> It’s not that surprising that many successful people seem to be strong fans of heritability, or more broadly, of the idea that metrics like IQ point to some sort of “universal independent” metric of value.

I agree that that could be a motivation. But I would also say that having a motivation for a given result doesn't preclude that result. That is generally true in science.

I'm not an expert. But there seems to be fairly overwhelming evidence that some significant amount of intelligence is heritable. That IQ is a reasonably good measure (or proxy) for intelligence. And that IQ correlates well with a lot of other things like educational attainment and income.

That doesn't mean that your genes determine your future. But it does suggest that some people are "born" in a better position than others -- aside from their socio-economic status.

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.