A lot of genes have multiplicative effects instead of additive effects. E.g. vegetable size is surprisingly log-normally distributed, not normally distributed, so I don’t think you should have a huge prior on normal here. See also one of my favorite papers of all time “Log-Normal Distributions Across The Sciences”.
In retrospect, I’ve come to agree more on this since we last debated, and I now think genetic effects are log-normally distributed, and I think you were directionally correct here (though I do still think that there’s a significant chance that what’s going on is people get mostly lucky, and then post-hoc a story about how their innate intelligence/sheer willpower made them successful, and this is important, because I do think the world in general is way more extreme than human genetics/traits.)
Thanks to @tailcalled for convincing me I was wrong here:
A lot of genes have multiplicative effects instead of additive effects. E.g. vegetable size is surprisingly log-normally distributed, not normally distributed, so I don’t think you should have a huge prior on normal here. See also one of my favorite papers of all time “Log-Normal Distributions Across The Sciences”.
In retrospect, I’ve come to agree more on this since we last debated, and I now think genetic effects are log-normally distributed, and I think you were directionally correct here (though I do still think that there’s a significant chance that what’s going on is people get mostly lucky, and then post-hoc a story about how their innate intelligence/sheer willpower made them successful, and this is important, because I do think the world in general is way more extreme than human genetics/traits.)
Thanks to @tailcalled for convincing me I was wrong here:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yJEf2TpPJstfScSnt/ldsl-1-performance-optimization-as-a-metaphor-for-life#CSCLkNhzzc5hqYM3n