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> The other major part of what you said is assortative mating. Assortative mating is extremely well documented and not disputed. (In fact, it's one of the most
by aab0 10y ago
> The other major part of what you said is assortative mating.
Assortative mating is extremely well documented and not disputed. (In fact, it's one of the most commonly employed ways of trying to debunk twin/family studies as producing wildly inflated estimate.)
> Its the whole package that will make you famous if you could truly demonstrate it.
I don't know what more you could possibly ask for. Family lineages have demonstrated overperformance since at least Galton's genealogies. The social mobility studies suggest it over many centuries. The twin and family studies show that SES is heritable. The GCTA methods which remove the assumptions of twin studies also show SES is heritable. The GWASes not just show that it's heritable, but give specific SNP hits! The package has been demonstrated. People just don't want to hear it.
> so it would also cause massive controversy
You'll note you didn't see any headlines or pop science articles on these papers.
> last time this was seriously brought up we had WWII and a genocide.
Eugenics may have been a pretext, but it certainly did not cause WWII or even the Holocaust, which can be traced to geopolitical factors (like the Versailles treaty...) and the long-standing virulent anti-semitism in the region, among many other factors.
- tlarkworthy 10y agoYeah your right, there is loads of literature on it. Now I am internally confused what the ethical consequence of that is. What should happen in policy? Should we mess with the societal bio machine? Is it a good thing, or a bad thing. What are we trying to achieve?
- aab0 10y agoI would say the implications are simple: first, acknowledge this reality and stop scientists from constantly making policy pronouncements like 'education correlates with increased longevity, let's make everyone go to school longer' which do not control the large known universal confounds of genetics and produce a large body of futile programs and bogus 'science'; second, push forward genetic engineering as fast as possible. Just as no one deserves to be born poor or born with a horrible genetic disease like Tay-Sachs, no one deserves to be born with a bum set of intelligence or SES-reducing variants either. The injustices and inequities of modern society remain outrageous, whether or not they stem from 'poverty traps' or SNPs. Everyone should have an equal chance; we will know we are moving towards a better society when shared-environments and heritability approach 0, and it's all error.