Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters? • Hacker News Board

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#691

Post by spiralx » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 5:17 AM UTC

raducu wrote: post #264

Hermitian909 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the more people can learn algebra than OP implies, but as a former math educator my experience also indicates some people are genetically limited in mathematics. For reference, my specialty was working with very remedial students and only ever had a few students not make progress (~2%) but I do think that small percent was genuinely hopeless and I don't say that lightly. I have a pet theory as to why those st…

I do have poor working memory and I did struggle with algebra, especially with copying wrong sign from row to row and things like that. But I did make paper sort of my working memory and when doing algebra I felt that I was just the very resource limited CPU that executed the instructions from paper-memory. Algebra always made me feel like I was doing some mindfull exercise where I had to empty my mind, follow the pa…

I read this paragraph in a paper on ADHD and learning disabilities literally after replying to a comment above yours...

> There is also evidence of domain-specific cognitive deficits that contribute to specific learning-related disabilities. For example, phonological processing difficulties have been found in children with poor reading performance, whether or not they also exhibited problems with ADHD symptoms or math, but not in children with deficits in ADHD symptoms or math only. Similarly, both with and without a reading deficit, children with ADHD symptoms exhibit significantly impaired object naming and behavioral inhibition, and math-disabled groups demonstrate visuospatial and numerical processing deficits, while those with only reading problems sometimes do not.

There's significant co-morbidity between learning disorders and ADHD, and despite dyscalculia being as common as dyslexia (~3-7% of the population) it's a lot less well-known, isn't as frequently diagnosed and there are fewer tools to help people with it. It would be very possible to have both ADHA and dyscalculia, given you used symptoms listed for both that are almost word-for-word identical with those in the paper...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7079676/

(paragraph 3 of the main discussion)

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#692

Post by inter_netuser » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 5:21 AM UTC

kragen wrote: post #597

inter_netuser wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is something called U-shaped response, with stimulants. If you are functioning at the optimal point - stimulants will only make your performance worse. You are likely sleep deprived, for whatever reason. That's all.

I don't think that's the case at all.

sleep deprivation, or deterioration of performance on U shaped curve?

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#693

Post by spiralx » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 5:41 AM UTC

tnzm wrote: post #363

colordrops wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm not. Can you be more precise in what you mean by "causative factors"? Without further context, and based on my understanding of the world, virtually anything internal or external to a person could cause them to be more or less skilled at something. It contains everything, and so seems that your statement could be interpreted that genetics and everything else in existence are one in the same.

You asked what was the difference between my statement (that genetics is not more special than other causes of being more or less skilled at something) and the statement that "all is one, separateness is an illusion". I answered that the difference between these two statements is arbitrary, which I still believe to be the case. Apologies if something else happened to you. My original comment had the purpose of questi…

> My original comment had the purpose of questioning the validity of the "nature vs nurture" distinction. It just seems like an unhelpful distinction, but then again I'm not a biologist, just a lay person who likes their concepts tidy.

The confusion is in the difference between proximal and ultimate causes, the rest of the discussion is over the ultimate cause of certain phenotypic features being down to genetics, some other mechanism or not significant at all. You've then said "all these different things are just proximate causes and [because free will doesn't exist] the ultimate cause is the laws of physics" to which people have unsurprisingly gone "what the hell does that have to do with anything?" because, well, it doesn't.

The fact that the ultimate cause of me taking a dump is "the laws of physics" doesn't mean the proximal cause wasn't me 'deciding' to go to the loo, and the fact that you can always say "the laws of physics" (or some higher power) is the cause doesn't make talking about higher level causes any less useful.

