Oh, applying a poorly understood abstract concepts to poorly understood vastly complex and still intractable stochastic process, which is what real genetics is. (daily reminder - each gamete is unique perturbation of host's DNA)
> It can also tell you how much you are likely to inherit and what network of people you are linked to as well.
Only to the extent that your parents have the same DNA. The point is that economic success is strongly correlated to genetics independently of social position and nurturing.
Of course this will be controversial; it's the same kind of conclusion that spurred the Soviet Union to promote Lysenkoism and suppress Darwinism.
Here in the UK, about 1000 years ago, the French invaded and took over, siezing control of the (basically German) population by replacing the top level of society.
Suddely, the lords were French and the serfs were German.
1000 years later, you can predict someones socio-economic level by surname. French surnames do better than German ones. Surnames linked by blood to royalty do better than both.
1000 years. Lack of social mobility overrides genetics?
I would say that a successful male has more choice in women to reproduce with. Presumably whoever is chosen has above average genetic material as well. So it’s not so surprising that one can still see an effect of this. Moreover success in high society requires a different set of skills than success as a peasant.
Like many things here though there's a chicken and egg type scenario. Society mostly started with increasingly isolated tribal groups. Over time, and lots of killing, the most successful groups started to form into larger and larger groups. And the most successful individuals among these most successful groups were in turn on top of the top. At some point leadership implied what was an extremely high probability of a genetic advantage. And that advantage can persist through the centuries. It can also deteriorate.
A great example of this is the House of Habsburg. [1] They were one of the most powerful families in history completely dominating Europe politics with lineages of kings and emperors throughout the entire continent for some 5 centuries, including holding the throne of the Holy Roman Empire for more than 300 years. But the reason they're an interesting example is because they're also the namesake of the Habsburg Jaw - a genetic deformity that was greatly exaggerated in the family through the years due to excessive inbreeding. If you've seen a cartoon depiction of royalty they often are drawn with the extreme protruding chin, which is a reference to this deformity and family in particular.
That family was almost certainly extremely genetically fit at one point. But through excessive inbreeding they destroyed their own genetic lineage. In Spain this was especially pronounced with Charles II. [2] He was described as "short, lame, epileptic, senile, and bald before 35." He learned to talk at age 4, walk at 8. His Habsburg Jaw was so extreme he could not chew his own food. He, unsurprisingly, died childless at the age of 35 - ending 200 years of Habsburg rule in Spain. And to emphasize -- this is just one example. This family did not just rule Spain. They had lasting dynasties in Germany, Hungary, Croatia, England, Boehmia, Ireland, Portugal, and many other nations.
Only the male line died out. The Habsburg-Lorraine cadet branch took over and although they don't actually rule any countries since WWI, they are still quite wealthy and well-connected.
Economic success is also very strongly correlated to height.
Now, height is only about 70% genetic, 30% is diet and other environmental factors, but if you were looking at DNA and financial outcomes without any nod to culture, you might conclude tall people are naturally good at business.
Invader Zim satirised the culture of this pretty well with the aliens being led by 'The Tallest'.
Things are too conflated in society to really get around gene vs societal/circumstantial-pressures on success.
However, I can see animal models with random assignment uncovering genes that help animals solve tasks. Comparing identified genes from animal models with frequencies in human populations would seem a fruitful path (even if we may not like some of the answers), that I am sure is being done already.
Unless we have a complete picture of "success", which means:
- How much of our behavior, habits, intelligence and success comes from the environment ?
- How much of stuff like education levels, income levels come from birth, social and environmental factors?
- How epigenetics shapes our life in a dynamic fashion? This field is pretty new, and we have just begin to understand it.
- What is intelligence or success in the first place ? How do you measure it that is all encompassing and diverse ? I have never seen a solid definition of that. Should we care about their definition of success? Can there ever be one definition of success for all groups? My own personal definition has changed over the years.
- Is Gene state correlated state or unchangeable predictors (which I extremely doubt in light of above points)
- Has there been a complete study of exceptions?
all of this is extremely reductionist at best and trying to push a malicious self serving agenda at the worst which can cause havoc in hands of any stupid policy makers.
From what I understand, we are very far off from getting a full picture of these questions. At least decades away if not more.
> all of this is extremely reductionist at best and trying to push a malicious self serving agenda at the worst which can cause havoc in hands of any stupid policy makers.
First thing that came to mind for me was eugenics. This kind of pseudoscience is very dangerous.
Points 1 2 and 4 are pretty well studied in academia concerning intelligence. Intelligence is defined as "g", and it's 60 to 80% heritable depending on the study (leaning towards 80%).
