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Study of pet dogs shows breed does not predict behaviour

nature.com

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Re: Study of pet dogs shows breed does not predict behaviour

#131

Post by astrange »

barry-cotter wrote: post #76
TameAntelope wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that people believe this demonstrates an egregious misunderstanding of how genetics works. People have never been "bred" in any meaningful sense (e.g. for a long enough or in a consistently isolated way for selection to be relevant) in human history.

> a consistently isolated way The San diverged from the rest of humanity ~200,000 years ago. Australian Aboriginals ~40,000 years ago. Amerindians ~12,000 years ago. No one’s been breeding humans but there’s been plenty of reproductive isolation. Enough that differences in selection pressures could easily lead to differences in traits. For a visible example 5,000 years ago there were no populations that looked like S…

Skin color is a useful adaptation to getting enough Vitamin D and folate but predicts approximately nothing else about you or your genes, or how related you are to people with different skin color. A single generation more of population mixing and you can have a direct sibling with a completely different appearance.

Re: Study of pet dogs shows breed does not predict behaviour

#132

Post by TameAntelope »

User23 wrote: post #126
TameAntelope wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not an example of a bottleneck, nor is it an example of a genetic adaptation occurring recently, as both happened more than ten thousand years ago. And none of this has anything whatsoever to do with the cultural concept of race. There are people who are not "Tibetans" who have this genetic adaptation, and there are "Tibetans" who do not have this genetic adaptation. Further, the pairing of this genetic trait…

Please stop violating the HN guidelines. I get that you're emotional about the subject and have a religious zeal for it, but that's no excuse for name-calling. There is no evidence that anyone you're replying to is writing in bad faith. They may be wrong, although you've failed to show that in any way that satisfies intellectual curiosity, but that doesn't justify personal attacks and slimy rhetoric[1]. [1] http://co…

It's not your job to police Hacker News. If I've violated a rule, that's up to the moderators of this site to police, not you.

You are a user, same as me. I'd even argue attempting to enforce the rules as a user is a violation of those very same rules.

I believe the people I'm talking to right now are supporting racist ideas and policies, and that makes those people, definitionally, racists. Including you! I apply no moral judgement to that term here; if you do not want to be called a racist, do not support ideas and policies that are racist.

Re: Study of pet dogs shows breed does not predict behaviour

#133

Post by barry-cotter »

TameAntelope wrote: post #123
barry-cotter wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that there have always been people who looked like Swedes in Sweden? Because from my reading of the literature 5,000 years ago there people living there had blue eyes but dark hair and a complexion we’d associate with Mediterranean peoples. Most dog breeds were created in less than 150 years. Call it 150 generations. 5,000 years is 200 generations at 25 years per generation. Enough time to change quite…

There is no such thing as a genetic "Swede". Literally every trait you could name is neither exclusive on its own or in any particular combination with Swedish people. And no, humans were not bred like dogs, so your math is both offensive and completely useless. At this point I'm beginning to think you're being intentionally hateful.

> humans were not bred like dogs

That the selection pressures on dogs were due to humans performing artificial selection and those on humans due to the environment does not mean that they weren’t both selection pressures. Thus brown ancestors to the very pale Swedes.

Re: Study of pet dogs shows breed does not predict behaviour

#134

Post by TameAntelope »

barry-cotter wrote: post #133
TameAntelope wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing as a genetic "Swede". Literally every trait you could name is neither exclusive on its own or in any particular combination with Swedish people. And no, humans were not bred like dogs, so your math is both offensive and completely useless. At this point I'm beginning to think you're being intentionally hateful.

> humans were not bred like dogs That the selection pressures on dogs were due to humans performing artificial selection and those on humans due to the environment does not mean that they weren’t both selection pressures. Thus brown ancestors to the very pale Swedes.

There were no meaningfully powerful selection pressures on Swedes, such as the pressures we applied to dogs, not in the time period you've specified.

Please stop spouting racist ideas, these were debunked thoroughly in the 1910s by Franz Boas and then over and over again by his students.

Re: Study of pet dogs shows breed does not predict behaviour

#135

Post by giantg2 »

defen wrote: post #47
tkahnoski wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots more details from the authors on twitter. https://twitter.com/eenork/status/1520450288095797251

The author says "We found no support for policies targeting particular breeds" [1] which is completely absurd even if you postulate that their study's results were even stronger than they are. Imagine that their study found zero correlation between breeds and behavior. Even if that were the case, the outcomes of that behavior are wildly different. Some breeds will bite you and not even break skin. Some breeds will bi…

"Is there anyone here who would let their 6 year old child play, unsupervised, with a random pit bull? How about a random chihuahua?"

Neither - they shouldn't be unsupervised with "random" dogs.

