(2021-11-09) Alexander Secrets Of The Great Families

Scott Alexander: Secrets Of The Great Families. Let's talk impressive families: Aldous Huxley... Henri Poincare... Charles Darwin... Neils Bohr... Rabindranath Tagore... How do these families keep producing such talent, generation after generation?

None of these families except the Tagores were fantastically rich; there are thousands or millions of families richer than they are who don’t have any of their accomplishments

The other obvious answer is “genetics!” I think this one is right, but there are some mysteries here that make it less of a slam dunk.

First, don’t genetics dilute quickly? You only share 6.25% of your genes with your great-great-grandfather.

We can formalize this objection using IQ, which is nice and quantifiable

And the second problem is: what gene do we think Niels and Harald Bohr shared that made one of them a physics Nobelist and the other an Olympic athlete?

The gene for excellence? Seems suspicious.

The answer to the first question is really impressive assortative mating and having vast litters of children.

If you find yourself marrying John Maynard Keynes’ brother, or Niels Nørlund’s sister, or future Nobel laureates, you’re going way above the bar of “just as selective as Harvard or Oxford”.

But also, all these people had massive broods, or litters, or however you want to describe it. Charles Darwin had ten children

let’s say that instead of having one kid, they have 10. Now the average kid is 129, but the smartest of ten is 147

What about the second question? Why does “talent” run in families but express itself in such different ways?

Let’s start with the Dysons

correlations between IQ (especially the nonverbal IQ which is helpful for math) and musical ability

What about the Poincares? Is political success g-loaded?

(In Sweden) Not only do politicians have higher IQs than the general population, but the higher you go in politics (from nominated, to city council, to mayor, to member of Parliament), the higher your IQ! Members of Parliament average 6.7 on this test, which I think equals IQ 115 - not as high as Ivy Leaguers, but still well above average. So the same intellectual skills that made Henri a great mathematician could have helped Raymond become Prime Minister.

Does this mean in some sense that talented people can choose their field? If Henri got tired of math, could he have gone into politics

I’m pretty proud of my own family. My brother and I both have Wikipedia pages

he focused on music, and I focused on writing. But in fact I tried really hard to be good at music and failed, badly

Is there anything else these families did right?

I was hoping to find evidence that the distinguished parents home-schooled or otherwise taught or made apprentices of their children, but this is pretty conflicting

I’m not sure I can find any commonalities in these families’ educational styles except that they were all pretty weird.

Eliezer Yudkowsky sometimes talks about the idea of a Hero License - ie, most people don’t accomplish great things, because they don’t try to accomplish great things, because they don’t think of themselves as the kind of person who could accomplish great things. (ambition)

children whose parents were doctors are 25x more likely to become doctors than others

It seems weird to think of “genius” as a career you can aim for. But maybe if your dad is Charles Darwin, you don’t just go into science. You also start making lots of big theories, speculating about lots of stuff. The fact that something is an unsolved problem doesn’t scare you; trying to solve the biggest unsolved problems is just what normal people do

Have you, dear reader, ever tried writing poetry that will set the collective soul of your nation on fire? If no, why not?