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From: Cryptoengineer <petertrei@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Things presented in-story as Good Ideas that seem like really Bad
 Ideas
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2024 12:50:18 -0400
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On 9/18/2024 12:21 PM, The Horny Goat wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Sep 2024 20:16:08 -0400, Cryptoengineer
> <petertrei@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> I think you're misunderstanding 'regression to the mean'.
>>
>> Yes, if two 150 IQ people have kids, its more likely that they're
>> intelligence will be below 150 than above.
>>
>> But its still likely to be above 100, which is the whole population
>> mean. The term should really be 'regression *toward* the mean'.
> 
> Fair enough (and I've seen IQ test scores for my father in high school
> vs myself) but I'm personally convinced that intelligence test scores
> hinge at least as much on how one was raised as anything inherited
> from your parents.
> 
> My father grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere whereas my mother
> (who was the daughter of a commercial fisherman - not known as a
> source of brilliance as opposed to "canniness") regularly took my
> brother and I to the library, parks, other interesting places in our
> city. I was a "life-long reader" from a very early age and when tested
> had the scores to prove it.
> 
> In other words I got a lot of intellectual stimulation growing up that
> my father didn't. In addition I met a LOT of people when my maternal
> grandfather ran (unsuccessfully) twice for the Canadian Parliament in
> my pre-teen years. Built the (Revell?) plastic models and taught to
> play chess by my grandfather. Plus lots of 'field trips' in school and
> in Scouts.
> 
> Which isn't a guarantee of anything but certainly a more
> intellectually stimulating experience than growing up on an isolated
> farm.
> 
>> After all, if good traits can't accumulate, natural selection
>> couldn't produce more intelligent creatures (like us) from less
>> intelligent ones (homo habilis, for example).
>>
>> Sending the dumber kids back to Earth is simply a replacement for
>> natural selection culling the stupid before they breed.

Intellectual development any given person is absolutely a combination
of Nature and Nurture - and the differences we see around us are, I
suspect, due more the latter than the former.

However, intelligence absolutely has a genetic factor, else it could
not have evolved. You don't have twice the brain matter of Lucy because
of how you were brought up.

pt