I don't believe in free will but its such a good trick that you act as though it were true almost 100% of the time, and talking about my 'decisions' as causes is useful the same as talking about 'genetic' and 'environmental' is useful. We talk about the causes of the Big Bang usefully despite time only coming into existence when the Big Bang happened :)

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#694

Post by luckylion » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 5:41 AM UTC

throwawaylinux wrote: post #662

luckylion wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The end result between nurture vs nature might be the same, but if it's all nurture, than "we can change it" and no price is too high to get to "the new man". If it's not, even the best funded policies with the best intentions can only get you so far, and inequality will remain. Not because of a conspiracy that is keeping some down while lifting others up, but because of nature. I do believe that it would be good on…

None of this seems plausible t me. Why should physical attributes matter less, and how much less exactly cross this supposed threshold between freely acknowledged and taboo on par with holocaust denial? Clearly the general idea of a "luck" element of advantage is not a problem in the slightest. And furthermore, looking into extremes, it's also perfectly clear that people are not actually against the idea that there i…

> Why should physical attributes matter less, and how much less exactly cross this supposed threshold between freely acknowledged and taboo on par with holocaust denial?

I believe they matter less because they're not a great predictor for success. You have plenty of very attractive people working the checkout at the super market, but few very smart people. At the same time, the super successful people aren't considered beautiful by most people. The same is true for essentially all other physical attributes -- having great hearing won't teleport you into the top 10% of wealth. I don't think either idea should be taboo, obviously.

Fair point about people with severe genetic disadvantages. I guess most people broadly categorize them into a different group and measure their success relative to that group ("he's doing great, he can often manage his daily chores alone"), not compared to "normal" people. It's more of a achievement vs perceived potential, I think.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#695

Post by inter_netuser » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 5:43 AM UTC

hnbad wrote: post #349

raverbashing wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> have genetic talent - they didn’t just train harder than their middle school mates who were out of breath Who knows if it was only due to genes? And more importantly, there isn't a gene that's about running faster. (sure, some genes are helpful and might get you in front - not discounting the work the athlete goes through) Getting to the podium is a mix of several characteristics: Some people might be more prone to…

Sure, there isn't a gene that makes you run faster, but no matter how hard you train, you'll have a hard time beating Michal Phelps unless you're also naturally built like Michael Phelps: https://www.biography.com/news/michael-phelp-perfect-body-sw... The point isn't that there is a "best" set of genes. The point is that there can be genetic advantages or disadvantages. Physical reality has an impact on experiential…

The US military routinely tests recruits for IQ and assigns roles appropriate to that level. They even outright reject some people for being too stupid.

Nobody seems to be up in arms about it, why?

We also already do all sorts of soft eugenics in our own lives, from assortative mating to academic scores and schools one attends, social circles that one enters because of their achievements and so on. At some point it will become a lot more quantitive, to reduce the currently large factor of luck.

Societies that refuse to take advantage of optimizations this could bring will eventually lose out, for better or worse, this is entirely inevitable.

The progress of technology is not always progressive. There is a reason most of sci-fi reads downright dystopian.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#696

Post by TFYS » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 5:51 AM UTC

bart_spoon wrote: post #640

TFYS wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You assume representative democracy is the only way to make democratic decisions. With our current technology we could make such decisions using direct democracy. Imagine a collectively owned bank with a democratic decision-making process. You'd propose your idea for a Netflix competitor, and after a period of public debate the bank invests in the ideas that people decided are worth investing in. Combine direct democ…

> Imagine a collectively owned bank with a democratic decision-making process. You'd propose your idea for a Netflix competitor, and after a period of public debate the bank invests in the ideas that people decided are worth investing in. There is no difference between what you write here and my example. Whether you call it a "collectively owned bank with a democratic decision-making process" or simply "ruling govern…

No, it's people deciding what will and won't receive funding. It's not that much different from today, where people vote with their money. The number of votes would just be the same for everyone. It could even result in better investment, since the voting process would guarantee some level of demand for the product as well.

You don't really need competition if anyone can influence the organization by making propositions, debating issues and voting. If there's a problem with the media, you can propose a fix for it. That's already much better than what we have today, where very few rich people own most of the media and therefore decide what most people think and talk about.

Even if you need competition, it can be done in such a system. There's no reason there couldn't be multiple competing collectively owned, democratic banks, newspapers, etc. Capitalism is not a requirement for markets.

