Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

Interestingly, testing myself with the Wechsler reverse-digit-span test, I found very large improvements in working memory from taking 20-minute afternoon naps and from modafinil. I'm not claiming everyone is alike, of course, but working memory is definitely not as fixed as height and eye color.

Specifically with regard to mental math, I find I can do a lot more when I'm lying in bed in a dark room than when I'm in an uncomfortable chair in a noisy cafe with people talking to me. Or, for that matter, classroom.

> Many of these students grew up in rich neighborhoods with good parents. They had most advantages you can imagine, seem reasonably intelligent when you talk to them, but Algebra will always be beyond them.

I tried marijuana once and found the opposite effect: when I was high, by the time I got to the end of saying a sentence, I couldn't remember how it had begun. But people report that I seemed like I was conversing normally; if they didn't know me, they wouldn't have realized anything was off. I wonder if these folks were experiencing something similar all their lives?

The problem is that since there already is substantial variance in environment that different people experience today, but nevertheless the amount of variance explained by shared environment is very, very low, this means that if we want to increase intelligence using environmental interventions, you can’t designate some environment that some (eg. well off people) already experience, and get everyone into that environment, because it simply won’t work. If it did, it would already show in the amount of variance explained by environment.

Instead, what you need to do is to intervene by putting people in environments very few if any people today experience. This is the only approach that can work, as it can overcome the low amount of variance explained by environment. Suffice to say, nobody yet figured out what those unusual environments actually would be like, as you can’t simply copy whatever well off or genius people grow up like. If you do come up with something, it might end up being a hard sale too, given that this will be necessarily stranger than what people normally expect. But, if it works, you’ll improve the world massively and make history. Chances are against you though, as millions of people in the education industry worldwide have already tried almost anything you could come up with, and nothing really works.

It just doesn't make sense given a more macroscopic view of things. If inheritance obviously controls the difference in intelligence between the human brain and the dog brain, or the cat brain, or the monkey brain, what black magic makes it so that among humans themselves inheritance controls very little of intelligence?

The 70% - 80% statistic seems like a ballpark estimate he pulled out of a anecdotal conclusion based off of a broad spectrum knowledge of the related scientific research. You likely aren't going to find a citation that proves this claim definitively. It does not mean that his point is incredulous nor does it mean that his point isn't part of common sense.

His point makes sense. It makes a lot of sense. The same sense as the fact that the covid vaccine protects against the virus even though for the longest time it was NEVER FDA approved (aka no strong citations). The conclusion was obvious despite not meeting the stringent verification of the FDA and many people were able to arrive at this conclusion without the science. Yet many people refused to believe the efficacy of the vaccine due to their political ideology.

I believe there's a similar biased attitude coming from the far left side of thinking. The unwillingness to see that the science and common sense points to an inescapable conclusion. There is no unseen magical force that makes all races, all genders and all peoples equal. There are differences, and the differences are biological and obvious.

Like literally genes control how ugly and how tall you are but not intelligence at all? By some crazy magic intelligence is the one thing that isn't at all influenced that much by genetics? Seriously, which viewpoint is more realistic here?

Seriously the same ultra left people who were calling out the anti-vacc people as stupid and unintelligent for refusing the vaccine are unable to see the exact same kind of ideological stupidity within themselves.