> I have a hypothesis that almost all of the greatest intellectual achievements come from a very small number of bloodlines.
Nice hypothesis, but not exactly backed up by history. So many different societies have made so many diverse contributions to innovation, I'd be pretty amazed if you could draw a cohesive line through all (or most) of them.
Also, separately, it's pretty difficult to separate "bloodlines", which I assume you mean genetically inherited traits, with socially inherited traits.
A great physicist is probably more likely than average to have offspring that are also great physicists. But is that because of their "blood" (i.e. DNA) or because the children grew up in a household exposed to physics at a much higher degree than average. The children's "blood" is an inherited DNA trait, but their upbringing is an inherited social trait.
The question boils down to the age-old nature vs. nurture argument. All signs seem to point to nurture being the far more powerful influence.
I think the underlying mechanism is simply natural selection, just like you can breed dogs, tulips or bacteria for traits, humans can be "breed" into intelectual performance. None of religions/cultures do it, with exception of Ashkenazi.
> I think the underlying mechanism is simply natural selection
Genetic natural selection takes thousands of years, or at an absolute minimum multiple generations. Social selection occurs far more rapidly, often within a single generation. A person born in the 1950s that is genetically predisposed to manual labor may do well for the first few decades of their life, but as society changes and starts valuing white collar work more, they will do far worse. Their genetics didn't change, but society did.
Those that favor nature over nurture vastly under-estimate the time-scales which it takes natural selection to occur as compared to social selection.
I think you underestimate how powerful this mechanism can be. Take 20 years for one generation, ie. 100 years is 5 generations. We're talking about roughly time from 800 CE, that is 60 generations. Imagine taking smartest people to reproduce, then taking smartest from their kids and so on - 60 times. You will see an effect. You can optimize on anything, ie. "time you can dive underwater" you will see the difference compared to other people after 60 generations, see https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/04/indonesian-divers-ha...
Actually this isnt really true. If you go back over the last 200 hundred years, intellectual contributions are extremely concentrated. My point was further along these lines:
But what I am saying is this, the highest levels of genius, I would argue, are categorically different than just highly intelligent people. I think theres something different about the way their brains are structured. I've interacted with some of the top minds in a few fields, and I never come off with the feeling that they are merely farther along some kind of "intelligence spectrum". It always feels as if their thinking is different, i.e. its source and methods are a different type of brain. I think theres a few mutations floating around in a few different pools of the population
Nice hypothesis, but not exactly backed up by history. So many different societies have made so many diverse contributions to innovation, I'd be pretty amazed if you could draw a cohesive line through all (or most) of them.
Also, separately, it's pretty difficult to separate "bloodlines", which I assume you mean genetically inherited traits, with socially inherited traits.
A great physicist is probably more likely than average to have offspring that are also great physicists. But is that because of their "blood" (i.e. DNA) or because the children grew up in a household exposed to physics at a much higher degree than average. The children's "blood" is an inherited DNA trait, but their upbringing is an inherited social trait.
The question boils down to the age-old nature vs. nurture argument. All signs seem to point to nurture being the far more powerful influence.