Genetics and Intelligence

I recall seeing this Google Tech Talk by Steve Hsu on how they are in the process of finding out basically all the additive genes that contribute to intelligence in China at the BGI research institute: this video They would take roughly a thousand people who are >=3 standard deviations smarter than average and compare their full genomes against people who are of average intelligence. This way they expect to find out all the "easy" genetic determinants of intelligence.

> Education is what needs to be innovated. We need more kids becoming scientists. Some people cannot just "become scientists". Without the intelligence, even an infinite amount of education would be pointless: this video

Remapping intelligence to certain cognitive performance parameters, many of which can be measured in a very metrical and objective way, still tends to produce correlations. See Figure 3 of this article: [0] - there is a mix of simple perceptual tasks and more complex reasoning ones, which on the surface appear independent. The paper admits at the end that intelligence isn't one kind of task, but instead many kinds of systems used together. That still doesn't prevent their ability to construct a version of g-factor. And very simple metrics, taken alone, seem to inter-correlate well with IQ scores, like reaction time.[1] This correlation increases with age, suggesting a biological factor in preserving brain integrity that would nullify educational effects of intelligence. If your version of intelligence has nothing to do with cognitive activity I don't know what to tell you. It's true that effectiveness in society might not be correlated with intelligence. That says more about what society rewards and the kind of labor required to get it. And I don't mean to say that society should reward people based off of test scores, that's dumb. Nor should we assortate people based off of pure test scores, also dumb. But I see no real conceptual problems regarding intelligence that doesn't try to conflate intelligence entirely with general effectiveness. There are IQ realists like Steven Hsu that don't do this, placing it on equal importance with conscientiousness [4]. As with height, ther

I am growing more disturbed in recent years by how true this statement is in our current society. While not all behavior is hereditary, genetics plays a massive role. I wish it were not taboo to talk about this more openly. While I have found few, at least there are some people attempting to give this subject more consideration: link this video