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From the Wall Street Journal:
Steven Pinker on New Advances in Behavioral Genetics
The findings of behavioral genetics have turned out to be substantial and robust, and new studies are linking genes with behavioral traits like IQ
Behavioral genetics, the study of why people differ, has long been the most vilified subfield of psychology. Its signature findings—that all traits are partly heritable and that the variation that can’t be attributed to genes can’t be attributed to families either—are regularly denied by commentators who consider them too fatalistic.
Yet it is just these results that have escaped the replicability crisis embroiling behavioral science, in which many highly publicized findings have turned out to be flukes. Unlike the cute but ephemeral journalist bait that comes out of many psychology labs, the findings of behavioral genetics have turned out to be substantial and robust.
Indeed, the heritability of intelligence has recently been corroborated by a new method which complements the classic studies of twins and adoptees and which solves an outstanding puzzle: Where are the genes? …
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Steve Pinker has done a great job of slowly and cautiously getting HBD thinking into the mainstream. He needs to watch his every step or he will be Watsoned by the censorship mob. So far he has shown a very deft touch in gently and subtly pushing the science. We need more major public figures like him in academia and the media.
Remember the last time a certain Austrian tried to implement HBD policy in Eastern Europe?
Well, at least we had one comment before someone tried to shut down discussion by comparing genuine scientific research to the benchmark for all evil.Replies: @Dirk Dagger
Count me in!
While there are a lot of things going on, and some major ones will doubtless remain a mystery, I think the old technocratic solutions (now in the guise of humanitarianism) are a real factor.
2. He wasn't interested in HB*D*, he wanted his race to triumph over all others. He was going to clean out Slavs to make room for Germans, inspired by our extermination of the Native Americans.
3. Everyone's going to pile on me for this one, but I think the Holocaust was one of the most dysgenic events in recent history.
In short: Adolf was a jerk. We threw the baby, not to mention the cradle and several other children, out with the bathwater.
-- Bill Kristol
Apparently HBD race realism was part of the Japanese political thought process in ww2?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Investigation_of_Global_Policy_with_the_Yamato_Race_as_Nucleus
That was a long time ago — before I was born and I am no spring chicken. Maybe focus on the scientific evidence here and now and not worry unduly about the wrongs of history. Just look hard and honestly at the data and do not try to wring political messages out of it (or insert political message into it).
That's the problem. Assuming the "latest" research is the most accurate and reliable.
Revisionist history, data mining, PC, and confirmation bias is what makes later studies LESS reliable. Academia has a decidedly liberal bent, and so do the results of their "research".
I get it. Your comment didn’t invoke Godwin’s Law because you substituted the phrase “a certain Austrian” for Hitler’s name. Very clever.
Well, at least we had one comment before someone tried to shut down discussion by comparing genuine scientific research to the benchmark for all evil.
efweq and aw , you seem to be insinuating that if a bad person ever makes use of a scientific finding, then that finding is no longer true (or maybe you are saying that if a bad person ever makes use of a scientific finding, it becomes immoral to talk about that science anymore).
If that is indeed what you are insinuating, you are both moronic ninnies.
If it isn’t, then what’s your point?
Famous Austrians for $20 … The answer is who is Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wilhelm Hölmes?
And just so you all know, no I’m not just signaling my moral superiority. I REALLY AM A GOOD PERSON! Learn a lesson, try to be like me, except you can’t because you’re all evil, evil evil! And I’m clever too! “A certain Austrian”, did you get that? Did you see what I did there?
Thanks for teaching me a lesson. I hereby and forthwith renounce HBD and all its adherents.
Pinker has cooties! Pinker has Cooties!
By fatalistic, the author means natalistic.
If that is indeed what you are insinuating, you are both moronic ninnies.
If it isn't, then what's your point?Replies: @iffen, @Anonymous
From Leo Strauss, “Reductio ad Hitlerum.”
James Thompson has an excellent write up on a study that just came out, I will link to his blog, scroll back to his January 3rd post titled Intelligence Genetics: Pathways. http://drjamesthompson.blogspot.com/
It is a mind blowing scientific breakthrough. The actual paper is behind a paywall and the abstract is well named, so to understand the findings go to James Thompson’s blog.