Perhaps you meant that at any given time, the heritability of a trait depends on the "state" of the population, and that heritability values can change over time. This is true, but I don't understand why you'd bring it up.
The article is pretty interesting and I didn't read the whole thing. The correlations are positive but not 1, sometimes less than 0.5. So it shows genes are positively correlated, but very different than saying it's an exclusive factor? So the problem with this is that even if something is correlated at 10% (for arguments sake), it can have predictive power. But that doesn't mean it can become the sole basis. Thats the cognitive jump most folks are incapable of and these discussions often lead to very wrong outcomes. Indeed this bias has led to many horrific examples of discrimination.
Also the heritability seems to be put at 0.5, not a sure thing? So it obviously can be heritable, but that doesn't rule out that it is only heritable and no other avenues for it exist?
I suspect it will be. We are already detecting genetic illnesses, and most of the scientists working on these problems with the goal of bettering human existence.
I won't make any assumptions about you, but I've suffered due to the poorly constructed features of the human genetic structure failing. My life would be much better if those could be fixed.
I'm not sure if you're joking or not (it did make me chuckle), but as dystopian as it sounds, I would prefer to live in a world where everyone is beautiful, since it would eliminate barriers for less attractive folks, and eliminate advantages for the more attractive ones. Of course, if we do ever learn how to change our physical appearance with genetics, the fashion industry will just change the definition of "beautiful" every five years anyway.
Hypothetical situation: if there was devised a cheap and easy to administer "genetic IQ test", would you oppose an NGO whose mission statement would be to administer this test to low income inner city kids, and offer scholarships or vouchers to good schools to those exhibiting the highest "genetic IQ"?
Not entirely true, standardized testing kind of breaks down for really low income populations. It's a good proxy for a population living in a functional environment and attending school regularly, but a poor one in highly dysfunctional environments.
Low IQ people can only be educated to the extent of their abilities. If anything, they need specialized education which is more rote-learning based and slower than that of the general population.
Maybe you think that education increases intelligence? Education increases intelligence about as much as playing basketball makes you taller.
"A new meta-analysis blends the results of 28 studies that all took measures to mitigate this problem. Based on data from more than 600,000 participants, all told, psychologists Stuart Ritchie and Elliot Tucker-Drob have arrived at a rough estimate of how much an added year of education lifted participants’ IQ scores, on average: between 1 and 5 points."
"The new report does reaffirm the conclusion of psychologists that intelligence—despite being heavily influenced by genetics—is subject to change. The public may not yet be on the same page, according to Ritchie, despite previous research reviews in tune with his paper. “I think the idea that IQ is completely set in stone is still hanging around,” he says. “I think, in this case, we have some of the strongest evidence that it’s not.”"
I reject the premise: I don't think it is possible to predict intelligence accurately from DNA. While some degree of intelligence is heritable, perhaps even a substantial degree, environmental factors still play a big role in intelligence. A poor prenatal environment, malnutrition, toxins like lead, and disease all negatively impact intelligence, none of which you could measure or account for from just DNA.
But let's suppose this hypothetical test also accounts for environmental factors, and it can even calculate what the child's future intelligence would be based on how much financial support is provided. I don't think such a thing is actually possible, but I won't fight the hypothetical. Then I would say to allocate the money to provide the best net increase in intelligence: prioritize those with the most IQ points gained per dollar. I'd rather get 10 kids from 80 IQ to 100 IQ than 1 kid from 80 IQ to 140 IQ.
Though I think you'll find that, if the goal is improving the intelligence of the average population, putting funds into prenatal care and lead abatement programs will probably have the same impact for a lot less money than college scholarships.
I don't think you're very informed on the current state of IQ research (which is totally fine, not many people are, it's a very taboo subject). Perhaps you would gain from reading a bit on the subject (wikipedia has good articles on IQ). But I'll try to address your points.
>I reject the premise: I don't think it is possible to predict intelligence accurately from DNA. While some degree of intelligence is heritable, perhaps even a substantial degree, environmental factors still play a big role in intelligence. A poor prenatal environment, malnutrition, toxins like lead, and disease all negatively impact intelligence, none of which you could measure or account for from just DNA
That's true, but the degree of heritability here is important. If intelligence was 10 percent heritable, then I would agree that trying to predict intelligence from DNA would be an absurd endeavor since most of the variance in intelligence would be caused by environmental factors.
