/lit/ - Literature

>>14779682
>frequently conflating ideas via glib phrases that serve to nurture this conflict
How ironic.
>IQ is a single number, but intelligence is not a single thing, and the genetic component to intelligence is most emphatically not a single gene. The most recent studies identify scores of genetic variants that correlate en masse with better results in cognitive tests.
Rutherford is weird, he can apparently read the writing on the wall, but not comprehend the implications.

>>14502801
>because you have to do a natural experiment (you cannot change a variable and see what the effect it) you cannot ascribe cause and effect there.
But you can. Achievement of non-identical twins in the same household but with 50% different genetics can be compared to identical twins - this is a natural experiment, you would expect non-identical twins to have half the correlation of identical twins, and they do. Children can have their genetic capability measured with polygenic scores and outcomes can be compared. Like you say, genes don't change, so a PGS at birth must be measuring something causal. You might argue that the genetic differences are causing something else - i.e. some sort of systematic population stratification, but that is attempted to be controlled for and validation is done in external samples and within family comparisons (i.e. predicting which sibling does better based on their PGS).