There is a huge variation in genetic in human intelligence and HBDers as well as psychometric studies have been saying it for years. Now, finally now the scientific proof is coming out. Just read what James Thompson has to say, he quotes at length from the article which is going to open up the doors to a brave new world, where folks like Steve Sailer will have scientific proof to back up his HBD claims.
We live in interesting times. No doubt Razib Khan and Greg Cochran will have their take on what this all means coming out shortly. Honestly Pinker brilliant as he is, influential as he is, he isn’t on the hunt for IQ genes, he isn’t a geneticist. In a nutshell there are no individual genes with large impact on IQ. What this study has found is that there is a large group of genes that together create an optimum combination that cause a better functioning human brain.
Steve – there’s something about this heritability of personality issue that I simply cannot grasp – given that DNA is a digital recording medium, why should it be surprising that it’s capable of capturing extremely detailed and subtle nuances, and transmitting copies with perfect fidelity over multiple generations? Your post of a couple of weeks ago, discussing similarities of personality of separated identical twins almost provoked a prolix, borderline-bizarre rant from me, and I may still have it within me – why, I ask, would anyone presume that extreme close-relatedness would be a necessary condition for joint-inheritance of subtle nuance of personality (or anything else?). As a long-term obsessive genealogical hobbiest, I’ve noticed multiple cases where one of my first cousins resembles one of our second or even third cousins much more closely than any of his first cousins. It’s not usual, but it’s not rare either. I conceive of heredity being like a big, vertically arranged pinball machine, with multiple levels of bumpers, each with equal probability of deflection left or right. That’s the generative mechanism of the normal distribution, if I’m not mistaken. Descending upon the bumpers is a steady rain of DNA fragments, big and little, like the descent of detritus from the upper ocean into the abyss (or metaphors into a mixmaster). These fragments are stamped “pancreatic enzymes,” “hairy big toe,” “religious impulse,” and so forth. Big identical chunks could end up in widely separated bins.
Most DNA research is driven by crazed lust for windfall profits from proprietary pharmaceuticals. My own CL-du jour is to discover the seat of personality and of “self” itself. Here’s what I’m really angling for: I want Prof. Churchill of the Personal Genome Project to walk down the hallway to the office of a particular astrophysicist and request a hair sample and if necessary yank it out. An angry argument would ensue, culminating in “Why should I care if an obscure weirdo allegedly from a branch of my family that I never heard of wants to tell me that he started a spiral notebook fifty years ago titled “Thompson’s New Eclectic Compendium of Astronomical Data / Being a Catalog of the Multifarous and Multitudinous Marvels of the Celestial Vault.” And if he says his efforts to embody in Fortran the concepts of Eddington’s “Stellar Interiors” and Pauling/Sharp’s “Quantum Theory” were completely feckless, puerile, and half-assed, what am I supposed to do? Argue against him?” Prof. Churchill’s calm rejoinder will be “Because Churchill/Thompson’s “Abode of Self” will surpass “Origin of Species” in the world’s esteem, albeit only slightly.”
Wow, I’m surprised how terse and lucid my posting turned out. I’m getting better at this.
Kind of like saying the skills of a surgeon for healing should be suppressed lest they be taken up by a Jack the Ripper for butchery.
Strauss? Another … Austrian!
Well, at least we had one comment before someone tried to shut down discussion by comparing genuine scientific research to the benchmark for all evil.Replies: @Dirk Dagger
Troll much?
If that is indeed what you are insinuating, you are both moronic ninnies.
If it isn't, then what's your point?Replies: @iffen, @Anonymous
My point is you’re BAD EVIL PEOPLE … and … I’M NOT!
” not worry unduly about the wrongs of history. Just look hard and honestly at the data and do not try to wring political messages out of it ”
That’s the problem. Assuming the “latest” research is the most accurate and reliable.
Revisionist history, data mining, PC, and confirmation bias is what makes later studies LESS reliable. Academia has a decidedly liberal bent, and so do the results of their “research”.
