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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1368 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 21, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Shower thought:

Is there a contradiction between the typical progressive belief in blank slateism and progressive women's (and some men's) choosiness in who to partner up and have babies with? If any baby can be nurtured and educated into becoming an astronaut or [insert high status white collar profession], then what's the big deal about getting DNA from a sub-optimal mate?

I don't think there are a lot of actual genetics deniers out there who don't believe in the heritability of DNA from parents to children. What gets strawmanned or parodied as "blank-slatism" is either a denial that there is a strong race/class correlation because we aren't sorting efficiently enough as a society, or a quibble about what percentage chances are involved. There's a tension between stated beliefs and revealed preferences, much like choosing schools and neighborhoods, but one can find one's way around it pretty easily.

Good substack article on the weakness of twin studies here, the particular portion I think is relevant to this question (check the article for the scatter plots):

Heritability is, by construction, a population-level aggregate. Before it can inform policy-making (or even personal decision-making), it must be interpreted at the level of individuals. This is where things get interesting and counterintuitive. Let’s say, for example, that you are a genetically average person. How much does that affect your prospects? Surprisingly, at 30%, it’s as if your genes didn’t matter at all. With an average potential, you still have a decent chance of landing at the top or bottom of the IQ distribution. Actually, in this specific random sample, one of three smartest people around (the top 0.3%) happens to have an almost exactly average genetic make-up, and the fourth dumbest person has a slightly above-average potential. At 50%, being genetically average starts to limit your optionality, but the spread remains massive. Had you been marginally luckier—say, in the top third for genetic potential—you’d still have a shot at becoming one of the smartest people around. At 80%, though, your optionality has mostly vanished. It’s still possible to move a notch upward or downward, but the game is mostly over. In this world, geniuses are born, not made.

Most debates aren't between genetics deniers who think that there is zero correlation between parents and children and feudal pedigree enthusiasts who assume that children are clones of their parents. It's a debate between people who think there's a 30% correlation and people who think there's an 80% correlation. And further, I think most of the debate between blank slatists and genetic determinists is a debate is between people who agree that the correlation is 50% but disagree about whether society is overrating or underrating that correlation. A 30% correlation is still a chance that one wants to take to benefit ones children, but it might not be a chance that you think society should shut doors against. Most people would acknowledge that there is a correlations between IQ and wealth and between parent IQ and children IQ, people still wring their hands about the fate of coal towns in Appalachia.

There's also a simple element: I don't get along with dumb people. Even if I thought having kids with a dumb girl wouldn't lead to dumb children, I wouldn't get along with the dumb girl anyway.

I don't think there are a lot of actual genetics deniers out there who don't believe in the heritability of DNA from parents to children.

Belief in "DNA" being transmitted from parents to children != Belief in heritability of traits like cognitive ability.

I do think there are a lot of people, perhaps the majority of Western whites, who believe in some vague sense that parents pass something called "DNA" (might as well be called Feynman's "wakalix" from their standpoint) along to their children and this can lead to children having similar skin tone and hair color as their parents. However, this belief quickly starts to break down as we move toward phenotypes like cognitive ability akin to the "Phoebe Teaching Joey" meme, especially in formalized and generalized form (such as the concept of the heritability of cognitive ability).

It's a debate between people who think there's a 30% correlation and people who think there's an 80% correlation.

Just because the author of that article set his simulations using figures of 30%, 50%, and 80% doesn't mean those figures are equally supported by the evidence, or if 80% is even the upper bound for the heritability of adulthood IQ. See here, for example, where estimates of adulthood IQ heritability exceed 80% and even 85%. Poor Shared Environment ("nurture") down there hugging the x-axis of 0.

Plus, the 30%, 50%, and 80% are R-sqs, not correlations; the respective correlations are 0.55, 0.71, and 0.89.

Let’s say, for example, that you are a genetically average person. How much does that affect your prospects? Surprisingly, at 30%, it’s as if your genes didn’t matter at all. With an average potential, you still have a decent chance of landing at the top or bottom of the IQ distribution.

Supposing you're an average person is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, and the "as if" is misleadingly handwavy.

