Comparing ancient and modern genomes for cognitive ability variants
biorxiv.org
biorxiv.org
If there are racial differences, then that simply means it would be more efficient to allocate more of those funds to people in that group. (Actually, if there are racial differences, this might even be good news; the massive efforts in the USA to close the black-white difference have largely failed over the past half-century, and I have more faith in genetic engineering becoming practical than I do in another half-century of trying the same thing suddenly succeeding. Wouldn't it be great if the black-white gap was just a few genes or insufficient iodine or something? We can fix that - all it would take is money and science! Maybe not even more than a few billions, chump change! Whereas if it's structural racism...)
I think your solution cannot happen because those with money and tech, and who don't have a cultural squeamishness with the idea, will get the genetic engineering first. The ultrarich. Probably the Chinese, maybe others. Then it will be a case of making the rest of the world amenable to these enhanced people. Elites don't want chaos and nor do they want anyone to threaten their dominance. So a functioning, intelligent, but malleable mass will be controlled by an elite who have the tech. Just as today the average joe doesn't have access to nuclear weapons.
"I think your solution cannot happen because those with money and tech, and who don't have a cultural squeamishness with the idea, will get the genetic engineering first. The ultrarich."
In some scenarios, not in others. With embryo selection, the gain is small enough that it will not create new elite classes with high solidarity, and in iterated/synthesis scenarios, an elite could try but the core technologies are widespread now and the end result gametes are easily stolen and replicated (imagine trying to do nuclear arms control if every single atomic bomb was walking around, having kids, and regularly shed skin cells which could be turned into new atomic bombs).
That said, this is of course good reason to oppose regulation, as regulatory capture is common and we already see a lot of self-serving hypocritical behavior by elites.
One could see this as a rallying cry for communism "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need".
I think the left has a tacit acknowledgement that those who cannot support themselves should be supported by society.
Does the fact that a certain group is genetically predisposed to some condition mean we should discriminate against that entire group? I think the answer is obviously not.
The question of diversity gets messy if you assume that this is because everyone is equally qualified and the current state of affairs is only due to discrimination, rather than seeing it as a way to improve society-wide outcomes.
It's a messy topic since much of today's discourse is based on the idea that we are or should be equal when that is clearly not the case, but we keep the fiction going to avoid looking too closely because it is uncomfortable for everyone.
I think it should be welcome by people of all political persuasions. To explain inequality, the Right tends to assume epidemic laziness (wanton self-destructive behavior) while the Left tends to assume epidemic racism and hatred -- neither of which is particularly nice. We can still choose whether we want equality of opportunity or equality of outcomes, but we can make that choice with compassion and have a much better shot at effective policy to support it when we acknowledge the truth.
The right-wing bootstraps ideology is as absurd as the left-wing equality ideology. The Randian right-wingers don't REALLY believe you can make it anywhere, otherwise they would be happy to move to Mogadishu or Kinshasa. Or even Flint, Michagan. Just like liberal white flight (revealed preference) contradicts liberals equality dogma (stated preference).
That there are speculative and probably marginal upsides to basing policies on this premise and there are concrete and known downsides to not do this (Jim Crow laws, Eugenics programs have been largely judged as abominations rather than successes).
Which is to say whether or not different populations have different (and I mean different as in different, not linearly better or worse) cognitive abilities may be true without being actionable or useful.
The correct response is the same as for any other scientific result: Was the experiment designed correctly? Was it executed correctly? And (most importantly) has it been reproduced by other investigators?
Thus the effects are not really tiny. The direct effect of a genetic variant may be tiny, but it is associated with many genetic variants with similar effects.
This is most obvious in the Ashkenazi population, which has been so strongly selected for intelligence that it now suffers from numerous recessive problems. If you have a trait found in that population, the chances are good that you have other traits found in that population.
Child and prenatal nutrition and parasite load are much larger factors in IQ variations between population groups. Genetic variation between groups is much smaller and the effect size is very small. In practice it disappears into variation between individuals.
This is strong assumption. Malnutrition (wider concept than just calories) exists in US and there are large differences between ethnic groups.
Interestingly enough, from the same researchers:
Parasite prevalence and the distribution of intelligence among the states of the USA, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229409035_Parasite_...
>In this study, we tested the parasite-stress hypothesis for the distribution of intelligence among the USA states: the hypothesis proposes that intelligence emerges from a developmental trade-off between maximizing brain vs. immune function. From this we predicted that among the USA states where infectious disease stress was high, average intelligence would be low and where infectious disease stress was low, average intelligence would be high. As predicted, we found that the correlation between average state IQ and infectious disease stress was − 0.67 (p < 0.0001) across the 50 states. Furthermore, when controlling the effects of wealth and educational variation among states, infectious disease stress was the best predictor of average state IQ.Highlights► We compared rates of infectious disease with average IQ across USA states. ► We controlled for education and wealth. ► Infectious disease was the best predictor of average IQ.
