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No, his other post is hot garbage. He's using his knowledge, wit and ability to obfuscate, ridicule and discredit the information critical to our well-being as

No, his other post is hot garbage. He's using his knowledge, wit and ability to obfuscate, ridicule and discredit the information critical to our well-being as a species – all the while committing character-assassination. It's honestly despicable. Let's look at it closer. > One of Watson’s obsessions has been to “improve” the “imperfect human” via human germline engineering. This is disturbing on many many levels. First, there is the fact that for years Watson presided over Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory which actually has a history as a center for eugenics. Then there are the numerous disparaging remarks by Watson about everyone who is not exactly like him, leaving little doubt about who he imagines the “perfect human” to be. But leaving aside creepy feelings… could he be right? Is the “perfect human” an American from Chicago of mixed Scottish/Irish ancestry? Should we look forward to a world filled with Watsons? Then he brings up the topic of "good" and "bad" SNPs and seques into an inane argument about ethnicity of perfect human: «since many disease SNPs are population specific», "admixed" Puerto Ricans are superior. But that's working backwards from the conclusion, not a knockdown argument against Watson's dream. To wit: Watson is racist and racists are obviously wrong, therefore we should renounce research into human germline engineering. Most damningly, Pachter poisons the well of engineering by tying it to eugenics with nothing but guilt by association. Now, any non-indoctrinated human can understand that the issue of "perfect" phenotype is not about modern groups at all; indeed, every human on the planet has a decidedly wretched genome. A word to Maynard Olson, one of the founders of the Human Genome Project: > So, what have our first glimpses of variation in the genomes of generally healthy people taught us?... What is on the top tier? Increasingly, the answer appears to be mutations that are “deleterious” by biochemical or standard evolutionary criteria. These mutations, as has long been appreciated, overwhelmingly make up the most abundant form of nonneutral variation in all genomes. A model for human genetic individuality is emerging in which there actually is a “wild-type” human genome—one in which most genes exist in an evolutionarily optimized form. There just are no “wild-type” humans: We each fall short of this Platonic ideal in our own distinctive ways.[1] It seems that Watson was correct again. The degree to which we fall short, to which we are damaged by deleterious mutations, is hard to appreciate, but near-certainly astronomical. By helping to suppress this line of research with his non sequitur and vitriol, Pachter subjects future generations to an avoidable misery of historically known human condition. Gwern makes a compelling case for intelligence: «since existing differences in intelligence are driven so much by the effects of thousands of variants, the CLT/standard deviation of a binomial/gamma distribution implies that those differences represent a net difference of only a few extra variants, as almost everyone has, say, 4990 or 5001 or 4970 or 5020 good variants and no one has extremes like 9000 or 3000 variants—even a von Neumann only had slightly better genes than everyone else, probably no more than a few hundred. Hence, anyone who does get thousands of extra good variants will be many SDs beyond what we currently see. »[2] But since so much is heavily hereditary, the same logic is true for longevity, willpower, general health, mental health, hedonic tone, beauty of course... Our descendants could be as Gods, way above ugly squabbles for ethnicity rankings that we have and Pachter is obsessed with – but only if some Professors of Computational Biology don't succeed at completely brainwashing people on fairly uncontroversial topic. Article Pachter links to is also just opinionated blather and guilt by association: > Watson then sought to pre-empt any scientific self-doubt: “We should be proud of what we’re doing and not worry about destroying the genetic patrimony of the world, which is awfully cruel to too many people,” he said. “We get a lot of pleasure from helping other people. That’s what we’re trying to do.” ... Making “better human beings” differs from making human beings better by curing their diseases. Making better human beings is more closely aligned with the old eugenics vision. The previous century’s eugenicists sought to breed better humans by promoting specific types. Besides the heavy–handed implicit demand to clutch pearls at Watson's suggestion, I don't see how he is wrong or bad, and how the author is making an argument at all. A community of hackers should be able to easily understand the eldritch horror or a long, highly redundant, 90% dysfunctional code that evolved by random alterations and no fitness function sans "can actually survive" running their entire biochemistry; as well as the potential for improvement here. But no, listening to politically motivated demagogues is more fun I guess. It's a shame really. 1: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/331/6019/872.3 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/331/6019/872.3 2: https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection#limits-to-iterated-selection-the-paradox-of-polygenicity https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection#limits-to-iterated-se...

