3 ms·

Looks are subjective. There isn't and will never be a SNP for "attractive". Tall yes, but not hot. Also, the understanding isn't there yet to detect casual SNP

Looks are subjective. There isn't and will never be a SNP for "attractive". Tall yes, but not hot. Also, the understanding isn't there yet to detect casual SNPs. We know roughly where these SNPs are, but not which ones they are. We can tell that if you have this region of the genome you may be taller, but along with it might come linked diseases. So no, no designer babies yet, but some kinds of selection are possible in theory.

umvi 7y ago
Hopefully this can be used to make babies with ghost-white skin which is considered attractive ("better looking") in Asia /s
Tehdasi 7y ago
Tallness is in and of itself will get you more heart disease since it put more strain on the heart to pump blood ever further. And tallness as an attractive trait only works in comparison, if everyone was 7 foot high, then they are all of average height, and equally attractive from that perspective.
- klipt 7y ago
  > tallness as an attractive trait only works in comparison In real life yes, because people see your height relative to others. In online dating it's all in comparison to nice round numbers like 6'. 80% of men are under 6' in real life, because the literal average is below that. But online 6' becomes the magic marker and anyone shorter is judged "below average".
  - buboard 7y ago
    Which raises the question: does online dating mess with human evolution?
    - haihaibye 7y ago
      7 years post Tinder it should be obvious humans are currently undergoing computer algorithm based sexual selection.
gwern 7y ago
> Looks are subjective. There isn't and will never be a SNP for "attractive". Tall yes, but not hot. There are already successful GWASes for attractiveness: https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1007973 https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/jo... This should not be shocking, since a lot of it is just tapping into weight/obesity phenotypes, which are very obviously heritable.
- searine 7y ago
  That result is pretty weak statistically and the phenotype is vague. (Yes it passes GWAS threshold but a lot of associations do that are later found to be false positives). Symmetry would be an easy "attractive" metric, but these are all complex traits that we aren't really close to narrowing down the mechanism for.
  - gwern 7y ago
    > That result is pretty weak statistically and the phenotype is vague. As one would be expected from GWASes with current sizes and noisy measurements. Yet, that's very different from 'never'. > Yes it passes GWAS threshold but a lot of associations do that are later found to be false positives That's not true. Genome-wide statistically-significant hits have excellent replication rates, when calculated properly.
haihaibye 7y ago
You don't have to look for good ones, you can avoid bad ones. There's snps for unattractive, eg rs1934328, involved in ~40% of all cases of nonsyndromic cleft lip with or without cleft palate.

umvi 7y ago

Hopefully this can be used to make babies with ghost-white skin which is considered attractive ("better looking") in Asia /s

Tehdasi 7y ago

Tallness is in and of itself will get you more heart disease since it put more strain on the heart to pump blood ever further. And tallness as an attractive trait only works in comparison, if everyone was 7 foot high, then they are all of average height, and equally attractive from that perspective.

klipt 7y ago
> tallness as an attractive trait only works in comparison In real life yes, because people see your height relative to others. In online dating it's all in comparison to nice round numbers like 6'. 80% of men are under 6' in real life, because the literal average is below that. But online 6' becomes the magic marker and anyone shorter is judged "below average".
- buboard 7y ago
  Which raises the question: does online dating mess with human evolution?
  - haihaibye 7y ago
    7 years post Tinder it should be obvious humans are currently undergoing computer algorithm based sexual selection.

gwern 7y ago

> Looks are subjective. There isn't and will never be a SNP for "attractive". Tall yes, but not hot. There are already successful GWASes for attractiveness: https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1007973 https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/jo... This should not be shocking, since a lot of it is just tapping into weight/obesity phenotypes, which are very obviously heritable.

searine 7y ago
That result is pretty weak statistically and the phenotype is vague. (Yes it passes GWAS threshold but a lot of associations do that are later found to be false positives). Symmetry would be an easy "attractive" metric, but these are all complex traits that we aren't really close to narrowing down the mechanism for.
- gwern 7y ago
  > That result is pretty weak statistically and the phenotype is vague. As one would be expected from GWASes with current sizes and noisy measurements. Yet, that's very different from 'never'. > Yes it passes GWAS threshold but a lot of associations do that are later found to be false positives That's not true. Genome-wide statistically-significant hits have excellent replication rates, when calculated properly.

haihaibye 7y ago

You don't have to look for good ones, you can avoid bad ones. There's snps for unattractive, eg rs1934328, involved in ~40% of all cases of nonsyndromic cleft lip with or without cleft palate.