Correlation is not Causation: You might want to look at the prevalence of infectious diseases by race according to the CDC.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/healthdisparities/africanamerica...
Edit: Insert Numbers;
Black People make up 14% of US population and
45% of the total of HIV/Aids
62% of women with HIV/Aids
55% of Gonorrhea
Chalmydia: Black Women 5.2x more likely and Black men 7.3 times more likely as white people
38% of Syphilis cases Black Men and Women over 5 times as likely as white people
37% of TB cases Black people, and 87% of all reported TB cases occurred in racial and ethnic minorities
If the states with lower IQs have a higher percentage of African Americans than the other states, they will have a higher rate of infectious diseases due to the propensity of infectious diseases among that group with respect to others.
PS: The two states with the lowest rate of infectious diseases, Nevada and West Virginia are respectivelly the 2nd and 7th lowest IQ states. #1 lowest IQ, Hawaii was deemed an outlier because of latitude and excluded from the results of the study you linked to.
http://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/2016-annual-re...
https://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-Jense...
Its worth reading and answers your question, while refuting the OP above
I suggested looking and comparing the magnitudes between different factors and putting them into order of importance.
We know that taller people have higher intelligence than shorter people on average [1]. Compare effect sizes between black and whites and tall and short white males. Now ask if the difference between ethnic groups is important or not.
[1] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_and_intelligence
ps. 90% of genetic variance in human races exists in the African continent. If we clean out all environmental factors, the "smart genes" are probably in Africa. We just need to find them and distribute them.
Counting neutral variation (the vast majority of genetic variation). You can get plenty of variation in non-coding DNA from drift without any effect on the variance in a trait. In fact, you rarely actually get effects on highly polygenic traits from drift without selection (imagine random directions chosen independently for each of the relevant alleles, and think in terms of the law of large numbers).
If you're getting this from Oded Galor or Deidre McCloskey, they're generally smart people but don't understand population genetics well.
>Studies on over 700 participants show that individuals with larger brain volumes have higher IQ scores. About two dozen studies using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure the volume of the human brain have found an overall correlation with IQ of greater than .40
>Within each race, cranial capacity correlated with IQ scores. By age 7, the Asian American children averaged an IQ of 110; the White children, 102; and the Black children 90. Because the Asian American children were the shortest in stature and the lightest in weight while the Black children were the tallest in stature and the heaviest in weight, these average race differences in brain-size/IQ relations were not due to body size.
>Overall, MRI studies show that brain size is related to IQ differences within race. Moreover, the three-way pattern of group differences in average brain size is detectable at birth. https://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-Jense...
Measurements like IQ or g are only validated by being "correlated with important social outcomes" and "correlated with job performance", uncritically accepting the current society or structure of work as natural or inevitable rather than as products of culture.
If "cognitive ability" is restated as "how likely an individual is to succeed and thrive in the dominant culture" it becomes less surprising that there are differences between different "population groups".
Essentially any evidence based on a Genome-Wide Association Study should be regarded as suspect. They use extremely simple population-genetic null models, and it's extremely rare for them to turn up novel, testable biological insights.
I honestly have no idea.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12993-chimps-outperfo...
All chimps are monarchists btw.
Anyway, my opinions are these:
* school k-12 should be free and available to all, with well taught and well compensated teachers, in facilities that are well maintained (posh facilities are pointless, but lead-free water is a must).
* Post-secondary education should span blue-collar and white-collar work and be free to all.
* Unions should be promoted and/or required for midsize and large employers.
* Strict regulations with relation to racist hiring and behaviors in the educational and job force.
The above will work to give everyone a reasonably equal starting point; if we can achieve that as a society as a stable fixedpoint, we've done well. I doubt I or my children will see that day.
I don't claim to speak for the Left, but I am a reasonable facsimile of a middle of the road Democrat in the US. I think that I rather like Churchill's definition of Liberalism from a century ago(slightly eliding the speech[1]):
* Liberalism seeks to raise up poverty.
* Liberalism would preserve private interests in the only way in which they can be safely and justly preserved, namely, by reconciling them with public right.
* Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference.
* Liberalism seeks, and shall seek more in the future, to build up a minimum standard for the mass.
It's also the case that popular analysis of population differences has historically been channeled into racial theories, which tends to get very ugly in practice. So as a non-utopian policy matter in 2017, it's best to downplay this research, because it attracts Nazis like viscera attracts flies.
[1] http://www.encyclopedia.com/politics/legal-and-political-mag...
It has never been easier to kiss your bosses ass, take an early bus home and order a pizza with your smart phone en route.