Selecting Embryos For Higher IQ

None. But we've all had to put up with Jim Thompson, who was born there and famously claimed to be both bright enough to qualify for Mensa and bright enough to realise that joining it would be a bad idea.

Growing up in an environment where most of the adults are pretty dumb does seem to make it difficult to take advantage of what intelligence you've got. Louisiana seems to be another area that warps the cognitive processes of people that grew up there.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
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bill.sloman
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Dumb is not how I'd describe the majority of the population of West Virginia. more like "unpretentious." Visitors can find that unpretentiousness very charming.

But small places can have a vicious streak, particularly reserved for anyone who doesn't seem to fit in or seems they wish to rise above the station they were born into.

I feel like JT experienced some of that viciousness because he was talented kid but perhaps a bit awkward. Unfortunately I think he learned the wrong lessons from it.

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bitrex

Twin studies done on twins in the US at least probably make the assumption that twins in the same household share the same environment and same "parenting style" i.e. that one or both parents wouldn't treat one twin great and one twin like garbage.

Except exactly that happens with other types of siblings all the time.

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bitrex

???

Rick C.

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gnuarm.deletethisbit

nstead opt for this embryo selection by polygenic scoring.

ellectually disabled, is half step away from offering to find the highest I Q in the batch.

NPs)that we know about each affect about 0.1% of the IQ score, and the lot

- taken to together - explain about 10% of the variance in IQ (not that hig h IQ is what you want to aim for, since it is more designed easy to be meas ure than it is designed to be useful).

ch have closer to a 0.01% effect on IQ, and that even bigger (tens of milli ons of samples) surveys will find them.

d one that is more than marginally better than average.

Identical twins may be genetically identical, but one does better than the other from the start - even in the womb, one will get more of nutrients su pplied through the placenta.

I've got a pair of identical nephews, and that difference is visible (thoug h not visible enough to make then easy to tell apart.

One of the things that Plomin found out was that parental influence was inf luenced by the kids response to it - lots of features of the juvenile envir onment that had been catalogued as "nuture" turned out to decidely heritabl e.

And seems to reflect the way the sibling react to this treatment at least a s much as it reflects the parents choices. Read the book, it's a whole lot more informative than the reviews.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
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bill.sloman

DSM "cluster" disorders A, B, C, like paranoid, schizoid, schizotypal, narcissistic, histrionic, borderline, etc. AFAIK have more-or-less since the time of Freud been considered reactionary psychological strategies to environmental dysfunction in early childhood, so I would be interested to see if and how he fits that in.

It seems hard to see how something like histrionic personality disorder could be encoded into our DNA as its physical behavior manifestations are so linked up with the modern world. It seems unlikely someone with say severe histrionic or schizoid personality disorder could have survived very long 20,000 years ago so in what way does our DNA enable them.

Probably a good 10% of the US population would score high in cluster B qualities and this has been assumed to be very much a cultural-thing.

Reply to
bitrex

And I guess I'd be interested to know the standard by which "outcomes" are judged. Is it just on-paper stuff? What degrees and what job and what level of education you ended up with?

Wealth can cover for a lot. Coming from a wealthy family can plaster over a lot of problems such that you make a great data point but an lousy/unhappy person. I know plenty of people who look real good "on paper" but in reality their personal lives and mental health are a shambles.

Reply to
bitrex

instead opt for this embryo selection by polygenic scoring.

ntellectually disabled, is half step away from offering to find the highest IQ in the batch.

(SNPs)that we know about each affect about 0.1% of the IQ score, and the lo t - taken to together - explain about 10% of the variance in IQ (not that h igh IQ is what you want to aim for, since it is more designed easy to be me asure than it is designed to be useful).

each have closer to a 0.01% effect on IQ, and that even bigger (tens of mil lions of samples) surveys will find them.

ind one that is more than marginally better than average.

t

the other from the start - even in the womb, one will get more of nutrient s supplied through the placenta.

hough not visible enough to make then easy to tell apart.

influenced by the kids response to it - lots of features of the juvenile e nvironment that had been catalogued as "nuture" turned out to decidely heri table.

st as much as it reflects the parents choices. Read the book, it's a whole lot more informative than the reviews.