Got that? If your results are unreproducible scientific shit but accord with prevailing political attitudes (e.g. “stereotype threat”), you will be rewarded with journalistic attention (and much more) but if you do real scientific work whose results are not politically correct you will be ignored at best or Richwined at worst. Basically we are back to Lysenkoism. God help us. God help Pinker if the eye of Soros ever turns upon him.
Pinker seems to be hinting that he is relying on some papers that are about to be published. Are these papers on a preprint server somewhere? Does anyone have the references to back up what he says?
Arnold Schwarzenegger is leading the HBD Panzers against the poor downtrodden Russians!???
Count me in!
Since when is the test of a theory whether it is too depressing or not? You could consider it depressing to think that the sun will one day run out of fuel and all life on earth will perish but that’s no reason not to accept the scientific evidence that is so. It is fatalistic to think that the human lifespan appears to be limited to perhaps 120 years or so, but you can’t deny it. But somehow, in this area it’s OK to cover your ears and shout “nah, nah, nah, I can’t hear you” because it might cause you to draw uncomfortable conclusions.
By the way, the conclusions you draw from this have nothing to do with the findings themselves. Just because intelligence is partly heritable it doesn’t follow that we must therefore build extermination camps or sterilize the less intelligent. Human dignity does not have an IQ cutoff.
In some ways, acceptance of this would be liberating. Say you are a black person with an 85 IQ, just like your parents and siblings. You are constantly being told that you are actually a genius just like the great African geniuses who built the pyramids and yet you find academic work to be incredibly difficult. You are told that white people have cheated you by not teaching you in a culturally appropriate way, which fills you with anger (but nothing anyone tries seems to work). You keep trying and keep running up against intellectual brick walls – calculus, even algebra just don’t seem to register – it’s as if the teacher is speaking some foreign language that you don’t understand and you can never seem to break the code no matter how hard you study. Wouldn’t it be better to just accept that you just don’t have it in you because you were born that way?
I was always horribly uncoordinated – the last person to be picked for teams in gym class (and no one in my family has ever shown any glimmer of athletic talent). Nor am I particularly musical or artistic (again like the rest of my family) I grew to accept this situation. Although I wish that I had been gifted with more talent in these areas, I had to accept reality and play to my strengths instead.
Methinks you need to watch more WSHH.
Now do you get it? If this evil "science" were allowed to proceed there would be evil racists micro-aggressing all over the place! Before long, somebody might even capture video of an evil old white lady telling Ta-Neezy Coates' kid to stop playing on the escalator - the horror!!
By the way, the conclusions you draw from this have nothing to do with the findings themselves. Just because intelligence is partly heritable it doesn't follow that we must therefore build extermination camps or sterilize the less intelligent. Human dignity does not have an IQ cutoff.
In some ways, acceptance of this would be liberating. Say you are a black person with an 85 IQ, just like your parents and siblings. You are constantly being told that you are actually a genius just like the great African geniuses who built the pyramids and yet you find academic work to be incredibly difficult. You are told that white people have cheated you by not teaching you in a culturally appropriate way, which fills you with anger (but nothing anyone tries seems to work). You keep trying and keep running up against intellectual brick walls - calculus, even algebra just don't seem to register - it's as if the teacher is speaking some foreign language that you don't understand and you can never seem to break the code no matter how hard you study. Wouldn't it be better to just accept that you just don't have it in you because you were born that way?
I was always horribly uncoordinated - the last person to be picked for teams in gym class (and no one in my family has ever shown any glimmer of athletic talent). Nor am I particularly musical or artistic (again like the rest of my family) I grew to accept this situation. Although I wish that I had been gifted with more talent in these areas, I had to accept reality and play to my strengths instead.Replies: @Olorin, @Desiderius, @Massimo Heitor, @Stan D Mute, @Reg Cæsar
” Human dignity does not have an IQ cutoff. ”
Methinks you need to watch more WSHH.
By the way, the conclusions you draw from this have nothing to do with the findings themselves. Just because intelligence is partly heritable it doesn't follow that we must therefore build extermination camps or sterilize the less intelligent. Human dignity does not have an IQ cutoff.
