Quote from: magneto on Today at 12:46:25 AM

This is a very insightful read.

I do think that nurture has a much larger role in determining outcomes compared to nature. Your physcial genes likely only determine the first 10% of your success, and the next 70-80% is really what you surround yourself with from an early age. The last 10-20% is actual effort/hard work.

It's not only a mentality, but also the networks and connections that you form. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the world is incredibly nepotistic.

Actually, that's a pretty common misbelief, I am surprised by how many people think that environment is more important than genes. Probably because most of us were told so at schools and no one ever questions it.

The fact is, there are published studies providing evidence that this might be wrong. Here's a great review summarizing a wide range of such studies: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2019.00044/full#B29

Here are some excerpts from this study:

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In a large longitudinal study of English children, a correlation of 0.81 was observed between intelligence at 11 years of age and scores on national tests of educational achievement 5 years later. This contribution of intelligence was evident in all 25 academic disciplines. Even at much later age, intelligence remains stable: a single test of general intelligence taken at age 11 correlated highly with the results of the test at the age of 90.

The stability of intelligence, especially after a long time indicates the importance of genetic material, as it is obvious that the environment is changing and if it played such an important role, then with years passing the test results would have changed.

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Finally, one of the most remarkable findings of twin studies is that heritability of intelligence is extraordinarily large, in the range 50%–80% even reaching 86% for verbal IQ. This makes human intelligence one of the most heritable behavioral traits.

Twin studies are very representative, as the genetic identity in twins is very high. Now, one could say that twins have similar performances due to the same environment, but I can hardly agree on that. I know a lot of twins that have very different interests, preferences, different friends, and, thus, quite different environments, especially when growing older.

The major problem with these studies is that "intelligence" is very difficult to measure, there's more to it than just IQ tests. But more studies are coming