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Comment by csomar | Hacker News Reader

I think, on the positive side, it'll make people reconsider that genetics and race affect intelligence (and maybe gender?). We are too stubborn and politically correct to discuss it. I kinda think it is true because my dog (a german shepherd) is definitively a lot smarter and dexterous than the other "normal" dogs. Hopefully, we'll be able to inject the intelligence DNA and everyone can get a fair share of intelligence.

> He said he doesn’t understand how RNA, which works on a time scale of minutes to hours, could be causing memory recall that is almost instantaneous, or how RNA could connect numerous parts of the brain, like the auditory and visual systems, that are involved in more complex memories.

I was puzzled by that too. Also, it is not like they go pick a fork and select the RNA. I wonder if they "picked up" something else along the way?

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> I think, on the positive side, it'll make people reconsider that genetics and race affect intelligence

I’m wondering why people dig at this so much, what is the answer you are looking for? To me the reason it’s not “politically correct” is because it comes off like the answer you want is for whatever race you believe yourself to be, to be superior to other races in a fundamental way, which would justify subjugating them.

There’s seems to be quite a bit of research done around genetics and intelligence. But every definition of race I’ve seen is either an ill-defined regional genetic stereotype or a description of physical appearance.

Now if some genes are associated with high intelligence or happiness or conscientiousness or empathy, and you want to engineer your children to have those genes, that’s understandable, if an ethical minefield. It also has nothing to with race.

Isn't it likely that training has a significant effect on the apparent "intelligence" of different dogs?

No. The german shepherd picks up very fast comparing to other dogs. It also has dexterity. My dog figured out how to open various door by just watching us come and go. The opening mechanism required some dexterity and manipulation. No other dogs did that before.

> it'll make people reconsider that genetics

Yes,

> and race affect intelligence

no.

To clarify: it’s extremely well established that genetics strongly affects intelligence [1]. Nobody in the field is denying (or ignoring) this. It’s just hard to exploit at the moment. But “race” is a different matter, and other people have written eloquently (e.g. [2]) about it so I won’t rehash the argument.

As a tl;dr: the social construct we call “race” has no relationship with genetic variability in humans. If somebody tells you otherwise, they don’t understand genetics. To put it simply, the labels “Black”, “Caucasian” or “Asian” don’t corresponds to our evolutionary heritage. Actual races (if we were to define them) would look something like “Bantu”, “Yoruba”, 10 more African races, and “pretty much all the rest” (see e.g. [3]).

Contrary to the frequent suggestion that science ignores race due to “political correctness”, this simply isn’t true (have you met scientists? they’re not generally known for being politically correct). Science is aware of race, but it’s an unhelpful concept for modern research.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ [2] https://www.salon.com/2017/10/18/how-genetics-undermines-sci... [3] http://www.pnas.org/content/107/2/786

https://stonetoss.com/comic/wagging-the-dog/

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