> Instead he advocates the use of such scores when choosing between candidates for a job.
What a ridiculous and offensive suggestion, widespread genetic discrimination. You don't have to be a scientist to understand why that's bad. Even if (or precisely if) some skills and proclivities are mostly inherited, that should not prevent people that managed to overcome their native shortcomings to find a fair place in society according to their actual, developed skills.
We already know for a fact that males are more aggressive, females have lower orientation skills and Asian kids are less agitated. The genetic markers are so strong there you can read them on the person's face, yet, discrimination on any of those gender or race characteristics should be repulsive to anyone.
It's not only ethically wrong and offensive, it may actually be factually wrong also. How much of a person--and their suitability for some role--is genetic predisposition, and how much is their nurture and experiences?
Furthermore, if you did identify the "ideal" person for that role, then you'd want more of them: so you'd want clone factories, eg Kamino.
Genetic Diversity is rather an outcome of a fact that mixing genes helped us evolve (mutations - vs diseases, environment changes etc)
Now or rather soon, when human species will be able to takr control over evolution process, genetic diversity will make no sense because you will be highly immune to anything and environment will be no different.
I know its hard to admit even now some families are highly superior to other when it comes to genes inheritage, but thats how it is.
Some may say that Eugenics sucks because for example it would not allow mentally ill people reproduce and they have such ppl in family, but overall majority of population has no such issues and mby they would like to have those genes out of the genes pool. All depends on how you look at that, collective vs single entity etc.
Just because you have a bad gene doesn't make you a bad/inferior person so yeah when humans take control over their source code they may put some genes on sleep.
You also forget that there are always trade offs. You can't be "perfect" because there is no such thing.
Back to real world, we all pay taxes and live in this world so I believe we should demand and receive equal opportunities.
I think the article explains pretty well why that is not possible.
And goverment cannot do anything to change that - ppl are just too different. Its like teaching someone how to play violin - if you dont have the talent you will have to learn 10 times as long for 20% efficiency.
Sooner or later most countries will have to tackle this issue and im sure more successful ppl (with better genes) wont be willing to wait for others just to simulate "equal opportunity".
> a bad gene doesn't make you a bad/inferior person
In fact, we don't always understand the interplay between, say Asbergers and savant skills, or schizophrenia and intense creativity. We might need to live with some of these to retain the whole spectrum of humanity.
My personal feeling, no facts here, is we should look at low hanging fruit that we all agree is isolated and can bring no benefits, such as Tay Sachs or Huntingtons. Those will not be missed and we well gain experience with the harder problem of evaluating the harder choices.
> Instead he advocates the use of such scores when choosing between candidates for a job.
I'm struggling to understand how this doesn't wind up being a proxy for racism/sexism and the other things we abhor when considering equal opportunity.
Genetic variation inside races is much larger than between them. I don't think that that genetic screening is a good idea, but if it would be rigorously and blindly applied, it would probably break up many race and gender barriers.
We already do ad hoc screening based on phenotypes determined by genes.
* taller men have higher wages than shorter men.
* beautiful women get jobs more easily than ugly women.
* facial asymmetries and other small deviations from the norm affect the prospects of many people.
As someone who's the same height (yay?) it's okay, it's really average around the world, you're not short, you're average for 95% of the world ;) (Also it's 5'10")
Having said so, may I remind you that the biggest predictor for your own personal wealth is the wealth of your parents, so you know.
>The proportion of human genetic variation due to differences between populations is modest, and individuals from different populations can be genetically more similar than individuals from the same population. Yet sufficient genetic data can permit accurate classification of individuals into populations. Both findings can be obtained from the same data set, using the same number of polymorphic loci. This article explains why.
....
>The fact that, given enough genetic data, individuals can be correctly assigned to their populations of origin is compatible with the observation that most human genetic variation is found within populations, not between them. It is also compatible with our finding that, even when the most distinct populations are considered and hundreds of loci are used, individuals are frequently more similar to members of other populations than to members of their own population. Thus, caution should be used when using geographic or genetic ancestry to make inferences about individual phenotypes.
Spot on. This will be and is being used to justify a world of luxury for the 1% and a world of pain for everyone else who isn't "perfect".
