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Genes describe lot of things from obese tendency to height to IQ to your looks. If someone has an IQ of 70, there are very likely to live a difficult life. Yes

Genes describe lot of things from obese tendency to height to IQ to your looks. If someone has an IQ of 70, there are very likely to live a difficult life. Yes IQ is not intelligence you will say but still there is a limit to everyday functioning if someone's IQ is low. Ask a conventional ugly person(specially female) about their life.

Sholmesy 5y ago
I agree with you, but an IQ of 70 is mentally disabled, so it's not really a good example of "bad" genetics, so much as it is an example of a disability.
- PlasticTank 5y ago
  That seems like a strange line to draw, surely plenty of disabilities are genetic, implying bad genetics no?
  - Sholmesy 5y ago
    Sure, but it's unlikely that you would have an IQ that low, and not have a specific medical disorder that is causing some of your impairment. E.g, Down Syndrome is a chromosomal change, something that can be measured outside of a 'bad genetics'.
    - nullifidian 5y ago
      What? You somehow think that if there is a named thing then it's not genetics. It's genetics both if it's a named thing, and if it's yet unnamed thing too.
      - Sholmesy 5y ago
        My point is that the distinction is important. Of course, named disorder or not, genetics can be the cause/have a high impact.
  - Ygg2 5y ago
    There is a thin line between disability and just different genetics. E.g. is it bad for a primate to have bad bite strength? What if that disability enhances their thinking ability (by both allowing their brain to expand more since the muscles holding the jaw are weaker and by forcing them to use something other than their bite strength)?
- mlang23 5y ago
  Isn't that a rather arbitrary distinction? Feels you are making it easy for yourself to just dismiss a certain amount of "not-normal" people as not relevant to the discussion? So, what do you define as "bad genetics", then?
- redsummer 5y ago
  The average IQ of Haiti is 67
- throwaway59553 5y ago
  However it is, 70 is the average IQ of some underdeveloped countries. And their average citizen is not mentally disabled per se. So are they underdeveloped, precisely because of that average? And speaking of distributions, are the people on the right hand side of the tail distribution, in a big enough number to lead their society, despite the low average?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
scandox 5y ago
Hard cases make bad law. In other words basing our precedents and rules on extreme cases is not a good idea. While extreme cases are useful for illustration and thought experiments, they are quite distracting when the real issue is small variances in the top ranges of ability.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
auganov 5y ago
> from obese tendency Which should make you rather skeptical of inferring just how innate IQ really is (assuming it's a valid concept). The heritability correlations for obesity are only slightly weaker than IQ. Yet we know for a fact the logical complexity of losing weight is simple (doesn't mean it's easy). Anyone can and people do lose weight, even if statistically it may be rather unlikely. It's completely plausible to me that intelligence can be simple but hard to increase too. If it's not a statistical anomaly and the genes truly do contribute to obesity, the causation must be very indirect and situational.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  Not to mention, obesity has increased by an order of magnitude in 50 years, with no signs of stopping. It's actually a nice example of how little genetic variance can actually matter at the population level, especially since it is a much more objective measure than IQ tests.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  Every phenomenon has both sides. While many people grew obese, there are still significant outliers among us who chug beer, consume current obesogenic diet and stay slim. Is it genetics? Is it gut microbiota? (E.g. genetics of other species?)
  - spiralx 5y ago
    > Is it genetics? Is it gut microbiota? (E.g. genetics of other species?) If you don't control for portion size comparing people who all have a burger and fries for dinner every night is basically useless, those meals could be hugely different in composition, portion size or how much is left over. Even if dinners are identical, snacking can be thousands of calories a day that you might never see happening. You've also missed what activity they do as well... Two people who both "chug beer and eat greasy takeaways" whenever you see them out can be very different the rest of the time. If one stays slim and one doesn't it's far more likely to be that the former eats smaller portions overall, snacks less between foods and does more activity overall, before reaching for more exotic answers.
Ygg2 5y ago
You can't discount environment either. We have fat raccoons, that implies that genetics doesn't matter as much as we think we does. Same with intelligence, how much is it genetics and how much is that the environment doesn't promote desired traits.
croon 5y ago
Obesity among US adults has gone from 10-15% in the 60s to 40% now. It's extremely unlikely that genetics changed in 60 years, but environmentals did. I understand that some have genetics that make it harder for them to keep off weight, either by metabolism, neural hunger stimuli or otherwise, but then we're still back to the fact that environmental changes made the biggest effect, not genetics. Why can't this be the case in your other examples too? TL;DR: Yes, genetics matter. What's more relevant is, how much?
- Levitz 5y ago
  >It's extremely unlikely that genetics changed in 60 years, but environmentals did. Due to epigenetics, environmentals actually shape genetics to a degree.
  - croon 5y ago
    Epigenetics does not change your DNA or what you pass down to your children, and is reversible, so I wouldn't call that "shaping genetics", at least not in the way I was referring to.
    - NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
      Heritable epigenetics is a (very cool) thing, though apparently somewhat overblown.
    - spiralx 5y ago
      But epigenetic changes during foetal development could effect the likelihood of being successful at passing ones genes along at all, although I've no idea how you'd manage to isolate or replicate these effects in any scientifically useful fashion. Someone in these discussions always brings up epigenetics at some point, its impact there far exceeding its impact on population genetics I would guess :) Nobody ever talks about genetic drift or gene flow however, probably because despite being actual things that affect population genetics talking about "nearly neutral drift in small populations" is really hard to wedge into an ideological shouting match dressed up as a scientific debate.

