Some people are really keen on behavioural genetics. They are marshalling quite good evidence of the power of genes is more than previously thought.
As James Heckman pointed out in his brilliant review of Charles Murray’s bell curve in 1995, as long as there is some environmental component in people’s developmental and life outcomes, there is a case for intervention as long surpassed the cost benefit test.
Post updated, 9/14/14 6/5/14. See below!
In my earlier post on Gregory Clark’s work, The Son Becomes The Father, I laid bare the case for the known high heritability of human behavioral traits (including values and attitudes) and life outcomes. As well, equally important, I illustrated the complete absence of shared environment influences on these – that is, the effect common environmental forces that children growing up together share. This includes parents and upbringing, making it abundantly clear that parents don’t leave a lasting impact on who we grow up to be. These are towards what I’m calling the “75-0-25 or something” rule, which echos Satoshi Kanazawa’s “50-0-50 rule” summarizing behavioral genetic research, only more accurately so. This “75-0-25 or something” rule means the following:
For the variance in behavioral traits and life outcomes, each factor accounts for the following fractions:
- Heredity: 75% (though the variance…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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