@wildgrass said
I haven't read Dr. Pinker's work, but maybe a quote would better illustrate your point. Certainly he would not argue that there was a genetic linkage between predicted intelligence and race? By what mechanism?
I didn't say it wasn't contentious. It is a robust and active area of scientific research [see ref]. You proclaimed earlier that "science... ignores the influence ...[text shortened]... probabilistic (i.e. not highly predictive).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5985927/
It'd be polygenetic.
For pinker specifically
Once the measurements are made, the variance of the sample may be calculated: the average squared deviation of each person's score from the group mean. The variance is a number that captures the degree to which the members of a group differ from one another. (&hellip😉 It is mathematically meaningful to say that a certain percentage of the variance in a group overlaps with one factor (perhaps, though not necessarily, its cause), another percentage with a second factor, and so on, the percentages adding up to 100. The degree of overlap may be measured as a correlation coefficient, a number between -1 and +1 that captures the degree to which people who are high on one measurement are also high on another measurement. (8) (&hellip😉
Heritability is the proportion of variance in a trait that correlates with genetic differences. It can be measured in several ways. (21) The simplest is to take the correlation between identical twins who were separated at birth and reared apart. (&hellip😉 Alternatively, one can compare identical twins reared together, who share all their genes and most of their environment, with fraternal twins reared together, who share half their genes and most of their environment. (&hellip😉 The bigger the difference between the two correlations, the higher the heritability estimate. Yet another technique is to compare biological siblings, who share half their genes and most of their environment, with adoptive siblings, who share none of their genes (among those that vary) and most of their environment.
Results:
The results come out roughly the same no matter what is measured or how it is measured. Identical twins reared apart are highly similar; identical twins reared together are more similar than fraternal twins reared together; biological siblings are far more similar than adoptive siblings. (1,2,3,10,19,21) All this translates into substantial heritability values, generally between .25 and .75. A conventional summary is that about half the variation in intelligence, personality, and life outcomes is heritable – a correlate or an indirect product of the genes. It's hard to be much more precise than that, because heritability values vary within this range for a number of reasons. (21)
(Please refer to the book or some other source to learn about those reasons.)
(&hellip😉
The heritability of intelligence, for example, increases over the lifespan, and can be as high as .8 late in life. (14,22) Forget "As the twig is bent"; think "Omigod, I'm turning into my parents!"
https://sebscogblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/steven-pinkers-account-of-evidence.html?m=1
.... But in general, you can even just visit the Wikipedia for the heritability of intelligence.