Judea Pearl: gene-IQ debate can be settled the same way as smoking-cancer was
yudapearl · x · 2026-08-28
Commenting on the gene→IQ causality debate, Judea Pearl argues the issue is no different from the smoking→cancer dilemma that occupied the health-care community in the 1960s: it can be resolved by scientific methods, but only if done right — using proper causal inference as described in The Book of Why, rather than toy causal diagrams. The quoted thread further asks what the correct causal model should look like if genes→IQ is wrong.
More from AGI Musings
- AI Projected to Trigger Exponential Economic Growth in the 2030s — JeffLadish · 2026-08-28
- Incoming Berkeley prof: AI firms spend billions on alignment, orders of magnitude less on agent control — sayashk · 2026-08-28
- Thought experiment: Pause pretraining to focus on controlling inner drives — louisvarge · 2026-08-28
- AI Reliability Lags 4-10x Behind Capabilities; 90% Accuracy Is Catastrophic — sayashk · 2026-08-28
- Google DeepMind uses Teamwork multi-agent framework for math breakthroughs — algo_diver · 2026-08-28
- Understanding as a Competency Vector: Prediction, Explanation and Control Trade Off — burny_tech · 2026-08-28