Roastoid writes a book that essentially amounts to a leftist version of "The Bell Curve", causes a copium overdose in an Amazon user who writes a 4 page 1 star review in response

|Every few years, the scant evidence for genetic determinism will be promoted and sold in book form. In 2018, it was Robert Plomin’s “Blueprint.” The latest comes from psychologist and behavior geneticist, Kathryn Paige Harden, with her new book: “The Genetic Lottery - Why DNA Matters for Social Equality.” From the title alone, one can see that she will be selling a version of genetic determinism with a heart. To her credit, in contrast to Plomin, Harden addresses the ramifications of behavioral genetics’ historical association with eugenics in some detail, but her book is otherwise similar in substance to Blueprint (despite her own negative review of Blueprint). Both books spin polygenic scores as a savior for the failing field of behavioral genetics, with the dubious suggestion that these results are “causal.”

In Plomin’s case, his fanaticism for polygenic scores could be written off as wishful thinking for a man at the end of his career, touting a perceived future of ever improving polygenic prediction. Harden, on the other hand, has had a few years to see the hype dwindle, with study after study noting the limitations of such scores.

Harden’s primary focus is what is referred to as “educational attainment,” basically a simple measurement of how far someone goes in school, viewing it as a trait with some genetic basis. In truth, this “trait” is a bit of subterfuge, serving as a proxy for intelligence, while avoiding some of the controversy surrounding genetic studies of IQ (and their association with books like Charles Murray’s, “The Bell Curve”).

Harden's writing style at times involves condescending oversimplification through analogy: “If a gene is a recipe, then your genome - all the DNA contained in all of your cells - is a large collection of recipes, an enormous cookbook.” This quaint presentation of the subject suggests that she is targeting a lay audience, but I question whether those not already familiar with this kind of research would find this book engaging and these analogies do not appear to clarify the subject in a more comprehensible manner.

Books of this nature generally have the same two issues to tackle and Harden’s is no exception. The first is to sell the scientific evidence related to claims of a genetic basis for educational attainment and other behavioral traits. The second relates to the ethical and practical implications of this research. I will address her treatment of both issues here, beginning with the latter.

As Harden notes: “When people hear ‘genes’ or ‘intelligence’ - particularly in the United States - they cannot help but hear ‘race.’” I’m not sure this is what comes to mind for me, but it’s certainly true for many of those touting these types of genetic studies, often using them as fodder for eugenic, classist and racist ideas, thinly disguised as science. Harden addresses the historical relationship between behavioral genetics and eugenics head on, but this leaves her trying to push largely hypothetical “benefits” of genetic studies, with a reframing of the ideas as egalitarian.

“What I am aiming to do in this book is re-envision the relationship between genetic science and equality… Can we imagine a new synthesis? And can this new synthesis broaden our understanding of what equality looks like and how to achieve it?”

I think that this falls flat and demonstrates a naive understanding of just what she is up against. Rather than admit that these studies feed fascistic and racist ideas, she attempts to “both-sides” the issues, focusing on leftists, for whom she appears to have some disdain, fancying herself as some kind of sensible centrist, by contrast. Case in point is her interpretation of a study related to bias towards genetic determinists:

“... a scientist who reported genetic influence on intelligence was also perceived as less objective, more motivated to prove a particular hypothesis, and more likely to hold non-egalitarian beliefs that predated their scientific research career…people who described themselves as politically liberal were particularly likely to doubt the scientist’s objectivity when she reported genetic influences on intelligence.”

Her point here is to paint the left as hopelessly biased on this subject, but despite Harden’s dubious effort to paint herself as a leftist, many individuals touting genetic determinist views also harbor racist and classist views that are hardly egalitarian. There are obvious reasons for this and it doesn’t take a leftist to distrust their motives, nor should one expect leftists to embrace a sugar-coated version of genetic determinism.

As Harden acknowledges, the field of behavioral genetics was largely founded on the backs of racist eugenicists such as Francis Galton and Karl Pearson. We still see this today, perhaps in a more attenuated form, both from scientific poseurs like Charles Murray, as well as renowned scientists, such as James Watson. Imagine expecting them to “re-envision” their view of the world. This demonstrates a real inability to read the room and, if there was any doubt about that, we already have race-oriented “scientists” embracing aspects of Harden’s book.