In some ways, acceptance of this would be liberating. Say you are a black person with an 85 IQ, just like your parents and siblings. You are constantly being told that you are actually a genius just like the great African geniuses who built the pyramids and yet you find academic work to be incredibly difficult. You are told that white people have cheated you by not teaching you in a culturally appropriate way, which fills you with anger (but nothing anyone tries seems to work). You keep trying and keep running up against intellectual brick walls - calculus, even algebra just don't seem to register - it's as if the teacher is speaking some foreign language that you don't understand and you can never seem to break the code no matter how hard you study. Wouldn't it be better to just accept that you just don't have it in you because you were born that way?
I was always horribly uncoordinated - the last person to be picked for teams in gym class (and no one in my family has ever shown any glimmer of athletic talent). Nor am I particularly musical or artistic (again like the rest of my family) I grew to accept this situation. Although I wish that I had been gifted with more talent in these areas, I had to accept reality and play to my strengths instead.Replies: @Olorin, @Desiderius, @Massimo Heitor, @Stan D Mute, @Reg Cæsar
When your identity is based on your ideology and a theory is fatal to that ideology if proven true, then yeah, that’s pretty much baked into the cake.
Looking for individual genes or base pairs that cause intelligence is like looking for individual words or letters that make best selling novels. Sure, genes cause much of intelligence and words cause much of novel popularity, but there is generally not a useful relationship there.
The genetics and biotech world is making huge strides that Sailer doesn’t cover because they aren’t op-ed style developments. Look at the pace of 23andme improvement, Editas medicine, Viagen biotech, Illumina sequencing, or the Japanese researchers behind cell cultured mammal sperm+eggs:
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110323/full/news.2011.179.html
The HBD crowd is obsessed with public discussion but avoids anything technical.
By the way, the conclusions you draw from this have nothing to do with the findings themselves. Just because intelligence is partly heritable it doesn't follow that we must therefore build extermination camps or sterilize the less intelligent. Human dignity does not have an IQ cutoff.
In some ways, acceptance of this would be liberating. Say you are a black person with an 85 IQ, just like your parents and siblings. You are constantly being told that you are actually a genius just like the great African geniuses who built the pyramids and yet you find academic work to be incredibly difficult. You are told that white people have cheated you by not teaching you in a culturally appropriate way, which fills you with anger (but nothing anyone tries seems to work). You keep trying and keep running up against intellectual brick walls - calculus, even algebra just don't seem to register - it's as if the teacher is speaking some foreign language that you don't understand and you can never seem to break the code no matter how hard you study. Wouldn't it be better to just accept that you just don't have it in you because you were born that way?
I was always horribly uncoordinated - the last person to be picked for teams in gym class (and no one in my family has ever shown any glimmer of athletic talent). Nor am I particularly musical or artistic (again like the rest of my family) I grew to accept this situation. Although I wish that I had been gifted with more talent in these areas, I had to accept reality and play to my strengths instead.Replies: @Olorin, @Desiderius, @Massimo Heitor, @Stan D Mute, @Reg Cæsar
This a problem of jealousy and resentment, not simply lack of aptitude. Many people lack aptitude in school or athletics or lack charisma or lack good looks, but aren’t jealous or resentful.
People who are terrible in math generally aren’t interested in math. Most adults of all ethnic groups don’t have basic calculus or even basic algebra proficiency. And they generally don’t care. If you meet people who are really interested in math, and do math for fun, they may not be math superstars or as good as they wish, but they generally have basic math aptitude. I’ve never heard of an adult who always wishes they could learn calculus but simply lacked the aptitude. Math skill is heritable, but I suspect that it is the personality that is interested in math that is inherited through genes, and the aptitude is developed in response.
They just don't go around whining about it, so they're effectively invisible.Replies: @Massimo Heitor
The book Architects of Annihilation is enlightening about the extent to which the Nazi program was mainstream technocratic thinking in racial guise . For example guidance about which East European ought to be selected for Germanisation specified they were to be from high achieving families irrespective of their sub racial type.
