Re: Things presented in-story as Good Ideas that seem like really Bad Ideas

On 9/18/2024 12:21 PM, The Horny Goat wrote:

On Wed, 11 Sep 2024 20:16:08 -0400, Cryptoengineer
<petertrei@gmail.com> wrote:
 

I think you're misunderstanding 'regression to the mean'.
>
Yes, if two 150 IQ people have kids, its more likely that they're
intelligence will be below 150 than above.
>
But its still likely to be above 100, which is the whole population
mean. The term should really be 'regression *toward* the mean'.

 Fair enough (and I've seen IQ test scores for my father in high school
vs myself) but I'm personally convinced that intelligence test scores
hinge at least as much on how one was raised as anything inherited
from your parents.
 My father grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere whereas my mother
(who was the daughter of a commercial fisherman - not known as a
source of brilliance as opposed to "canniness") regularly took my
brother and I to the library, parks, other interesting places in our
city. I was a "life-long reader" from a very early age and when tested
had the scores to prove it.
 In other words I got a lot of intellectual stimulation growing up that
my father didn't. In addition I met a LOT of people when my maternal
grandfather ran (unsuccessfully) twice for the Canadian Parliament in
my pre-teen years. Built the (Revell?) plastic models and taught to
play chess by my grandfather. Plus lots of 'field trips' in school and
in Scouts.
 Which isn't a guarantee of anything but certainly a more
intellectually stimulating experience than growing up on an isolated
farm.
 

After all, if good traits can't accumulate, natural selection
couldn't produce more intelligent creatures (like us) from less
intelligent ones (homo habilis, for example).
>
Sending the dumber kids back to Earth is simply a replacement for
natural selection culling the stupid before they breed.

Intellectual development any given person is absolutely a combination
of Nature and Nurture - and the differences we see around us are, I
suspect, due more the latter than the former.
However, intelligence absolutely has a genetic factor, else it could
not have evolved. You don't have twice the brain matter of Lucy because
of how you were brought up.
pt