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The collective intellect is change-blind. Knowledge gained seems so natural that we forget what it was like not to have it. Piaget says children gain long-term memory at age 4 and don\u2019t learn abstract thought until ten; do you remember what it was like not to have abstract thought? We underestimate our intellectual progress because every every sliver of knowledge acquired gets backpropagated unboundedly into the past.

For decades, people talked about \u201cthe gene for height\u201d, \u201cthe gene for intelligence\u201d, etc. Was the gene for intelligence\xa0on chromosome 6? Was it\xa0on the X chromosome?\xa0What happens if your baby doesn\u2019t have the gene for intelligence? Can they still succeed?

Meanwhile, the responsible experts were saying traits might be determined by\xa0a two-digit number\xa0of genes. Human Genome Project leader Francis Collins\xa0estimated\xa0that there were \u201cabout twelve genes\u201d for diabetes, and \u201call of them will be discovered in the next two years\u201d.\xa0Quanta Magazine\xa0reminds us of a 1999 study which claimed that \u201cperhaps more than fifteen genes\u201d might contribute to autism. By the early 2000s, the American Psychological Association was a little more cautious,\xa0was saying\xa0intelligence might be linked to \u201cdozens \u2013 if not hundreds\u201d of genes.