7 ms·

I think you're placing far too much faith in genetic determinism. Intelligence is a highly fluid concept with no widely accepted defining characteristics. To th

I think you're placing far too much faith in genetic determinism. Intelligence is a highly fluid concept with no widely accepted defining characteristics. To think that geneticists can just "pick and choose" genes to add to an embryo that will reliably result in genius level intellects is absurd. The human mind is not a tomato plant or a wheat kernel. It's a highly complex system that requires a multitude of biological and environmental factors to flourish into an above average intelligence.

faitswulff 7y ago
Reminds me of this quote: "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." - Jay Gould
- lanstin 7y ago
  That is Stephen Jay Gould and I just reread the Mismeasure of Man, an excellent inoculation against essentialist beliefs about the incarnation of intelligence.
  - ZhuanXia 7y ago
    I am afraid Paul Krugman's take on Gould is pretty accurate: "Now it is not very hard to find out, if you spend a little while reading in evolution, that Gould is the John Kenneth Galbraith of his subject. That is, he is a wonderful writer who is bevolved by literary intellectuals and lionized by the media because he does not use algebra or difficult jargon. Unfortunately, it appears that he avoids these sins not because he has transcended his colleagues but because he does does not seem to understand what they have to say; and his own descriptions of what the field is about - not just the answers, but even the questions - are consistently misleading." He certainly misrepresented data in Mismeasure of Man:https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001071 https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou... I do find it amusing how people who claim intelligence is 100% environment are also terrified of letting others select for intelligence. It is almost like they know, deep down, that it will work. That intelligence, like almost every other trait we have measured, has a very large heritable component: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ
    - lanstin 7y ago
      Goulds argument is that different cases have different causes. The difference between my brain and a chimp is mostly genetic. The difference between brains in the neighborhood I grew up in and the brwins in a more wretched to2n are mostly environmental. The act of measuring heriditability without the context for what effect you are analysing is as meaningless as reporting means without variances. Have youbactually read this work? It is primarily a guide to avoiding conceptual phallacies that preceed the experiments/numerical analysis.
      - maxander 7y ago
        I haven’t read Gould, but from what you describe- the people running the studies aren’t dumb, they’re aware of these difficulties! That’s why they use all sorts of means (statistical control, twin studies, etc etc) to get around them, in addition to using compilations of studies from different populations and methods to drive conclusions.
        lanstin 7y ago
        That would be an experimental error. Conceptual error means they take experiments that show that within a homogeneous population, the variances in intelligence (begging the question of "are there multiple types of mind skills which are heriditable?") are 50% or whatever explained by genetics. Then they apply these to explain variances between groups, e.g. US African-Americans compared to US European-Americans. The fallacy is made clear if you look at something less charged like hight. Clearly, in your town, height variance is mostly due to genetics. However, in genetically similar groups over time, heights have been gradually increasing over the generations. This increase is not because heights are being genetically selected for but because the genome codes for an organism that can grow taller or shorter in different conditions, and these places (e.g. Europe) are providing the "grow tall" conditions. Places that aren't providing these conditions are not seeing their children grow them taller. Now, height is a lot easier to measure than intelligence, and a lot less politically weighted by the various movements to promote racial inequality. But the conceptual fallacy is the same. Note that Gould is explicitly attacking a "races are genetically different in some substantive intelligence fashion" movement of his time, using the oddly similar movements from prior times. This eugenics thru biotech argument is not currently racially motivated, but western cultures have suffered thru a number of "eugenics by positive means -> eugenics by racism" shifts in the near past, so we are a bit twichty about it. tldr: No studies about individual variation will tell you about between non-random subgroup variation.
  - aheretic 7y ago
