From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Thu Oct 03 2002 - 02:26:39 MDT
At 06:26 PM 10/2/02 -0400, Rafal wrote:
>### Regression to the mean is a natural by-product of recombination of
>recessive traits - the super-smart are so smart because they have the luck
>of being homozygous for some IQ-enhancing recessive genes
I believe I can see some problems with this (which should
smartness-conducive genes all be *recessive*, for example, which you seem
to imply?).
More generally, if the IQ population mean is 100, sigma 15, and correlation
of parent and child is about 0.5, then I suppose the argument is that in
our world stupid parents of 70 IQ will tend to have kids with IQ 100 - 30/2
= 85, and their kids will have kids with IQ 92.5, all the way back up to mu
= 100... But if the IQ pool of the braindrained town is going down due to
leaching, I guess you're saying the breeding pool mean is no longer 100. Or
is it? All those alleles lurking in all those people... I'm out of my
depth, as you see, but interested.
Damien Broderick
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