5 ms·

> Think of how much brain power is lost to poverty and inequality. How much exactly? Do you have an estimate? A good rule of thumb for dismissing bad argument

> Think of how much brain power is lost to poverty and inequality. How much exactly? Do you have an estimate? A good rule of thumb for dismissing bad arguments is asking yourself: "would the same have been argued in the opposite circumstance?" Improving conditions for people in need is a moral imperative. If it were proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that this won't actually maximize economic growth or pace of progress, would you say "oh well" and abandon them? I'd wager you would not. This is one cause to suspect you are not arguing in good faith when you shoehorn their plight into this discussion. Based of what we know about conditions in modern advanced economies, intelligence as measured by standardized tests is both a good proxy for scientific achievement potential, without any signs of plateauing in the upper ranges [1] and overwhelmingly genetic in origin, with a large number of specific associated polymorphisms already known [2] and parents and children getting closer in the trait rather than diverging with age due to random effects [3]; crucially, with little to no effect of social stratification on heredity [4]. This all but rules out any significant impact of your laundry list of plausible harms – which are, nevertheless, issues that must be addressed for purely humanitarian reasons. (Purported evidence for significant impact is usually invalidated by genetic confounding). What this means, however, is that there is very little or perhaps no low-hanging fruit left (it having been picked by Flynn effect over the last century), and we are unlikely to directly accelerate progress by any popular progressive policy, as it would not increase our labor pool for cognitively demanding work. And the hardest, highest-impact problems remain dependent on uniquely capable individuals – not lone geniuses but entire teams and organizations of them, sure, and only more scarce for it. People who have wrestled with available evidence seriously tend to arrive at the idea that we need to institute a program of voluntary genetic improvement and ensure its availability to all. The tech is already here; the price can be driven almost arbitrarily low at scale. Whether we become a society of geniuses or one stratified by genetic enhancement [5] is a matter of policy – and willingness to look truth in the eye. 1. https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/files/2013/02/Ferriman_20101.pdf https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/files/2013/02/Ferriman_20101.... 2. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-022-01016-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-022-01016-z 3. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23919982/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23919982/ 4. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1708491114 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1708491114 5. https://parrhesia.substack.com/p/america-in-2072-a-society-stratified?s=r https://parrhesia.substack.com/p/america-in-2072-a-society-s...

