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While I agree with you, and also find the evolution = improvement views kind of annoying, I think you're also stating something that's accurate but perhaps misl

While I agree with you, and also find the evolution = improvement views kind of annoying, I think you're also stating something that's accurate but perhaps misleading. Because when you say "good" or "bad" people are going to mistake that for what they personally think would be good or bad. When in reality good = makes you more likely to successfully reproduce, and bad = makes you less likely to successfully reproduce. The best example of this is intelligence. In modern times, intelligence has become substantially inversely correlated with fertility. And as intelligence has high heritability, we are actively selecting against intelligence. And in fact we are already seeing generational declines (which had been previously been increasing for as long as IQ has been measured) in intelligence. [1] And this trend will continue until the point that intelligence and fertility once again become positively correlated. Nobody would ever say intelligence is a "bad" trait, but in evolutionary terms it has become one. [1] - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289623000156 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028962...

aredox 2y ago
The study you linked to doesn't find heredity to be the driver of decline of IQ (which they pointedly reminded is not a measure of intelligence): Regardless, we believe education, test-taking, and media exposure emerge as potential moderators for explaining the observed gains in three-dimensional rotation scores and declines or stagnation in matrix reasoning, letter and number series, verbal reasoning, and composite ability scores.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - tptacek 2y ago
    It is not at all an inescapable fact, because that's not what heritability is; it's not a measure of genetic determinism.
    - somenameforme 2y ago
      And did I say or even imply it was? Height is comparably heritable to adult IQ (and coincidentally is even strongly correlated with such) at around 0.8, but obviously somebody who is e.g. malnourished as a child will never reach their height (or intelligence) potential. And that's precisely why heritability is useful. It lets you create a ballpark estimate for the overall average influence of genetic vs contemporary environmental factors. So genetic factors would tend to explain about 80% of the differences in heights, with environmental factors taking up the remaining 20%. The heritability for factors without a genetic component is zero.

aredox 2y ago

The study you linked to doesn't find heredity to be the driver of decline of IQ (which they pointedly reminded is not a measure of intelligence): Regardless, we believe education, test-taking, and media exposure emerge as potential moderators for explaining the observed gains in three-dimensional rotation scores and declines or stagnation in matrix reasoning, letter and number series, verbal reasoning, and composite ability scores.

somenameforme 2y ago
[flagged]
- tptacek 2y ago
  It is not at all an inescapable fact, because that's not what heritability is; it's not a measure of genetic determinism.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    And did I say or even imply it was? Height is comparably heritable to adult IQ (and coincidentally is even strongly correlated with such) at around 0.8, but obviously somebody who is e.g. malnourished as a child will never reach their height (or intelligence) potential. And that's precisely why heritability is useful. It lets you create a ballpark estimate for the overall average influence of genetic vs contemporary environmental factors. So genetic factors would tend to explain about 80% of the differences in heights, with environmental factors taking up the remaining 20%. The heritability for factors without a genetic component is zero.