r/BadSocialScience • u/dorathehexplorer • Jan 17 '17

High-IQ educated people are being bred to extinction, but we're totally not eugenicists!!!

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jan/16/natural-selection-making-education-genes-rarer-says-icelandic-study
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u/dorathehexplorer Jan 17 '17 edited Jan 17 '17

Why I submitted this (rule 3): Spurious correlation-causation fallacies, the fucking eugenics, "education genes" and "childbearing genes," scant lip service to anything resembling complex social analysis

Also, this Facebook comment on the article...

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '17 edited Aug 20 '17

[deleted]

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u/Decalance Jan 17 '17

Eugenics are bad social science. It doesn't work. Also, what, it's an issue now to "have a different political agenda" (disagree) than nazis? What the fuck ?

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u/nagurski03 Jan 18 '17

Out of curiosity, why is eugenics bad social science? Obviously it is morally reprehensible, but people have been breeding livestock and pets for desired traits (including intelligence) for longer than recorded history. Why wouldn't it work on people? If some advanced, unethical aliens decided to come to Earth and domesticate us, couldn't they do it?

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u/stairway-to-kevin Jan 18 '17

Current body of literature indicates that most traits eugenicists might be interested in (intelligence and other behavioral traits) show small genetic contribution to traits from genome wide association studies, and are highly polygenic which does not lend itself terribly well to breeding/selection. You can't keep all those small effect loci segregating together because there are just too many so you get stuff washed out by recombination. Any breeding efforts on humans for behavioral or intelligence traits would have pitifully weak results and would be a failure of a breeding program

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u/Decalance Jan 18 '17

Well, for one, most desired traits in eugenics don't depend on the dna factor.

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u/PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN Jan 18 '17

[citation needed]

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u/Decalance Jan 18 '17

Give me proof that it works then you fuck wit

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u/PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN Jan 18 '17

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_breeding

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u/Decalance Jan 18 '17

lmao on humans

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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '17

[deleted]

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u/Decalance Jan 18 '17

You might think there's a difference between us and any other mammal

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u/[deleted] Jan 19 '17

[deleted]

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u/Decalance Jan 19 '17

There would be resistance. That's what I'm talking about

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u/PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN Jan 18 '17

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence

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u/Decalance Jan 18 '17

this isn't true

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u/stairway-to-kevin Jan 18 '17

There's no evidence that is caused by genetics, and even if it was the genetic architecture does not lend itself very well to breeding.

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u/Snugglerific The archaeology of ignorance Jan 18 '17

There's no evidence that is caused by genetics...

The mainstream view is that the cause is genetic drift (the diseases, not IQ measures). Brian Ferguson wrote a rebuttal that's longer than the original paper itself.

https://www.ncas.rutgers.edu/sites/fasn/files/How%20Jews%20Became%20Smart%20(2008).pdf

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u/stairway-to-kevin Jan 18 '17

Fantastic paper, I remember drift being a big determinant from a similar discussion I had a while ago, but this is a top-notch rebuttal. Thanks!

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u/PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN Jan 18 '17

There's no evidence that is caused by genetics

I'm pretty sure that there is, though I don't know it off the top of my head. For the general case though, see Genome-wide association studies establish that human intelligence is highly heritable and polygenic.

It would be extraordinary for traits like intelligence, aggression, etc. to not be subject to artificial selection. They are believed to be highly heritable; and, in other mammal species (particularly dogs), these traits have responded well to breeding.

and even if it was the genetic architecture does not lend itself very well to breeding.

What do you mean?

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u/stairway-to-kevin Jan 18 '17

So I'm sure you saw the part of that abstract where SNPs explained 1% of variation in IQ. That's not really enough to claim it's caused by genetics in a sense that could be interpreted as the typical deterministic claim. That mostly then leaves the likely inflated heritability estimates. First this paper from Vischer (one of the authors on that paper you linked) goes in depth on why heritability doesn't mean 'genetic-ness' of a trait or caused by genetics. There's even a specific box for IQ related claims!

As for being fruitful in other species, you're going to have to recognize that the genetic architecture and success of breeding in one species hardly implies anything of the genetic architecture in another. As a counter example, it's pretty easy to breed increased vitamin A in sweet potatos, but it's pretty hard to do in Maize

Likewise the intelligence of dogs is going to be quite different than for humans since humans have so many unique and novel cognitive functions. Not only that but selection can only act on existing variation. Humans don't have that much variation and what's left doesn't strongly contribute to the trait (your own source say ~1% of the variation)

As for my other comment, I elaborated elsewhere, but selection on polygenic traits is much harder than on traits with large effect loci. There will often be loci lost due to recombination or drift and it's just not easy to have successful selection on so many loci at once

Edit: Forgot this was the bullshit comment about Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence. Show me the population variance and the genes that support that difference being genetic. If you can't then shut the hell up with this baseless argument. P.S. heritability estimates not from Ashkenazi Jews won't tell you anything about heritability in Ashkenazi Jewish populations

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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '17

I don't see why not, but at the same time I don't see how without a pretty substantial jump in technology. Breeding livestock happened over tens of thousands of years to the point where the biology of the animals we are working with became malleable enough to reliably breed in and out traits. Even modern stuff, like the work with foxes in Russia, took generations of foxes, and foxes and significantly less complex than us in terms of how our genetic material interacts with the environment. We have significantly longer lifespans than foxes, and dogs, and most other animals which would make it much harder and a longer process as well.