Hacker News Reader

Comment by rawnlq | Hacker News Reader

I found his claim that "people are basically the same" pretty interesting. He came from a family of IMO medalists (himself, his brother Po-Ru Loh, and his sister Po-Ling Loh). So it's surprising that he believes in nurture over nature.

Maybe there was really some secret sauce in his upbringing that he is now passing on via coaching?

View on HN

Is it surprising? Intelligence isn't 100% hereditary; maybe 50% can be attributed to genetic factors? So if you see three family members performing at world-class intelligence levels, you might actually be experiencing a nurture argument, not a nature argument. The heritability of intelligence isn't strong enough to explain that outcome through nature.

Another front page thread tonight has multiple people saying it's 0.4 hereditary at childhood, rising to 0.75 by adulthood. Height is 0.8. I take those numbers with healthy skepticism, having not read the source material, but they aren't out of thin air.

Could you link me that thread?

Ultimately the "environmental" factor depends on how much the environment naturally varies from family to family. Anyway, having one IMO kid is virtually not possible with most parents' genetic contribution, and there are plenty of IMO competitors with siblings that would have no hope of being such, where, if there was an environmental factor, the question was decided by the second birthday as a result of air quality, lead paint, or what music was on the radio.

Isn't it completely unsurprising?

If you grew up in a family of bodybuilders, you would emphasise training, because your brothers who didn't train would look fairly ordinary. You'd acknowledge that you all had similar premises all well, thanks to genetics.

The secret sauce is probably an intense interest brought about by being in a family where everyone is talking about math all the time.

People aren't the same, despite how nice of a story that would make.

However, this fact should not deter our attempts to provide everyone with equal opportunity to pursue the life they desire.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com