rilezg 4y ago
That is many big words to be so blind. A big brain does not make a person immune to poverty or war. If a person does not believe maximizing economic growth (as measured by GDP and/or the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average) is the most holy of missions, then I suppose their genetics are just too impure. I am not a serious wrestler, but I do not want the government instituting genetic programs as a final solution to a perfect society.
maybelsyrup 4y ago
> People who have wrestled with available evidence seriously tend to arrive at the idea that we need to institute a program of voluntary genetic improvement and ensure its availability to all. It's great to read comments like these because it's one of the rare times when these people go mask-off and just tell you that they're eugenicists. Kudos for honesty. Genetics and race-science cannot be separated, as they were forged in the same (American) fire [1][2]. The role of the former in supporting the latter never goes away; it just changes forms. For every phrenology that's utterly falsified, there's an "omg but what about polygenic risk scores!?" that pops up in its place [3]. Intelligence scores, IQ, psychometrics? Same thing: willing and enthusiastic handmaidens of selective breeding and strengthening the gene pool. Forced sterilization came soon after (60-70k people in the US). Don't let these guys fool you: there's no "debate" about intelligence and heredity, or really any behavioral genetics, only a reactionary moral and political project: find the vulnerable, the poor, and the sick, and grind'em into dust. Meanwhile: > and willingness to look truth in the eye. Mask on or off, this is a constant: "I'm a brave teller of hard truths in a world intent on hiding from them." You wonder if they'd really be exempt from their own "programs of genetic improvement." 1. https://archive.ph/eILU7 https://archive.ph/eILU7 2. https://books.google.com/books/about/War_Against_the_Weak.html?id=qfliJPdl9V4C https://books.google.com/books/about/War_Against_the_Weak.ht... 3. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-021-00961-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-021-00961-5
- sinenomine 4y ago
  See, this is exactly the problem I'm talking about. For example, you are referencing Feldman&Riskin, as if they have made some cogent argument. They have not, their review is a mess. Consider Nick Patterson's response: > Let us discuss the genetics of Educational Attainment (EA) defined as the number of years of schooling and measured in adults over 30 years old. EA takes up a good part both of the book and the review. Using genetic data from more than 300,000 individuals of European ancestry, it was possible to develop a ‘score’ using the genomes of the people in the study (Okbay et al. Genome-wide association study identifies 74 loci associated with educational attainment, Nature, 2016). The details of the score are of lesser importance, but it’s important to realize that the score is a single number calculated from a genomic sample, by a fixed recipe. The score is correlated with EA at an enormously significant statistical level. This result was then replicated in an Icelandic study, using entirely different individuals from the first study. (Kong et al. Selection against variants in the genome associated with educational attainment, PNAS, 2017). Again enormously significant results were obtained. > How do Feldman and Riskin explain these results? After a somewhat rambling diatribe complaining that choices were made in the details of the score, and how exactly the EA phenotype was chosen to study, they conclude that ‘researchers are [not] counting anything but their own projections’. How is this reasonable? A recipe is given, checked in a different study and the results replicated. (Incidentally a much larger study with more than 3,000,000 (!) individuals was completed just this month and the results again replicated). Are we somehow to believe that experimental error in Iceland is correlated with EA of a sample? This is truly absurd. > ...This review is baffling. Feldman is a leading mathematical biologist at Stanford who I would have assumed understands statistical genetics, yet if I didn’t know who the reviewers were I would have thought that they were incompetent or ignorant. > Perhaps Feldman and Riskin think that any argument is acceptable if it goes against results that they dislike?[1] etc.[2] Then you act like there is some continuing chain of "phrenologies" which have been falsified by science. In reality, the opposite is true – differential psychology and genetics are independent from any phrenological legacy, stand on their own and receive consistent confirmation, whereas, for example, both Gould (already approvingly cited in the thread) and Franz Boas, the founder of modern progressive anthropology, knowingly lied when grappling with literal skull shape data [3][4][5]. Yet those are still cited as authorities on the matter. You frame it into a narrative where duplicitous "eugenicists" feign being truth-tellers to reinforce their political agenda; aren't you practicing this very approach? But then the question is precisely who has truth on their side, and things Feldman&Riskin feel compelled to write in their review suggest it's still hereditarians. > Don't let these guys fool you: there's no "debate" about intelligence and heredity, or really any behavioral genetics, only a reactionary moral and political project: find the vulnerable, the poor, and the sick, and grind'em into dust. This is conflict theory in its essence [6] – or rather, conspiracy theory. You dismiss all evidence that conflicts with your political views because you a priori assume it is produced by a complex conspiracy with the aim to grind the vulnerable into dust. But this assumption forces you into a closed, totalitarian ideology. When you are offered a project of "genetic improvement" that does not involve sterilization, abuse or any denial of personal freedom, you are confused as to what is happening, and resort to plain denial and scare quotes. "How is this reasonable?", indeed. > You wonder if they'd really be exempt from their own "programs of genetic improvement." Why would I want to be exempt, though? You've taken time to find a statistical objection to GWAS data, but don't understand what embryo selection[7] is about technically, and how it's most likely to hurt people you wish to protect by being limited in accessibility to the very rich, if at all? What's the concrete scenario you have in mind here, really? 1. https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2022/05/12/nick-patterson-responds-to-feldman-and-riskin-in-nyrb/ https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2022/05/12/nick-patterson-res... 2. https://stuartritchie.substack.com/p/scientific-nihilism https://stuartritchie.substack.com/p/scientific-nihilism 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man#Criticis... 4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3110184/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3110184/) 5. https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/boas-bones-and-race/ https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/boas-bones-and-race/ 6. https://web.archive.org/web/20180313234504/https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/24/conflict-vs-mistake/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180313234504/https://slatestar... 7. https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection

rilezg 4y ago

That is many big words to be so blind. A big brain does not make a person immune to poverty or war. If a person does not believe maximizing economic growth (as measured by GDP and/or the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average) is the most holy of missions, then I suppose their genetics are just too impure. I am not a serious wrestler, but I do not want the government instituting genetic programs as a final solution to a perfect society.

maybelsyrup 4y ago

> People who have wrestled with available evidence seriously tend to arrive at the idea that we need to institute a program of voluntary genetic improvement and ensure its availability to all. It's great to read comments like these because it's one of the rare times when these people go mask-off and just tell you that they're eugenicists. Kudos for honesty. Genetics and race-science cannot be separated, as they were forged in the same (American) fire [1][2]. The role of the former in supporting the latter never goes away; it just changes forms. For every phrenology that's utterly falsified, there's an "omg but what about polygenic risk scores!?" that pops up in its place [3]. Intelligence scores, IQ, psychometrics? Same thing: willing and enthusiastic handmaidens of selective breeding and strengthening the gene pool. Forced sterilization came soon after (60-70k people in the US). Don't let these guys fool you: there's no "debate" about intelligence and heredity, or really any behavioral genetics, only a reactionary moral and political project: find the vulnerable, the poor, and the sick, and grind'em into dust. Meanwhile: > and willingness to look truth in the eye. Mask on or off, this is a constant: "I'm a brave teller of hard truths in a world intent on hiding from them." You wonder if they'd really be exempt from their own "programs of genetic improvement." 1. https://archive.ph/eILU7 https://archive.ph/eILU7 2. https://books.google.com/books/about/War_Against_the_Weak.html?id=qfliJPdl9V4C https://books.google.com/books/about/War_Against_the_Weak.ht... 3. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-021-00961-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-021-00961-5