I quickly replicated his 30% heritability simulation but with 1 million individuals, dividing the population into 20. Under the 30% scenario, if you're in the middle decile (ventiles 10 & 11) of genotypic IQ ("genes"), you have about twice the chance of being in the middle decile of phenotypic IQ than the top decile (ventiles 19 & 20). So it's not exactly the coinflip the author implies, although I suppose "decent chance" might be sufficiently vague as a CYA.

If you were instead in the bottom decile of genotypic IQ (ventiles 1 & 2), you'd have about a 6x greater chance of being in the bottom decile of phenotypic IQ than in the middle decile. Furthermore, you'd have over a 70x greater chance of being in the bottom decile than top decile of phenotypic IQ. Given the symmetry, same deal for the top decile of genotypic IQ with respect to the middle and bottom deciles of phenotypic IQ. Note that there are the same number of people in the bottom decile of genotypic IQ as there are in the middle decile, and the top decile as there are in the middle decile.

So even under the 30% scenario, genotypic IQ still matters plenty—much less the 50% or heaven forbid, 80% scenario.

Actually, in this specific random sample, one of three smartest people around (the top 0.3%) happens to have an almost exactly average genetic make-up, and the fourth dumbest person has a slightly above-average potential.

This is a type of base rate adjacent fallacy. The pool of people with average or below genotypic IQ is literally over 150x that of those in the top 0.3%, 50x those in the top 1%, etc. They get a lot more cracks at making it into the Top [X] of phenotypic IQ rank. Kind of like how, taking listed heights at their word (NBA players were born in the darkness of height frauding; men doing online dating merely adopted it), there appears to be a similar number of men between 6'0" and 6'3" and men between 7'0" and 7'3" in the NBA. It could be that height doesn't matter that much for basketball—or perhaps it could be because there are hundreds of thousands times more men in the former group than the latter group.

At 80%, though, your optionality has mostly vanished. It’s still possible to move a notch upward or downward, but the game is mostly over. In this world, geniuses are born, not made.

Playing with dynamite there when some studies have indeed suggested the upper bound could be well above 80%. The author does seem genuine; as he mentioned, he penned a book claiming that mathematical genius is a myth (for which in his article he provided an Amazon link). Else I'd suspect he was writing in a Straussian manner pretending to be a centrist "both-sides"ing but was actually a Chud hereditarian playing dumb, or leaving low hanging fruit engagement bait like how Reddit posts will make intentional typos or misspellings in their titles (a modern innovation in Cunningham's Law).

This is a type of base rate adjacent fallacy. The pool of people with average or below genotypic IQ is literally over 150x that of those in the top 0.3%, 50x those in the top 1%, etc. They get a lot more cracks at making it into the Top [X] of phenotypic IQ rank. Kind of like how, taking listed heights at their word (NBA players were born in the darkness of height frauding; men doing online dating merely adopted it), there appears to be a similar number of men between 6'0" and 6'3" and men between 7'0" and 7'3" in the NBA. It could be that height doesn't matter that much for basketball—or perhaps it could be because there are hundreds of thousands times more men in the former group than the latter group.

Surely you agree that it is possible to both over or under rate the importance of height for a basketball player? Height is critically important for basketball, and a player is nearly always, ceteris paribus, better and more useful for a team if he as inch taller. But if you proposed trading Tyrese Maxey for Zach Edey, you'd be making a mistake.

There can bo societies that overrate the importance of genetic heritage, and societies that underrate it.

Surely you agree that it is possible to both over or under rate the importance of height for a basketball player? ...There can bo societies that overrate the importance of genetic heritage, and societies that underrate it.

I reject the attempt at reframing and equivocating via a hypothetical after the excerpt you selected—from an article you selected—turned out to be an own-goal on the initial point you were trying to make because you lacked understanding of what you were quoting.

A better question would not be whether there "can bo [sic]" societies that underrate or overrate the heritability of cognitive ability, but whether societies in the world we live in underrate or overrate the heritability of cognitive ability, insofar as they rate cognitive ability or heritability at all.

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