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asd


				

				

				

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asd


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2023 January 13 04:41:18 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm sure you've seen the Gwern essay on embryo selection where these lines of argument are touched on (https://gwern.net/embryo-selection). The whole thing is ofc great, and on this point the TLDR is: yes absolutely selecting myopically on a single trait can go wrong (especially over long timescales and/or small populations) but given the size of our population and existing genetic variation it's not a pressing worry at all. Further it seems that presently IQ correlates are other "good things" like overall health, so the tradeoff does not even arise.




Selecting only on one trait means that almost all of the available genotype information is being ignored; at best, this is a lost opportunity, and at worst, in some cases it is harmful—in the long run (dozens of generations), selection only on one trait, particularly in a very small breeding population like often used in agriculture (albeit irrelevant to humans), will have “unintended consequences” like greater disease rates, shorter lifespans, etc (see Falconer 1960’s Introduction to Quantitative Genetics, Ch. 19 “Correlated Characters”, & Lynch & Walsh 1998’sCh. 21 “Correlations Between Characters” on genetic correlations). When breeding is done out of ignorance or with regard only to a few traits or on tiny founding populations, one may wind up with problematic breeds like some purebred dog breeds which have serious health issues due to inbreeding, small founding populations, no selection against negative mutations popping up, and variants which increase the selected trait at the expense of another trait.^28 (This is not an immediate concern for humans as we have an enormous population, only weak selection methods, low levels of historical selection, and high heritabilities & much standing variance, but it is a concern for very long-term programs or hypothetical future selection methods like iterated embryo selection.)




The footnote (no. 28) continues the argument:




Although unintended side effects due to bad genetic correlations is frequently raised as an objection to selecting on intelligence, it is not an issue, as the genetic correlations of other traits are so uniformly in desirable directions (with the practically-unimportant exception of myopia, and the dubious exception of autism spectrum disorder symptom checklist scores). In any case, we can note by their behavior that people do not genuinely believe this objection, as they are, among countless other things, not upset by having intelligent children, do not regard successes like childhood vaccination or iodization or lead remediation or improved nutrition or the Flynn Effect as humanitarian disasters, interpret reports of (hollow) gains on intelligence due to formal schooling as reasons to increase funding for formal schooling, are worried by brain-damaging diseases like Zika (thus passing the double reversal test) and would be horrified by a proposal to starve or drop babies on their heads to spare them the supposed terrible unintended side-effects of being above-average.




				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
For people who might doubt that 'Cultural Marxism' was a term happily used by academics referring to the intellectual project there were themselves engaged in, here is an essay that is still up on Douglas Kellner's academic website: Cultural Marxism and Cultural Studies.


I am reminded of a line from a Scott Alexander essay replying to Nathan Robinson about SA's supposed misunderstanding of left-wing thought:




The reason I claim people believe this kind of thing is exactly because I do read your magazines where you say it.




				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Calling all Lurkers: Share your Dreams of Effortposting
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
@gattsuru, you recently edited this post. I happened to have it open at the time of the great crash (retaining links and formatting). I've messaged you about getting a copy of it to you.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There is a section in Dawkins' "The Ancestors Tale" which makes a 'flipped' version of this argument. Perhaps the process starts with a chemical that has this duplication-like property, and then it turns into competition for what spreads/duplicates best:




After that digression on catalysis and enzymes, we now turn from ordinary catalysis to the special case of autocatalysis, some version of which probably played a key role in the origin of life. Think back to our hypothetical example of molecules A and B combining to make Z under the influence of the enzyme abzase. What if Z itself is its own abzase? I mean, what if the Z molecule happens to have just the right shape and chemical properties to seize one A and one B, bring them together in the correct orientation, and combine them to make a new Z, just like itself? In our previous example we could say that the amount of abzase in the solution would influence the amount of Z produced. But now, if Z actually is one and the same molecule as abzase, we need only a single molecule of Z to seed a chain reaction. The first Z grabs As and Bs and combines them to make more Zs. Then these new Zs grab more As and Bs to make still more Zs and so on. This is autocatalysis. Under the right conditions the population of Z molecules will grow exponentially - explosively. This is the kind of thing that sounds promising as an ingredient for the origin of life.




pg 571 of the hardback edition


Dawkins' goes on to discuss a real example of a (relatively) simple 'abzase', an amino adenosine triacid ester (AATE), that has this property. In that case, 'A' is amino adenosine and 'B' is a pentafluorophenyl ester.


edit: this is the same as the middle bullet point from recovering_rationaleist's comment


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Review: Blackberry, The Best Business film ever made... in Canada.
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Enjoyed the essay, will check out the film.


One nitpick: it's Peter Thiel, not Theil.