    >https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-folly-fools/201210/fraud-in-the-imputation-fraud https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-folly-fools/2012... In response to the criticism of Lewis et al, the keeper of Gould's Tomb—his longtime editor at Natural History, Richard Milner—had some choice comments in defense of Gould (William 2012). Gould acted with "complete conviction and integrity" (that is, with full self-deception). "He was a tireless crusader against racism in any form" (In what way is misrepresenting the true facts about population differences—and then hiding this misrepresentation—a contribution to anti-racism?) And then, fully in flight, he says that any bias was "on the side of the angels". Who of us is in any position to say what is on the side of the angels? We barely know what is in our own self-interest. How on Earth does this charlatan still have so many acolytes?
stanfordkid 7y ago
The complex system argument is a strawman. It’s well understood that complex traits are polygenic (no single gene or sets of causal variants) but quite easy to predict such traits when looking at the full genome (I agree the resolution of prediction is still not there — but we are in the infancy of this field). I recommend learning more about some of the polygenic risk scoring methodologies that are popping up in research: https://www.broadinstitute.org/news/giant-study-finds-rare-influential-genetic-changes-related-height https://www.broadinstitute.org/news/giant-study-finds-rare-i...
- stanfordkid 7y ago
  EDIT: Why height is relevant : "Why study height? Height is the “poster child” of complex genetic traits, meaning it is influenced by multiple genetic variants working together. It’s easy to measure, so makes a relatively simple model for understanding traits produced by not one gene, but many."
dangbang6 7y ago
he main reason for high education in the modern US is crime prevention, not any kind of achievement. It's known to any competent public school teacher in say Watsonville, CA or in Baltimore, MD that the majority of their students cannot learn. But keeping them in school prevents crime. Your mere attemt at argument with the OP is ridiculoüs. He is of Chinese descent. They have won, and you with your policies have patently lost the game already.
haihaibye 7y ago
This is a belief just like God making man and animals on separate days. We have DNA and (partly) heritable traits just like tomatos and wheat. The only reason modification (eg CRISPR) was done later in humans vs other organisms was due to ethical not technical reasons. We have easily obtained metrics that work as a proxy for intelligence like IQ, educational attainment, elite professional success, number of patents, publications etc. As for having many genes being responsible for a trait, Fisher showed in 1918 you can perform selection even if there were an infinite number of loci involved, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinitesimal_model https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinitesimal_model
- justforyou 7y ago
  >> educational attainment, elite professional success, number of patents, publications etc. None of these are meaningful measures of intelligence.
  - sgt101 7y ago
    As anyone who has worked at a university or a research lab has said always!
  - haihaibye 7y ago
    They correlate and as I said are 'easily measured.. proxies for intelligence' You can't just sequence people who have accomplished great things and are widely recognised as geniuses as there aren't enough of then and they're busy. We need huge sample sizes. Ideally, you'd sequence a million people and have them sit rigorous tests, interviews etc. But it's way cheaper and faster to have them tick boxes on forms.
    - justforyou 7y ago
      >> They correlate and as I said are 'easily measured.. proxies for intelligence' You're going to have to provide meaningful evidence to back up the assertion that numbers of patents (as well as the other criteria listed) actually correlate to higher intelligence.
Iv 7y ago
And yet IQ (which is a pretty good proxy for intelligence) is a highly inheritable trait, as shown by several twin studies. It is a fact that I had a hard time accepting, considering that it flies in the face of my beliefs about merit, hard work and the importance of education. These things are important, but genes play a huge role too.
- justforyou 7y ago
  >> And yet IQ (which is a pretty good proxy for intelligence) is a highly inheritable trait, as shown by several twin studies. Given the tight coupling between culture and IQ tests, it's not necessarily proof of inheritability. Twins raised in the same household have nearly identical cultural exposure. (Unless the control is an adopted child of the same age, raised in the same household...)
  - ZhuanXia 7y ago
    The twins were separated at birth.
    - justforyou 7y ago
      I stand corrected.
AlexanderNull 7y ago
You're only mentioning our CURRENT adolescence in this field. Dozens of genes associated with intelligence have already been identified and hereditary studies have already shown intelligence's genetic roots. A geneticist today can no more just "pick and choose" to enhance the intellect of an embryo anymore than Isaac Newton could have just manually entangled two photons, or Alan Turing could have fit something over a billion times more powerful than one of his Bombe machines into a sleek gadget the size of a wallet (with also remote telephony and photographic capabilities!). This is how science works, humanity learns more and progresses. Just because something is complex to you today doesn't mean it will still be complex to you 50 years from now.

