

Why Are Some People So Smart? The Answer Could Spawn a Generation of Superbabies - daegloe
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/07/genetics-of-iq/

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Jongseong
The working hypothesis described is that one's IQ is determined by the number
of deleterious mutations out of perhaps 10,000 possible ones that would have
an effect on IQ. So high IQ is a result of a relative lack of negative
mutations rather than the presence of positive mutations. This reminds me of
the Anna Karenina principle that success is often the result of avoiding all
the numerous different ways to fail, named after the opening of the novel:
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

This theory has a certain appeal. But I wonder how it affects my own personal
conclusion (as someone with no background in cognitive science) that the
variation in how people think is grossly underestimated—there are people who
think exclusively in words, others who think exclusively in pictures. Based on
the theory, perhaps these mental variations are influenced by the particular
combination of IQ-related mutations, with the brain arriving at the particular
way of thinking that is least affected by deleterious mutations.