I personally believe we should strive to create a better world for 100% of the population, not justify the shortfallings of the current mixed-capi-soci system.
It seems that "genetics" is increasingly becoming the essentialism of the 21st century. Because you now sound silly if you use words like 'soul' or 'energy', people increasingly rely on 'genetics' or 'biology' to prove all sorts of political points or argue for public policies. As someone whose job is literally staring at and manipulating fasta files [1][2] all day, I find this newly found fascination people have with their own DNA (and others') deeply unsettling. People want it to be our 'source code', our 'blueprint', our video game character starting stats, any kind of proxy for one's soul, but there's so much more to the self than a dumb fasta file, we're only barely beginning to uncover it. And I'm not talking about the environment either (and by the way, the genetics/environment false dichotomy has been outdated for a while; whenever I hear things like 'nature/nurture' it makes me cringe). Epigenetics, microbiota, DNA spatial structure, all sorts of developmental stuff... these all contribute too, and have little to do with one's 'upgringing' or 'nurturing' as most people understand it.
It's all the more pervasive because some of the talking points are sort of true, but then people immediately jump to conclusions regarding social issues. Which in my view shows that people are not really interested in the science itself but are more looking into a way to map their mental model onto it so as to provide a socially acceptable justification of their opinions. This has been done for hundreds of years (from racialist theories to Lyssenkism to all kinds of foodstuffs lobbies) and I would very much like it if there weren't a resurgence of this kind of thinking in the current political climate.
I think there is an enormous danger in abuse of this knowledge. People simply don't understand the concepts and statistics very well.
The part about how heritability varies between countries is very important observation. A country successful at creating great opportunities for the majority of the population will measure very high heritability values because naturally most differences seen will be genetic if the environment is mostly optimal.
This hides the significance of the environment. E.g. height has a heritability of 90%, yet that is easy to misinterpret. Height in various populations have varied dramatically over time and that can primarily be explained by changes in the environment: health care and nutrition.
There may be generic markers and genetic predisposition, but it's not because a person comes from a "long race of X" or "long family of Y". Even if that's true in fact it's wrong in policy. It's dangerous to consider some better than others.
Changes to family traits may be slow, but can be cultivated! We should encourage and help all families and communities to improve their environment to bring about positive changes in their lives and children's lives.
From TFA:
"These are problems of emphasis rather than accuracy. But in a field as ethically fraught as genetics, even that can be troubling. For instance, as Mr Plomin notes, the size of the genetic component of a particular trait—its “heritability”—varies between different populations. The heritability of educational attainment in Norway has increased since the second world war as the country widened access to health care and schools, flattening out environmental effects. That trend seems, worryingly, to have reversed in America in the 21st century. The irony is that the heritability of many traits rises if states do more to provide for all their citizens equally."
28 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 65.3 ms ] threadWhat a ridiculous and offensive suggestion, widespread genetic discrimination. You don't have to be a scientist to understand why that's bad. Even if (or precisely if) some skills and proclivities are mostly inherited, that should not prevent people that managed to overcome their native shortcomings to find a fair place in society according to their actual, developed skills.
We already know for a fact that males are more aggressive, females have lower orientation skills and Asian kids are less agitated. The genetic markers are so strong there you can read them on the person's face, yet, discrimination on any of those gender or race characteristics should be repulsive to anyone.
Eugenics is all fun and games until they come after you and your family.
Furthermore, if you did identify the "ideal" person for that role, then you'd want more of them: so you'd want clone factories, eg Kamino.
No, we have genetic diversity for a reason.
Now or rather soon, when human species will be able to takr control over evolution process, genetic diversity will make no sense because you will be highly immune to anything and environment will be no different.
I know its hard to admit even now some families are highly superior to other when it comes to genes inheritage, but thats how it is.
Some may say that Eugenics sucks because for example it would not allow mentally ill people reproduce and they have such ppl in family, but overall majority of population has no such issues and mby they would like to have those genes out of the genes pool. All depends on how you look at that, collective vs single entity etc.
You also forget that there are always trade offs. You can't be "perfect" because there is no such thing.
Back to real world, we all pay taxes and live in this world so I believe we should demand and receive equal opportunities.
I think the article explains pretty well why that is not possible.
