Could it also be called wealth-mellishence or perhaps familialValuationOfWorkEthic-melloshence?
"Intelligence doesn't exist" is just a defense mechanism for above-average intelligence people to feel like they earned all their good outcomes.
But here's the thing: even if it was all hard work and not that you were born of above-average intelligence, it's pure luck that you were born someone who works hard.
But also intelligence exists and it's wildly discrediting to insist it doesn't.
That sounds... suspiciously convenient.
No, there's actually nothing convenient about the fact that most people are accidents of their genetic, geographic, and environmental roll of the dice.
The convenient view is: I worked hard because I chose to work hard. I achieved hard things because I worked to be smart. People who did not achieve the same things did not do so because they chose not to work hard or they chose not to be smart.
Very self-serving and transparently wrong.
I will grant you that there are some people who, due to handicaps or other things beyond their control, do not have the option of choosing to work hard. But I claim (without statistical proof, I admit) that by far the majority of those who do not work hard, still have the real option of choosing to work hard, but do not.
For most of those who won't, "I can't" is also "very self-serving and transparently wrong."
"Go look up twin studies" is a very strange thing to tell someone on a message board in 2026. It's like saying "go look up phlogiston".
Fraternal twins reared together: .55 correlation in IQ
Identical twins reared apart: .75 correlation in IQ
And the genetic correlation grows as children age.
No, genetic studies did not "demolish" heritability estimates, they set a floor on them. Genetic studies do not and cannot (currently) predict all phenotypic outcomes, they set the floor on how much variation can be caused by genetic differences.
The genetic predictions don't even directly contradict, never mind demolish, the twin study findings.
The "missing heritability problem" is only a problem if one believes our genetic analysis techniques are comprehensive, but we already know they're not. For example, current methods are extremely limited in detecting gene-gene interactions, which we have good reason to suspect are widespread (otherwise making new genetic drugs would be trivial).
This has come up a bunch on HN and I don't want to rehash dozens of earlier comments, but the search bar will give you plenty of cites.
I'm not sure what you mean by "hereditarian" given that even the genetic studies obviously point to significant heritability.
This is always a funny conversation because on the one side you have people saying "intelligence is both heritable and correlated with nearly every outcome we care about."
On the other hand you have people saying "nuh uh! It's only... medium-high heritability and medium-high correlation with other positive outcomes," as if it makes any material difference to any downstream question.
Again, the search bar will avail, but the answers you're giving here are very early-90s.
Why don't you just share what your estimate is?
Is it zero?
It's totally OK if we're just not going to persuade each other or develop any productive ideas in this thread! I've said all I originally wanted to say.