Half of Syrian migrants so far are said (by the EU) to have university degrees by the EU. I think the HBD perspective dominant in the German world now is mainly the strain represented by Merkel and harking back to an old technocratic style of thought. It is HBD by a different name and it doesn’t care about or is actively hostile to racial or national considerations. Merkel and company clearly prefer foreigners to the unskilled low class ethnioGermans. Indeed ethnoGermans are being kicked out of special low income housing to make way for the so called refugee (actual permanent immigration. The ethnoGermans who have failed to demonstrate achievement ( a big thing in Germany) are to be replaced by bright foreigners. Some of the ethnoGermansermans being evicted were interviewed and they were standard Western underclass types, surely with low IQ. One careworn fellow was asked about the reasons for the disruption to his living arrangements (the Syrian refugees) and he said “I don’t dare say it”.
While there are a lot of things going on, and some major ones will doubtless remain a mystery, I think the old technocratic solutions (now in the guise of humanitarianism) are a real factor.
The genetics and biotech world is making huge strides that Sailer doesn't cover because they aren't op-ed style developments. Look at the pace of 23andme improvement, Editas medicine, Viagen biotech, Illumina sequencing, or the Japanese researchers behind cell cultured mammal sperm+eggs:
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110323/full/news.2011.179.html
The HBD crowd is obsessed with public discussion but avoids anything technical.Replies: @Peter Johnson
The analogy seems very strained “words cause much of novel popularity, but there is generally not a useful relationship there”. Does that have any useful meaning? Does it have some useful scientific explanatory power regarding gene-culture evolution? We just need to face up to the reality that different ethnic groups have some observable differences in average behavior that are due to genetic-based differences across ethnic groups. Dressing it up in complex metaphors tied to novels, etc. does not explain it away. Just be honest about the data and keep it simple.
I agree with racial group genetic IQ differences. I agree that genetics control much of intelligence and personality.
I am skeptical that looking for single base pair or even single gene differences will explain genetic differences in intelligence and personality. This is really a technical skepticism, not a political or ethical skepticism.
I also agree that words control book quality, movie pixel data causes movie quality. Why is one movie good and another movie terrible? If you analyze pixel data, I don't think you will get a useful answer even though those pixels make up the movie.Replies: @rvg, @Peter Johnson
By the way, the conclusions you draw from this have nothing to do with the findings themselves. Just because intelligence is partly heritable it doesn't follow that we must therefore build extermination camps or sterilize the less intelligent. Human dignity does not have an IQ cutoff.
In some ways, acceptance of this would be liberating. Say you are a black person with an 85 IQ, just like your parents and siblings. You are constantly being told that you are actually a genius just like the great African geniuses who built the pyramids and yet you find academic work to be incredibly difficult. You are told that white people have cheated you by not teaching you in a culturally appropriate way, which fills you with anger (but nothing anyone tries seems to work). You keep trying and keep running up against intellectual brick walls - calculus, even algebra just don't seem to register - it's as if the teacher is speaking some foreign language that you don't understand and you can never seem to break the code no matter how hard you study. Wouldn't it be better to just accept that you just don't have it in you because you were born that way?
I was always horribly uncoordinated - the last person to be picked for teams in gym class (and no one in my family has ever shown any glimmer of athletic talent). Nor am I particularly musical or artistic (again like the rest of my family) I grew to accept this situation. Although I wish that I had been gifted with more talent in these areas, I had to accept reality and play to my strengths instead.Replies: @Olorin, @Desiderius, @Massimo Heitor, @Stan D Mute, @Reg Cæsar
Oh my! You must get with the times friend. Don’t you know that “micro-aggressions” are the extermination camps of today? And “disparate impact” is the contemporary analog of forced sterilization.
Now do you get it? If this evil “science” were allowed to proceed there would be evil racists micro-aggressing all over the place! Before long, somebody might even capture video of an evil old white lady telling Ta-Neezy Coates’ kid to stop playing on the escalator – the horror!!
“a certain Austrian”
Bruno?
There are plenty of adults who wish they could learn / be good at calculus but can’t due to lack of mathematical talent.
They just don’t go around whining about it, so they’re effectively invisible.
