One interesting fact is that Darwin directly referred to Bakewell in the first chapter of On the Origin of Species:
“a kind of Selection, which may be called Unconscious, and which results from every one trying to possess and breed from the best individual animals, is more important. Thus, a man who intends keeping pointers naturally tries to get as good dogs as he can, and afterwards breeds from his own best dogs, but he has no wish or expectation of permanently altering the breed. Nevertheless I cannot doubt that this process, continued during centuries, would improve and modify any breed, in the same way as Bakewell, Collins, &c., by this very same process, only carried on more methodically, did greatly modify, even during their own lifetimes, the forms and qualities of their cattle.”
The caste/nobility system, harems, prima nocta, and a high immigration bar are all variations of this theme.
These days elite universities, Tinder, Twitter, and the general Internet are pushing out the tails of humanity further. Expect more outliers as time marches on.
If universal basic income is adopted, expect more negative outliers, as the barriers to entry to human reproduction plummets, and the lure to collect the child’s paycheck proves hard to resist.
The problem with attempting to apply this to humans is that humans take an extraordinary amount of time to develop into their prime (~30 years each gen). You might at most get 2 generations of data if you began to run this experiment in your early 20s.
The only case I am aware of is that of the "Potsdam Giants" [1]. Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia was so obsessed with tall men he created a regiment of them, and pushed these soldiers to marry tall women. It apparently worked in producing even taller offspring.
As for entrepreneurship, I don't think there's a gene that encodes that :). Although heredity isn't only genetic.
I'd love to see if there's been a study on this, but anecdotally it seems a high number of PhDs are married to other PhDs, doctors to other doctors, attorneys to other attorneys.
My take is for the most part of the grind of these types of professions is more relatable and schedules are easier to align, but it probably also aligns on social cache/prestige to some degree.
Yeah but part of that is just sharing the same social space. It's pretty common for people to meet at work or at school and then start dating and eventually marry. For large portions of your life, especially in law and medicine, school dominates your life and virtually all your friends and potential mates come from that pool. Same for work or professional life. Have you ever hooked up with a coworker or classmate? Many people have. Doesn't matter the profession. It's less common for professions that are not as gender balanced, of course, but it still happens.
“a kind of Selection, which may be called Unconscious, and which results from every one trying to possess and breed from the best individual animals, is more important. Thus, a man who intends keeping pointers naturally tries to get as good dogs as he can, and afterwards breeds from his own best dogs, but he has no wish or expectation of permanently altering the breed. Nevertheless I cannot doubt that this process, continued during centuries, would improve and modify any breed, in the same way as Bakewell, Collins, &c., by this very same process, only carried on more methodically, did greatly modify, even during their own lifetimes, the forms and qualities of their cattle.”