Re: Study of pet dogs shows breed does not predict behaviour

#136

Post by ensan »

randomblast wrote: post #102
0x737368 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sub has stickies with pretty convincing evidence of the breed being dangerous. The posts by users mostly seem to be either news stories of someone getting attacked by pitbulls, users sharing their frustrations related to pitbulls and/or their owners, and a few social media screenshots where users claim that the way the dogs' owners behavior is unsafe. Even if some users comment that the dog is dangerous based on…

Correlation is not causation. There could be plenty of reasons why pitbulls feature highly in the dog attack stats (severity making attacks more noteworthy, type of owner increasing likelihood, stigma causing human behavioural changes making a self-fulfilling prophecy). There is no evidence that genetics is a direct cause of dangerous behaviour.

"There could be plenty of reasons why pitbulls feature highly in the dog attack stats (severity making attacks more noteworthy, type of owner increasing likelihood"

Well, the severity of their attacks is essentially a results of their genetics. As for the type of owner, it the same logic used against gun control, saying that they pose no danger if the owner is responsible.

Whatever the combination of factors, the end result on a large scale point to pitbulls as the most dangerous breed of dog to humans and banning them should be a no-brainer.

Re: Study of pet dogs shows breed does not predict behaviour

#137

Post by barry-cotter »

astrange wrote: post #131
barry-cotter wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a consistently isolated way The San diverged from the rest of humanity ~200,000 years ago. Australian Aboriginals ~40,000 years ago. Amerindians ~12,000 years ago. No one’s been breeding humans but there’s been plenty of reproductive isolation. Enough that differences in selection pressures could easily lead to differences in traits. For a visible example 5,000 years ago there were no populations that looked like S…

Skin color is a useful adaptation to getting enough Vitamin D and folate but predicts approximately nothing else about you or your genes, or how related you are to people with different skin color. A single generation more of population mixing and you can have a direct sibling with a completely different appearance.

All that is true. How does it relate to the possibility or not of large differences between human populations? Interbreeding will reduce variation extremely quickly but we know reproductive isolation was very high between continents for a very long time. Even individual villages in India have jatis that have been living next to each other for centuries that haven’t interbred for over 1,000 years.

Re: Study of pet dogs shows breed does not predict behaviour

#138

Post by User23 »

barry-cotter wrote: post #133
TameAntelope wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing as a genetic "Swede". Literally every trait you could name is neither exclusive on its own or in any particular combination with Swedish people. And no, humans were not bred like dogs, so your math is both offensive and completely useless. At this point I'm beginning to think you're being intentionally hateful.

> humans were not bred like dogs That the selection pressures on dogs were due to humans performing artificial selection and those on humans due to the environment does not mean that they weren’t both selection pressures. Thus brown ancestors to the very pale Swedes.

Many, if not most, human populations spent the majority of their existence with some kind of arranged marriage system. I wouldn't say "bred like dogs" because it's insulting, but human mating and procreation isn't remotely random. This is true even in societies that no longer practice arranged marriages.

Re: Study of pet dogs shows breed does not predict behaviour

#139

Post by barry-cotter »

TameAntelope wrote: post #124
barry-cotter wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tibetans and Andeans both have adaptations for living at high altitudes. The Tibetan ones are better because they come from Denisovans, predating the existence of modern humans. There’s been massive positive selection on lactose persistence. 5,000 years ago no human adults could digest lactase. The differences in diabetes among human populations track closely with length of time they have been using agriculture.

That is not an example of a bottleneck, nor is it an example of a genetic adaptation occurring recently, as both happened more than ten thousand years ago. And none of this has anything whatsoever to do with the cultural concept of race. There are people who are not "Tibetans" who have this genetic adaptation, and there are "Tibetans" who do not have this genetic adaptation. Further, the pairing of this genetic trait…

> And none of this has anything whatsoever to do with the cultural concept of race.

Quite true. Race is a useless and imprecise term and it’s a pity you felt the need to start talking about it. The clustering of traits among human ancestry population groups and the reasons for that don’t need that baggage.

Re: Study of pet dogs shows breed does not predict behaviour

#140

Post by TameAntelope »

User23 wrote: post #138
barry-cotter wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> humans were not bred like dogs That the selection pressures on dogs were due to humans performing artificial selection and those on humans due to the environment does not mean that they weren’t both selection pressures. Thus brown ancestors to the very pale Swedes.

Many, if not most, human populations spent the majority of their existence with some kind of arranged marriage system. I wouldn't say "bred like dogs" because it's insulting, but human mating and procreation isn't remotely random. This is true even in societies that no longer practice arranged marriages.

This is so completely false it borders on offensive.

You are speaking about sensitive matters you know very little.

People were never "bred", arranged marriages were never genetically consistent across even one generation, let alone many, and your continued ignorant speculation aligns disturbingly well with how eugenicists described human evolution through the early 20th century.

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