sinenomine 4y ago
See, this is exactly the problem I'm talking about. For example, you are referencing Feldman&Riskin, as if they have made some cogent argument. They have not, their review is a mess. Consider Nick Patterson's response: > Let us discuss the genetics of Educational Attainment (EA) defined as the number of years of schooling and measured in adults over 30 years old. EA takes up a good part both of the book and the review. Using genetic data from more than 300,000 individuals of European ancestry, it was possible to develop a ‘score’ using the genomes of the people in the study (Okbay et al. Genome-wide association study identifies 74 loci associated with educational attainment, Nature, 2016). The details of the score are of lesser importance, but it’s important to realize that the score is a single number calculated from a genomic sample, by a fixed recipe. The score is correlated with EA at an enormously significant statistical level. This result was then replicated in an Icelandic study, using entirely different individuals from the first study. (Kong et al. Selection against variants in the genome associated with educational attainment, PNAS, 2017). Again enormously significant results were obtained. > How do Feldman and Riskin explain these results? After a somewhat rambling diatribe complaining that choices were made in the details of the score, and how exactly the EA phenotype was chosen to study, they conclude that ‘researchers are [not] counting anything but their own projections’. How is this reasonable? A recipe is given, checked in a different study and the results replicated. (Incidentally a much larger study with more than 3,000,000 (!) individuals was completed just this month and the results again replicated). Are we somehow to believe that experimental error in Iceland is correlated with EA of a sample? This is truly absurd. > ...This review is baffling. Feldman is a leading mathematical biologist at Stanford who I would have assumed understands statistical genetics, yet if I didn’t know who the reviewers were I would have thought that they were incompetent or ignorant. > Perhaps Feldman and Riskin think that any argument is acceptable if it goes against results that they dislike?[1] etc.[2] Then you act like there is some continuing chain of "phrenologies" which have been falsified by science. In reality, the opposite is true – differential psychology and genetics are independent from any phrenological legacy, stand on their own and receive consistent confirmation, whereas, for example, both Gould (already approvingly cited in the thread) and Franz Boas, the founder of modern progressive anthropology, knowingly lied when grappling with literal skull shape data [3][4][5]. Yet those are still cited as authorities on the matter. You frame it into a narrative where duplicitous "eugenicists" feign being truth-tellers to reinforce their political agenda; aren't you practicing this very approach? But then the question is precisely who has truth on their side, and things Feldman&Riskin feel compelled to write in their review suggest it's still hereditarians. > Don't let these guys fool you: there's no "debate" about intelligence and heredity, or really any behavioral genetics, only a reactionary moral and political project: find the vulnerable, the poor, and the sick, and grind'em into dust. This is conflict theory in its essence [6] – or rather, conspiracy theory. You dismiss all evidence that conflicts with your political views because you a priori assume it is produced by a complex conspiracy with the aim to grind the vulnerable into dust. But this assumption forces you into a closed, totalitarian ideology. When you are offered a project of "genetic improvement" that does not involve sterilization, abuse or any denial of personal freedom, you are confused as to what is happening, and resort to plain denial and scare quotes. "How is this reasonable?", indeed. > You wonder if they'd really be exempt from their own "programs of genetic improvement." Why would I want to be exempt, though? You've taken time to find a statistical objection to GWAS data, but don't understand what embryo selection[7] is about technically, and how it's most likely to hurt people you wish to protect by being limited in accessibility to the very rich, if at all? What's the concrete scenario you have in mind here, really? 1. https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2022/05/12/nick-patterson-responds-to-feldman-and-riskin-in-nyrb/ https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2022/05/12/nick-patterson-res... 2. https://stuartritchie.substack.com/p/scientific-nihilism https://stuartritchie.substack.com/p/scientific-nihilism 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man#Criticis... 4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3110184/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3110184/) 5. https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/boas-bones-and-race/ https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/boas-bones-and-race/ 6. https://web.archive.org/web/20180313234504/https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/24/conflict-vs-mistake/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180313234504/https://slatestar... 7. https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection