The first thought that came to mind here was that emphasizing heritability will lead to racism, nepotism, sexism, inherited classism, etc. This is merely an observation independent of how strong heritability actually is.

Then I realized that the developmental / nurture model favored by most of today's intellectuals combined with brutal meritocracy does the same thing, but with a layer of personal blame and a huge quacky market for developmental aids of dubious effectiveness.

The fundamental issue is that society has become much more competitive and stratified, with the easier middle class path vanishing. That is going to create brutal competitive stratification regardless of what model (heritability or nurture) best characterizes the rules of the game.

Yet paradoxically we are in an age of extreme abundance where goods, services, and money itself (low interest rates) are cheaper than ever before.

Abundance is creating scarcity. Something is very very wrong.

We’re not wired for “enough”. Our evolutionary past never had abundance, so we we evolved to compete, so we compete. Don’t worry, though, our material abundance will soon come to an end as population increases. And then we’ll be well adapted to our level of material prosperity again.

We're extremely adaptable, and in some cases can re-wire ourselves to appreciate abundance and ease up on the competition at least to some degree. Maybe it's possible to learn to live better.

Neither of my parents are particularly "bright" and today I work as a computer programmer. I'm skeptical of this premise.

Being employed as a computer programmer does not mean you are bright.

A source for the heritability claim, to allay your scepticism: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/06/heritability-...

It shows the heritability of intelligence at age 26 as 88%. Perhaps you're one of the 12% (forgive the statistically meaningless phrase - you get the idea). Or perhaps you underestimate your parents.

Likely the latter. Do not conflate renumeration or political views with intelligence, curiosity or just street smarts.

All of these forms of intelligence are genetically valid, but phenotype is determined by environment. You may get a great farmer, or you might get a researcher depending on environmental conditions...

So yes, they do matter a lot on outcome. If you haven't found a computer early, there could be a problem of you being outmatched and not proceeding alongside that path.

High heritability does not mean that there's a formula that you can apply to predict what a child "inherits". It's about probabilities in great numbers, not about individuals, hence the advice from ZhuanXia on what to do to increase the odds and then roll the dice a lot (have a lot of children) to increase the odds for a perfect roll in one of them.

Who can afford it though? Environment matters too. But if you can afford it, why not. Few can though, kids are expensive in time and money, and to get money you spend time...