nl 7y ago
I don't think Watson is after some narrow, technical relationship between a particular gene and a particular ability. Instead, he make wide, unconstrained and unscientific generalisations which can only be defended by shrinking what he says. To quote Watson: “I think now we’re in a terrible sitution where we should pay the rich people to have children.. if we don’t encourage procreation of wealthier citizens, IQ levels will most definitely fall.” Now, any non-indoctrinated human can understand that the issue of "perfect" phenotype is not about modern groups at all; TO be clear - it is Watson who is making racial arguments about Irish, Black and Jewish "races". The whole point is what you are saying - the "perfect" human isn't about racial selection. It's Watson's clear racism (and he admits he is racist!) that makes it so dangerous. This isn't some indoctrination thing - it's anyone who has read the Nazi or Communist "scientific" justifications of their theories that should hear alarms.
- anglercut 7y ago
  But why should Watson be after narrow technical issues like some cautious undergrad, when the problem is about funding for fundamental research to improve human condition? > The whole point is what you are saying - the "perfect" human isn't about racial selection. It's Watson's clear racism (and he admits he is racist!) that makes it so dangerous. This has no bearing on the issue of human germline engineering, which he advocated for and wanted to use reputation earned on medical research to promote. Pachter, as well as the article he links to, tries to discredit precisely this project; defending their goobledydook with appeal to Watson's other opinions constitutes a non sequitur. Furthermore, we cannot infer, unless, again, brainwashed, that Watson, even if he was very racist indeed, wanted to somehow reify a racial hierarchy: he points to differences, but finds in all populations some disappointing aspects, even for the "first class" Jewish brains. He understood, like I do, like Olson does, that all humans are horrendously damaged; and he went as far as to suggest eventually adding non-human DNA for further improvement! Call this catroonish mad science, call this creepy, but racist? White supremacist? Talk about being small-minded. Pachter's assertion that Watson was a narcissist who believed "American from Chicago of mixed Scottish/Irish ancestry" to be an Ubermench is nothing but vile slander. I also suspect that the notion of being critical towards your group is alien to Pachter, seeing as he ascribes to Watson some prejudice against the Irish just as he makes him out to be a self-absorbed racist. But, most importantly, we cannot get there from here. We cannot engineer happier and more capable humans if we do not investigate what makes modern humans differ on significant traits, and we can't do that without noticing group differences attributable to ancestry in the process, and without basically confirming some stereotypes (because, all told, stereotypes are pretty accurate, and in fact more robust than most findings in social science)[1]. Either deal with it, or call openly for the end of research on group differences of intelligence, like some do[2]. It's fraught with problems, though: «...enforcement of this policy entails technical difficulties. For one thing, essentially all IRBs already try to ban such research, but they don’t do a very good job, because they don’t know enough about the subject. Probably nobody does. For example, not so long ago people felt free to speculate that modern humans might have picked a few useful alleles from Neanderthals – including ones that increased intelligence. That was before it was found that there is substantial Neanderthal admixture only in non-Africans.»[3] But pretending to respect the research of human generic potential, all the while demonising any scientist who so much as hints at agreement with some group generalization, is hypocrisy. A self-contradiction. Note also how Horgan reinforces his suggestion of banning the topic with "stereotype threat": «The claims of researchers like Murray, Herrnstein and Richwine could easily become self-fulfilling, by bolstering the confirmation bias of racists and by convincing minority children, their parents and teachers that the children are innately, immutably inferior. ». As usual, this seems to be bogus science.[4] This is the typical state of affairs, very weak studies with politically convenient "leftist" results used to triumphantly "debunk" robust models while, hilariously enough, accusing the other side of confirmation bias. > anyone who has read the Nazi or Communist "scientific" justifications of their theories Did you? Because Nazis were very disapproving of intelligence research, and Communists were into Lysenkoism, which opposed mainstream genetics[5]. I'm not at all sure there ever was a totalitarian regime which promulgated Watson's understanding of these topics. 1: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-19097-002 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-19097-002 2: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/should-research-on-race-and-iq-be-banned/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/should-rese... 3: https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/05/23/the-end-of-science/ https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/05/23/the-end-of-science... 4: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/another-replication-failure-stereotype-threat-is-probably-empty/ https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/another-replication-fa... 5: https://medium.com/@cremieux/is-eric-turkheimer-a-scientist-ed5850b028d1 https://medium.com/@cremieux/is-eric-turkheimer-a-scientist-...

