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Intelligence is not like height

... and the reason is one of the most interesting findings from modern behavioral genetics

As three prominent psychologists have written, “Modern DNA science has found hundreds of genetic variants that each have a very, very tiny association with intelligence, but even if you add them all together they predict only a small fraction of someone’s IQ score.” We sometimes forget this point, but people have to jump through hoops to end up in a genetic analysis: they need to know about the study and be able to access it (which typically means living near a major hospital or university and having the resources to engage with it), provide informed consent, fill out the relevant questionnaires, etc. Prior to that, over a century of race science argued that intelligence is just like any other biological trait, with individual differences explained by simple genetic causes that are easily quantifiable and culturally immutable.

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