Freud wasn't any kind of scientist, and his silly ideas have done a lot of damage.

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It's from late Latin, and means theatrical. Even the classical Greeks had t heatre.

em.

Plombin makes the point that all these behaviors appear as a continuum from more to less flamboyant examples. Like sickle cell anemia, a small dose ma y be helpful where a large dose can be fatal.

Sickle cell anemia does depend on a single gene - personality disorders see m to reflect the total effect of the sum of a rather larger number of genes which may also affect other areas in other ways.

People make lots of assumptions. Its cheap and easy, but the conclusions ar en't all that reliable - see the reference to Freud above.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

instead opt for this embryo selection by polygenic scoring.

ntellectually disabled, is half step away from offering to find the highest IQ in the batch.

(SNPs)that we know about each affect about 0.1% of the IQ score, and the lo t - taken to together - explain about 10% of the variance in IQ (not that h igh IQ is what you want to aim for, since it is more designed easy to be me asure than it is designed to be useful).

each have closer to a 0.01% effect on IQ, and that even bigger (tens of mil lions of samples) surveys will find them.

ind one that is more than marginally better than average.

t

the other from the start - even in the womb, one will get more of nutrient s supplied through the placenta.

hough not visible enough to make then easy to tell apart.

influenced by the kids response to it - lots of features of the juvenile e nvironment that had been catalogued as "nuture" turned out to decidedly her itable.

st as much as it reflects the parents choices. Read the book, it's a whole lot more informative than the reviews.

"Years in education" turned out to be his favourite measure - not because h e liked it much, but because it was recorded for the largest genome data s ets he could get his hands on.

Assessing outcomes is an obvious weakness of the field as a whole.

IQ tests are useful for sorting people who will probably do well in formal education. Attempts to use them to predict how well people do in later life haven't had much success at all.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

If that's the standard then perhaps he's discovered that being a huge "square" is mostly hereditary.

Ok, I'll buy that. Even engineers probably had moms with DNA like everyone else.

Reply to
bitrex

se he liked it much, but because it was recorded for the largest genome da ta sets he could get his hands on.

mal education. Attempts to use them to predict how well people do in later life haven't had much success at all.

The difference between mom DNA and dad DNA is that mom supplies the X chrom osome - 153 million base pairs and some 800 protein coding genes while dad supplies the Y chromosome 59 million base pairs and 70 working genes.

The rest is pretty much identical. Mom is marginally more influential since genome as a whole is about 20,000 working genes and three billion base pai rs, but there's not a lot in it - about 4%.

Engineer DNA works just like everybody else's. There are probably lots of d ifferent ways of getting the kind of DNA mix that makes it likely that you will become an engineer - until recently having a X-chromosome made it less likely, but that seems to have been a problem with society rather than wit h the genome.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

Be careful what you wish for. I have known several geniuses whose mental abilities also put them on the edge of madness and sometimes over it. High IQ and a very good memory is insufficient for success in life.

I doubt it. There will always be some dedicated retro types like Shakers and ultra-orthodox Jews who refuse to live in the modern world.

I would be in favour of germ line editing to eliminate cruel genetic diseases like cystic fibrosis and haemophilia if it can be demonstrated to be safe to do using our existing Crispr tools (which I doubt).

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Regards, 
Martin Brown
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Martin Brown

Whoever suggested that they might be?

The major deficiency with Robert Plomin's book "Blueprint" though it's more a defect of the field than the book itself

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is that the measure of what might be better genes and better outcomes is de cidedly ad hoc.

Plomin starts off talking about the heritable parts of IQ, but later in the book switches over to "years in education" - not because it's any better t han the results of IQ tests (which aren't all that good as an indicator of outcomes) but because the biggest genome data bank that he could get his ha nds on didn't tie the individual genomes to IQ scores but had recorded yea rs in education.

When it comes to "edge of madness" he's on firmer ground - episodes that ha ve required psychiatric health get noted in medical records.

