5 ms·

Why the West should be worried about Chinese Eugenics (2013)

37 points by roymurdock 12y ago

scarfez 12y ago
love the humblebrag he snuck in there
romanpoet 12y ago
This is hilarious. I also contributed to BGI-Cognitive Genomics.
roymurdock 12y ago
I would be interested to hear the Chinese perspective on the whole eugenics program, especially after many of the bold claims made by the author. Would also like to hear opinions on the author's claim that IQ could be increased 10-15 points on average, per generation. Sounds very unlikely to me.
- wavefunction 12y ago
  >>Would also like to hear opinions on the author's claim that IQ could be increased 10-15 points on average, per generation. The same could be true if we just killed low-IQ people, which would be horrific in practice and spirit. I'm also not sure I particularly care for the "smart" people I know more than the "less smart." This is even more true for the "smart" people I don't know who seem to be making this world worse for all of us. I would pick those "smart" people to be culled, if I had to choose.
  - zanny 12y ago
    You don't have to kill them, you just stop them from reproducing. It is cheaper and easier (in the horrific brave new world sense) to just sterilize anyone below a desired IQ threshold and let them act as worker class. Because by the time you can accurately gage adult IQ you would have already invested a lot of resources into the child.
    - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
      Didn't the nazis try that?
    - jstclair 12y ago
      So you've just sterilized the Einsteins... The whole premise is that "like produces like", which of course is nonsense. Dumb people have brilliant kids, ugly people produce beautiful children, and so on and so forth.
      - omonra 12y ago
        1. The Einsteins were a fairly intelligent family - so it's a bad example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_family http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_family 2. You are wrong vis-a-vis heritability of intelligence. It is largely determined by genes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ 3. However - you are right in one respect. There is usually a 'pull to the mean'. That means that children of exceptional people tend to be closer to the average, thus they are not as gifted as the exceptional parent.
        Zuider 12y ago
        Would an individual have been chosen for sterilization if: 1) He was born with a markedly pointy head, which caused much consternation to his parents and relatives. 2) Was developmentally backward. Notably, he failed to acquire language skills for a significant period during his early childhood. 3) He was educationally subnormal, showing signs of what would now be diagnosed as ADHD,and drugged into a stupor. 4) Was bone lazy. I believe that 'schweinehunde' was the informal term used at the time for this condition. 5) Was disobedient and rebellious, or one of those 'malcontents' that perennially threaten to upset the applecart of society (the term 'hooligan' enjoyed a brief vogue for describing this condition). 6) Was Jewish. The eugenics movement designated Jews for mass sterilization, along with Blacks, Poles and the 'bloody Irish' (but then again, these were the same dolts who thought that sterilizing homosexuals would somehow serve to 'keep the race pure'). Albert Einstein was a prime candidate for this preemptive culling.
- meric 12y ago
  Maybe this would be of relevance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hua%E2%80%93Yi_distinction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hua%E2%80%93Yi_distinction "In its cultural form, the Hua–Yi distinction assumed Chinese cultural superiority, but also implied that outsiders could become Chinese by adopting Chinese values and customs." What it means is Chinese identity is tied to culture, rather than tied to the actual physical body. The author's article's point amounts to: "The smartest Chinese tend to be more successful and can afford more children, and this is eugenics."
  - fspeech 12y ago
    <quote>The author's article's point amounts to: "The smartest Chinese tend to be more successful and can afford more children, and this is eugenics."</quote> While in reality the countryside folks (less density) can have more children than urban dwellers (typically one child).
  - zo1 12y ago
    >'The author's article's point amounts to: "The smartest Chinese tend to be more successful and can afford more children, and this is eugenics."' Agreed, and it sounds like the author has an axe to grind for some odd reason. It's not eugenics that he's attacking only, note the implicit blame of "Darwinians" and "Galtonians" as being a cause for these policies.
  - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
    The one child policy has worked against that for a couple of generations....the smartest with city hukou almost always being limited to one.
- eric_h 12y ago
  I'd be interested in any perspective at all other than the author's, as he does not support his claims with anything other than general "it's widely understood" hand waving nonsense.
- monkeypizza 12y ago
  You seem to have missed the author's explanation of how they could get 10-15 IQ points per generation: "Potentially, the results would allow all Chinese couples to maximize the intelligence of their offspring by selecting among their own fertilized eggs for the one or two that include the highest likelihood of the highest intelligence. Given the Mendelian genetic lottery, the kids produced by any one couple typically differ by 5 to 15 IQ points. So this method of "preimplantation embryo selection" might allow IQ within every Chinese family to increase by 5 to 15 IQ points per generation." Stephen Hsu has written more about it here http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2014/10/genius-nautilus-magazine.html http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2014/10/genius-nautilus-magazin...
