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by forapurpose
2798 days ago
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Plomin himself seems to characterize it differently: Another problem that Plomin encounters with explaining his findings is that people often confuse group and individual differences – or, to put it another way, the distinction between means and variances. Thus, the average height of northern European males has increased by more than 15cm in the past two centuries. That is obviously due to changes in environment. However, the variation in height between northern European males is down to genetics. The same applies to psychological traits. “The causes of average differences,” he says, “aren’t necessarily related to causes of individual differences. So that’s why you can say heritability can be very high for a trait, but the average differences between groups – ethnic groups, gender – could be entirely environmental; for example, as a result of discrimination. The confusion between means and variances is a fundamental misunderstanding.” https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/sep/29/so-is-it-nat... The above article, and Plomin, were discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18101570 |
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That did not reduce my surprise about the things stated in the book though. If statements it contains like that after correcting for genetics "the most important environmental factors, such as our families and schools, account for less than 5 percent of the differences between us in our mental health or how well we did at school" and "Genetics accounts for 50 per cent of psychological differences, not just for mental health and school achievement, but for all psychological traits, from personality to mental abilities" are true, then I definitely consider that as going against "common knowledge" and "common sense". Definitely blew my mind.
Thanks for the links. Totally missed that it was discussed here before.