But in fact, most recent studies converge towards the fact that IQ is 80 percent heritable. This leaves a lot of wiggle room for the 20 percent of environmental factors to either increase or decrease this genetic component, but I think you really overestimate the effect of environmental factors. Intelligence is predominantly determined by genes, with the environment having mild influences. In the USA they are especially mild since most children thankfully do not grow up starving or suffering from tropical parasites.
>Then I would say to allocate the money to provide the best net increase in intelligence
You can't influence intelligence through education. Study after study has shown that effect of education on adult IQ is exactly zero. The point would not be to increase a kid's intelligence, but rather to identify kids with potential and transfer them to an environment where they could flourish.
>Though I think you'll find that, if the goal is improving the intelligence of the average population, putting funds into prenatal care and lead abatement programs will probably have the same impact for a lot less money than college scholarships.
Oh definitely, my hypothetical scenario would not increase the average intelligence in the least, that was not the point of it. I agree that prenatal care and policies for a clean environment would probably raise the general intelligence.
I am aware of the current state of IQ research, and I think you overstate some of the conclusions. The biggest is that heritability of IQ is 80%, but that does not mean that it is entirely the consequences of genetics. Parents raise their children, and thus affect their child's environment, both in the womb and early life. That can't be accounted for in DNA.
> would you oppose an NGO whose mission statement would be to administer this test to low income inner city kids, and offer scholarships or vouchers to good schools to those exhibiting the highest "genetic IQ"?
I'd think it was flawed even before any ethical considerations, since the environmental factors that the poor tend to be more exposed to that lead to downward deviations from genetic potential have had significant impact before schooling starts (in many cases even in utero), and school performance numbers today basically just reflect the student body (and in very large part the engagement and socioeconomic background of the parents) they are dealt more than outcome differences produced by the school. So, mostly, you'd be spending money to give kids a longer commute.
> since the environmental factors that the poor tend to be more exposed to that lead to downward deviations from genetic potential have had significant impact before schooling starts (in many cases even in utero),
It's true that adverse environmental conditions can lower IQ, but not whole standards of deviation. There are many people who grew up dirt poor and yet managed to achieve academically, which if intelligence was really irreparably impaired by a poor environment would not be possible.
> and school performance numbers today basically just reflect the student body (and in very large part the engagement and socioeconomic background of the parents) they are dealt more than outcome differences produced by the school
Which is exactly why a genetic test would be more accurate! It would not take into account differences due to quality of schooling.
> Which is exactly why a genetic test would be more accurate!
Accurate at...what?
They'd be less accurate at measuring IQ than actual IQ tests, and they'd be less accurate than IQ tests plus evaluating parental socioeconomic background at predicting academic performance.
I wonder how much of the feeling of the absolute evil of eugenics is just the echo of the highly successful propaganda campaigns against the Nazis by the Allies? Isn't eugenics just the idea that society should promote the improvement of the genetic makeup of the populous? An idea prone to abuse fundamental individual liberties, but do we just instead say genetics don't matter at all? Seems like that is the West's current path, but that does not look like it is working out so well either.
It seems clear to me that the role of genetics is to prepare you to survive/thrive in your parents' (and grandparents') environment. I would assume that as the environment changes over time, that the genetic makeup of their children would change (over generations), due to varying demands and "marrying up." Maybe environmental changes are limited to epigenetic changes, and "marrying up" produces the real genome variation, but still, the story is more complicated.
A short-sighted focus on "keeping people where their genes fit" ignores our tendency to improve our communities by conscious effort, up to and (by collaboration) beyond our innate capabilities.
I really dislike the focus on the individual and the "sorting problem", as distinct from the focus on community.
The above statement is false. That's more clear than ever and geno-economics contributes to that clarity. If you live your life by this assumption you will get many important things wrong.
Yet this clearly wrong statement, as applied to the operation of the rule of law, is also one of the most brilliant, important and useful concepts invented by civilization. As a proposition for how to engineer law to support a flourishing society, it is true and right.
I think that's the right way to deal with this controversy. Acknowledge that people have significant and important differences that are beyond their control, while also acknowledging that such difference can be overwhelmed by the effects of their nurturing and other controllable differences, such that it's better to judge them holistically and personally when that data is available.
That line is taken out of context a lot - the Declaration of Independence does not try to assert that all humans are equal in ability, its main focus was to state that all humans have equal rights to their life, liberty and freedom to pursue happiness. That means that even if a human is weaker, or even disabled, he or she still has equal rights to a human who is in good health.
Yes and no. Classical liberalism uses the assumed equality of all people to argue that the people are capable of and ought to engage in self rule. If by some miracle of science we can prove that this presumed equality is mostly false, then you can begin to attack the fundamental justification for self rule. There is a lot of complexity here (for example, what does it even mean for for a disabled person to have an equal right to good health?) and this discussion could go for days, but assumed equality is a huge foundational point for classical liberalism.
