'Warrior Gene' Linked To Gang Membership, Weapon Use | Hacker News Reader

'Warrior Gene' Linked To Gang Membership, Weapon Use

sciencedaily.com

22 pointsamichail34 comments

Just as computers and the internet have caused all sorts of problems with existing laws, so too will genetics.

In both cases, there is no solution in sight.

A solution would be to allow violence in a controlled environment, rather than suppress it completely.

Boys like to fight. Instead of denying it, why not nurture it in a responsible manner? Get the angry teenage kids out of the cities and suburbs and give them a real challenge. Martial arts, full-contact, hiking, rock-climbing, white-water rafting. Whatever works to keep them busy and physically tired.

Most kids don't like to learn. Only a very few teenage boys can be entertained with math and programming puzzles. But if you give the majority of teenage boys some macho stuff to do, they will most likely embrace the challenge.

I can't remember where I read it now, but there was a very well reasoned argument positing that this is essentially why we have sports. A sport is a means of venting primal violent and competitive urges in a way that's controlled and (usually) not harmful to civilized society, so they claimed. This violent expression works directly for those playing and vicariously for those watching.

Providing an outlet for it might be pretty much the same thing as encouraging it.

Now, if you could reliably identify kids who needed the outlet and have them do it, but leave the rest of us alone, that would be fine. But I shudder to think how I would have turned out if I was subjected to the kind of thing you're proposing. I was a pretty impressionable kid.

Even though I grew up in the 1980s, I still enjoyed a rather Tom Sawyer kind of lifestyle which most kids can't enjoy anymore. Fighting at school was routine. Never got seriously hurt because the fights were outlets, and we had no desire to truly harm each other. I learned how to shoot and hunt from my uncle who's the only member of my family to have served in the military. I spent my teens doing martial arts and fighting full-contact with guys twice my age.

I was also a pretty impressionable kid, but I think this kind of martial training was educational. I have not become a Marine or anything. Instead, I became a grad student with a burning passion for differential geometry and mathematical physics ;-)

It may happen that, in some cases, providing an outlet is the same as encouraging. In my case, it was a wonderful way of spending my youth.

You've just described the Boy Scouts, in many respects.

I was thinking of the boy scouts on steroids, so to say. The boy scouts are too well-behaved. A little bit of boot-camp atmosphere would be interesting.

Well, there's the armed forces, but the consequences are not so pretty.

Enlisting is a hell of a lot better option than gang-banging.

I wholeheartedly agree.

The armed forces are for kids older than 18. I think 13-18 y.o. teenage boys with too much testosterone could use a sort of "boot-camp lite" thing. Instead of shooting weapons, they could focus on less deadly stuff which is equally macho. Say, survival training, martial arts, extreme sports, etc.

This would probably never work in Europe because it would bring back memories of Hitler's youth. I am totally pro-freedom and anti-fascism, but I think that leaving teenage boys bored in the cities and suburbs with nothing to do is dangerous. The amount of money spent on teaching them how to fight, rock-climb, whatever, would perhaps be saved in less prisons and criminality.

Giving a teenage boy something challenging to do can be a huge self-confidence booster. Moreover, it can allow him to use his aggressiveness in a productive manner.

> Instead of shooting weapons

Why not weapons?

The Rochester Youth Study, one of the longest study of youth behavior, found that who kids learn to use weapons matters from a lot. Kids who learn from parents and authority figures are far less likely to use them criminally than kids who learn from other kids.

This didn't effect didn't translate to less criminality in general - kids who learned about guns from parents were just as likely to engage in criminal activity, they just didn't use guns.

Er, but are they controlling for other environmental risk factors? In other words, I would guess that most kids from the suburbs learn to use weapons from authority figures- but they were probably never going to fall on the wrong side of the law anyhow.

It'd be straight out of Lord of the Flies without some sort of authority figure.

I generally think it is a great idea though, particularly about throwing them out into wilderness for survival training and martial arts.

Going only by my own memories of being a teenager, 13-18 in our current society is no different than a Milgram prison experiment. That's gotta exacerbate the genetic disposition for violence rather than contain it. Whereas out in the wilderness, violence is simply a part of nature.

Martial arts, on the other hand, explores the edges of natural instincts (for violence) and civilizing influences. Taught carefully, a genetic disposition for violence becomes a resource that can be tapped, rather than an external controlling factor.

I didn't know that about kids who learn weapons training are less likely to use it for violence. I think I can make use of that.

> I didn't know that about kids who learn weapons training are less likely to use it for violence.

It's not "learn weapons training" that's important. It's from whom they learn.

Various people have observed that the secret to civil society is dangerous old men who are civil.

Right, I forgot to add "authority figure".

Among my friends, we call those dangerous old men as having "Old Man Powers". Having had a day to think this over, I'm not sure "authority figure" would be the right attitude either. Even though I'm nearing 30, the demonstration of old man powers still awe me, however, "authority figures" whom I have little or no respect for (the man, not the office) inspires disgust or contempt. I like Neal Stepheson's description the best -- every teenage (boy) grows up wanting to be a badass.

I think someone suggested creating a program for this. Although it would give violent teengers of apprenticeship age a chance to integrate into society, that is only the symptom. A more complete solution would be people reading here -- me personally, you personally -- to acquire badass skills and cultivate them in the teenage apprentices, regardless of whether they are likely to be violent or not. Instead of waiting for a far-off government administration to get the genetic testing in place and create special training camps, do what you can do in the local environment. Lend some time to Boy Scouts or Venturing Crew. Or just demonstrate some badass skill to neighborhood teenagers, saying, "Hey. Check this out."