  - jleader 12y ago
    Once we've found which genes produce a 10-15 IQ point difference (and that's a big "once"!), we select for those genes, and get a 10-15 point boost in the next generation. Eventually, assuming an ongoing eugenics program, we get a strain that breeds true for those characteristics, and the 10-15 point gain becomes permanent. What makes you (or the author) assume that every generation we're going to find another set of genes that will produce another 10-15 point boost?
    - monkeypizza 12y ago
      I don't think you even need to think of it on the level of genes (because most of the time, chromosomes are inherited whole (barring crossing over)). So you'd just be picking the best combinations of random selection of chromosomes contributed by the parents. It's like being able to roll 100 times and picking the best one in D&D character creation. The improvement might not be able to be done infinitely, but could at least get us to everyone having IQ 130, which would mean a reduction in all the problems associated with lower IQ. (Crime, poverty, lack of educational achievement, bad health) i.e. a father has two variants of chromosome 6, one good and one great. Why not make sure that his kids just "by chance" get the great one? There will be lots of tradeoffs, but it'd always be better to occasionally step in and make a choice than to always accept randomness.
r721 12y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5659344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5659344
hingisundhorsa 12y ago
"For a thousand years, China has been ruled by a cognitive meritocracy selected through the highly competitive imperial exams. The brightest young men became the scholar-officials who ruled the masses, amassed wealth, attracted multiple wives, and had more children." Author manages to squeeze a topping of first semester Introduction to China with a thick crust of massive unsubstantiated overreach. "hunting for sets of sets of IQ-predicting alleles. I know because I recently contributed my DNA to the project, not fully understanding the implications." Nice autopraise, mildly disguised. "After a couple of generations, it would be game over for Western global competitiveness." Seriously? There was an otherwise intelligent guy working for us who started spouting this kind of drivel. We noticed it all started after he got assigned a female manager and then subsequently a non-white manager. Some people have mild racial hangups, which they then externalize in odd ways like China peril.
- isomorphic 12y ago
  > sets of IQ-predicting alleles This bothered me more than the autopraise. He (and, if he is to be believed, China) are proceeding from the assumption that IQ can be reduced to a set of switches in the genome. What if there are alleles that select for intelligence--but also select for a mixture of cancer, OCD, suicidal depression, and plain batshit crazy?
  - hawkice 12y ago
    It's also worth considering that your hypothetical might be anything but! At extremely high levels of intelligence the rate of extreme social disorders skyrockets up to "most" (I recall the cutoff for 50% happening at ~165 IQ, but it continues to rise even after that, limited primarily by our lack of data on IQs much higher). I'm not entirely sure if this analogy is appropriate, but just as organisms with more cells are more likely to produce cancer, it seems minds with more thoughts racing through them are just as damaged by some small percentage of errant thoughts (some are extreme delusions, some are just the product of the isolation of a brilliant mind growing tired of a world, retreating from it, losing touch with how to interact with excellence and subtlety, and seeing even less subtlety in the world, simply growing more tired of it, ending with many extremely intelligent people simply unable to interact with others in any normal way).
jleader 12y ago
Is it wrong of me that the title "Evolutionary Psychologist" sets off warning bells?
sytelus 12y ago
My guess is that eugenics experiments on humans would most likely turn in to disaster, not just from ethical perspective, but from the desired outcome perspective. For animals, it's routine to target a specific trait such as more milk or less aggressiveness and do planned breeding to successfully get the desired outcome. However what we forget is that those animals suffer from many side effects when their one feature is amplified out of proportion. For instance, you can successfully get dog that is super small or super large but they would suffer from severe issues such as bad eyesight or frickle bones. For humans, this gets far more complicated. The intelligence is hardly indicated by ill-defined measurements such as IQ. We don't even dare quantify "creativity" and "taste" which are often drivers to major breakthroughs. In any case, let's say if you do try human breeding to target these qualities and you do end up with people with very high IQ - you can count on lots of potential side effects such as schizophrenia and other mental disorders that dominates lives of people with such out-of-proportion amplified characteristics. On the other end there is a strong argument for random trials, aka, let nature decide evolution. Most high-impact human beings, from Newton to Einstein to Hawking were not the product of other high impact human beings or even high IQ parents, for that matter. They spontaneously appeared on the scene and many times nurture played much stronger role in any case.
