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The Breeder's Equation

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Re: The Breeder's Equation

#31

Post by daenz »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #20

The heritability of intelligence is overhyped, and in my opinion of no practical use. It's extremely hard to find data where it is even possible to distinguish between genetic and environmental influence. That would be the studies of the kind "twins raised apart". And that already excludes the reality that those twins will probably grow up in a similar background, similar health and educational system etc. The talk a…

>The talk about heritable IQ is pointless, even dangerous, because it leads to complacency around issues around structural racism and equality in education.

Can you say more about this? Why would it lead to complacency? If there is scientific merit to some ideas like IQ heritability, don't you think we need to find a way to incorporate those ideas safely into our formulation of society, rather than suppress them as heretical?

Re: The Breeder's Equation

#32

Post by PKop »

notahacker wrote: post #17
throwvirtever wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An IQ is just a number coming out of a test. Whether or not that correlates to something useful for humanity, or even the individual being tested, is a different question. Surely the majority of useful discoveries are made by people with above-average IQs, but would juicing the numbers through eugenics really make much of a difference? How many extra Isaac Newtons would it take to make controlled nuclear fusion work?…

Not to mention the regression to the mean issue discussed in the article, and the slight problem of attracting women aware that they have a very high IQ to trade career success or other personal preferences for being the baby making machine for some billionaire's experiment. It's not like they're currently disproportionately likely to choose not to have kids because they can't afford them

>to trade career success or other personal preferences for being the baby making machine for some billionaire's experiment

Why is it assumed that this isn't a more attractive proposition compared the alternative. Certainly there would be many, if not most or all, that would be willing to make this choice.

The point you are implying is that "career success and personal goals minus children" > "making smart babies and being a mother"...where ">" can be more enjoyable or fulfilling. It's not clear that this is true. Part of "baby making" means leveraging that IQ in a productive way to raise strong, intelligent children, so it would not be going to waste.

Re: The Breeder's Equation

#33

Post by s28l »

The author is playing fast and loose with definitions here. Other sources[0][1] (that I would consider more reputable) define the breeder's equation in terms of populations, but this author focuses on arbitrary and ill-defined subsets of populations.

Crucially, the author defines R as "the response to selection", but he omits the second part: "from one generation to the next". Source [0] defines it even more clearly: "the change in the mean [of the population] over one complete generation".

Similarly, S is the difference in the measured trait among the entire population and the population that reproduces. So when the author considers "a set of parents with IQs of 120", it only fits the correct usage of the equation if we take that to mean that mean IQ of all parents in this generation is 120. If that's his argument, how is he defining the population of parents?

In my opinion, this is a wishy-washy argument that seems like a subtle way of advancing eugenics (or something similarly distasteful).

[0]: https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/the-breede... [1]: https://public.wsu.edu/~gomulki/biol519/presentations/Sjober...

Re: The Breeder's Equation

#34

Post by Gregaros »

> It also explains why the professors’ kids are a disproportionate fraction of the National Merit Finalists in a college town. […] But those kids, although smarter than average, usually aren’t as smart as their *fathers*: partly because their *mothers* typically aren’t theoretical physicists, partly because of regression towards the mean.

Wow, this guy is … not concerned with political correctness/not considering whether or not the college professors worth mentioning are guaranteed to be male.

Re: The Breeder's Equation

#35

Post by pjscott »

hirundo wrote: post #6

"And of course the breeder’s equation explains how average IQ potential is declining today, because of low fertility among highly educated women." In the Heinlein universe, the Howard Foundation runs a voluntary eugenics program by paying people with particularly long lived ancestors to mate with each other. Protagonist Lazarus Long is a product of this. The author is saying that this would work as expected, with off…

> The author is saying that this would work as expected, with offspring gaining around 50% of their parents' extra longevity.

Not for lifespan. What the author didn't mention is that this equation works for traits affected by a large number of genetic variants, each with small, roughly additive effects. Most heritable traits are like this, and if you plot the probability distribution for one, it looks like a normal distribution. Lifespan, on the other hand, is not at all normally distributed and you shouldn't expect it to work the same way as things like height.

(Regarding your proposal, another idea that would probably be more cost-effective is to find people who are already extremely smart and clone them. More details: https://fantasticanachronism.com/2021/03/23/two-paths-to-the...)

Re: The Breeder's Equation

#36

Post by rkk3 »

Gregaros wrote: post #34

> It also explains why the professors’ kids are a disproportionate fraction of the National Merit Finalists in a college town. […] But those kids, although smarter than average, usually aren’t as smart as their *fathers*: partly because their *mothers* typically aren’t theoretical physicists, partly because of regression towards the mean. Wow, this guy is … not concerned with political correctness/not considering whe…

Ironic since their department, Anthropology, is one of the most politically-correct and female academic disciplines.

Re: The Breeder's Equation

#37

Post by LogonType10 »

sokoloff wrote: post #26
bayesian_horse wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember something about studies about "twins raised apart". In my opinion, Human nature is too complicate to poke at many of these factors, and talking about genetics quickly devolves into racism and elitism.

I agree with your last, which is very unfortunate in that if we could figure a way via research to shift upward the effectiveness of cognition (for which IQ is a proxy measure), I think peoples lives overall would be improved. Some of these are interventions that we’ve already found to prevent wasting of ability (as you cite in another comment); others might be nutritional or environmental changes we could make to be…

You can't boost IQ, but you can stave off its decline with exercise. The reason why there's no incentive to do this is that no one wants smarter voters.

Re: The Breeder's Equation

#38

Post by lmilcin »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #20

The heritability of intelligence is overhyped, and in my opinion of no practical use. It's extremely hard to find data where it is even possible to distinguish between genetic and environmental influence. That would be the studies of the kind "twins raised apart". And that already excludes the reality that those twins will probably grow up in a similar background, similar health and educational system etc. The talk a…

This is dangerous view IMO. Knowledge should not be suppressed just because some people might interpret it incorrectly.

If you fear the problem is "complacency around issues around structural racism and equality in education" then why not address those problems head on rather than propose to not talk about heritable IQ?

I mean both structural racism and equality in education aren't at all difficult problems. They are only made difficult because large part of population is still effectively racist, has racist role models and has approval from government officials.

It apparently is ok for people to be racist.

If you are racist today, you can happily live with friends that have the same view and tune out the rest of the world that does not agree with you.

And as long as it is ok for people to be racist they will always find some kind of excuse for their beliefs whether it is heritable IQ or something else.

Re: The Breeder's Equation

#39

Post by LogonType10 »

rkk3 wrote: post #36
Gregaros wrote: post #34

> It also explains why the professors’ kids are a disproportionate fraction of the National Merit Finalists in a college town. […] But those kids, although smarter than average, usually aren’t as smart as their *fathers*: partly because their *mothers* typically aren’t theoretical physicists, partly because of regression towards the mean. Wow, this guy is … not concerned with political correctness/not considering whe…

Ironic since their department, Anthropology, is one of the most politically-correct and female academic disciplines.

Maybe they don't think anthropologists have high IQ.

Re: The Breeder's Equation

#40

Post by robocat »

pjscott wrote: post #35
hirundo wrote: post #6

"And of course the breeder’s equation explains how average IQ potential is declining today, because of low fertility among highly educated women." In the Heinlein universe, the Howard Foundation runs a voluntary eugenics program by paying people with particularly long lived ancestors to mate with each other. Protagonist Lazarus Long is a product of this. The author is saying that this would work as expected, with off…

> The author is saying that this would work as expected, with offspring gaining around 50% of their parents' extra longevity. Not for lifespan. What the author didn't mention is that this equation works for traits affected by a large number of genetic variants, each with small, roughly additive effects. Most heritable traits are like this, and if you plot the probability distribution for one, it looks like a normal d…

To add to your point, here is a distribution of heights: https://capitalaspower.com/2019/10/visualizing-power-law-dis... and here is a distribution of ages: https://siepr.stanford.edu/research/publications/life-expect...
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