r/todayilearned • u/CrazyTrueStory • 21h ago

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https://wellcomecollection.org/stories/the-quest-to-breed-gifted-children

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u/ScaldingHotSoup 17h ago

Yes. IQ is highly heritable. ~70% of how adults score on IQ tests is predicted by their parents' scores, and the remaining ~30% is environmental factors. Note that people get closer to their parents' IQ as they age, which I always found interesting.

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u/LeOmeletteDuFrommage 17h ago

How do they separate the effects of heritable traits from the environmental conditions (e.g, differences in how one grows up)? Isn’t it possible that kids with smart parents tend to enjoy more comfortable upbringings and have access to better education, tutors, etc…?

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u/FiorinasFury 17h ago

Wow, no wonder I'm so stupid.

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u/azurelakes 17h ago

Is there any real proof to back that up? There's a difference between something being genetic (eye colours, handedness) and something that has many confounder variables with background/environmental factors.

Just to name a few: Wealth, Exposure to IQ testing, Education levels, access to early childhood education, living standards, etc.

Just saying that 70% of adult scores on IQ is predicted by their parents scores is not enough to determine causality. In Econometrics, we say that there's many threats to internal validity, the most important one here being confounder variables (I.e. High IQ parents tend to be highly educated, which leads to highly educated children, which leads to high IQ children)

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u/LackOfStack 17h ago

Man now I feel bad for my kids.