cousin_it comments on [Link] Why the kids don’t know no algebra - Less Wrong

21 Post author: GLaDOS 04 July 2012 10:29AM

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Comment author: cousin_it 04 July 2012 07:31:31PM *  4 points [-]

Thanks! It looks like you're right. This is bizarre, Shalizi says accent is "highly heritable", yet in another post he explains that estimated heritability of accent will be quite low if you measure it properly (see the section "Cultural transmission"). Edited my comment.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 05 July 2012 08:08:27PM 2 points [-]

Shalizi's usage seems perfectly reasonable to me. People use the phrase "highly heritable" to refer to the experiments they actually do, not to the theoretically best experiments they could do. Shalizi claims that performing the same experiments with accent would yield a conclusion of "heritable." (though he backs off of "highly" and is generally evasive about quantity)