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Comment by woko | Hacker News Reader

> People strongly want to believe that intelligence doesn't have a strong genetic component, I think mainly for moral reasons.

More so because there is no proof for that.

Individuals exhibit different levels of intelligence. Sure, life is unfair.

However, individuals do not necessarily inherit intelligence from their parents' genes. Seriously, who could think that you could build a lineage of "gifted persons" solely by genetically selecting the parents among the population of "gifted persons"?

What we observe could be explained by many other more convincing factors: early learning activity, more care to the child's education, logical and clear answers to the kid's questions about the world around him, help with the homework, etc. With proper early learning activity for the baby, and amazing teachers for the early teachings, the kid has a strong foundation. From there, compound returns.

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> However, individuals do not necessarily inherit intelligence from their parents' genes.

Do you have an alternative explanation for the results of twin studies on IQ then? It's also not just IQ, so many things very strongly correlate between identical twins.

> Seriously, who could think that you could build a lineage of "gifted persons" solely by genetically selecting the parents among the population of "gifted persons"?

Does natural selection only work on non-humans then?

One could argue that we've decoupled ourselves from natural selection in significant ways by moving toward more egalitarian societies where huge numbers of people who would've been shut out in our more brutal past aren't shut out any longer. Non-humans don't have anything comparable in terms of scale.

Alternatively, it could be viewed as more of a reshuffling, where selection will still take place in the long run but with very different pressures.

The way I see it, none of us asked to be born, so if we really are trying to be 'fair', everyone should be granted a base level of material support regardless of their ability to contribute. I also think all of us would be much better off we collectively valued happiness more than material wealth. There is definitely a place for incentives, but when those come with the baggage of class warfare, past a certain point they become more destructive than constructive on aggregate.

> Seriously, who could think that you could build a lineage of "gifted persons" solely by genetically selecting the parents among the population of "gifted persons"?

Yes, definitely. Ask anyone who breeds animals for a living. You can select for even more abstract traits like "willingness to train", obedience or fearlessness.

> However, individuals do not necessarily inherit intelligence from their parents' genes.

While they do not necessarily inherit intelligence, there is a non-zero likelihood that eg. intelligence is a gene-thing. This non-zero likelihood might be bigger than a primarily by moral standards led discussion might suggest us to be.

> What we observe could be explained by many other more convincing factors: early learning activity, more care to the child's education, logical and clear answers to the kid's questions about the world around him, help with the homework, etc. With proper early learning activity for the baby, and amazing teachers for the early teachings, the kid has a strong foundation. From there, compound returns.

I don't see why that would be more convincing. As a hyperbole, if two completely different species (say a monkey and a primate) are exposed to the same learning environment, one would definitely end up fairing better than the other due to the differences in their brain. The twin studies just show that, given most other factors for twins are likely to be the same.

>However, individuals do not necessarily inherit intelligence from their parents' genes. Seriously, who could think that you could build a lineage of "gifted persons" solely by genetically selecting the parents among the population of "gifted persons"?

Genes determine differences in intelligence between say a human and a dog or a human and a bird.

Genes also determine physical size, skin color and basically every difference in human attributes.

What black magic makes it so that these genes just happen to not at all influence intelligence among humans?

You can't see it but ideology is influencing your bias. You are unable to see how ludicrous it is to say intelligence isn't inherited when literally every single other thing is.

> gifted persons" solely by genetically selecting the parents among the population of "gifted persons"?

Yes, this is why top schools are designed to segregate out stupid people - positive eugenics.

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