- jarek-foksa 12y ago
  If selective breeding based exclusively on IQ criteria would produce significant number of individuals with schizophrenia and other mental disorders then I would just update the breeding criteria to eliminate those unwanted traits from the gene pool as well. After all, evolution is all about trials and errors.
  - Zuider 12y ago
    And dead ends.
  - hobbes78 12y ago
    You'll probably end up with each guy trying to find the best girl he can, and each girl trying to find the best guy she can... Evolution proved it to work :) We should concentrate instead on removing impediments to this, such as arranged marriages, rapes and accidental pregnancies... Contraception is helpful on the latter...
keane 12y ago
>China has been running the world's largest and most successful eugenics program for more than thirty years From what I know about eugenics programs this is horrible! You have my attention! >A more mature response would be… asking… how can they help us to keep up as they create their brave new world? Oh.. so your only concern was that there might be more Chinese people than white people in the future. So… basically a racist rationale for promoting eugenics in this country. Not cool Geoffrey.
- Zuider 12y ago
  There are already more Chinese people than 'white' people. They've won! Please join the queue at the nearest surrender booth.
contingencies 12y ago
Total bullshit. Firstly, the fact that these terms exist in language and officialdom is meaningless. There is perhaps nowhere else in the world today sporting a greater gap between the official line and the reality of popular life than mainland China. Secondly, Chinese popular nutrition is still in the dark ages, its common currency being tradition, old-wives hearsay and happenstance. Things that are imported or claimed to be imported are held in high esteem for no other reason. Basic biology is barely taught. I've been here on and off for 13 years, mostly on, and that's most of my adult life. I was born in Australia, my wife is Chinese, and we chose to have our kid in Thailand. However, I have many friends who have had children here and in fact this morning we just visited a friend in a local hospital who had just had a C-section. Frankly, the kid was wasted looking and it seemed obvious to me that they'd scheduled the operation prematurely. Thirdly, the author confuses Confucian tradition (family lineage oriented for 2000+ years) and eugenics. The benefits of coming from an aristocratic background of eating well, education and the social network that brings is recognized in all societies. Choosing not to have a child (to kill them because of genetic status) is something else entirely, and even checking the sex of your baby is outlawed here... which isn't to say it doesn't happen, just that it's a lot more on the 'no popularly accessible eugenics' side than the west. However, there is a hint of reality in the article. The Chinese government has for decades collected the blood of foreigners visiting the country, ostensibly as a medical exam to check whether you have some life-threatening disease and may spread it about the country but obviously partly as a backslap to other countries for doing the same and partly as a money spinner. I have often supposed that database, which is certainly linked to other information about visitors such as who they are, where they come from, who their family is, where they have been and what they are nominally doing in the country, is being compiled in to a massive global genetic database for research purposes. That much is perhaps real, but the eugenics line as spouted here is to my mind utterly baseless.
bayesianhorse 12y ago
My belief is that the idea of "intelligence being genetic" has zero practical benefits. Good health (and all the factors contributing to this) and education will probably out-explain genetics for decades to come, and any significant amount of genomic selection in humans would be futile.
austinz 12y ago
Are there any sources (besides this rather fantastical article) that BGI-Shenzhen is conducting large-scale research into the genetics behind human intelligence, and that if so that research is going towards some sort of comprehensive national eugenics policy? Has anyone else written about this sort of project? Or is this all just (rather misguided) wishful thinking? > After a couple of generations, it would be game over for Western global competitiveness. I would expect that providing proper nutrition, health care, and primary and secondary education to the majority of Chinese children (especially those in the marginalized countryside) would be far more important than having a handful of rich families gestating designer babies. e.g. iodine deficiency: 1996: "The World Health Organization says that of the estimated 1.6 billion cases worldwide of iodine deficiency, nearly a third, or 500 million, are in China." http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/04/world/china-confronts-retardation-of-millions-deficient-in-iodine.html http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/04/world/china-confronts-reta... 2006: "After a 10-year government campaign, over 90 percent of people use iodized salt, still leaving 100 million facing deficiency." http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/16/health/16iodine.html http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/16/health/16iodine.html