nl 7y ago

I don't think Watson is after some narrow, technical relationship between a particular gene and a particular ability. Instead, he make wide, unconstrained and unscientific generalisations which can only be defended by shrinking what he says. To quote Watson: “I think now we’re in a terrible sitution where we should pay the rich people to have children.. if we don’t encourage procreation of wealthier citizens, IQ levels will most definitely fall.” Now, any non-indoctrinated human can understand that the issue of "perfect" phenotype is not about modern groups at all; TO be clear - it is Watson who is making racial arguments about Irish, Black and Jewish "races". The whole point is what you are saying - the "perfect" human isn't about racial selection. It's Watson's clear racism (and he admits he is racist!) that makes it so dangerous. This isn't some indoctrination thing - it's anyone who has read the Nazi or Communist "scientific" justifications of their theories that should hear alarms.

anglercut 7y ago
But why should Watson be after narrow technical issues like some cautious undergrad, when the problem is about funding for fundamental research to improve human condition? > The whole point is what you are saying - the "perfect" human isn't about racial selection. It's Watson's clear racism (and he admits he is racist!) that makes it so dangerous. This has no bearing on the issue of human germline engineering, which he advocated for and wanted to use reputation earned on medical research to promote. Pachter, as well as the article he links to, tries to discredit precisely this project; defending their goobledydook with appeal to Watson's other opinions constitutes a non sequitur. Furthermore, we cannot infer, unless, again, brainwashed, that Watson, even if he was very racist indeed, wanted to somehow reify a racial hierarchy: he points to differences, but finds in all populations some disappointing aspects, even for the "first class" Jewish brains. He understood, like I do, like Olson does, that all humans are horrendously damaged; and he went as far as to suggest eventually adding non-human DNA for further improvement! Call this catroonish mad science, call this creepy, but racist? White supremacist? Talk about being small-minded. Pachter's assertion that Watson was a narcissist who believed "American from Chicago of mixed Scottish/Irish ancestry" to be an Ubermench is nothing but vile slander. I also suspect that the notion of being critical towards your group is alien to Pachter, seeing as he ascribes to Watson some prejudice against the Irish just as he makes him out to be a self-absorbed racist. But, most importantly, we cannot get there from here. We cannot engineer happier and more capable humans if we do not investigate what makes modern humans differ on significant traits, and we can't do that without noticing group differences attributable to ancestry in the process, and without basically confirming some stereotypes (because, all told, stereotypes are pretty accurate, and in fact more robust than most findings in social science)[1]. Either deal with it, or call openly for the end of research on group differences of intelligence, like some do[2]. It's fraught with problems, though: «...enforcement of this policy entails technical difficulties. For one thing, essentially all IRBs already try to ban such research, but they don’t do a very good job, because they don’t know enough about the subject. Probably nobody does. For example, not so long ago people felt free to speculate that modern humans might have picked a few useful alleles from Neanderthals – including ones that increased intelligence. That was before it was found that there is substantial Neanderthal admixture only in non-Africans.»[3] But pretending to respect the research of human generic potential, all the while demonising any scientist who so much as hints at agreement with some group generalization, is hypocrisy. A self-contradiction. Note also how Horgan reinforces his suggestion of banning the topic with "stereotype threat": «The claims of researchers like Murray, Herrnstein and Richwine could easily become self-fulfilling, by bolstering the confirmation bias of racists and by convincing minority children, their parents and teachers that the children are innately, immutably inferior. ». As usual, this seems to be bogus science.[4] This is the typical state of affairs, very weak studies with politically convenient "leftist" results used to triumphantly "debunk" robust models while, hilariously enough, accusing the other side of confirmation bias. > anyone who has read the Nazi or Communist "scientific" justifications of their theories Did you? Because Nazis were very disapproving of intelligence research, and Communists were into Lysenkoism, which opposed mainstream genetics[5]. I'm not at all sure there ever was a totalitarian regime which promulgated Watson's understanding of these topics. 1: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-19097-002 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-19097-002 2: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/should-research-on-race-and-iq-be-banned/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/should-rese... 3: https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/05/23/the-end-of-science/ https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/05/23/the-end-of-science... 4: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/another-replication-failure-stereotype-threat-is-probably-empty/ https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/another-replication-fa... 5: https://medium.com/@cremieux/is-eric-turkheimer-a-scientist-ed5850b028d1 https://medium.com/@cremieux/is-eric-turkheimer-a-scientist-...