Cognitive Manoeuvres
23rd December 2021
The Genetic Lottery is not the only book published this summer to tackle controversial topics in biology.
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Ask the average person whether intelligence is encoded in DNA and they’ll most likely say that yes, to some extent it is. As Harden points out, it is interesting that academics — some of the people most likely to be beneficiaries of an unequal distribution of genetic propensity to learn — are the ones most likely to deny that inequality. People dislike being asked to “check their privilege”. This must be especially true when that “privilege” is something that has attracted praise since earliest childhood, and something one has built one’s identity around.