Speaking as someone who analyzes genetic data for a living I have to say you are totally off. Our understanding of human genetics is extremely primitive. We have the dictionary, but we are just now beginning to try to figure out how to read. For gross genetic abnormalities like cancer we are making a fair amount of progress, as these things often involve single abnormal genes and pathways. For something as complicated as intelligence, which we don’t even understand at mechanistic cellular level, we have no hope of understanding genetically. 100 years from now maybe, but not 5-10 years.
Regarding the Chinese study, it seems like a giant waste of resources. The results will either come up with nothing, or else they will use faulty statistics to come up with a number of targets that appear related to intelligence, but only by chance, in the same way that you can win the lottery by buying 10 million tickets.
( by CP: )
I am already surprised that people can accept some phenotypic differences that are more prevalent by race, such as skin color or hair characteristics, but seem to draw a totally artificially line with those sorts of traits…
Were you hoping Mother Nature would only differentially dole out appearance genes but make sure ability genes were completely randomly and evenly distributed to all SIRE clusters?
Hint: “Mother” is just a pretend word. There is no real Mother making sure all the kids get the same share. It’s really just Nature, and she couldn’t care less who gets what.
Actually, any number of genes have been shown to vary in prevalence by SIRE (self-indicated race/ethnicity).
But sure, you could argue that all tall people are better suited for basketball than all short people, and you’d be right on. You’d also be correct in identifying genes, and not nurturing, as the reason they are better. They are taller 'cuz they got genes for being tall.
Within all those tall people, you’d find blacks disproportionately represented, and also for the same reason: better genes for it. You’d have to show whites had poorer nurturing if you wanted an alternate explanation, and that seems unlikely from my observation, anyway. Hero-worship for sports stars and a dream of making it to professional sports is as prevalent in white homes as blacks, and nurturing to get your kid to that level surely favors the white group.
I’m totally off suggesting you read someone else’s article?
Interesting, but not surprising, to see your dismissal of the BGI study before it’s even done.
As to your dismissal of where we are now: OK. We’ll see.
Here’s the timeline I see:
Within 5-10 years, we’ll define how gene prevalences vary among groups. 10-20 years, how those genes work.
What you’ll see within the next few years is an elucidation of differences in prevalence. So suppose you found that two groups with different skillsets for cognitive skills differed in xyz genes. That’s not “proof” for some people that those genes made the difference until we define exactly how those genes work, which is further away.
But it is certainly a shot across the bow to the idea that we are all equal.
The bar for proof will continue to be moved, from “show me that we are different except for skin color genes” to “prove to me the differences we have in genes drive phenotypic differences.”
Long before we publicly accept that in humans, we’ll have accepted it for plants and every other animal. So I’m pretty confident how the story is going to turn out for people.
We are our genes. Where we find differences, and can normalize for opportunity, the difference is genetic, even if the details are “primitive.”
Chef - btw, it’s good to see you’ve been demoted to the kitchen! - assuming there was any factual basis to these studies, what would you suggest the next step be, after establing these differing levels of “ability”?
Hm. Random thought, but, most every guy I know that goes on and on about white people being genetically smarter, has been afflicted with what I quoted above. I wonder if there is some kind of connection.
Regarding the relationship between genetics intelligence and race:
If I understand your logic it is as follows
A) Race is genetic
B) Intelligence is (partially) genetic
C) genetic characteristics can be correlated
Therefore
D) Race and intelligence could be correlated
Therefore
E) The differences in intellectual aptitude we see in the races is due to genetics
The problem is that the same logic can be used replacing race with, Blood type, detached earlobes, tongue rolling, hemophilia, etc. and yet there is no interest in detecting aptitude differences in any of these classes. Why is that?
Regarding the studies. As I stated previously this is what I’ve done for a living over that last 9 years. I’ve designed and analyzed data from dozens of such studies and read hundreds more. Much of what the article says is true, and the thousand human genome project is very exciting, but it terms of finding genes that associate with intelligence based on 1000 samples of 10% geneomes, I don’t buy it. It seems to me a study proposed by some bureaucrat with no knowledge of science, so that the project will be sexy enough to get funding.
Intelligence is really, really complicated biologically. We don’t even understand how it works at a cellular level. Given the huge number of SNPs in the human genome any study of correlation is by chance going to produce thousands of hits that appear extremely strongly correlated with intelligence, which means that any effect that you are going to observe is going to be lots stronger than any of those false effects, which means that you have to have a single SNP that has a massive effect on intelligence. In fact it is much more likely that intelligence is related to a combination of different SNPs and so you really need to look at pairs or triplets or what have you. This will massively increase the number of multiple comparisons to the point that the required population needed to detect a modest effect is more than 6 billion so we’ll need to import some more people. Of course, it may not exactly be related to the SNPs, but may depend on which of the genes are methylated, or on how the proteins produced by the genes are folded etc. etc. leading to more complication. The way to do the study is to have a model of biological intelligence to start with so you can start finding pieces of the puzzle step by step. For example it might be possible to find genetic roots of aggression if we first find that aggression is linked to testosterone and then look for genetic links to testosterone.
In the next several decades genetics will be great for finding about about genetic diseases which are usually governed by one or a few mutations that lead to a specific signalling pathway. For determining vague personality effects such as intelligence without understanding the biology first you might as well use astrology.
That’s correct. “Racist” and “racism” as terms don’t seem to be real helpful in the anthropological literature, especially since they are rarely defined. Also, using them usually requires mindreading since the terms seem to infer some sort of intent or motivation. I liked Levi-Strauss’s definition of racism because he actually spelled out what he meant, but damned if I can find it on Google now. All I remember is that he equated ethnic groups and “races.”
I can’t speak for sociology or other disciplines, though.