> Classical liberalism uses the assumed equality of all people to argue that the people are capable of and ought to engage in self rule.
"Equality" in the sense of equal rights, yes. Not in the sense of equal capabilities. Classical liberalism, as exemplified in documents like the Declaration of Independence, was based on the idea that, even though people have differences in ability, those differences do not give any person a right to rule over any other person. That's where the justification for "self rule" comes from.
Since this reasoning already recognizes that people have differences in ability, "science" showing that people have differences in ability (did we really need "science" to tell us this? isn't it obvious?) does not invalidate the reasoning at all.
There are other interpretations that square with this obvious contradiction. The founders may have believed as Aristolte that man was a rational animal and those lacking rationality were not men but just animals and fit to be slaves. More likely though they did not mean the equality of White and black but the equality of themselves and King George, stripping him of his divine right to rule. Using this quote to justify contemporary egalitarianism is ridiculous.
>The above statement is false. That's more clear than ever and geno-economics contributes to that clarity. If you live your life by this assumption you will get many important things wrong.
"It's bad to kill people" -- this statement is also false. There's no logical necessity that says its bad to kill people, it's only a utility calculation (whether you get caught, what the profit will be vs repercussions etc).
Still if you don't live your life by this assumption (that killing people is bad) you will get many important things wrong.
The basic moral imperatives should not be based on them being objectively true, but on what kind of world we want to live in.
"All men are created equal" doesn't mean "everybody is as tall" or "as strong" or "as smart". Obviously those who wrote it knew that already. It also doesn't mean a person without qualifications should get to work as a doctor just as well as someone with a M.D. diploma. They knew that too.
It just means that all people are equally worth, not to some utility function, but absolutely as human beings.
> It just means that all people are equally worth, not to some utility function, but absolutely as human beings.
In order to believe that worth can be determined independent of a utility function, you need a standard of absolute worth. Even religious statements of worth are based on utility to the deity. Biological statements of worth regard utility toward the population or ecosystem. I can't think of a non-utilitarian standard of worth that isn't arbitrary, can you?
>In order to believe that worth can be determined independent of a utility function, you need a standard of absolute worth
Or you can just dispense with the notion of worth of a person as person altogether -- then you don't need to "determine" anything. That's what the "equal" part means in that sentence: don't try to determine".
You can determine the skills of a surgeon, the education of a scholar, the speed of an athlete, the voice of an actor, the coding skills of a developer, etc.
But you should not try to determine the worth of a person as person. That is, when you don't care to measure something something specific, you should not consider someone inferior.
>Even religious statements of worth are based on utility to the deity.
Not really, at least not in the religions I've known. At least in (non-protestant) christianity people have absolute utility.
> At least in (non-protestant) christianity people have absolute utility.
Christianity allocates some souls to hell and others to heaven. Isn't that an expression of differential utility to God's purpose?
> But you should not try to determine the worth of a person as person
I agree that should usually be the case before the law, and in that context we should generally pretend that all people are created equal. But for most other purposes it is valuable to determine individual fitness for that purpose. And there are few purposes for which that fitness is uniform.
>Christianity allocates some souls to hell and others to heaven. Isn't that an expression of differential utility to God's purpose?
That's not all of Christianity. In the orthodox church for example, there's no hell even -- it's how a person perceives eternity without God, said distance from God based on their own predisposition (or tendency), out of their own free will. "Hell" in that sense is not some place, nor does it have actual fires and other BS folk iconography, it's a kind of regret:
> . . . those who find themselves in hell will be chastised by the scourge of love. How cruel and bitter this torment of love will be! For those who understand that they have sinned against love, undergo no greater suffering than those produced by the most fearful tortures. The sorrow which takes hold of the heart, which has sinned against love, is more piercing than any other pain. It is not right to say that the sinners in hell are deprived of the love of God . . . But love acts in two ways, as suffering of the reproved, and as joy in the blessed! (Saint Isaac of Syria, Mystic Treatises).
> According to the saints, the “fire” that will consume sinners at the coming of the Kingdom of God is the same “fire” that will shine with splendor in the saints. It is the “fire” of God’s love; the “fire” of God Himself who is Love. “For our God is a consuming fire” (Heb 12.29) who “dwells in unapproachable light” (1 Tim 6.16). For those who love God and who love all creation in Him, the “consuming fire” of God will be radiant bliss and unspeakable delight. For those who do not love God, and who do not love at all, this same “consuming fire” will be the cause of their “weeping” and their “gnashing of teeth.”
