razibk comments on BHTV: Eliezer Yudkowsky & Razib Khan - Less Wrong

12 Post author: MichaelGR 06 February 2010 02:27PM

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Comment author: razibk 07 February 2010 05:43:29AM *  4 points [-]

Right. Though below Tim notes one truism: on a continuous trait with a non-trivial heritability (IQ) you likely don't have strong long-term unidirectional fitness implications. Otherwise, all the genic variance would be gone (strong selection + high heritability).

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 07 February 2010 05:55:48AM 0 points [-]

That truism doesn't sound right to me, but maybe I don't understand it. In the long term, you have equilibrium, but that doesn't mean fixation for genes of small effects, because there are always new mutations. There is an equilibrium between deleterious mutation and selection driving out the mutations; and this is somehow balanced between, say, height and IQ. And none of this is to say there was long-term upward pressure on either trait.

Comment author: razibk 07 February 2010 06:02:32AM *  1 point [-]

Looking at your comment I am not sure we disagree. Rather than unpacking what I'm trying to get at (which is orthogonal to the discussion), I'll leave it be. But if you are curious look up "heritabitility" in Hartl & Clark, they explain the issues more lucidly than I could here.