> Er, but are they controlling for other environmental risk factors? In other words, I would guess that most kids from the suburbs learn to use weapons from authority figures

Yes, they were controlling for every environmental factor they could. (FWIW, this isn't a "gun" study. Gun stuff is just one of the things that popped out.) We're comparing kids from the same neighborhoods.

And, while legal gun ownership is higher in the suburbs, it isn't unknown in the inner city and it isn't universal in the suburbs. As a result, we can observe "learn from parents" vs "learn from peers" in both situations.

> but they were probably never going to fall on the wrong side of the law anyhow.

As I wrote, their criminality wasn't affected, just their use of weapons.

Correlation vs causation and all that.

Why not weapons? With a competent instructor, the accident risk is lower than for any of your suggested alternatives.

I have nothing against weapons. I actually like them. However, a camp for teenage boys where there's weapons training would be a PR disaster. The feminists would complain that it was a men's conspiracy to impose the old status quo. The far left-wing whackos would compare it to Hitler's youth. I believe that teenage boys can be taught how to shoot, and that they can be trained to use weapons in a responsible manner. An old drill instructor would be required to keep the kids in check, though.

Much of this PR nightmare could be avoided if there were no weapons. Martial arts would be OK. By keeping weapons out, you could sell it as an extreme sports camp, rather than a boot camp for teenagers ;-) Image is everything.

> Much of this PR nightmare could be avoided if there were no weapons.

At what cost in effectiveness?

If you don't tell the loons to get stuffed, your life is run by loons.

I think the cost would be infinitesimal. Weapons are cool, but not essential.

In a way, doing without weapons would be fun. Teach the kids martial arts. Their bare hands would be their weapons. What I like about martial arts is that it's a bit like mathematics. In math you can't fool yourself thinking you know more than you do... your own limitations are right in front of you, in the blank sheet of paper reminding you that you're no Grothendieck. In martial arts you also know your limitations. If you don't, you get your ass kicked really quick. In this age of grade-inflation where all kids are believed to be geniuses until proven otherwise, knowing where you stand relative to your peers is good. Harsh, but it builds character ;-)

> I think the cost would be infinitesimal.

What is your "thought" based on?

> Weapons are cool, but not essential.

I've got nothing against martial arts, but AFAIK, they weren't associated with the observed reduction in criminally violent gun use.

Assuming that the effect is real and significant, why don't you find it important?

I'll state my bias up front - I'm all for reducing criminal violence. (However, that means that I oppose things that don't reduce criminal violence because they make it harder to do experiments and I think that restricting people for no good reason is bad.)

"Most kids don't like to learn. "

Sure they do.

Most kids don't like to learn stuff they deem stupid and useless.

That seems like a geek fantasy to me. Just because you like to learn, it does not mean other people are like you. Through my school years, I never saw evidence to back the claim that most kids like to learn. Maybe in early grade school when kids want to know why stars twinkle, why the sky is blue, and where babies come from. After a certain age, their curiosity dies. That may be sad, but let's face it: the world also need doers, not just thinkers. For each, his own.

"That seems like a geek fantasy to me. Just because you like to learn, it does not mean other people are like you."

Sure. I never claimed that.

I'm basing this on experience with people I knew growing up (some of whom were geeky, most not), plus the children of friends and family.

Kids want to learn to play guitar, hot-wire cars, assemble weapons, throw strike-outs, pick up girls (or boys), pick locks, cheat on tests, tape up their hockey sticks; the list is near endless.

It may be that, once they became adults, that passion fades (or, more likely, gets stifled), but that's a different matter. My experience is that, up until people enter the workforce, they are generally interested in learning about things of value in their world.

"That may be sad, but let's face it: the world also need doers, not just thinkers"

Doing without thinking is a nightmare. If you find someone doing that, slap them. (So to speak.)

"After a certain age, their curiosity dies."

Dies, or is killed?

Being curious is easy. Acting on it is harder. You may wonder why the world is the way it is, but then you realize that reading about it takes a lot of time and effort. Most people are lazy. It happens that school is a great curiosity-killer, but people kill their own curiosity as well as soon as they discover that the answers to their endless questions affect their daily lives very little.

It's too bad the article doesn't provide more information and context. There are lots of studies that show people with gene x are more prone to y, but for a given individual the results are not a useful predictor of anything. Therefore it's a little troubling that people can be flagged as "potential violent gang member" based on their genetics.

There are lots of studies that show people with gene x are more prone to y

Yes, and many of those studies aren't replicated when another data set is looked at. Gene association studies related to human behavior are thus far very subject to failure of replication.

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

Maybe some day there will be better studies with more reliable, replicable findings. Then there should be a way to tease out what environmental influences provide resiliency and protect against the effects of risky genes. Meanwhile, the first thing to do with this result is to see if it holds up in a different cohort of young people tested for gene associations to behavior.

Yeah it is a little shady, but still an interesting topic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAOA#Warrior_gene

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maori#Modern_socio-economic_iss...

http://www.nzma.org.nz/journal/120-1250/2441/

So the logical thing to do is to create a gene therapy correcting germlines with this variant and provide it to juvenile delinquents (or simply confirmed carriers) before they reproduce.

Farmers breed docility into their livestock so that they are easier to handle when sending them to the slaughterhouse.

Next we're going to hear about the higher prevalence of this gene in minority communities, and then we'll hear how the prison-industrial complex was really wonderful all along.

More anti-male crap. These genes are necessary for human survival, but academics think everyone lives in a fluffy pink cradle - like them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com