> Thus it is the Church’s spiritual teaching that God does not punish man by some material fire or physical torment. God simply reveals Himself in the risen Lord Jesus in such a glorious way that no man can fail to behold His glory. It is the presence of God’s splendid glory and love that is the scourge of those who reject its radiant power and light.
To an extent that’s true - genetics can detect your race and gender, both of which have a very strong correlation (although definitely not causation) with success.
That said ever since we have been able to run genetic tests people have tried to use them to demonstrate that group A is “worse” than everyone else, or the group B is superior. Before that they tried to use phrenology. In every case they successfully came up with a measurement that demonstrated that some group was inferior.
Weirdly the measurements confirmed stereotypes of the time, it’s almost like there was some kind of external bias effecting their results...
You’re aware that race doesn’t mean “white” vs “black” right?
While obviously these systems were used to justify treating non-white races as being fundamentally inferior, it was also used against other groups (“proving” that the Irish and scots were predisposed to drunkenness, etc).
The idea of racism being purely a skin color concept is relatively recent. Look at the historic treatment of the Irish, welsh, and Scottish in Britain over the last few millennia - or Italians up until the the mid to early 1900s. The treatment of people from Eastern Europe, the polish, today.
All of these races can be distinguished genetically - or even through external features.
Similar discrimination occurs other countries among people with the same skin colour- I’m sure countries like China and Japan could point to “objective” measures like genetics that can be not related to negative aspects of groups they discriminate against.
Combining GWAS data with social science... sounds like a recipe for generating incorrect conclusions from noise to me.
>"before the Human Genome Project had fully sequenced human DNA"
The human genome is still not complete by any normal definition, they just redefined "complete" to mean "we did our best". It is like if someone turns in homework with only half the questions answered and argues they should get 100% since they "completed" it.
>The human genome is still not complete by any normal definition
Well considering that the human genome is a moving target, it can never be "complete". However, it can be 99.9% complete, which is all but complete for all scientific intents and purposes. The rest is just semantics.
I mean, for genetics in the early 2000’s, I would say that mapping 99% of the genome is a good definition of complete. Its not as fun for Bill Clinton to say “the genome is mostly complete, barring a small bunch of gaps comprised of repeating elements”.
And the gaps are actively being studied with stuff like nanopore sequencing. There’s a lot of hype surrounding next-gen sequencing in general.
This is true. But, the biggest problem with the Human Genome Project isn’t that the genome didn’t get totally sequenced. It’s that we still don’t understand what the vast majority of the genome does, even if we know the DNA sequence.
>it suggests that the GWAS effect-size estimates may be biased upward by correlation between educational attainment and a rearing envi-ronment conducive to educational attainment.
A full 60% of the already modest 'effect' of correlated genes can be immediately attributed to environment according to their sibling study.
When we constantly pound the table and shout that all people are all exactly the same, they often self-identify as oppressed victims, if they look around themselves and see others that are better off than they are.
This is a recipe for societal tension, although it is handy in politics.
Minorities and non-minorities alike, after having been assured that everybody is exactly the same, often feel that they have been cheated in some way. This is sadly often used by politicians to marshal them against their fellow citizens in the next election or referendum.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 166 ms ] threadIf it is not an astrology then what is it?
Only to the extent that your parents have the same DNA. The point is that economic success is strongly correlated to genetics independently of social position and nurturing.
Of course this will be controversial; it's the same kind of conclusion that spurred the Soviet Union to promote Lysenkoism and suppress Darwinism.
Suddely, the lords were French and the serfs were German.
1000 years later, you can predict someones socio-economic level by surname. French surnames do better than German ones. Surnames linked by blood to royalty do better than both.
1000 years. Lack of social mobility overrides genetics?
[I'm sure you can do better than this link but its what I found: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/842...]
A great example of this is the House of Habsburg. [1] They were one of the most powerful families in history completely dominating Europe politics with lineages of kings and emperors throughout the entire continent for some 5 centuries, including holding the throne of the Holy Roman Empire for more than 300 years. But the reason they're an interesting example is because they're also the namesake of the Habsburg Jaw - a genetic deformity that was greatly exaggerated in the family through the years due to excessive inbreeding. If you've seen a cartoon depiction of royalty they often are drawn with the extreme protruding chin, which is a reference to this deformity and family in particular.
