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Comment by ludston | Hacker News Reader

How does your science control for differences between parenting, access to education and nutrition though? I would expect doing so to be unethical and therefore not allowed.

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Twin studies is the oldest, best answer. People have fancy statistical trickery these days too.

Would you mind elaborating on exactly how many studies you think are engaging in "statistical trickery"?

"exactly how many"--I have no idea. I didn't mean to put those studies down, the statistical trickery can be quite cool! Hard to do right, though.

I think at least some of those statements are independent of parenting, access to education and nutrition.

Give everyone perfect parenting, a great education and lots of nutritious food and some of them still won't be able to learn calculus.

Give everyone the perfect genes and lack of environment can also cause them not to learn calculus.

You are misunderstanding. Calculus is just a placeholder for something that requires a particular level of intelligence.

It's about whether it's possible or not, not whether you actually do learn the thing.

Someone with an IQ of 120 may not ever learn calculus, but they probably have the ability to do so. You cannot say the same of someone with an IQ of 80.

Yeah, but the whole debate is about how much is genetics responsible for intelligence vs the environment. There was a claim that genetics is responsible for ~70-80% of variance. Pick any intellectual ability and lack of environment can cause for an individual to not be able to achieve that, so how can genetics be responsible for that much variance?

The question is where and how does the 70-80% come? How is it meaningful and how is it measured?

It's 70-80% conditional on (some sampling from) our current environment. Obviously if your environment is boiling sulfuric acid you aren't gonna be smart.

But why only calculus? Why the focus on a single subject? This is a very limited view of intelligence.

It wouldnt matter what subject was picked, the point they are making that 70% of your ability in a domain is going to be genetic. It could be distance running, calculus or marble sculpting.

I was continuing the example the OP gave. Calculus is just a placeholder for something that requires a particular level of intelligence.

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