faitswulff 7y ago

Reminds me of this quote: "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." - Jay Gould

lanstin 7y ago
That is Stephen Jay Gould and I just reread the Mismeasure of Man, an excellent inoculation against essentialist beliefs about the incarnation of intelligence.
- ZhuanXia 7y ago
  I am afraid Paul Krugman's take on Gould is pretty accurate: "Now it is not very hard to find out, if you spend a little while reading in evolution, that Gould is the John Kenneth Galbraith of his subject. That is, he is a wonderful writer who is bevolved by literary intellectuals and lionized by the media because he does not use algebra or difficult jargon. Unfortunately, it appears that he avoids these sins not because he has transcended his colleagues but because he does does not seem to understand what they have to say; and his own descriptions of what the field is about - not just the answers, but even the questions - are consistently misleading." He certainly misrepresented data in Mismeasure of Man:https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001071 https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou... I do find it amusing how people who claim intelligence is 100% environment are also terrified of letting others select for intelligence. It is almost like they know, deep down, that it will work. That intelligence, like almost every other trait we have measured, has a very large heritable component: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ
  - lanstin 7y ago
    Goulds argument is that different cases have different causes. The difference between my brain and a chimp is mostly genetic. The difference between brains in the neighborhood I grew up in and the brwins in a more wretched to2n are mostly environmental. The act of measuring heriditability without the context for what effect you are analysing is as meaningless as reporting means without variances. Have youbactually read this work? It is primarily a guide to avoiding conceptual phallacies that preceed the experiments/numerical analysis.
    - maxander 7y ago
      I haven’t read Gould, but from what you describe- the people running the studies aren’t dumb, they’re aware of these difficulties! That’s why they use all sorts of means (statistical control, twin studies, etc etc) to get around them, in addition to using compilations of studies from different populations and methods to drive conclusions.
      - lanstin 7y ago
        That would be an experimental error. Conceptual error means they take experiments that show that within a homogeneous population, the variances in intelligence (begging the question of "are there multiple types of mind skills which are heriditable?") are 50% or whatever explained by genetics. Then they apply these to explain variances between groups, e.g. US African-Americans compared to US European-Americans. The fallacy is made clear if you look at something less charged like hight. Clearly, in your town, height variance is mostly due to genetics. However, in genetically similar groups over time, heights have been gradually increasing over the generations. This increase is not because heights are being genetically selected for but because the genome codes for an organism that can grow taller or shorter in different conditions, and these places (e.g. Europe) are providing the "grow tall" conditions. Places that aren't providing these conditions are not seeing their children grow them taller. Now, height is a lot easier to measure than intelligence, and a lot less politically weighted by the various movements to promote racial inequality. But the conceptual fallacy is the same. Note that Gould is explicitly attacking a "races are genetically different in some substantive intelligence fashion" movement of his time, using the oddly similar movements from prior times. This eugenics thru biotech argument is not currently racially motivated, but western cultures have suffered thru a number of "eugenics by positive means -> eugenics by racism" shifts in the near past, so we are a bit twichty about it. tldr: No studies about individual variation will tell you about between non-random subgroup variation.
- aheretic 7y ago
  >https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-folly-fools/201210/fraud-in-the-imputation-fraud https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-folly-fools/2012... In response to the criticism of Lewis et al, the keeper of Gould's Tomb—his longtime editor at Natural History, Richard Milner—had some choice comments in defense of Gould (William 2012). Gould acted with "complete conviction and integrity" (that is, with full self-deception). "He was a tireless crusader against racism in any form" (In what way is misrepresenting the true facts about population differences—and then hiding this misrepresentation—a contribution to anti-racism?) And then, fully in flight, he says that any bias was "on the side of the angels". Who of us is in any position to say what is on the side of the angels? We barely know what is in our own self-interest. How on Earth does this charlatan still have so many acolytes?

