Stuart_Armstrong comments on Genetic "Nature" is cultural too - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 18 March 2016 02:33PM

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Comment author: Torchlight_Crimson 18 March 2016 10:58:40PM 0 points [-]

But I am confused about what this means in practice, due to arguments like "contacts are very important for business success, rich people get much more contacts than poor people, yet business success is strongly correlated with genetic parent wealth" and such.

Keep in mind that people's genes tend to correlate with their parents' genes. So even if success in wealth is determined by genetics, we would still expect wealth to correlate with your parents' wealth.

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 21 March 2016 10:21:24AM 0 points [-]

Yes, but this means that a lot of very rich people are very incorrect as to what is important for their wealth. Which is possible. But you have to posit a lot people being in error about things they should know about, for the heavy-hereditibility picture to fit.

Comment author: Crownless_Prince 22 March 2016 12:05:14AM 2 points [-]

Yes, but this means that a lot of very rich people are very incorrect as to what is important for their wealth.

They know about the factors they can control. After all, those are the ones they actually focus on.

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