- briandh 12y ago
  > Are there any sources (besides this rather fantastical article) that BGI-Shenzhen is conducting large-scale research into the genetics behind human intelligence Yes, that is well known, e.g., http://www.nature.com/news/chinese-project-probes-the-genetics-of-genius-1.12985 http://www.nature.com/news/chinese-project-probes-the-geneti... (depending on how you define large-scale -- see the piece). > if so that research is going towards some sort of comprehensive national eugenics policy? Now that, as far as I know, is mere speculation, albeit speculation that has been bandied about by many more individuals than just the author of this piece.
  - austinz 12y ago
    Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks.
frozenport 12y ago
I think they are correct in that Eugenics should be taken more seriously, if not to explain better why it doesn't work. We may find that some things are easy to eliminate while others are impossible.
LiweiZ 12y ago
As a native Chinese, I found most of articles to see my country as "the next big thing" or something like that are either: 1. lack of enough homework to know a bit deeper of what they are talking about or 2. intended to serve the opposite purpose of what the article itself means.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
santoriv 12y ago
Pretty good critique of this article -> http://eastasiastudent.net/china/edge-org-chinese-eugenics-rubbish http://eastasiastudent.net/china/edge-org-chinese-eugenics-r...
johnsmith33 12y ago
As a chinese, I can safely assure you that this article is utter bullshit. Typical of the kind written by western scholars without a single shred of understanding of the chinese culture. The chinese culture is one which places emphasis on the cream of the crop i.e. the top scholars, scientist etc. Politicians usually rise to power through connection or by slowly working their way up. This is completely contrary to those of the west where politicians are usually those who are the best at convincing people, not chosen because of their ability. The west worships democracy and condamns china for it single party rule, yet they set double standards when it comes to human right abuses such as guantanamo bay. What they seem to forget is that china has 1.35 billion people, 4.3 times those of America. Any problem the US has will be amplified by 4.3 times.
- eric_h 12y ago
  It is a tremendous stretch to call this guy a scholar using this piece as an example. When scholars (western or otherwise) write an essay to make a point, they back it up with evidence from sources other than themselves. This article was not a scholarly work.
johnsmith33 12y ago
As a chinese, I can safely assure you that this article is utter bullst. Typical of the kind written by western scholars without a single shred of understanding of the chinese culture. The chinese culture is one which places emphasis on the cream of the crop i.e. the top scholars, scientist etc. Politicians usually rise to power through connection or by slowly working their way up. This is completely contrary to those of the west where politicians are usually those who are the best at convincing people, not chosen because of their ability. The west worships democracy and condamns china for it single party rule, yet they set double standards when it comes to human right abuses such as guantanamo bay.
beering 12y ago
Is this written by the same Geoffrey Miller who said that fat people don't have the willpower to finish a PhD?
- wmt 12y ago
  Indeed it is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Miller_%28psychologist%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Miller_%28psychologist...
tn13 12y ago
China's increasing economic power is being converted into soft-power where every scholars writes such baseless stuff glorifying China. This article has less to do with reality of human population and more to do with Chinese investments in western scholars and media.
hyp0 12y ago
The super villian's handbook for creating a master race: 1. encourage diversity. This expands the genepool, and the combinations of genes. In particular, allow mating of people with "disorders" because (1) you don't know what other valuable genes they have, (2) the gene directly responsible for the "disorder" may have other benefts (consider sickle cell anaemia), and (3) what is considered a disorder in a present context might be beneficial in a future situation. 2. increase population. This increases the chances of mutations, and therefore of beneficial mutations; and especially the chance of beneficial combinations of genes. The thing you do not want to do is to select for particular traits! This is primarily because we do not actually know which traits will end up being ideal. Anything else is breeding exotic show-dogs, which are usually no match for the first mongrel that comes along. That is, the mongrel is the superior dog. Disregard the above if you don't actually want to create a master race, but instead want to control other people and/or feel better about yourself. That's a different handbook.
- jarek-foksa 12y ago
  Selective breeding is the primary reason why Canis lupus is one of the most diverse species now. Excessive interbreeding between races can impair diversity just like too little interbreeding.
glomph 12y ago
Did anyone read the article from Helena Cronin that was one after the Eugenics one? Absolute drivel. Even worse than the Eugenics piece.

