Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The ‘Geno-Economists’ Say DNA Can Predict Our Chances of Success

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 82 posts

Re: The ‘Geno-Economists’ Say DNA Can Predict Our Chances of Success

#41

Post by fjsolwmv »

asianthrowaway wrote: post #25
nyrulez wrote: post #8

Unless we have a complete picture of "success", which means: - How much of our behavior, habits, intelligence and success comes from the environment ? - How much of stuff like education levels, income levels come from birth, social and environmental factors? - How epigenetics shapes our life in a dynamic fashion? This field is pretty new, and we have just begin to understand it. - What is intelligence or success in t…

Points 1 2 and 4 are pretty well studied in academia concerning intelligence. Intelligence is defined as "g", and it's 60 to 80% heritable depending on the study (leaning towards 80%). More info for the curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)

"heritability" is a mix of genetics and environment.

Re: The ‘Geno-Economists’ Say DNA Can Predict Our Chances of Success

#43

Post by invalidOrTaken »

asianthrowaway wrote: post #28
osazuwa wrote: post #14

Boy I can't wait for Eugenics 2.0! I'm sure it will be better the second time around.

Hypothetical situation: if there was devised a cheap and easy to administer "genetic IQ test", would you oppose an NGO whose mission statement would be to administer this test to low income inner city kids, and offer scholarships or vouchers to good schools to those exhibiting the highest "genetic IQ"?

On the contrary; given education's effect on fertility, you'd want to offer scholarships to those with the lowest "genetic iq."

Re: The ‘Geno-Economists’ Say DNA Can Predict Our Chances of Success

#44

Post by nabla9 »

asianthrowaway wrote: post #25
nyrulez wrote: post #8

Unless we have a complete picture of "success", which means: - How much of our behavior, habits, intelligence and success comes from the environment ? - How much of stuff like education levels, income levels come from birth, social and environmental factors? - How epigenetics shapes our life in a dynamic fashion? This field is pretty new, and we have just begin to understand it. - What is intelligence or success in t…

Points 1 2 and 4 are pretty well studied in academia concerning intelligence. Intelligence is defined as "g", and it's 60 to 80% heritable depending on the study (leaning towards 80%). More info for the curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)

It's easy to misunderstand what heritable or even genetically heritable means.

Consider just few hypothetical ways genes can increase g-factor:

* Metabolic trait increases nutrition intake in high calorie low nutrition junk food environment. This leads to faster brain development.

* Improved immune system against certain parasites that makes individual healthier and leads to statistically higher g-factor.

Genes that improve intelligence can change from generation to generation and be different in different geographic areas.

Re: The ‘Geno-Economists’ Say DNA Can Predict Our Chances of Success

#45

Post by avertz »

fjsolwmv wrote: post #40
vtange wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That line is taken out of context a lot - the Declaration of Independence does not try to assert that all humans are equal in ability, its main focus was to state that all humans have equal rights to their life, liberty and freedom to pursue happiness. That means that even if a human is weaker, or even disabled, he or she still has equal rights to a human who is in good health.

But not if they were "nonhuman savages" that were roughly human shaped but not Western European in skin tone.

There are other interpretations that square with this obvious contradiction. The founders may have believed as Aristolte that man was a rational animal and those lacking rationality were not men but just animals and fit to be slaves. More likely though they did not mean the equality of White and black but the equality of themselves and King George, stripping him of his divine right to rule. Using this quote to justify contemporary egalitarianism is ridiculous.

Re: The ‘Geno-Economists’ Say DNA Can Predict Our Chances of Success

#46

Post by hirundo »

coldtea wrote: post #34
hirundo wrote: post #18

> All men are created equal. - U.S. Declaration of Independence The above statement is false. That's more clear than ever and geno-economics contributes to that clarity. If you live your life by this assumption you will get many important things wrong. Yet this clearly wrong statement, as applied to the operation of the rule of law, is also one of the most brilliant, important and useful concepts invented by civiliza…

> The above statement is false. That's more clear than ever and geno-economics contributes to that clarity. If you live your life by this assumption you will get many important things wrong. "It's bad to kill people" -- this statement is also false. There's no logical necessity that says its bad to kill people, it's only a utility calculation (whether you get caught, what the profit will be vs repercussions etc). Sti…

> It just means that all people are equally worth, not to some utility function, but absolutely as human beings.

In order to believe that worth can be determined independent of a utility function, you need a standard of absolute worth. Even religious statements of worth are based on utility to the deity. Biological statements of worth regard utility toward the population or ecosystem. I can't think of a non-utilitarian standard of worth that isn't arbitrary, can you?

Re: The ‘Geno-Economists’ Say DNA Can Predict Our Chances of Success

#49

Post by dragonwriter »

asianthrowaway wrote: post #28
osazuwa wrote: post #14

Boy I can't wait for Eugenics 2.0! I'm sure it will be better the second time around.

Hypothetical situation: if there was devised a cheap and easy to administer "genetic IQ test", would you oppose an NGO whose mission statement would be to administer this test to low income inner city kids, and offer scholarships or vouchers to good schools to those exhibiting the highest "genetic IQ"?

> would you oppose an NGO whose mission statement would be to administer this test to low income inner city kids, and offer scholarships or vouchers to good schools to those exhibiting the highest "genetic IQ"?

I'd think it was flawed even before any ethical considerations, since the environmental factors that the poor tend to be more exposed to that lead to downward deviations from genetic potential have had significant impact before schooling starts (in many cases even in utero), and school performance numbers today basically just reflect the student body (and in very large part the engagement and socioeconomic background of the parents) they are dealt more than outcome differences produced by the school. So, mostly, you'd be spending money to give kids a longer commute.

Re: The ‘Geno-Economists’ Say DNA Can Predict Our Chances of Success

#50

Post by [deleted] »

searine wrote: post #32
nonbel wrote: post #27

Combining GWAS data with social science... sounds like a recipe for generating incorrect conclusions from noise to me. >"before the Human Genome Project had fully sequenced human DNA" The human genome is still not complete by any normal definition, they just redefined "complete" to mean "we did our best". It is like if someone turns in homework with only half the questions answered and argues they should get 100% sin…

>The human genome is still not complete by any normal definition Well considering that the human genome is a moving target, it can never be "complete". However, it can be 99.9% complete, which is all but complete for all scientific intents and purposes. The rest is just semantics.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN