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Comment by crusso | Hacker News Reader

Correlating genetics to propensities is astrology?

So, correlating the existence of certain genes to propensity of heart disease is mumbo jumbo?

Not really sure why anyone would say such a thing. Maybe you didn't understand what the word "propensities" means?

When you put it in the same sentence as 'tastes and behaviors' you're creating a very different context from things like heart disease. Imagine, for example, a genetic test that says that you, Crusso, are 29% more likely to commit a criminal act involving deception than the median person. Now imagine that your genetic testing service has a data breach and suddenly you have immense difficulty getting hired, getting credit, or getting a table in a restaurant.

One has only to glance back to the last century to see overconfident claims along the same lines from eugenicists, for example. Or look at the dreadful state of science journalism and the broken logic that prevails in many internet comment/forum sections to see how easily a statistical correlation can be substituted for fact - to say nothing of poor statistical work in scientific research, where publication strongly favors positive results and replication is often under-prioritized.

Now please return to your preventive custody zone, non-citizen.

statistical correlation can be substituted for fact

Well let's stop this Science nonsense and get on with full blown Political Correctness as our guide to the future we're heading toward.

That's got nothing to do with PC or any such nonsense, it's got to do with you taking as your starting point that it's possible to reduce highly complex, multivariate and environmentally influenced phenotypes down to useful genotypes.

Your comments are essentially daily mail fare.

anigbrowl's comment argued that correlations were bad, and did not mention whether useful ones were possible. Blame them for bringing up political correctness, not crusso.

This is news to me.

Would you care to provide your interpretation of "Now imagine that your genetic testing service has a data breach and suddenly you have immense difficulty getting hired, getting credit, or getting a table in a restaurant."

The meaning of that is self-evident - you could be discriminated against because people considered you to be untrustworthy due to the results of the test mentioned in the preceding sentence. Where you and crusso see political correctness - perhaps in the belief that I'm describing such a test as a proxy for some identity group - what I'm actually concerned about is the accuracy and/orpredictive power of such tests. I really doubt that you would be OK with finding yourself on the receiving end of such an evaluation.

I see arguing against the test because of possible discriminatory uses as an argument of political correctness. Maybe we have different definitions.

Obviously you're just dragging your feet here. He is not saying whether the discrimination itself is correct, but that if the validity of the tests is not correct this can lead to incorrect discrimination here, the chance of this data ruining someones life in the wrong hands is very high.

Avoiding performing measurements because you're worried about how the results could possibly be misused is a political motivation, not a scientific one.

I'm just trying to argue in favor of this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6794926 , not about whether doing the testing is a spectacularly good idea.

The primary concern is fragility, not in truth-space. Scientists have ethical responsibilities and pretending that this isn't true is probably how NSA mathematicians justify their work.

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