I think one should find that IQ is more highly correlated with myopia than academic achievement
More correlated than academic achievement is correlated with IQ, or with myopia?
Your comment is a very good point. But IQ may be more-closely correlated with academic achievement than academic achievement is with reading books; so this comparison might not help. (And you want to talk about the variance in X accounted for by Y but not by Z, rather than place a bet on whether Y or Z has a higher correlation with X.)
Yes, of course. But remember that in science we are not in the business of "accepting" one thing of another. That is the domain of religion and politics. The only thing that matters is finding good hypotheses and testing them.
HCH
Edit: Q&A is now closed. Thanks to everyone for participating, and thanks very much to Harpending and Cochran for their responses.
In response to Kaj's review, Henry Harpending and Gregory Cochran, the authors of the The 10,000 Year Explosion, have agreed to a Q&A session with the Less Wrong community.
If you have any questions for either Harpending or Cochran, please reply to this post with a question addressed to one or both of them. Material for questions might be derived from their blog for the book which includes stories about hunting animals in Africa with an eye towards evolutionary implications (which rose to Jennifer's attention based on Steve Sailer's prior attention).
Please do not kibitz in this Q&A... instead go to the kibitzing area to talk about the Q&A session itself. Eventually, this post will be edited to note that the process has been closed, at which time there should be no new questions.