37 points by roymurdock 12y ago

scarfez 12y ago

love the humblebrag he snuck in there

romanpoet 12y ago

This is hilarious. I also contributed to BGI-Cognitive Genomics.

roymurdock 12y ago

I would be interested to hear the Chinese perspective on the whole eugenics program, especially after many of the bold claims made by the author. Would also like to hear opinions on the author's claim that IQ could be increased 10-15 points on average, per generation. Sounds very unlikely to me.

wavefunction 12y ago
>>Would also like to hear opinions on the author's claim that IQ could be increased 10-15 points on average, per generation. The same could be true if we just killed low-IQ people, which would be horrific in practice and spirit. I'm also not sure I particularly care for the "smart" people I know more than the "less smart." This is even more true for the "smart" people I don't know who seem to be making this world worse for all of us. I would pick those "smart" people to be culled, if I had to choose.
- zanny 12y ago
  You don't have to kill them, you just stop them from reproducing. It is cheaper and easier (in the horrific brave new world sense) to just sterilize anyone below a desired IQ threshold and let them act as worker class. Because by the time you can accurately gage adult IQ you would have already invested a lot of resources into the child.
  - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
    Didn't the nazis try that?
  - jstclair 12y ago
    So you've just sterilized the Einsteins... The whole premise is that "like produces like", which of course is nonsense. Dumb people have brilliant kids, ugly people produce beautiful children, and so on and so forth.
    - omonra 12y ago
      1. The Einsteins were a fairly intelligent family - so it's a bad example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_family http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_family 2. You are wrong vis-a-vis heritability of intelligence. It is largely determined by genes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ 3. However - you are right in one respect. There is usually a 'pull to the mean'. That means that children of exceptional people tend to be closer to the average, thus they are not as gifted as the exceptional parent.
      - Zuider 12y ago
        Would an individual have been chosen for sterilization if: 1) He was born with a markedly pointy head, which caused much consternation to his parents and relatives. 2) Was developmentally backward. Notably, he failed to acquire language skills for a significant period during his early childhood. 3) He was educationally subnormal, showing signs of what would now be diagnosed as ADHD,and drugged into a stupor. 4) Was bone lazy. I believe that 'schweinehunde' was the informal term used at the time for this condition. 5) Was disobedient and rebellious, or one of those 'malcontents' that perennially threaten to upset the applecart of society (the term 'hooligan' enjoyed a brief vogue for describing this condition). 6) Was Jewish. The eugenics movement designated Jews for mass sterilization, along with Blacks, Poles and the 'bloody Irish' (but then again, these were the same dolts who thought that sterilizing homosexuals would somehow serve to 'keep the race pure'). Albert Einstein was a prime candidate for this preemptive culling.
meric 12y ago
Maybe this would be of relevance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hua%E2%80%93Yi_distinction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hua%E2%80%93Yi_distinction "In its cultural form, the Hua–Yi distinction assumed Chinese cultural superiority, but also implied that outsiders could become Chinese by adopting Chinese values and customs." What it means is Chinese identity is tied to culture, rather than tied to the actual physical body. The author's article's point amounts to: "The smartest Chinese tend to be more successful and can afford more children, and this is eugenics."
- fspeech 12y ago
  <quote>The author's article's point amounts to: "The smartest Chinese tend to be more successful and can afford more children, and this is eugenics."</quote> While in reality the countryside folks (less density) can have more children than urban dwellers (typically one child).
- zo1 12y ago
  >'The author's article's point amounts to: "The smartest Chinese tend to be more successful and can afford more children, and this is eugenics."' Agreed, and it sounds like the author has an axe to grind for some odd reason. It's not eugenics that he's attacking only, note the implicit blame of "Darwinians" and "Galtonians" as being a cause for these policies.
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  The one child policy has worked against that for a couple of generations....the smartest with city hukou almost always being limited to one.
eric_h 12y ago
I'd be interested in any perspective at all other than the author's, as he does not support his claims with anything other than general "it's widely understood" hand waving nonsense.
monkeypizza 12y ago
You seem to have missed the author's explanation of how they could get 10-15 IQ points per generation: "Potentially, the results would allow all Chinese couples to maximize the intelligence of their offspring by selecting among their own fertilized eggs for the one or two that include the highest likelihood of the highest intelligence. Given the Mendelian genetic lottery, the kids produced by any one couple typically differ by 5 to 15 IQ points. So this method of "preimplantation embryo selection" might allow IQ within every Chinese family to increase by 5 to 15 IQ points per generation." Stephen Hsu has written more about it here http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2014/10/genius-nautilus-magazine.html http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2014/10/genius-nautilus-magazin...
- jleader 12y ago
  Once we've found which genes produce a 10-15 IQ point difference (and that's a big "once"!), we select for those genes, and get a 10-15 point boost in the next generation. Eventually, assuming an ongoing eugenics program, we get a strain that breeds true for those characteristics, and the 10-15 point gain becomes permanent. What makes you (or the author) assume that every generation we're going to find another set of genes that will produce another 10-15 point boost?
  - monkeypizza 12y ago
    I don't think you even need to think of it on the level of genes (because most of the time, chromosomes are inherited whole (barring crossing over)). So you'd just be picking the best combinations of random selection of chromosomes contributed by the parents. It's like being able to roll 100 times and picking the best one in D&D character creation. The improvement might not be able to be done infinitely, but could at least get us to everyone having IQ 130, which would mean a reduction in all the problems associated with lower IQ. (Crime, poverty, lack of educational achievement, bad health) i.e. a father has two variants of chromosome 6, one good and one great. Why not make sure that his kids just "by chance" get the great one? There will be lots of tradeoffs, but it'd always be better to occasionally step in and make a choice than to always accept randomness.

