That study will probably step right into the trap of ‘got a generator of trillion hypotheses; got a million hypotheses with extreme confidence in them’. It seems people deliberately walk into such traps to produce some data to justify the funding.
The combined effect of what ever genes affect intelligence, is likely to be strongly nonlinear (e.g. a improves iq, b improves iq, a and b decrease iq) . That will be the case even for very simple functional measures, like the speed of running, as clear from understanding of how genes can affect speed of running. There is optimal length to a bone, there’s a lot of genes that affect length of a bone, they must sum to ideal bone length for maximum speed. Repeat for many bones and other parameters.
But as there is no understanding how genes may affect IQ, one has a free pass to model effect on IQ with much simpler model than needed for the running speed, and get away with it, even though its complete absurd. People fail at abstract thought, and IQ is abstract. It’s easy to imagine that it won’t be pinned down, as we’d have only a few billions people to sequence, but much much larger number of pairs and triplets of genes.
That study will probably step right into the trap of ‘got a generator of trillion hypotheses; got a million hypotheses with extreme confidence in them’. It seems people deliberately walk into such traps to produce some data to justify the funding.
The combined effect of what ever genes affect intelligence, is likely to be strongly nonlinear (e.g. a improves iq, b improves iq, a and b decrease iq) . That will be the case even for very simple functional measures, like the speed of running, as clear from understanding of how genes can affect speed of running. There is optimal length to a bone, there’s a lot of genes that affect length of a bone, they must sum to ideal bone length for maximum speed. Repeat for many bones and other parameters.
But as there is no understanding how genes may affect IQ, one has a free pass to model effect on IQ with much simpler model than needed for the running speed, and get away with it, even though its complete absurd. People fail at abstract thought, and IQ is abstract. It’s easy to imagine that it won’t be pinned down, as we’d have only a few billions people to sequence, but much much larger number of pairs and triplets of genes.