That family was almost certainly extremely genetically fit at one point. But through excessive inbreeding they destroyed their own genetic lineage. In Spain this was especially pronounced with Charles II. [2] He was described as "short, lame, epileptic, senile, and bald before 35." He learned to talk at age 4, walk at 8. His Habsburg Jaw was so extreme he could not chew his own food. He, unsurprisingly, died childless at the age of 35 - ending 200 years of Habsburg rule in Spain. And to emphasize -- this is just one example. This family did not just rule Spain. They had lasting dynasties in Germany, Hungary, Croatia, England, Boehmia, Ireland, Portugal, and many other nations.
Today, the entire house of Habsburg is extinct.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Habsburg
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_II_of_Spain
Now, height is only about 70% genetic, 30% is diet and other environmental factors, but if you were looking at DNA and financial outcomes without any nod to culture, you might conclude tall people are naturally good at business.
Invader Zim satirised the culture of this pretty well with the aliens being led by 'The Tallest'.
- How much of our behavior, habits, intelligence and success comes from the environment ?
- How much of stuff like education levels, income levels come from birth, social and environmental factors?
- How epigenetics shapes our life in a dynamic fashion? This field is pretty new, and we have just begin to understand it.
- What is intelligence or success in the first place ? How do you measure it that is all encompassing and diverse ? I have never seen a solid definition of that. Should we care about their definition of success? Can there ever be one definition of success for all groups? My own personal definition has changed over the years.
- Is Gene state correlated state or unchangeable predictors (which I extremely doubt in light of above points)
- Has there been a complete study of exceptions?
all of this is extremely reductionist at best and trying to push a malicious self serving agenda at the worst which can cause havoc in hands of any stupid policy makers.
From what I understand, we are very far off from getting a full picture of these questions. At least decades away if not more.
First thing that came to mind for me was eugenics. This kind of pseudoscience is very dangerous.
More info for the curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)
Perhaps you meant that at any given time, the heritability of a trait depends on the "state" of the population, and that heritability values can change over time. This is true, but I don't understand why you'd bring it up.
Consider just few hypothetical ways genes can increase g-factor:
* Metabolic trait increases nutrition intake in high calorie low nutrition junk food environment. This leads to faster brain development.
* Improved immune system against certain parasites that makes individual healthier and leads to statistically higher g-factor.
Genes that improve intelligence can change from generation to generation and be different in different geographic areas.
Anyway, I don't understand how this is supposed to explain what heritability is...
Also the heritability seems to be put at 0.5, not a sure thing? So it obviously can be heritable, but that doesn't rule out that it is only heritable and no other avenues for it exist?
I won't make any assumptions about you, but I've suffered due to the poorly constructed features of the human genetic structure failing. My life would be much better if those could be fixed.
That said, I don't think it will ever catch on because the associations with eugenics and the like is too strong.
If anything, those with lowest IQs could use quality education some more...
Maybe you think that education increases intelligence? Education increases intelligence about as much as playing basketball makes you taller.
"A new meta-analysis blends the results of 28 studies that all took measures to mitigate this problem. Based on data from more than 600,000 participants, all told, psychologists Stuart Ritchie and Elliot Tucker-Drob have arrived at a rough estimate of how much an added year of education lifted participants’ IQ scores, on average: between 1 and 5 points."
"The new report does reaffirm the conclusion of psychologists that intelligence—despite being heavily influenced by genetics—is subject to change. The public may not yet be on the same page, according to Ritchie, despite previous research reviews in tune with his paper. “I think the idea that IQ is completely set in stone is still hanging around,” he says. “I think, in this case, we have some of the strongest evidence that it’s not.”"
But let's suppose this hypothetical test also accounts for environmental factors, and it can even calculate what the child's future intelligence would be based on how much financial support is provided. I don't think such a thing is actually possible, but I won't fight the hypothetical. Then I would say to allocate the money to provide the best net increase in intelligence: prioritize those with the most IQ points gained per dollar. I'd rather get 10 kids from 80 IQ to 100 IQ than 1 kid from 80 IQ to 140 IQ.
Though I think you'll find that, if the goal is improving the intelligence of the average population, putting funds into prenatal care and lead abatement programs will probably have the same impact for a lot less money than college scholarships.
>I reject the premise: I don't think it is possible to predict intelligence accurately from DNA. While some degree of intelligence is heritable, perhaps even a substantial degree, environmental factors still play a big role in intelligence. A poor prenatal environment, malnutrition, toxins like lead, and disease all negatively impact intelligence, none of which you could measure or account for from just DNA
That's true, but the degree of heritability here is important. If intelligence was 10 percent heritable, then I would agree that trying to predict intelligence from DNA would be an absurd endeavor since most of the variance in intelligence would be caused by environmental factors.