r721 12y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5659344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5659344

hingisundhorsa 12y ago

"For a thousand years, China has been ruled by a cognitive meritocracy selected through the highly competitive imperial exams. The brightest young men became the scholar-officials who ruled the masses, amassed wealth, attracted multiple wives, and had more children." Author manages to squeeze a topping of first semester Introduction to China with a thick crust of massive unsubstantiated overreach. "hunting for sets of sets of IQ-predicting alleles. I know because I recently contributed my DNA to the project, not fully understanding the implications." Nice autopraise, mildly disguised. "After a couple of generations, it would be game over for Western global competitiveness." Seriously? There was an otherwise intelligent guy working for us who started spouting this kind of drivel. We noticed it all started after he got assigned a female manager and then subsequently a non-white manager. Some people have mild racial hangups, which they then externalize in odd ways like China peril.

isomorphic 12y ago
> sets of IQ-predicting alleles This bothered me more than the autopraise. He (and, if he is to be believed, China) are proceeding from the assumption that IQ can be reduced to a set of switches in the genome. What if there are alleles that select for intelligence--but also select for a mixture of cancer, OCD, suicidal depression, and plain batshit crazy?
- hawkice 12y ago
  It's also worth considering that your hypothetical might be anything but! At extremely high levels of intelligence the rate of extreme social disorders skyrockets up to "most" (I recall the cutoff for 50% happening at ~165 IQ, but it continues to rise even after that, limited primarily by our lack of data on IQs much higher). I'm not entirely sure if this analogy is appropriate, but just as organisms with more cells are more likely to produce cancer, it seems minds with more thoughts racing through them are just as damaged by some small percentage of errant thoughts (some are extreme delusions, some are just the product of the isolation of a brilliant mind growing tired of a world, retreating from it, losing touch with how to interact with excellence and subtlety, and seeing even less subtlety in the world, simply growing more tired of it, ending with many extremely intelligent people simply unable to interact with others in any normal way).

jleader 12y ago

Is it wrong of me that the title "Evolutionary Psychologist" sets off warning bells?

sytelus 12y ago

My guess is that eugenics experiments on humans would most likely turn in to disaster, not just from ethical perspective, but from the desired outcome perspective. For animals, it's routine to target a specific trait such as more milk or less aggressiveness and do planned breeding to successfully get the desired outcome. However what we forget is that those animals suffer from many side effects when their one feature is amplified out of proportion. For instance, you can successfully get dog that is super small or super large but they would suffer from severe issues such as bad eyesight or frickle bones. For humans, this gets far more complicated. The intelligence is hardly indicated by ill-defined measurements such as IQ. We don't even dare quantify "creativity" and "taste" which are often drivers to major breakthroughs. In any case, let's say if you do try human breeding to target these qualities and you do end up with people with very high IQ - you can count on lots of potential side effects such as schizophrenia and other mental disorders that dominates lives of people with such out-of-proportion amplified characteristics. On the other end there is a strong argument for random trials, aka, let nature decide evolution. Most high-impact human beings, from Newton to Einstein to Hawking were not the product of other high impact human beings or even high IQ parents, for that matter. They spontaneously appeared on the scene and many times nurture played much stronger role in any case.

