
Intelligence: 99% Genetic? Individual Differences in Exec Functions Are Almost Perfectly Heritable - nickb
http://scienceblogs.com/developingintelligence/2007/10/99_genetic_individual_differen.php
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jey
The idea that skin color or athletic ability is "heritable" but not
intelligence seems an idea more motivated by our cultural stance of anti-
intellectualism than by any data. If you want to be politically correct you
must assume that everyone has the same intellectual potential, but you don't
have to make that assumption for athletic ability.

This cultural convention affected me even as I was writing this comment: I
hesitated to write "intellectual potential" in the previous sentence and had
written something indirect like "potential in this area" at first.

/although i wonder what an "executive function" is. :\

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Tichy
I am not sure about the athletic ability? Of course somebody who is taller is
more suited for basketball than somebody smaller, but in general? The smaller
guy might be better suited for some other task.

It is just that the brain seems to be a fairly universal tool, we don't really
know aspects equivalent to being tall or small that would apply to the brain
yet, or do we? It rather seems that parts of the brain are exchangeable, as
could be seen from the blind guy who learned to see things with his tongue
(machine would translate images to impressions on the tongue). So what would
be the problem of less intelligent brains? Synapses working slightly slower?
Less neurons - but why can't you grow them by training (like muscles)? Or
what?

On the other hand, clearly intelligence is 100% genetic: no matter how much
you nurture a pig, it will never go to harvard.

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nickb
Athletic ability is highly genetic. It has to do with what ratio of muscle
fibers you have and all of the research so far suggests that it's genetic.

[http://sportsmedicine.about.com/cs/exercisephysiology/a/aa08...](http://sportsmedicine.about.com/cs/exercisephysiology/a/aa080901a.htm)

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DaniFong
That's 99% on that one trait 'inhibition', but very much less on the others.

I'm very skeptical that it's all genetic, since they didn't factor out the
environment. I can't access the paper right now, but how did they measure the
resistance to habit? Did they build up specific habits and then try to break
them down, or did they use existing habits, or what?

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fauigerzigerk
Interesting. But there's one thing that makes me very uneasy about these kinds
of studies. To make performance comparable they have to radically reduce the
complexity of the tasks on which they measure. It may well be that variance is
much greater between individuals for average real world tasks that allow for
reflection, communication, etc.

