> "hey, this is an interesting field of study but it's very complicated, many genes are involved, we are far from understanding them or being able to model them, be very careful with interpreting correlations and for (m)any practical purposes (such as thinking about how to structure educational environments), you really should consider quite a lot of things not directly related to genetics."
I'll say the same thing as you: context matters. Someone trying to say that smarter parents lead to a smarter student body doesn't need to model any genes and they don't need to care about the difference between things that are transferred genetically and things that are transferred socially.
> because of genetics as the main determining factor?
Does that matter? While the word "heritability" was used, and that term "very much has to do with genetics" as you say, that person didn't directly mention genes and didn't attribute any particular percent to genes. The original argument is the same whether genes are 80% or 20%.
Again, the person I was originally replying to called intelligence "highly heritable". That does mean a genetic argument and I replied to that and not a generic assertion that there are mechanisms in play that have influence on the expression over generations.
Well because you basically accused most people of being eugenicists simply for believing something that is most likely true and clearly implied a strong position that you are now retreating from. It's clearly an incendiary one-liner where previously the conversation was not so.
> The researchers who look at those things seem to be the ones telling us that the relationship between intelligence and genetics is complicated and many, many non-genetic factors are in play, no
There are massive biases in academia that encourage researchers to hedge results like this. When you ask anonymously, the answers & beliefs are clear.
> Snyderman & Rothman (1987/1988) — mailed survey to ~1,020 academics; 661 replies. Experts overwhelmingly agreed that IQ has substantial within-group heritability, and among those willing to give a number, the average estimate was ~60% for U.S. populations. Also https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4804158/ which is going to be a lower bound because it focuses on international differences.
Adoption studies pretty clearly upper bound the amount that these complicated non-genetic/non-prenatal factors can be causing differences in tested adult intelligence among Americans.
> I'd politely ask you to refrain from insulting my good faith.
Again, you started your entry into this conversation by leveling accusations of eugenics. The responses you get are going to be tinged by that.
> how you come up with that clear of a statement about smart parents and their non-externally-influenced child, how one would approach that as a research question/design
Adoption studies can provide an upper bound (excluding pre-natal environment). Also GWASs paired with mendelian randomization can provide a lower bound.
The study you linked is interesting but its results are far from "clear" (see its discussion section but that's probably also just bias and hedging or whatever) and it does have fuck all to do with your proposed thought experiment of a Kaspar-Hauser-like child. Even less so with your confident prediction of how a Kasper-Hauser-like child would turn out. I think you probably know this yourself but these kinds of predictions are something scientists would very, very rarely do - because they know the limitations of their work.
I'm kind of weirded out by this exchange, people here rather confidently express quite a bit of stuff that goes against years and decades of training I received when I became a scientist and I think I'll stop replying now. That was the recommendation of a colleague - who actually is a geneticist - I showed this thread to over coffee as well.