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Comment by xamuel | Hacker News Reader

That's a really interesting way of looking at things. How do you reconcile that with the notion of Darwinian evolution? Is it not true that individual organisms are born with small mutations which make them more or less suitable for an environment, and that over long time periods, the ones who are more suitable for an environment will flourish in that environment? Are you suggesting the individual could reverse a detrimental inherited mutation in his own lifetime (as opposed to the lifetime of his distant descendants), if properly nurtured?

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This position hinges on the giant assumption that "genetic mutations" are effectively the only important factor in one's life outcomes.

It's a point of view I'm thoroughly familiar with as I've read/listened to plenty of material by Richard Dawkins et al, and spent a solid few years of my life subscribing to that deterministic/materialistic worldview.

But, both for reasons of curiosity and personal need, it's a worldview I ended up researching deeply enough to progress beyond, and it turns out there's plenty of evidence that factors beyond one's genetic code are at least as important, and quite possibly vastly more so.

Most importantly: genetic expression (epigenetics), which we already know can change during one's lifetime, and may be able to be changed far more significantly/rapidly, and have a far greater propensity to change one's life outcomes, than has been previously accepted.

> Are you suggesting the individual could reverse a detrimental inherited mutation in his own lifetime (as opposed to the lifetime of his distant descendants), if properly nurtured?

I don't suggest that but I think it's far less important than you assume.

However I do suggest that a person can reverse a detrimental genetic expression if properly nurtured.

I've spent about the last 8 years putting this hypothesis to the test and so far have been successful in overcoming multiple debilitating health conditions and dramatically improving my capabilities and outcomes in my professional and personal life.

And yes, I'm fully cognisant that I am an n=1 self-evaluated anecdote, so my case is at-best suggestive, not conclusive.

But I'm not alone in applying these theories and having these kinds of outcomes, and there is a growing body of scientific theory and research to provide a basis for these experiences/observations.

> How do you reconcile that with the notion of Darwinian evolution? Is it not true that individual organisms are born with small mutations which make them more or less suitable for an environment, and that over long time periods, the ones who are more suitable for an environment will flourish in that environment?

Very true. Nothing has changed about the facts of natural selection in biology. I'm not talking about biology, though, I'm talking about sociology, and I don't think the mechanisms that act on biology have much of anything to do with sociology. For example, we can demonstrate that natural selection can be totally annihilated by, for example, keeping people with birth defects alive with medicine. We can even develop entire industries around keeping these people "equal." One of these industries is Optometry.

> Are you suggesting the individual could reverse a detrimental inherited mutation in his own lifetime (as opposed to the lifetime of his distant descendants), if properly nurtured?

Since we are talking about sociology, the "mutation" is a result of society, not of biology (or anything to do with the individual, really), in which case yes, any aspect caused sociologically can be reversed/changed/altered sociologically.

People born poor and thus lacking education can be given education, which both solves the problem for new "people born poor" while also "reversing" the detrimental effects of a lacking education in existent individuals (through nurturing them).

I believe this method of nurturing or uplifting is not only morally superior to the concept of social darwinism (and I am happy to defend this point moralistically), but it is also better by all other traditional measures of society "success" - average happiness, productivity, technological advancement.

Thanks for the answer. I think you touch on something with the Optometry example, and that example helped me to articulate a proto-idea I've been trying to get a finger on and haven't been able to grasp until now.

To avoid unnecessary anguish, pretend there's a country called Foo.

Natives of Foo are much less intelligent than the average human, and racists point to them as an example validating their racism. But imagine what's really going on is, the natives of Foo are all genetically disposed to have terrible sleep apnea, and that's what's causing their reduced intelligence.

If we ask "Why on earth are natives of Foo less intelligent?", then we can follow that thread and eventually realize it's because they all have sleep apnea. Then we can give them CPAP machines and fix the problem.

But if we dogmatically put our fingers in our ears and scream "everyone is equal!", then we have no hope of sorting the mess out. It would be as ludicrous as condemning optometry because we're afraid of hurting the feelings of people born with poor eyes.

Thanks for the comments about sociology vs. biology. Pragmatically speaking, we need to figure out how we can change our society to legitimately incentivize this "uplifting" (it isn't free). Our current tactic seems to be to brainwash people about magic pixie dust qualities of diversity. This doesn't do anybody any favors, because the invisible hand of the market doesn't care about propaganda. Push it far enough and the whole job market will be made of shell company contracting agencies whose sole purpose is to take on "diversity liability".

I understand the point you're making - that we must not be afraid to talk about genetic differences between people.

While I respect the perspective, there's a couple critical "implementation issues":

1. I've never heard of a case like you used in your example, of everyone from an island having sleep apnea which leads to lower IQ. The obstacles are that we've never seen a universal population wide disease like that (before you bring up sickle cell or something hold on), we've never seen such a disease consistently lead to "employable" side effects (say, intelligence or charisma or something), and we've just never had such a homogeneous population anyway.

2. The CPAP issue is open to literally anyone, and so what's the point in trying to figure out whether a given population is genetically predisposed to sleep apnea? Just continue to treat at an individual level (by providing universal access to healthcare)

It boils down to: separating populations to find cause of "issue" doesn't actually generate any useful information but does create fantastic weapons for racists. Instead, just persuing socially liberal policies such as universal education and healthcare do a great job of evening the scales for us.

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