Increasingly intelligent? No, there are no selective pressures for this. As to families of simply intelligent people? That is rather easy, this is called upper-middle class and the lack of social mobility.

If you want to read up on this, start with studies on Ashkenazi Jews.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

You are technically correct on one point, this study did not look into broad question of heritability of intelligence. They only looked into specific genes linked to specific traits associated with some aspects of intelligence. From the general body of knowledge we also know that these genes would be heritable.

Since we are nitpicking, you are also incorrect by stating that "the predictive utility of what they have discovered" - they have not performed exhaustive search for all genes that would positively and negatively impact memory and learning, as such it is still only a correlation.

I partially agree, they should have at least limited to degrees in hard science. If anything, there is a negative correlation with intelligence to getting a PhD in social sciences, like gender studies or communication.

You are moving the goalposts. This study didn't set out to completely explain intelligence on genetic level, they set out to find some evidence that some aspects of intelligence can be linked to specific genes and they found them. They also found a number of false positives, leading to your mistaken conclusion that they only found false positives.

As many of you know, you can do amazing things with Raspberry Pi and can completely waste performance of Xeon E5. Intelligence is not interchangeable with success or productivity.

The summary is incorrect, please read the abstract to form your own opinion. Specifically:

"Convergent evidence from a set of bioinformatics analyses implicates four specific genes (KNCMA1, NRXN1, POU2F3, and SCRT). All of these genes are associated with a particular neurotransmitter pathway involved in synaptic plasticity, the main cellular mechanism for learning and memory. "

Intelligence is highly heritable, but there is no single 'genius' gene and often there are multiple genetic markers that have similar positive or negative effects. This study looked for common genetic variants that correlated with memory and learning and found them!

We understand entropy, but have we considered that a symmetrical and opposite phenomena could exist and be primarily responsible for creation of life? That is, some property of information to self-organize that leads to creation of life, and later to creation of intelligence?

While I hate people that drive and text, I don't see the solution proposed by the article as effective. Phones are cheap enough and portable enough that there is no way to enforce such "interlock" if the user does not want to comply.

Fundamentally, text and driving is an interface design problem. Instant messaging interfaces are designed to almost fully occupy your attention while information conveyed is nearly trivial to cognitively process. As such, removing the need to type with your thumbs on a tiny screen to text would be my recommended solution.