jarek-foksa 12y ago
If selective breeding based exclusively on IQ criteria would produce significant number of individuals with schizophrenia and other mental disorders then I would just update the breeding criteria to eliminate those unwanted traits from the gene pool as well. After all, evolution is all about trials and errors.
- Zuider 12y ago
  And dead ends.
- hobbes78 12y ago
  You'll probably end up with each guy trying to find the best girl he can, and each girl trying to find the best guy she can... Evolution proved it to work :) We should concentrate instead on removing impediments to this, such as arranged marriages, rapes and accidental pregnancies... Contraception is helpful on the latter...

keane 12y ago

>China has been running the world's largest and most successful eugenics program for more than thirty years From what I know about eugenics programs this is horrible! You have my attention! >A more mature response would be… asking… how can they help us to keep up as they create their brave new world? Oh.. so your only concern was that there might be more Chinese people than white people in the future. So… basically a racist rationale for promoting eugenics in this country. Not cool Geoffrey.

Zuider 12y ago
There are already more Chinese people than 'white' people. They've won! Please join the queue at the nearest surrender booth.

contingencies 12y ago

Total bullshit. Firstly, the fact that these terms exist in language and officialdom is meaningless. There is perhaps nowhere else in the world today sporting a greater gap between the official line and the reality of popular life than mainland China. Secondly, Chinese popular nutrition is still in the dark ages, its common currency being tradition, old-wives hearsay and happenstance. Things that are imported or claimed to be imported are held in high esteem for no other reason. Basic biology is barely taught. I've been here on and off for 13 years, mostly on, and that's most of my adult life. I was born in Australia, my wife is Chinese, and we chose to have our kid in Thailand. However, I have many friends who have had children here and in fact this morning we just visited a friend in a local hospital who had just had a C-section. Frankly, the kid was wasted looking and it seemed obvious to me that they'd scheduled the operation prematurely. Thirdly, the author confuses Confucian tradition (family lineage oriented for 2000+ years) and eugenics. The benefits of coming from an aristocratic background of eating well, education and the social network that brings is recognized in all societies. Choosing not to have a child (to kill them because of genetic status) is something else entirely, and even checking the sex of your baby is outlawed here... which isn't to say it doesn't happen, just that it's a lot more on the 'no popularly accessible eugenics' side than the west. However, there is a hint of reality in the article. The Chinese government has for decades collected the blood of foreigners visiting the country, ostensibly as a medical exam to check whether you have some life-threatening disease and may spread it about the country but obviously partly as a backslap to other countries for doing the same and partly as a money spinner. I have often supposed that database, which is certainly linked to other information about visitors such as who they are, where they come from, who their family is, where they have been and what they are nominally doing in the country, is being compiled in to a massive global genetic database for research purposes. That much is perhaps real, but the eugenics line as spouted here is to my mind utterly baseless.

bayesianhorse 12y ago

My belief is that the idea of "intelligence being genetic" has zero practical benefits. Good health (and all the factors contributing to this) and education will probably out-explain genetics for decades to come, and any significant amount of genomic selection in humans would be futile.

austinz 12y ago

Are there any sources (besides this rather fantastical article) that BGI-Shenzhen is conducting large-scale research into the genetics behind human intelligence, and that if so that research is going towards some sort of comprehensive national eugenics policy? Has anyone else written about this sort of project? Or is this all just (rather misguided) wishful thinking? > After a couple of generations, it would be game over for Western global competitiveness. I would expect that providing proper nutrition, health care, and primary and secondary education to the majority of Chinese children (especially those in the marginalized countryside) would be far more important than having a handful of rich families gestating designer babies. e.g. iodine deficiency: 1996: "The World Health Organization says that of the estimated 1.6 billion cases worldwide of iodine deficiency, nearly a third, or 500 million, are in China." http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/04/world/china-confronts-retardation-of-millions-deficient-in-iodine.html http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/04/world/china-confronts-reta... 2006: "After a 10-year government campaign, over 90 percent of people use iodized salt, still leaving 100 million facing deficiency." http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/16/health/16iodine.html http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/16/health/16iodine.html

