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Childhood Autism and Assortative Mating

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Re: Childhood Autism and Assortative Mating

#11
post #8

Interesting, but correlation does not imply causation. Yet, unfortunately, that is the first response many will have to reading this.

"Correlation does not imply causation" is not a meaningful reaction to an article like this. Yet, unfortunately, that is the first response many will have to reading this.

This is more about a model than a study, and the model involves causation. Data fitting the model, therefore, implies causation! Not, of course, "implies" in the strict logical sense; it's possible that there is another model that lacks the causal link and also fits the data. But rather, "implies" in the sense that it's reasonably strong evidence - the more confident we are in the model, the more confident we are that there is causation involved.

Re: Childhood Autism and Assortative Mating

#13
post #8

Interesting, but correlation does not imply causation. Yet, unfortunately, that is the first response many will have to reading this.

No, but correlation correlates with causation because causation causes correlation. Correlation between A and doesn't tell you if its (A->B) or (B->A) or (C->A and C->B)[1]. And robust correlation pretty much does imply that causation is happening somewhere. So then you have to look at the plausibility of each of those to try to figure out which it is. And since (assortative mating) -> (reinforced traits) has a clear and reasonable mechanism it has a serious leg up here.

[1] Interestingly (A->C and B->C) doesn't cause correlation between A and B despite causing correlation between A and C and B and C. Which is how you can figure out causation from enough correlation datapoints.

Re: Childhood Autism and Assortative Mating

#14

Interesting that a highly transient society has managed to apparently reduce genetic diversity to an observable degree in such a short span of time. Having recently rewatched Gattaca and falling in the Asperger range of ASD, I can't help but wonder if studies of this nature will nudge us closer to passive forms of eugenics. We're certainly within the realm of feasibility at this point...

Wait, isn't this an example of a genetic diversity increase?

Re: Childhood Autism and Assortative Mating

#15
Relevant to this issue is that the more brain you devote to analytic thinking, the less you have for empathetic thinking, according to the findings described here: Empathy Represses Analytic Thought, and Vice Versa: Brain Physiology Limits Simultaneous Use of Both Networks http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121030161416.ht...

Re: Childhood Autism and Assortative Mating

#16
Sometime in the future it will become clear that one of the causes of autism is traumatic experiences during labor and within the first few weeks of life. And the reason why boys are 4 times more likely than girls to be autistic is because of the trauma caused by circumcision.

I can't point at any scientific studies. This is purely speculation based on years of research and observation on my end. I don't have autistic children, but I know people who do.

Re: Childhood Autism and Assortative Mating

#17
post #8

Interesting, but correlation does not imply causation. Yet, unfortunately, that is the first response many will have to reading this.

No, but correlation correlates with causation because causation causes correlation. Correlation between A and doesn't tell you if its (A->B) or (B->A) or (C->A and C->B)[1]. And robust correlation pretty much does imply that causation is happening somewhere. So then you have to look at the plausibility of each of those to try to figure out which it is. And since (assortative mating) -> (reinforced traits) has a clear…

> No, but correlation correlates with causation because causation causes correlation.

Ow. Correct, but ow.

Re: Childhood Autism and Assortative Mating

#18

Interesting that a highly transient society has managed to apparently reduce genetic diversity to an observable degree in such a short span of time. Having recently rewatched Gattaca and falling in the Asperger range of ASD, I can't help but wonder if studies of this nature will nudge us closer to passive forms of eugenics. We're certainly within the realm of feasibility at this point...

Wait, isn't this an example of a genetic diversity increase?

I will freely admit that most of what I attempted to read beyond the first few pages was over my head (and certainly my attention span), but the gist of my interpretation would be that humans are increasingly mating with sameness in mind, or as I will henceforth (egotastically--not a typo) call "self-identifying physiopsychological compatibility".

Re: Childhood Autism and Assortative Mating

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, isn't this an example of a genetic diversity increase?

I will freely admit that most of what I attempted to read beyond the first few pages was over my head (and certainly my attention span), but the gist of my interpretation would be that humans are increasingly mating with sameness in mind, or as I will henceforth (egotastically--not a typo) call "self-identifying physiopsychological compatibility".

But increased mating with sameness in mind causes increased variability in phenotype. For example heights in the US span a larger range now.

Re: Childhood Autism and Assortative Mating

#20
What jumps out immediately at me as I read this paper is that the author is not a behavioral geneticist, but an economist,

http://nymag.com/news/media/51015/index3.html

and most of the people he credits for helping him on the paper are other economists. He cites psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen a lot, but Baron-Cohen's view of autism is not yet the mainstream view among autism researchers.

Other economists are examining behavior genetics issues, and one group of economists has published a paper updating their fellow social scientists on issues of human behavorial genetics that are little understood among most social scientists.

Chabris, C. F., Hebert, B. M., Benjamin, D. J., Beauchamp, J., Cesarini, D., van der Loos, M., ... & Laibson, D. (2012). Most reported genetic associations with general intelligence are probably false positives. Psychological Science.

http://coglab.wjh.harvard.edu/~cfc/Chabris2012a-FalsePositiv...

"At the time most of the results we attempted to replicate were obtained, candidate-gene studies of complex traits were commonplace in medical genetics research. Such studies are now rarely published in leading journals. Our results add IQ to the list of phenotypes that must be approached with great caution when considering published molecular genetic associations. In our view, excitement over the value of behavioral and molecular genetic studies in the social sciences should be tempered—as it has been in the medical sciences—by a recognition that, for complex phenotypes, individual common genetic variants of the sort assayed by SNP microarrays are likely to have very small effects.

"Associations of candidate genes with psychological traits and other traits studied in the social sciences should be viewed as tentative until they have been replicated in multiple large samples. Failing to exercise such caution may hamper scientific progress by allowing for the proliferation of potentially false results, which may then influence the research agendas of scientists who do not realize that the associations they take as a starting point for their efforts may not be real. And the dissemination of false results to the public may lead to incorrect perceptions about the state of knowledge in the field, especially knowledge concerning genetic variants that have been described as 'genes for' traits on the basis of unintentionally inflated estimates of effect size and statistical significance."

So my caution here would be that an unpublished working paper like this (a common form of preliminary sharing of speculative results in the discipline of economics) is very unlikely to be the definitive word on this interesting topic.

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