You don't need everyone to vote on everything. You just need the process to be open to everyone and fully transparent. If any small group were to start abusing the process, it would immediately be visible and fixable. People would notice and start voting against the group. Mostly they would vote on things that interest and affect them. If that's not enough, you could have randomized voting duty on issues that need it.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#697

Post by inglor_cz » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 6:03 AM UTC

spiralx wrote: post #685

inglor_cz wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?)

> 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 als…

Portion size is notoriously hard to control for in freely moving people. If people self-report their foods, they are likely to make mistakes.

I know of one study only where the numbers can be trusted, and it was done on prisoners, where every single gram of food that passed their lips was accounted for. They were fed the same diets, but their weight gains varied a lot:

https://dm5migu4zj3pb.cloudfront.net/manuscripts/106000/1065...

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#698

Post by pasabagi » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 6:11 AM UTC

throwawaylinux wrote: post #679

pasabagi wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “That people from different parts of the world have wildly different distributions on many different attributes” is, as you say, obvious. Is this obvious? I can't imagine what kinds of attributes you're talking about. I think if they were significant ones (courageousness, curiosity, etc) they would probably have really profound political effects you don't see in reality.

What profound political effects do you think would probably be caused by these attributes being different?

Consider something like the role of courage in military tactics. If you had some populations who were simply less courageous than others, you'd have a different baseline for stuff like, does a phalanx work? Is a phalanx even necessary?

Even a minute difference in something like this would change the mechanics of the formation. So stuff like Alexander's globe-spanning conquests would suddenly become impossible as he hit a different population regime where his tactics don't work anymore, or the Mongols would hit some barrier where they would start losing all their battles because people weren't reacting the way they should, etc.

In reality, of course, empires like the Roman one absolutely depended on the fact that the same social systems and techniques worked just as well in modern day scotland as they worked in modern day Iraq - a legionnaire was a legionnaire, whether they came from egypt or wales, and they could and were moved around and interchanged.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#699

Post by pcrh » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 6:13 AM UTC

sfblah wrote: post #327

pcrh wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These studies are highly powered statistically. One conclusion you can definitely draw is that common variation in intelligence is not primarily caused by common genetic variation. Evidently, our genes determine our brain, and are what makes us more intelligent than other animals. But between individual humans, genetic variation contributes to only a few percent of variation.

Or variation in intelligence is genetically controlled in ways we don’t understand yet because our understanding of genetics is nascent.

No, it is quite clear that, between people, there is only a very small contribution of variation in genetics to variation in intelligence.

This is independent of understanding how genes might affect intelligence.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#700

Post by throwawaylinux » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 6:16 AM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #694

throwawaylinux wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of this seems plausible t me. Why should physical attributes matter less, and how much less exactly cross this supposed threshold between freely acknowledged and taboo on par with holocaust denial? Clearly the general idea of a "luck" element of advantage is not a problem in the slightest. And furthermore, looking into extremes, it's also perfectly clear that people are not actually against the idea that there i…

> Why should physical attributes matter less, and how much less exactly cross this supposed threshold between freely acknowledged and taboo on par with holocaust denial? I believe they matter less because they're not a great predictor for success. You have plenty of very attractive people working the checkout at the super market, but few very smart people. At the same time, the super successful people aren't consider…

> I believe they matter less because they're not a great predictor for success. You have plenty of very attractive people working the checkout at the super market, but few very smart people.

You can see whether or not they are smart, can you?

> At the same time, the super successful people aren't considered beautiful by most people. The same is true for essentially all other physical attributes -- having great hearing won't teleport you into the top 10% of wealth. I don't think either idea should be taboo, obviously.

This just all seems like complete handwaving to make observations fit the hypothesis.

What we do know for sure is that people are not at all hesitant about attributing to luck/genetics many things which affect a person's ability to contribute, create value, and earn money. Both physical and intellectual conditions, as well as circumstances of birth. So the burden of proof required to claim otherwise for specific cases has to be far higher than this.