https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/s3fs-public/imported/KoreanPe...
That's North and South Korea from space. Those people are almost genetically identical. They're practically clones. Why is the South so much stronger economically and technologically?
Could it have to do with different ideas? The North is a mixture of a monarchist family cult of personality and Marxism, while the South is closer to a Western liberal democracy.
I'm sure you can find other cases of ethnically identical people have massively different outcomes, but this is probably the most obvious. You can see it from space.
These are a problem for people who want to discount the importance of ideas and culture in favor of genetic determinism. If genes are the most important thing, North and South Korea should not have such a large gap in outcome.
It's a lot easier to think of examples of over time. Europe went from being backward and poor compared to the Middle East and China to basically ruling the world in a few generations. That's too fast to explain with genetics. There are loads more examples like this: Japan's sudden industrialization, the rise of China in the last 50 years, etc. In all these cases you had people suddenly leaping forward in development without much genetic change. Why weren't they always so developed if it's genetic?
I'm not arguing that genes have zero impact, but I think ideas are much more significant. Humans are thinking beings. Most of our efficacy comes from things that are not heritable. Genes only give you the base raw material.