Sholmesy 5y ago

I agree with you, but an IQ of 70 is mentally disabled, so it's not really a good example of "bad" genetics, so much as it is an example of a disability.

PlasticTank 5y ago
That seems like a strange line to draw, surely plenty of disabilities are genetic, implying bad genetics no?
- Sholmesy 5y ago
  Sure, but it's unlikely that you would have an IQ that low, and not have a specific medical disorder that is causing some of your impairment. E.g, Down Syndrome is a chromosomal change, something that can be measured outside of a 'bad genetics'.
  - nullifidian 5y ago
    What? You somehow think that if there is a named thing then it's not genetics. It's genetics both if it's a named thing, and if it's yet unnamed thing too.
    - Sholmesy 5y ago
      My point is that the distinction is important. Of course, named disorder or not, genetics can be the cause/have a high impact.
- Ygg2 5y ago
  There is a thin line between disability and just different genetics. E.g. is it bad for a primate to have bad bite strength? What if that disability enhances their thinking ability (by both allowing their brain to expand more since the muscles holding the jaw are weaker and by forcing them to use something other than their bite strength)?
mlang23 5y ago
Isn't that a rather arbitrary distinction? Feels you are making it easy for yourself to just dismiss a certain amount of "not-normal" people as not relevant to the discussion? So, what do you define as "bad genetics", then?
redsummer 5y ago
The average IQ of Haiti is 67
throwaway59553 5y ago
However it is, 70 is the average IQ of some underdeveloped countries. And their average citizen is not mentally disabled per se. So are they underdeveloped, precisely because of that average? And speaking of distributions, are the people on the right hand side of the tail distribution, in a big enough number to lead their society, despite the low average?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

scandox 5y ago

Hard cases make bad law. In other words basing our precedents and rules on extreme cases is not a good idea. While extreme cases are useful for illustration and thought experiments, they are quite distracting when the real issue is small variances in the top ranges of ability.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

auganov 5y ago

> from obese tendency Which should make you rather skeptical of inferring just how innate IQ really is (assuming it's a valid concept). The heritability correlations for obesity are only slightly weaker than IQ. Yet we know for a fact the logical complexity of losing weight is simple (doesn't mean it's easy). Anyone can and people do lose weight, even if statistically it may be rather unlikely. It's completely plausible to me that intelligence can be simple but hard to increase too. If it's not a statistical anomaly and the genes truly do contribute to obesity, the causation must be very indirect and situational.

tsimionescu 5y ago
Not to mention, obesity has increased by an order of magnitude in 50 years, with no signs of stopping. It's actually a nice example of how little genetic variance can actually matter at the population level, especially since it is a much more objective measure than IQ tests.
inglor_cz 5y ago
Every phenomenon has both sides. While many people grew obese, there are still significant outliers among us who chug beer, consume current obesogenic diet and stay slim. Is it genetics? Is it gut microbiota? (E.g. genetics of other species?)
- spiralx 5y ago
  > Is it genetics? Is it gut microbiota? (E.g. genetics of other species?) If you don't control for portion size comparing people who all have a burger and fries for dinner every night is basically useless, those meals could be hugely different in composition, portion size or how much is left over. Even if dinners are identical, snacking can be thousands of calories a day that you might never see happening. You've also missed what activity they do as well... Two people who both "chug beer and eat greasy takeaways" whenever you see them out can be very different the rest of the time. If one stays slim and one doesn't it's far more likely to be that the former eats smaller portions overall, snacks less between foods and does more activity overall, before reaching for more exotic answers.

Ygg2 5y ago

You can't discount environment either. We have fat raccoons, that implies that genetics doesn't matter as much as we think we does. Same with intelligence, how much is it genetics and how much is that the environment doesn't promote desired traits.

croon 5y ago

Obesity among US adults has gone from 10-15% in the 60s to 40% now. It's extremely unlikely that genetics changed in 60 years, but environmentals did. I understand that some have genetics that make it harder for them to keep off weight, either by metabolism, neural hunger stimuli or otherwise, but then we're still back to the fact that environmental changes made the biggest effect, not genetics. Why can't this be the case in your other examples too? TL;DR: Yes, genetics matter. What's more relevant is, how much?

Levitz 5y ago
>It's extremely unlikely that genetics changed in 60 years, but environmentals did. Due to epigenetics, environmentals actually shape genetics to a degree.
- croon 5y ago
  Epigenetics does not change your DNA or what you pass down to your children, and is reversible, so I wouldn't call that "shaping genetics", at least not in the way I was referring to.
  - NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
    Heritable epigenetics is a (very cool) thing, though apparently somewhat overblown.
  - spiralx 5y ago
    But epigenetic changes during foetal development could effect the likelihood of being successful at passing ones genes along at all, although I've no idea how you'd manage to isolate or replicate these effects in any scientifically useful fashion. Someone in these discussions always brings up epigenetics at some point, its impact there far exceeding its impact on population genetics I would guess :) Nobody ever talks about genetic drift or gene flow however, probably because despite being actual things that affect population genetics talking about "nearly neutral drift in small populations" is really hard to wedge into an ideological shouting match dressed up as a scientific debate.