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tptacekyesterday at 6:41 PM1 replyview on HN

The heritability statistic that occurs in the literature is the ratio of genetic variance to phenotypic variance.

Two corrollaries:

* When discussing heritability results from the literature, we are discussing that statistic, not your intuitive understanding of what the word should mean.

* In the scientific literature, your conception of heritability doesn't operate. In the scientific sense, the number of hands you have has low heritability, despite being genetically determined.

I think you're going to find "let's check Wiktionary" is not the decisive move in these kinds of discussions that it is elsewhere.


Replies

AgentMEyesterday at 8:15 PM

Another great example of the unintuitiveness of heritability is the fact that earrings are highly heritable. Earrings are highly correlated to a specific genetics (being female), so they're very "heritable", even though that correlation is an arbitrary cultural fashion.