He's quite as interested in the numerous genes that have - mostly small - e ffects on mental health, and does make the point that mental health is a co ntinuum - there's no sharp distinction between eccentricity and madness, an d if you have inherited enough unhelpful genes to put you at risk of mental disease you can use this information to avoid situations that are likely t o precipate anti-social behaviour.

y

And some of their silly ideas are treated as child abuse when they try to e nforce them on their children.

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Circumcision - at least for male children - isn't seen this way yet.

At present all that seems to be offered is antenatal genetic testing and ea rly abortion.

This can be very early indeed with in vitro fertilisation - genetically def ective blastocysts don't even get to implant which makes a considerable pra ctical difference, even if the moral considerations are identical.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

Just as most of the great killer infectuous diseases are rare nowadays, most genetic diseases will be rare in the future.

Progress happens.

--
John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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John Larkin

The perhaps-little-known "miracle drug" of the early 21st century might be Humira. I know a guy who suffered terribly with a rare autoimmune disorder, blanking on the name but it attacked the mucous membranes, bleeding mouth ulcers, chronic conjunctivitis.

He's been taking that one for a couple years and claims 90% "fix", no longer needs cortisone injections, painkiller med use down from almost daily to maybe once a month.

Reply to
bitrex

ote:

but instead opt for this embryo selection by polygenic scoring.

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rm intellectually disabled, is half step away from offering to find the hig hest IQ in the batch.

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modern society selects for intelligence, and smarter people are more likely to get married and have kids - there's clearly fairly vigorous evolutionar y selection going on in the relevant bits of the genome (granting that we a ren't too sure what those bits are actually doing for intelligence/social s uccess or whatever).

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effects turned out to be kids shaping their environment to suit their tale nts.

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ffect - it's down at the 0.1% level and below. Plomin thinks that the relev ant single nucleotide polymorphism identified so far each have an effect of the order of o.1% or less, and the ones that remain to be identified will have less (so you need large samples of people - in the millions - to be ab le to pull them out).

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and him.

of ways.

clever people, but clever people can certainly be clever in very different ways.

ar the place.

Haiti and Dominican Republic in just about every aspect of their so-called societies, considering all other things remain equal among the usual excus es for this kind of disparity.

aving enough to eat is a precondition for growing up taller.

re child mortality is low. In place like Haiti and Cameroon lose respective ly 71.7 and 84 children from 0 to 5 per 1000, while the Dominican Repulbic loses 29.9.

airly typical for the advanced industrial countries where intelligence is a bout 80% heritable.

table in less well-off countries, because not getting enough to eat makes y ou grow up short, skinny and dumb.

You're exhibiting some form of nutty irrational circular thinking when it c omes to making sense of these kinds of statistics. By heritable IQ I take i t you mean a full realization of their potential IQ endowed at birth, versu s damaged potential due to environmental factors. That does not help you ou t a whole lot when the fully realizable potential is deficient to begin wit h. So what we have is a bunch of low IQ people, whose state religion is voo doo and who are too stupid to be taught to farm, who have created this horr endous excuse of a place. But it's not their fault, it's the fault of this horrendous place they created.

Reply to
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred

In "The Manipulated Man" anti-feminist Esther Vilar argues that one of the reasons for the dearth of women in the sciences/academics is that Western women are raised to be hookers, not scientists, and that many Western women are quite satisfied with this arrangement.

I don't believe this is necessarily too severe a slam at women; prostitution is an honest profession unlike many many traditionally-male professions such as political wonk, climate science denialst, and Fox news pundit.

Reply to
bitrex

I know a bunch of women scientists, but no hookers.

Some western men are hookers, too.

Why would anyone pay for sex? That's the ultimate self-inflicted insult. And a good way to get any one of about 50 popular viruses.

--
John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  
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John Larkin

"So what we have is a bunch of low IQ people, whose state religion is voodoo and who are too stupid to be taught to farm"

are we talking about Haiti or the United States, here?

Reply to
bitrex

Some female sex workers are drug-addled, some are crazy, some both, some are just suburban single moms with bills to pay who don't want to be on welfare but can't afford day care.

Ya I mentioned some of the types in my second paragraph

Some men prefer to pay, maybe they think of romance, sex and companionship as just another thing you buy in a capitalist society, same as anything else.

Reply to
bitrex

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