The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019) • Hacker News Board

Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)

#361

Post by tofery » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 3:29 AM UTC

aspaceman wrote: post #346

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #272

Fascinating! To me this sounds like the mother's body is trying to "nudge" the odds towards a daughter after several sons, but sometimes the process "fails" and produces an effeminate male instead - a gay son. Alternatively, some kind of meta-level mechanism to reduce competition over women in the community, ultimately improving its collective health and well-being.

Comments like these are so hilariously idiotic. Props for making me guffaw out loud. “A meta level mechanism to reduce competition in the community” what the fuck is this saying. Why would gay men reduce competition? In a society that doesn’t accept homosexuality, they would still be with women. In a society that does, why would the woman’s body find it any more favorable to produce. This kind of navel gazing about e…

>Why would gay men become more effeminate?

Well, if we take "effeminate" to mean "Exhibiting behaviour or mannerisms considered typical of a female" [1], then wanting to have sex with men, something straight females (the majority of females) and gay males have in common, is effeminate. So I'd say it's not so ridiculous to think that gay men are typically more effeminate.

1: From https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/effeminate#Adjective, definition 1, which is also what I interpreted the word to mean

Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)

#362

Post by tofery » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 3:36 AM UTC

jabberwcky wrote: post #331

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #272

Fascinating! To me this sounds like the mother's body is trying to "nudge" the odds towards a daughter after several sons, but sometimes the process "fails" and produces an effeminate male instead - a gay son. Alternatively, some kind of meta-level mechanism to reduce competition over women in the community, ultimately improving its collective health and well-being.

> effeminate male > gay son This is a dangerous stereotype that is equally harmful to people of any sexuality, I'd encourage you to correct it. Most of the gay folk I know personally tend towards the athletic end of the spectrum

>This [gay males being effeminate] is a dangerous stereotype that is equally harmful to people of any sexuality

Why do you assume that gay men being effeminate is unfounded (if you do think that, which I'm basing off of you calling it a stereotype), and why do you think it's harmful? Gay men, in common with straight women, want to have sex with men. That seems effeminate to me (another comment I made with a similar argument: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26073496).

As for the stereotype being harmful, is it? If society assumes gay men tend to be effeminate, what harm does that cause?

Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)

#363

Post by sjg007 » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 3:40 AM UTC

Brian_K_White wrote: post #141

sjg007 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm... Men have nipples because they form before sexual differentiation occurs.

I don't see how this makes their illustration invalid. This is, or could be, just the how not the why.

Here's the way you answer your question. Ask yourself, is this the answer I would have said in middle school? Or maybe, maybe high school. If you think the answer is worth more than that. Well... May god save your soul.

Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)

#364

Post by arp242 » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 3:44 AM UTC

jdgoesmarching wrote: post #309

drocer88 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the link: "Research from the 1990s2 showed that identical twins are more likely to share a sexual orientation than are fraternal twins or adopted siblings." Study here : https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9549243/ "We present an overview of behavioral genetics research on homosexual and heterosexual orientation. Family, twin, and adoptee studies indicate that homosexuality and thus heterosexuality run in families.…

This thread seems very insistent on pushing the environmental case when presented with evidence to the contrary. It’s like I stumbled into a Republican convention in the 90s. Baseless theories: people do this to feel better about LGBT discrimination or the idea of sexuality being out of our control is too scary for dudes who haven’t come to terms with their own masculinity. The latter isn’t necessarily shade, I’m not…

You can believe that homosexuality is at least partly environmental while also believing that people should have the freedom to be as gay as they want to be.

I don't really like these appeals to motive; this is quite an interesting empirical question that's disconnected from discrimination. Even if it would turn out that homosexuality is a choice (I don't think it is, but let's assume it would be) then this wouldn't change my position one iota. People choose whether to smoke weed or not, and I also think people should have the freedom to choose to do so.

I'm not so sure what the evidence says on this, but it appears it's less of clear-cut "it's 100% genetic" than it seems to be. These things are notoriously hard to study.

The real problem seems to be that people are afraid that the "God hates fags" people will run with these kind of things, but these people will do their thing anyway no matter what the science says on account of being homophobic twats.

Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)

#365

Post by the_af » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 3:57 AM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #347

the_af wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article in Wikipedia seems to imply the mother's womb does "remember" prior pregnancies; after all, what are antibodies and the immune response if not a form of memory? From Wikipedia: > The mechanism is thought to be a maternal immune response to male fetuses, whereby antibodies neutralize male Y-proteins thought to play a role in sexual differentiation during development. The article states even interrupted pre…

This goes beyond that an implies "counting" and that the reproductive system in addition wants to achieve an output balance in a non random manner. That said, it would be very interesting if the body did actually count and take measures to keep things even.

In what sense does this go beyond? Generating antibodies or an immune response is a form of "remembering". It's how your body "remembers" past invading viruses and "learns" how to fight them.

The reproductive system doesn't "want" anything any more than your immune system "wants" to fight viruses and invading pathogens.

Why couldn't a similar mechanism be at play here?

Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)

#366

Post by goodside » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 4:00 AM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #353

Animats wrote: post #167

It's known that birth order matters. "The more older brothers a male has from the same mother, the greater the probability he will have a homosexual orientation."[1] Interestingly, this occurs only in right-handed males. See [2]: "Mothers of gay sons, particularly those with older brothers, had significantly higher anti-NLGN4Y levels than did the control samples of women, including mothers of heterosexual sons." Ther…

That weird caveat about right handedness actually makes me think this is a spurious correlation.

Sexual orientation has a known association with handedness (same-sex-attracted people of either gender have higher odds of being left-handed/ambidextrous than do straight people) so it’s reasonable a priori for a correlation to exist in one sub-population and not the other. Splitting by handedness reduces variance for many sexuality questions — it’s not a sign of p-hacking.

Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)

#367

Post by jabberwcky » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 4:00 AM UTC

spodek wrote: post #352

jabberwcky wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> effeminate male > gay son This is a dangerous stereotype that is equally harmful to people of any sexuality, I'd encourage you to correct it. Most of the gay folk I know personally tend towards the athletic end of the spectrum

Is there some law of the internet that when someone corrects someone, they often commit the error they're pointing out? Did you mean to imply that effeminate -- showing characteristics more associated with females than males -- was at the other end of a spectrum from athletic?

The inverse of effeminate by definition is butch, I purposefully avoided using it as it invokes yet more popular and inaccurate gay stereotypes that in no way capture the folk I was describing

Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)

#368

Post by tofery » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 4:04 AM UTC

Bostonian wrote: post #97

SonicScrub wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An argument for gay rights has been that people are "born that way". That appears to be false Only if you take the strict literal definition of the phrase "born that way" to mean your genetic make-up. A person has little to no control over their environmental factors during their upbringing. Everything from average air temperature, food nutrient makeup, airborne particles, etc are environmental factors that we know…

"Your comment is making the assumption that the environmental factor that causes homosexuality is witnessing other members of the species be homosexual, which is a large leap of logic to make." I think research has found that people are more likely to engage in a behavior if they see others doing the same. For example, someone who would not ordinarily shoplift may do so during a riot where many people are looting sto…

I'd be interested in hearing the voices of those downvoting this. Is one of the claims in the comment false, or do you disagree with the conclusion "I think this overestimation may influence some behavior at the margin." [note1] (or both)?

Additionally, what if the conclusion is right (hypothetically)? Is it really that improbable? And if the greater acceptance of homosexuality as of recently (compared to, say, the 19th century) does cause some otherwise-straight people to be gay, what exactly is the problem with that? Would that be something we should address?

And more generally, if we did find an environmental factor that was linked to homosexuality, would we want to address that factor?

Note 1: User Bostonian uses the term "at the margin" in their comment, and I don't know what they meant by that. I'm taking it to be the subset of people who are unsure of their sexuality, though perhaps the author was referring to something else.

Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)

#369

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 4:06 AM UTC

scythe wrote: post #358

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #272

Fascinating! To me this sounds like the mother's body is trying to "nudge" the odds towards a daughter after several sons, but sometimes the process "fails" and produces an effeminate male instead - a gay son. Alternatively, some kind of meta-level mechanism to reduce competition over women in the community, ultimately improving its collective health and well-being.

>To me this sounds like the mother's body is trying to "nudge" the odds towards a daughter But if that were true, it must succeed sometimes. Evolution doesn't select for things that don't work. We should see an equally strong correlation with sex of offspring and birth order. We don't. One possibility is that the effect reduces the harmful effects of sibling rivalry by making second sons more empathetic. However, thi…

> But if that were true, it must succeed sometimes. We should see an equally strong correlation with sex of offspring and birth order.

There is a correlation in the opposite direction between sex and birth order, but that could be explained with a slight variation on the upthread hypothesis; instead of trying to bend things toward girls and sometimes failing with an effeminate boy, one could speculate that it is “trying” to bend things toward boys and sometimes succeeds incompletely, resulting in an effeminate boy.

(“Trying" in this case meaning nothing having to do with intentionality, but merely the effect of the process for which it was selected.)

Re: The largest study to date on the genetic basis of sexuality (2019)

#370

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 4:13 AM UTC

suizi wrote: post #184

coding123 wrote: post #39

I'm curious if they instead focused on a simple neural net that is fed genes + gay/straight flag if the NN would actually successfully predict it.... in other words, NN's don't care about "finding" that specific gene, they kinda include everything and it "finds" the gene without actually pointing it out. That's very different from the human approach which is to try to find something specific. I mean compare it to blo…

I don't think it is entirely genetic. There are other factors like development within the mother's body, levels of hormones / chemicals, and so on which could contribute to a different sexuality later on. This doesn't mean you can change it, and messing with chemical levels in the hope of finding a configuration which leads to "normality" would be very unethical in my eyes.

> There are other factors like development within the mother's body, levels of hormones / chemicals, and so on which could contribute to a different sexuality later on.

Those could still be influences if it was purely genetic. Biological sex is approximately fully genetic (not quite, but very close to it), but womb environment (I remember pH differences specifically being identified as an influence) play a role in which sperm, with which sex chromosomes, are most likely to survive and reach the ova.