And goverment cannot do anything to change that - ppl are just too different. Its like teaching someone how to play violin - if you dont have the talent you will have to learn 10 times as long for 20% efficiency.
Sooner or later most countries will have to tackle this issue and im sure more successful ppl (with better genes) wont be willing to wait for others just to simulate "equal opportunity".
In fact, we don't always understand the interplay between, say Asbergers and savant skills, or schizophrenia and intense creativity. We might need to live with some of these to retain the whole spectrum of humanity.
My personal feeling, no facts here, is we should look at low hanging fruit that we all agree is isolated and can bring no benefits, such as Tay Sachs or Huntingtons. Those will not be missed and we well gain experience with the harder problem of evaluating the harder choices.
But in sports they measure things related to genetics all the time - ie in the NBA they measure height, wingspan, standing reach, etc.
People understand that just because someone has good measureables doesn't mean they'll be a good player, but it certainly helps gauge potential.
I'm struggling to understand how this doesn't wind up being a proxy for racism/sexism and the other things we abhor when considering equal opportunity.
The alternative is giving out jobs by guesswork. It could be argued that by not checking for aptitude, we are doing quite a bit of that now.
Genetic variation inside races is much larger than between them. I don't think that that genetic screening is a good idea, but if it would be rigorously and blindly applied, it would probably break up many race and gender barriers.
We already do ad hoc screening based on phenotypes determined by genes.
* taller men have higher wages than shorter men.
* beautiful women get jobs more easily than ugly women.
* facial asymmetries and other small deviations from the norm affect the prospects of many people.
Having said so, may I remind you that the biggest predictor for your own personal wealth is the wealth of your parents, so you know.
Do you have a source for this? It sounds suspiciously like feel good propaganda.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/race-is-a-social-...
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/is-race-real
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/10/genetics-history...
Those are literally the first three results from the google search "is race real from science point of view".
Here is good article that explains it more clearly: Genetic Similarities Within and Between Human Populations https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1893020/
>The proportion of human genetic variation due to differences between populations is modest, and individuals from different populations can be genetically more similar than individuals from the same population. Yet sufficient genetic data can permit accurate classification of individuals into populations. Both findings can be obtained from the same data set, using the same number of polymorphic loci. This article explains why.
....
>The fact that, given enough genetic data, individuals can be correctly assigned to their populations of origin is compatible with the observation that most human genetic variation is found within populations, not between them. It is also compatible with our finding that, even when the most distinct populations are considered and hundreds of loci are used, individuals are frequently more similar to members of other populations than to members of their own population. Thus, caution should be used when using geographic or genetic ancestry to make inferences about individual phenotypes.
Here's the gist: Human bad. Capital good.
I personally believe we should strive to create a better world for 100% of the population, not justify the shortfallings of the current mixed-capi-soci system.
It's all the more pervasive because some of the talking points are sort of true, but then people immediately jump to conclusions regarding social issues. Which in my view shows that people are not really interested in the science itself but are more looking into a way to map their mental model onto it so as to provide a socially acceptable justification of their opinions. This has been done for hundreds of years (from racialist theories to Lyssenkism to all kinds of foodstuffs lobbies) and I would very much like it if there weren't a resurgence of this kind of thinking in the current political climate.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FASTA_format
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FASTQ_format
The part about how heritability varies between countries is very important observation. A country successful at creating great opportunities for the majority of the population will measure very high heritability values because naturally most differences seen will be genetic if the environment is mostly optimal.
This hides the significance of the environment. E.g. height has a heritability of 90%, yet that is easy to misinterpret. Height in various populations have varied dramatically over time and that can primarily be explained by changes in the environment: health care and nutrition.
Changes to family traits may be slow, but can be cultivated! We should encourage and help all families and communities to improve their environment to bring about positive changes in their lives and children's lives.
From TFA:
"These are problems of emphasis rather than accuracy. But in a field as ethically fraught as genetics, even that can be troubling. For instance, as Mr Plomin notes, the size of the genetic component of a particular trait—its “heritability”—varies between different populations. The heritability of educational attainment in Norway has increased since the second world war as the country widened access to health care and schools, flattening out environmental effects. That trend seems, worryingly, to have reversed in America in the 21st century. The irony is that the heritability of many traits rises if states do more to provide for all their citizens equally."