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The heritability statistic that occurs in the literature is the ratio of genetic variance to phenotypic variance. Two corrollaries: * When discussing heritabi
by tptacek 6mo ago
The heritability statistic that occurs in the literature is the ratio of genetic variance to phenotypic variance.
Two corrollaries:
* When discussing heritability results from the literature, we are discussing that statistic, not your intuitive understanding of what the word should mean.
* In the scientific literature, your conception of heritability doesn't operate. In the scientific sense, the number of hands you have has low heritability, despite being genetically determined.
I think you're going to find "let's check Wiktionary" is not the decisive move in these kinds of discussions that it is elsewhere.
- AgentME 6mo agoAnother great example of the unintuitiveness of heritability is the fact that earrings are highly heritable. Earrings are highly correlated to a specific genetics (being female), so they're very "heritable", even though that correlation is an arbitrary cultural fashion.
- lostmsu 6mo agoSee my sibling comment. This is misleading for the same reason, but in this case the cause of misleading is narrowing the timespan under consideration to approximately now.
- lostmsu 6mo ago> In the scientific sense, the number of hands you have has low heritability, despite being genetically determined. This is only a surprise because unlike layman the author of this joke insists on considering heritability among humans specifically. While "heritability among humans" sounds like a reasonable comment to a layman, the author of this joke is misleading the layman, because layman (before being mislead) correctly thinks of "heritability" as "heritability among all living things with genes".