But in fact, most recent studies converge towards the fact that IQ is 80 percent heritable. This leaves a lot of wiggle room for the 20 percent of environmental factors to either increase or decrease this genetic component, but I think you really overestimate the effect of environmental factors. Intelligence is predominantly determined by genes, with the environment having mild influences. In the USA they are especially mild since most children thankfully do not grow up starving or suffering from tropical parasites.
>Then I would say to allocate the money to provide the best net increase in intelligence
You can't influence intelligence through education. Study after study has shown that effect of education on adult IQ is exactly zero. The point would not be to increase a kid's intelligence, but rather to identify kids with potential and transfer them to an environment where they could flourish.
>Though I think you'll find that, if the goal is improving the intelligence of the average population, putting funds into prenatal care and lead abatement programs will probably have the same impact for a lot less money than college scholarships.
Oh definitely, my hypothetical scenario would not increase the average intelligence in the least, that was not the point of it. I agree that prenatal care and policies for a clean environment would probably raise the general intelligence.
I'd think it was flawed even before any ethical considerations, since the environmental factors that the poor tend to be more exposed to that lead to downward deviations from genetic potential have had significant impact before schooling starts (in many cases even in utero), and school performance numbers today basically just reflect the student body (and in very large part the engagement and socioeconomic background of the parents) they are dealt more than outcome differences produced by the school. So, mostly, you'd be spending money to give kids a longer commute.
It's true that adverse environmental conditions can lower IQ, but not whole standards of deviation. There are many people who grew up dirt poor and yet managed to achieve academically, which if intelligence was really irreparably impaired by a poor environment would not be possible.
> and school performance numbers today basically just reflect the student body (and in very large part the engagement and socioeconomic background of the parents) they are dealt more than outcome differences produced by the school
Which is exactly why a genetic test would be more accurate! It would not take into account differences due to quality of schooling.
Accurate at...what?
They'd be less accurate at measuring IQ than actual IQ tests, and they'd be less accurate than IQ tests plus evaluating parental socioeconomic background at predicting academic performance.
A short-sighted focus on "keeping people where their genes fit" ignores our tendency to improve our communities by conscious effort, up to and (by collaboration) beyond our innate capabilities.
I really dislike the focus on the individual and the "sorting problem", as distinct from the focus on community.
- U.S. Declaration of Independence
The above statement is false. That's more clear than ever and geno-economics contributes to that clarity. If you live your life by this assumption you will get many important things wrong.
Yet this clearly wrong statement, as applied to the operation of the rule of law, is also one of the most brilliant, important and useful concepts invented by civilization. As a proposition for how to engineer law to support a flourishing society, it is true and right.
I think that's the right way to deal with this controversy. Acknowledge that people have significant and important differences that are beyond their control, while also acknowledging that such difference can be overwhelmed by the effects of their nurturing and other controllable differences, such that it's better to judge them holistically and personally when that data is available.
The last two words are how the founders interpreted that statement when written.
They were all male, wealthy and white. People allowed to participate in government were the same.
"Equality" in the sense of equal rights, yes. Not in the sense of equal capabilities. Classical liberalism, as exemplified in documents like the Declaration of Independence, was based on the idea that, even though people have differences in ability, those differences do not give any person a right to rule over any other person. That's where the justification for "self rule" comes from.
Since this reasoning already recognizes that people have differences in ability, "science" showing that people have differences in ability (did we really need "science" to tell us this? isn't it obvious?) does not invalidate the reasoning at all.
"It's bad to kill people" -- this statement is also false. There's no logical necessity that says its bad to kill people, it's only a utility calculation (whether you get caught, what the profit will be vs repercussions etc).
Still if you don't live your life by this assumption (that killing people is bad) you will get many important things wrong.
The basic moral imperatives should not be based on them being objectively true, but on what kind of world we want to live in.
"All men are created equal" doesn't mean "everybody is as tall" or "as strong" or "as smart". Obviously those who wrote it knew that already. It also doesn't mean a person without qualifications should get to work as a doctor just as well as someone with a M.D. diploma. They knew that too.
It just means that all people are equally worth, not to some utility function, but absolutely as human beings.
In order to believe that worth can be determined independent of a utility function, you need a standard of absolute worth. Even religious statements of worth are based on utility to the deity. Biological statements of worth regard utility toward the population or ecosystem. I can't think of a non-utilitarian standard of worth that isn't arbitrary, can you?
Or you can just dispense with the notion of worth of a person as person altogether -- then you don't need to "determine" anything. That's what the "equal" part means in that sentence: don't try to determine".
