Yes, that's true. That's what is implied when the heritability is said to be less than 1, which I think everyone agrees on.
Yes, I would agree to that as well. But we are discussing Hsu's post here and I did not see this mentioned anywhere, and that is clearly what I was responding to. Perhaps it is another assumption of his that the reader would understand this, but many people who might read this will not take that into account and be misled.
[quote=DAD22I think the point was to use a theoretical example to explain a consideration to keep in mind when interpreting population statistics, nothing more.
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Perhaps, but I see little point in theoretical examples that can never be empirically tested. If you cannot provide valid, reliable measures of these variables, then what's the point? As a social scientist (not a physicist) I have to justify my assumptions and demonstrate the validity and reliability of my measures to my colleagues in order to be taken seriously. My point here was that in addition to the critiques of the model itself presented by pps, I question the likelihood that we could ever know what G & E are anyways, much less their standard deviations. So for example, I could just as easily create a "theoretical" model that says that genetics has nothing to do with intelligence and it is completely dependent on environment, if I can make any assumptions I want and not have to justify how I measure my variables. But if there is no way to disprove it, then it is not science.
What concerns me about things like this, is that people will read it and believe it to be true, just because a scientist said it. No matter how questionable his assumptions or models are.
