> since the amount of variation in height that's attributable to environmental factors might make that fundamentally impossible
Yes, that is my point.
Both intelligence and attractiveness have a significant amount of variation attributable to environmental or other external factors, and have the additional complication that they cannot be measured by a single objective unit (like height can).
> do you think that in 20 years we'll have no ability to predict height or intelligence from a genome
The quantification of intelligence is notoriously confounded by socioeconomic factors. I do not think talking about predicting a feature makes sense while we are currently unable to describe it well.
IMO dedicating funding to improving child care, healthcare+diet, and k-12 education will have a much greater impact on increasing a society's measures of intelligence and educational attainment. There's much stronger evidence that these factors are associated with improved outcomes. But, the work isn't "sexy" and doesn't come with a sci-fi flair.
Kind of like ignoring climate work in favor of Mars colonization. There seems to be a cultural bias in tech towards moonshot panaceas vs doing the unglamorous grind. It makes me think of the Bill Gates quote that "a lazy person will find an easy way to do a hard job," and while that's valuable in some contexts I don't think it's universally applicable.