Nonetheless, what matters in the end is the validity of the science and the book is written under the presumption that the science is settled. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Books of this nature can’t rely solely on actual scientific evidence, because there isn’t much there. Their acceptance relies on decades of hyperbole, ingraining the psyche of society, at large. Even those having little familiarity with the subject have been exposed to enough headlines in news media suggesting genes have been “found” for intelligence, schizophrenia, personality traits or your favorite flavor of ice cream. This is bolstered by futuristic books and movies, presenting a mythology, dystopic or otherwise, of genetic deification.

The actual science is far less impressive, and for those not familiar, it essentially relies on establishing genetic “correlations,” without defining what or how these genes might influence a particular trait. The principle behind the studies is not much different than what commercial genealogy sites like Ancestry.com do, but instead of establishing ethnicity or ancestry, they correlate the genetic variants that are more common in one group than another for a particular behavioral trait, or just about anything that can be designated on a questionnaire. Then they score the total number of these correlated variants a person has for a “polygenic score,” the idea being that a higher score makes it more likely you will have the trait. This is based on the hypothesis that traits are “polygenic,” consisting of hundreds or thousands of genetic variants. It is a probabilistic assessment, with no definitive set of genetic variants that would confer a trait or explanation of how any of these variants would contribute to the trait, nor explain why many with high scores do not have the trait and many with low scores do.

In truth, applying a polygenic score for a trait isn’t a whole lot different than commercial genealogy sites assessing whether someone has genetic variation that is more common for, say, Italian or Korean people. The difference is that Ancestry.com is not absurdly claiming that these genetic variations are causing Italians to like pizza or Koreans to use chopsticks. That, however, is essentially what behavioral geneticists are trying to claim, but instead of pizza or chopsticks, Harden is focused largely on so-called “educational attainment.”

Much of the genetic variation we find in people is due to genetic drift, where populations in historically isolated parts of the world randomly acquire different genetic variants over generations, that will be more common among people in a particular region. These genetic variations generally have little or no known functional difference, but can serve as genealogy identifiers. Geography is probably the most important aspect in looking at ancestry, although individuals of different ethnicity, living in the same region might also acquire common, distinguishing variants due to marrying within their own group (a form of assortative mating). In either case, these phenomena create what is called “population stratification” and allow you to distinguish populations via their genetics.

It’s not difficult to see how a trait like educational attainment would be subject to population stratification. People of one social class will marry others in the same class and highly educated individuals will tend to marry others in that social class and push their children in that direction for successive generations. Harden is arguing that these people have, at least in part, won the genetic lottery and that the genes they have in common confer some abilities that allow them to achieve higher education over those who are more, say, blue collar. To assume this up front, in my view, is an aristocratic way of thinking.

The problem here is that you add nothing to the argument by pedantically looking at the genetic variants that are found in different social classes. Of course you will find genetic variants that are more or less frequent due to long-standing population stratification, but are you really doing anything more than correlating Italians to pizza and Koreans to chopsticks? I contend that you are not and Harden and others in the field, all highly educated, and mostly from privileged backgrounds, should be wary of doing such self-affirming research on educational attainment. Believing that people within these privileged classes have actual genetic variants that allow them to be “... smart and curious and hard-working,” in some way that confers educational attainment is blind to both common sense and the obvious realities of the society we (and the UK, where many of these studies arise) live in. Although Harden does acknowledge some of the factors leading to this kind of confounding in genetic studies, she

What the 🦆? At that point, might as well try to get it ready for publishing, rather than post it on Amazon lmao

>When you can instantly tell the person who wrote it has not a single clue about biology

Anyway, too lazy to read any of that sperging

I've discussed this elephant-in-the-room topic with a few liberals over the past few years. Without exception these conversations have been us agreeing on the nature of the problem. There is no panacea for resolving it longterm outside a few no-no ideas or UBI, which is unsustainable unless a certain no-no idea is implemented in conjunction with it.

I feel what we're going to see is an intentional slowdown in global automation, as well as our designated messengers continuously amplifying how it is a bad thing, actually. We're also going to continue to see more do-nothing jobs. These do-nothing jobs often come at a price, such as less effective healthcare and social services (by being administrative top-heavy).

I want to see that as a snappy quote.

All of it.

“I think that gay marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman.” -Arnold Schwarzenegger

Snapshots:

• reveddit.com
• archive.org
• archive.ph (click to archive)