briandh 12y ago
> Are there any sources (besides this rather fantastical article) that BGI-Shenzhen is conducting large-scale research into the genetics behind human intelligence Yes, that is well known, e.g., http://www.nature.com/news/chinese-project-probes-the-genetics-of-genius-1.12985 http://www.nature.com/news/chinese-project-probes-the-geneti... (depending on how you define large-scale -- see the piece). > if so that research is going towards some sort of comprehensive national eugenics policy? Now that, as far as I know, is mere speculation, albeit speculation that has been bandied about by many more individuals than just the author of this piece.
- austinz 12y ago
  Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks.

frozenport 12y ago

I think they are correct in that Eugenics should be taken more seriously, if not to explain better why it doesn't work. We may find that some things are easy to eliminate while others are impossible.

LiweiZ 12y ago

As a native Chinese, I found most of articles to see my country as "the next big thing" or something like that are either: 1. lack of enough homework to know a bit deeper of what they are talking about or 2. intended to serve the opposite purpose of what the article itself means.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

santoriv 12y ago

Pretty good critique of this article -> http://eastasiastudent.net/china/edge-org-chinese-eugenics-rubbish http://eastasiastudent.net/china/edge-org-chinese-eugenics-r...

johnsmith33 12y ago

As a chinese, I can safely assure you that this article is utter bullshit. Typical of the kind written by western scholars without a single shred of understanding of the chinese culture. The chinese culture is one which places emphasis on the cream of the crop i.e. the top scholars, scientist etc. Politicians usually rise to power through connection or by slowly working their way up. This is completely contrary to those of the west where politicians are usually those who are the best at convincing people, not chosen because of their ability. The west worships democracy and condamns china for it single party rule, yet they set double standards when it comes to human right abuses such as guantanamo bay. What they seem to forget is that china has 1.35 billion people, 4.3 times those of America. Any problem the US has will be amplified by 4.3 times.

eric_h 12y ago
It is a tremendous stretch to call this guy a scholar using this piece as an example. When scholars (western or otherwise) write an essay to make a point, they back it up with evidence from sources other than themselves. This article was not a scholarly work.

johnsmith33 12y ago

As a chinese, I can safely assure you that this article is utter bullst. Typical of the kind written by western scholars without a single shred of understanding of the chinese culture. The chinese culture is one which places emphasis on the cream of the crop i.e. the top scholars, scientist etc. Politicians usually rise to power through connection or by slowly working their way up. This is completely contrary to those of the west where politicians are usually those who are the best at convincing people, not chosen because of their ability. The west worships democracy and condamns china for it single party rule, yet they set double standards when it comes to human right abuses such as guantanamo bay.

beering 12y ago

Is this written by the same Geoffrey Miller who said that fat people don't have the willpower to finish a PhD?

wmt 12y ago
Indeed it is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Miller_%28psychologist%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Miller_%28psychologist...

tn13 12y ago

China's increasing economic power is being converted into soft-power where every scholars writes such baseless stuff glorifying China. This article has less to do with reality of human population and more to do with Chinese investments in western scholars and media.

hyp0 12y ago

The super villian's handbook for creating a master race: 1. encourage diversity. This expands the genepool, and the combinations of genes. In particular, allow mating of people with "disorders" because (1) you don't know what other valuable genes they have, (2) the gene directly responsible for the "disorder" may have other benefts (consider sickle cell anaemia), and (3) what is considered a disorder in a present context might be beneficial in a future situation. 2. increase population. This increases the chances of mutations, and therefore of beneficial mutations; and especially the chance of beneficial combinations of genes. The thing you do not want to do is to select for particular traits! This is primarily because we do not actually know which traits will end up being ideal. Anything else is breeding exotic show-dogs, which are usually no match for the first mongrel that comes along. That is, the mongrel is the superior dog. Disregard the above if you don't actually want to create a master race, but instead want to control other people and/or feel better about yourself. That's a different handbook.

jarek-foksa 12y ago
Selective breeding is the primary reason why Canis lupus is one of the most diverse species now. Excessive interbreeding between races can impair diversity just like too little interbreeding.

glomph 12y ago

Did anyone read the article from Helena Cronin that was one after the Eugenics one? Absolute drivel. Even worse than the Eugenics piece.