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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   23045 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026

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Heritability would be the dominant form of the equation, but you also can’t factor out the epigenetic influence (I would think) unless gene expression itself can be further reduced to strict biological determinants. Which is to say gene expression is also heritable. I understand what you’re saying here but I’m still unsure as to whether it answers the question or not. Or maybe it’s a poorly formed question. I probably don’t have the background here that you do.

Incidentally what does the equation say about people of exceptionally gifted talents that have no known biological pedigree found within their family ancestry?

Epigenetic variance explains ~0% of phenotypic variance. You should probably just not refer to it again and epistemically audit whatever process led you to mention it like it was important.

That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about its role in gene expression.

It doesn't have a significant role if it doesn't cause significant differences in phenotype, because heritability is high.

It doesn’t play a direct role in the inheritance of certain traits but it impacts the ability to express them.

You're not understanding. Epigenetic variance explains ~0% of phenotypic variance, so it doesn't impact gene expression between people do a significant extent. Has nothing to do with between-generations.

Then explain the phenomenon I brought up earlier that wasn’t answered because whatever the answer is it certainly isn’t an obvious one to me.

Michael Jordan's height compared to his siblings? It's caused by mendelian segregation which causes the genetic variance of siblings to be 1/2 that of the whole population. I left another comment about this.

How does that tie in more generally with the origin of traits that are at the more extreme bound of the population with no previously known biological determinants? There’s clearly something here I’m not getting that doesn’t seem right and I’m not sure if your comments are really explaining it. Mendelian genetics has also long since been superseded by better insights and it’s not best extrapolated to explaining the outcomes of inheritance in humans (yes his laws still apply, but there’s also a lot more to genetics than what he captured).

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