be heritable.
I don't understand why so many commenters here are arguing against a straw man. The article author does not and never did believe in the "blank slate" theory. The author has a "centrist" view that genes matter but are not the only determining factor.
I was responding to the previous comment, not so much the article.
> The author has a "centrist" view that genes matter but are not the only determining factor.
Nobody thinks genes are the only determining factor (that's a straw man on the other side :)
Most people agree it is somewhere on a continuum. Some people think it leans more one way; others the other way. Some people want it to lean more one way; others want it to lean more the other.
> I was responding to the previous comment, not so much the article.
How so? You said, "This shouldn't be controversial. Height is well-known to be heritable. Being tall gives you a better shot at making the NBA. The same is true for many other things." But there's no indication that the previous comment was arguing the opposite of that. Rather, the previous comment was arguing against this idea: "Surely success and intelligence is just an inborn thing, and thus inevitable and unchangeable. There’s nothing they can do, and it was always going to end up that way. Inevitability erases any feelings or guilt or shame."
I said quite a bit more than what you quoted. And I find your interest in my comment and why I made it... odd.
I'm sorry if I didn't get my point across in a way that satisfies you. But I suggest you take a step back and re-read what both of us wrote. Or maybe just move on.
The author questions whether genes are a meaningful factor, in the large, and comes down against it. I don't think that makes them a centrist; I think they're just rejecting a caricature (the "blank slate") laid out by people strongly invested in the idea that intelligence is determined genetically.
> At 30%, one does observe a faint correlation between genetic potential and IQ. The correlation becomes clearer at 50%, while remaining quite noisy. This is an essential aspect to keep in mind: 50% may sound like a solid heritability figure, but the associated correlation is rather modest. It’s only at 80% that the picture starts to “feel like” a line.
My understanding is that the author thinks the heritability of IQ is somewhere between 30% and 50%, but not 80% or 100%, and not 20% or 0%.
I'm not reacting against the article, but the people mentioned in the article that the author is critiquing.