3 ms·

Aren’t all hereditary traits due to genetics?

• joshuamorton 6y ago
  No. Spoken language, and religion are generally hereditary. They're not genetic. Such traits are socially heritable. Lots of other things (wealth, approximate birth location, etc. are also heritable, though perhaps not as strongly. This are also clearly not genetic.)
  • sanxiyn 6y ago
    We now have GWAS. Social heritability is ruled out as explanation of IQ inheritance.
  • yibg 6y ago
    Interesting. Is this a common definition? Heredity as far as I understood referred to genetic inheritance. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heredity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heredity Including religion and language as part of the definition seems to be overloading it. In any case, is it really controversial that intelligence is at least partially influenced by genes?
    • joshuamorton 6y ago
      Ah, you're correct. I made a mistake (that I make far too often), conflating the words "heritability" and "hereditary". Such factors are socially heritable. But manfredo was incorrect to say that "We know that IQ is hereditary.", we don't, really. We observe that it is heritable, but the extent to which that is social, genetic, or epigenetic is not clear. Apologies. That said, there's also epigenetics, which hurts my brain. > In any case, is it really controversial that intelligence is at least partially influenced by genes? Broadly speaking, no (like obviously, in some sense it is, right?), but most common attempts to measure intelligence don't really do a good job of deciding what intelligence is. This can be fine if you're trying to draw conclusions about individuals that are generally culturally homogenous (if you're comparing solely amongst a group of pro basketball players, the one with the best bench press is probably above average, even if it isn't really a great judge of basketball skill), but not when trying to compare athleticism between a group made up of basketball players and powerlifters.