stanfordkid 7y ago

The complex system argument is a strawman. It’s well understood that complex traits are polygenic (no single gene or sets of causal variants) but quite easy to predict such traits when looking at the full genome (I agree the resolution of prediction is still not there — but we are in the infancy of this field). I recommend learning more about some of the polygenic risk scoring methodologies that are popping up in research: https://www.broadinstitute.org/news/giant-study-finds-rare-influential-genetic-changes-related-height https://www.broadinstitute.org/news/giant-study-finds-rare-i...

stanfordkid 7y ago
EDIT: Why height is relevant : "Why study height? Height is the “poster child” of complex genetic traits, meaning it is influenced by multiple genetic variants working together. It’s easy to measure, so makes a relatively simple model for understanding traits produced by not one gene, but many."

dangbang6 7y ago

he main reason for high education in the modern US is crime prevention, not any kind of achievement. It's known to any competent public school teacher in say Watsonville, CA or in Baltimore, MD that the majority of their students cannot learn. But keeping them in school prevents crime. Your mere attemt at argument with the OP is ridiculoüs. He is of Chinese descent. They have won, and you with your policies have patently lost the game already.

haihaibye 7y ago

This is a belief just like God making man and animals on separate days. We have DNA and (partly) heritable traits just like tomatos and wheat. The only reason modification (eg CRISPR) was done later in humans vs other organisms was due to ethical not technical reasons. We have easily obtained metrics that work as a proxy for intelligence like IQ, educational attainment, elite professional success, number of patents, publications etc. As for having many genes being responsible for a trait, Fisher showed in 1918 you can perform selection even if there were an infinite number of loci involved, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinitesimal_model https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinitesimal_model

justforyou 7y ago
>> educational attainment, elite professional success, number of patents, publications etc. None of these are meaningful measures of intelligence.
- sgt101 7y ago
  As anyone who has worked at a university or a research lab has said always!
- haihaibye 7y ago
  They correlate and as I said are 'easily measured.. proxies for intelligence' You can't just sequence people who have accomplished great things and are widely recognised as geniuses as there aren't enough of then and they're busy. We need huge sample sizes. Ideally, you'd sequence a million people and have them sit rigorous tests, interviews etc. But it's way cheaper and faster to have them tick boxes on forms.
  - justforyou 7y ago
    >> They correlate and as I said are 'easily measured.. proxies for intelligence' You're going to have to provide meaningful evidence to back up the assertion that numbers of patents (as well as the other criteria listed) actually correlate to higher intelligence.

Iv 7y ago

And yet IQ (which is a pretty good proxy for intelligence) is a highly inheritable trait, as shown by several twin studies. It is a fact that I had a hard time accepting, considering that it flies in the face of my beliefs about merit, hard work and the importance of education. These things are important, but genes play a huge role too.

justforyou 7y ago
>> And yet IQ (which is a pretty good proxy for intelligence) is a highly inheritable trait, as shown by several twin studies. Given the tight coupling between culture and IQ tests, it's not necessarily proof of inheritability. Twins raised in the same household have nearly identical cultural exposure. (Unless the control is an adopted child of the same age, raised in the same household...)
- ZhuanXia 7y ago
  The twins were separated at birth.
  - justforyou 7y ago
    I stand corrected.

AlexanderNull 7y ago

You're only mentioning our CURRENT adolescence in this field. Dozens of genes associated with intelligence have already been identified and hereditary studies have already shown intelligence's genetic roots. A geneticist today can no more just "pick and choose" to enhance the intellect of an embryo anymore than Isaac Newton could have just manually entangled two photons, or Alan Turing could have fit something over a billion times more powerful than one of his Bombe machines into a sleek gadget the size of a wallet (with also remote telephony and photographic capabilities!). This is how science works, humanity learns more and progresses. Just because something is complex to you today doesn't mean it will still be complex to you 50 years from now.