You can determine the skills of a surgeon, the education of a scholar, the speed of an athlete, the voice of an actor, the coding skills of a developer, etc.
But you should not try to determine the worth of a person as person. That is, when you don't care to measure something something specific, you should not consider someone inferior.
>Even religious statements of worth are based on utility to the deity.
Not really, at least not in the religions I've known. At least in (non-protestant) christianity people have absolute utility.
Christianity allocates some souls to hell and others to heaven. Isn't that an expression of differential utility to God's purpose?
> But you should not try to determine the worth of a person as person
I agree that should usually be the case before the law, and in that context we should generally pretend that all people are created equal. But for most other purposes it is valuable to determine individual fitness for that purpose. And there are few purposes for which that fitness is uniform.
That's not all of Christianity. In the orthodox church for example, there's no hell even -- it's how a person perceives eternity without God, said distance from God based on their own predisposition (or tendency), out of their own free will. "Hell" in that sense is not some place, nor does it have actual fires and other BS folk iconography, it's a kind of regret:
> . . . those who find themselves in hell will be chastised by the scourge of love. How cruel and bitter this torment of love will be! For those who understand that they have sinned against love, undergo no greater suffering than those produced by the most fearful tortures. The sorrow which takes hold of the heart, which has sinned against love, is more piercing than any other pain. It is not right to say that the sinners in hell are deprived of the love of God . . . But love acts in two ways, as suffering of the reproved, and as joy in the blessed! (Saint Isaac of Syria, Mystic Treatises).
> According to the saints, the “fire” that will consume sinners at the coming of the Kingdom of God is the same “fire” that will shine with splendor in the saints. It is the “fire” of God’s love; the “fire” of God Himself who is Love. “For our God is a consuming fire” (Heb 12.29) who “dwells in unapproachable light” (1 Tim 6.16). For those who love God and who love all creation in Him, the “consuming fire” of God will be radiant bliss and unspeakable delight. For those who do not love God, and who do not love at all, this same “consuming fire” will be the cause of their “weeping” and their “gnashing of teeth.”
> Thus it is the Church’s spiritual teaching that God does not punish man by some material fire or physical torment. God simply reveals Himself in the risen Lord Jesus in such a glorious way that no man can fail to behold His glory. It is the presence of God’s splendid glory and love that is the scourge of those who reject its radiant power and light.
https://oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/spirituality/th...
That said ever since we have been able to run genetic tests people have tried to use them to demonstrate that group A is “worse” than everyone else, or the group B is superior. Before that they tried to use phrenology. In every case they successfully came up with a measurement that demonstrated that some group was inferior.
Weirdly the measurements confirmed stereotypes of the time, it’s almost like there was some kind of external bias effecting their results...
While obviously these systems were used to justify treating non-white races as being fundamentally inferior, it was also used against other groups (“proving” that the Irish and scots were predisposed to drunkenness, etc).
The idea of racism being purely a skin color concept is relatively recent. Look at the historic treatment of the Irish, welsh, and Scottish in Britain over the last few millennia - or Italians up until the the mid to early 1900s. The treatment of people from Eastern Europe, the polish, today.
All of these races can be distinguished genetically - or even through external features.
Similar discrimination occurs other countries among people with the same skin colour- I’m sure countries like China and Japan could point to “objective” measures like genetics that can be not related to negative aspects of groups they discriminate against.
>"before the Human Genome Project had fully sequenced human DNA"
The human genome is still not complete by any normal definition, they just redefined "complete" to mean "we did our best". It is like if someone turns in homework with only half the questions answered and argues they should get 100% since they "completed" it.
Well considering that the human genome is a moving target, it can never be "complete". However, it can be 99.9% complete, which is all but complete for all scientific intents and purposes. The rest is just semantics.
And the gaps are actively being studied with stuff like nanopore sequencing. There’s a lot of hype surrounding next-gen sequencing in general.
>it suggests that the GWAS effect-size estimates may be biased upward by correlation between educational attainment and a rearing envi-ronment conducive to educational attainment.
A full 60% of the already modest 'effect' of correlated genes can be immediately attributed to environment according to their sibling study.
This is a recipe for societal tension, although it is handy in politics.
Minorities and non-minorities alike, after having been assured that everybody is exactly the same, often feel that they have been cheated in some way. This is sadly often used by politicians to marshal them against their fellow citizens in the next election or referendum.
I mean height is one of the largest factors of success for men. If being of smaller stature that is when a Napoleon complex forms.
Just extrapolate dating economics for shorter guys and that pretty much sums up society.
I would say heightism is one of the largest biases currently still allowable.