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Comment by quantumofmalice | Hacker News Reader

Eugenics has a bad name, but it is scientifically valid. We now know that genetics play a huge role in life outcomes (e.g. adult IQ appears to be 70-80% heritable) and, for better or for worse, the eugenicists were right, even if their methods were morally wrong.

We don't focus enough on positive eugenics: getting smart, non-violent and conscientious people to have large families. Right now we do the opposite: smart folks feel all sorts of pressures to have a small or no family due to careers, the expense of elite schooling, the environment, etc. The opening scene of Idiocracy nailed it.

It is reasonable to look at soft negative eugenics, such as offering free, voluntary sterilization for reduction of prison sentences for violent crimes, but getting smart folks to have more kids is far more important.

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The methods weren't "just" morally wrong but a bunch of hokum rationalized as science.

Just like yours.

Heritability does not mean heredity. Even taste is heritable. Results of the GWAS crowd are so bad that Plomin recently truned to praising his levels of signal for being not worse than social sciences. This is astounding from someone previously selling behavioral genetics as a rigorous science up there with actual genetics.

Don't even get me started on IQ https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2018/06/04/low-iq-scores-p...

That is simply emotional nonsense, on par with young earth creationism. The heritability and heredity of intelligence, for example, has been established beyond all reasonable doubt and no one in the intelligence research arena disputes it.

I appreciate the moral sentiment, and to an extent I even feel it myself, but being a denialist is not an answer. We need sane, sober and humane discussions about public policy dealing with the increasingly uncomfortable results coming from the genetic research community.

Look at the definition, there is no possible way you can equate heredity with heritability unless you can't math, sorry. There's no moral sentiment to appreciate in understanding this definition, just education.

Denialism of the variance it isn't either, the issue is it's fallacious reification. That would be a concern for explanatory power and drawing conclusions even if actual statistical research into these very poorly understood mechanisms weren't so spurious on mathematical level (which was my initial interest).

But IQ performance likely predicts success in data science, and not only that, it does predict success in a variety of subjects. I'm also with the post on the bottom -- I don't think Lior believes in his post. I interpret this as humble-bragging. There's enough silliness in this post that permits the author to wiggle away; I'm sure the author already agrees that it's unfair to pick two highly prejudicial examples, or reduce causal modelling down to Occam's razor.

Or perhaps it's a jab at subtle misconceptions on causal learning and empiricism. Either way it's not meant to be taken seriously at face value.

But do get started on IQ.

I don't think Lior believes in his post

You may even think he didn't in fact wrote it. Just before you redefine what it means to think, don't tell anyone.

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