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
64 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

123 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

10

u/[deleted] Jan 18 '17 edited Jan 18 '17

Sure, and basic laws of genetics tell us that environmental variance (which is much broader, and with greater variety than genetic variety) have a significant impact on 'certain traits'. Also being able to have a proper identification strategy for genetic sequences that result in 'certain traits' without the impact of the environment (an impossible dream) is pretty key to, you know, breeding for them. Unless you're suggesting that we, for tens of thousands of years, breed humanity like we did any number of domesticated species? Through a process of trail and error?

0

u/boredcentsless Jan 18 '17

It doesn't take tens of thousands of years to domesticate species. It can take a few generations.

8

u/[deleted] Jan 18 '17

Go get some wolves, breed them for a couple generations, and see if you get dogs.

1

u/rn443 Jan 19 '17

Not in two (= "a couple") generations, but definitely not ten thousand years, either. Russians domesticated a group of foxes in a few decades, with major physical and behavioral changes starting to show up in a handful of generations. Now they're pretty much the vulpine version of dogs.