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Comment by planetguy | Hacker News Reader

Surely genetics plays a huge role, one that's ignored in this article.

Does it now? Cite your sources, please.

This shouldn't be in the least bit controversial; it's well known that a great many human characteristics are extremely heritable, and it would be absolutely shocking if none of these characteristics turned out to be helpful or harmful in becoming rich or poor.

But since you want sources, here we go:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21826061 "Genome-wide association studies establish that human intelligence is highly heritable and polygenic."

The other half, that intelligence is correlated with income, should be fairly obvious from everyday experience, but nonetheless here's a nice graph

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yzQUAtWS_U4/TZYCh68KW8I/AAAAAAAAAd...

Next up I will provide citations for the fact that the sky is blue, since we seem to be on a prove-the-bloody-obvious kick today:

"Human color vision and the unsaturated blue color of the daytime sky", Glenn S. Smith, American Journal of Physics, Volume 73, Issue 7, pp. 590-597 (2005).

Next up I will provide citations for the fact that the sky is blue, since we seem to be on a prove-the-bloody-obvious kick today...

You can, and should, make your point without being so insulting and demeaning. We can do better than this.

it's well known that a great many human characteristics are extremely heritable

Methinks you are not completely familiar with what "extremely heritable" really implies in studies of human behavioral genetics. (I attribute this to a knowledge gap, as I have generally found your other comments about natural science to be highly reliable, if they are close to the field you work in.) I am blessed with the opportunity to attend the weekly behavioral genetics seminar ("journal club") at my alma mater university each week during the school year, and from the seminar I have learned about professional articles that dispel common misconceptions about human behavioral genetics.

Turkheimer, E. (2012). Genome wide association studies of behavior are social science. In K. S. Plaisance & T.A.C. Reydon (Eds.) Philosophy of Behavioral Biology (pp. 43-64). New York, NY: Springer.

http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Turkheimer%20GWAS%...

"If the history of empirical psychology has taught researchers anything, it is that correlations between causally distant variables cannot be counted on to lead to coherent etiological models."

Johnson, W., Turkheimer, E., Gottesman, I. I., & Bouchard, T. J. (2009). Beyond heritability: Twin studies in behavioral research. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18, 217-220. [I am personally acquainted with three of the four co-authors of this paper, one of whom regularly exchanges links with me by email.]

http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20O...

"Moreover, even highly heritable traits can be strongly manipulated by the environment, so heritability has little if anything to do with controllability. For example, height is on the order of 90% heritable, yet North and South Koreans, who come from the same genetic background, presently differ in average height by a full 6 inches (Pak, 2004; Schwekendiek, 2008)."

Turkheimer, E. (2008, Spring). A better way to use twins for developmental research. LIFE Newsletter, 2, 1-5.

http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20O...

"Unfortunately, that fundamental intuition is wrong. Heritability isn’t an index of how genetic a trait is. A great deal of time has been wasted in the effort of measuring the heritability of traits in the false expectation that somehow the genetic nature of psychological phenomena would be revealed. There are many reasons for making this strong statement, but the most important of them harkens back to the description of heritability as an effect size."

To sum up, individual human differences in poverty (on a relative basis, within any one society) probably have something to do with individual human differences in the genes shuffled into each person at conception, but those differences neither fix an absolute level of poverty nor fix a stable rank-ordering of relative poverty. Other factors that are properly called "environmental," both at the societal and individual level of analysis, can and do overcome the odds influenced by individual genomes.

A link I just discovered yesterday

http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/Fryer_R...

leads to a LONG, detailed article about reasonable social policies that may do much to alleviate poverty in the United States.

Thanks, these are great reads.

Excellent reply, reading through a couple of the links.

Comments like these remind me of HN of the past.

In academic circles it is not controversial at all. Outside of academia, people will always resist these facts.

However, keep in mind that this is one part of the puzzle, and always explicitly note that when talking about this subject in public to minimize negative reactions.

It is extremely controversial in academic circles. Since you provide no citation let me provide one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve#Criticisms

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_caus...

What does intelligence have to do with education? Specifically, why should ex-cons etc. change their abilities partway through their lives if the abilities were genetically determined?

Note that correlations between populations are not transitive like that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy

That is indeed true, and I thought about putting in a note about that in my original comment, but... c'mon folks, I don't think there can be any serious doubt about the idea that some people are born stupid, and that stupid people are more likely to be poor. Can there? Is this a concept which people genuinely doubt?

Likewise, some people are born ugly, and ugly people are more likely to be poor, and why didn't TFA mention all the research on this?

Contra-point: the rich have more resources to invest in beauty.

Contra-point: but surely there are some beautiful poor people, denied the opportunity to maintain, develop and leverage their beauty for material gain. What of them, the deserving poor?

Contra-point: it's not just good genes, it takes hard work too, with proper diet, exercise, plenty of sleep and good grooming. I deserve my success, I earned it.

Contra-point: do beautiful parents necessarily have beautiful children, and vice-versa? I know this girl, she's really hot, but her sister is such a dog....

Wow, two distint populations correlations used to conclude heredity causes/affects poorness. Where to even start on why that's poor reasoning.

What would be the point? It's not an issue we're equipped to address, so what good would come from dwelling on the topic, even discounting the risk of muddying the author's point with divisive claims?

Genetics is a red herring, but so are most discussions about "social" causes. Social is just the new genetic. More often than not, the discussion goes down the same slippery slope of blame-the-victim reasoning to rationalize the status quo.

It makes all the difference in the world. If people are poor because that's the best they're genetically equipped to do, then there's not much we can do about it.

Look at pigeons. They eat out of garbage cans. They die within a few years. They get run over by cars rather a lot. But we don't really worry about this, because they're just fucking pigeons.

if that's the best they're genetically equipped to do

Gosh I'd be ashamed to make such an argument. It's a) incredibly loaded, and b) carries incredible risk in the event that someone takes it to heart and actually starts acting along those lines. Though perhaps you are just not used to your words having any force, and have yet to learn circumspection.

And I sense a certain hubris: "I am not a pigeon." Well, so you think.

Surely? Any sources?

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