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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026

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This ignores regression to the mean. The 120 IQ parent's children will tend towards a longer term average of the ancestors of that parent. Roughly speaking. So the distribution is not symmetric. An especially smart, outlier person's children are more likely to go downwards in IQ than to go upwards.

This ignores regression to the mean. The 120 IQ parent's children will tend towards a longer term average of the ancestors of that parent.

Gene scores do not regress to the mean. And therefore neither do 100% heritable phenotypes. I was speaking in gene scores. Regression to the mean comes from e^2. People with above average traits have above average e^2, but their children have an expected e^2 of exactly average.

An especially smart, outlier person's children are more likely to go downwards in IQ than to go upwards.

But yes, this is true in real life since the e^2 component of IQ is between 20% and 40% Also, the expected effect of de novo mutations on offspring gene scores is small but negative.