I think math is the same way. There are adults who feel, gee, it must be nice to be good at calculus but never actually crack a calc book. But anyone who has seriously been drilling calculus books for a length of time will gain basic proficiency.Replies: @Melendwyr
Most DNA research is driven by crazed lust for windfall profits from proprietary pharmaceuticals. My own CL-du jour is to discover the seat of personality and of "self" itself. Here's what I'm really angling for: I want Prof. Churchill of the Personal Genome Project to walk down the hallway to the office of a particular astrophysicist and request a hair sample and if necessary yank it out. An angry argument would ensue, culminating in "Why should I care if an obscure weirdo allegedly from a branch of my family that I never heard of wants to tell me that he started a spiral notebook fifty years ago titled "Thompson's New Eclectic Compendium of Astronomical Data / Being a Catalog of the Multifarous and Multitudinous Marvels of the Celestial Vault." And if he says his efforts to embody in Fortran the concepts of Eddington's "Stellar Interiors" and Pauling/Sharp's "Quantum Theory" were completely feckless, puerile, and half-assed, what am I supposed to do? Argue against him?" Prof. Churchill's calm rejoinder will be "Because Churchill/Thompson's "Abode of Self" will surpass "Origin of Species" in the world's esteem, albeit only slightly."
Wow, I'm surprised how terse and lucid my posting turned out. I'm getting better at this.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @SFG, @Diversity Heretic
” I conceive of heredity being like a big, vertically arranged pinball machine, with multiple levels of bumpers, each with equal probability of deflection left or right.”
Galton invented one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bean_machine
Japanese pachinko machine is the best known of this class of pinball games.
I’ve taught and tutored calculus and algebra enough to get a pretty good idea of the general intelligence required (with geometry it’s less predictable because talent for visualization helps a lot and is significantly less g-loaded).
Most people with IQ 120 can learn Calculus normally in a classroom with normal effort. 110 IQ can learn it fully and with understanding with serious effort if well-tutored. 100 IQ can struggle and scrape a passing grade with lots of effort and help, but they won’t really get all of it. 90 will understand nothing specific to Calculus. This is why Calculus has always been considered “not for everybody” and is never required for high school even though smart 11th graders routinely ace it.
For Algebra 2, subtract 5 points from the above. For Algebra 1, subtract 5 more points.
Now consider the damage done by the requirement implemented by naive educational reformers who think that everyone ought to go to college so high schools ought to require Algebra 2.
This 5 point shift means that the median African-American kid can no longer graduate without cheating or lowered standards that will make brighter students unprepared for further math.
You are dismissing my metaphor too quickly.
I agree with racial group genetic IQ differences. I agree that genetics control much of intelligence and personality.
I am skeptical that looking for single base pair or even single gene differences will explain genetic differences in intelligence and personality. This is really a technical skepticism, not a political or ethical skepticism.
I also agree that words control book quality, movie pixel data causes movie quality. Why is one movie good and another movie terrible? If you analyze pixel data, I don’t think you will get a useful answer even though those pixels make up the movie.
What do you mean “understand calculus”? Do you mean understand the fine technical detail such as the actual proof of the chain rule or the fundamental theorem of calculus, or do you just mean knowing how to differentiate different types of function and find turning points and tangents? Because if the latter then in my experience no 18 years old maths student understands calculus and even hardly any maths graduates. They just know how to execute a technique without really understanding what they’re doing.
“Reductio ad Austrium?”
1. He also had the Autobahn and the VW Bug built. He also ate sugar. Is sugar evil?
2. He wasn’t interested in HB*D*, he wanted his race to triumph over all others. He was going to clean out Slavs to make room for Germans, inspired by our extermination of the Native Americans.
3. Everyone’s going to pile on me for this one, but I think the Holocaust was one of the most dysgenic events in recent history.
In short: Adolf was a jerk. We threw the baby, not to mention the cradle and several other children, out with the bathwater.
Most DNA research is driven by crazed lust for windfall profits from proprietary pharmaceuticals. My own CL-du jour is to discover the seat of personality and of "self" itself. Here's what I'm really angling for: I want Prof. Churchill of the Personal Genome Project to walk down the hallway to the office of a particular astrophysicist and request a hair sample and if necessary yank it out. An angry argument would ensue, culminating in "Why should I care if an obscure weirdo allegedly from a branch of my family that I never heard of wants to tell me that he started a spiral notebook fifty years ago titled "Thompson's New Eclectic Compendium of Astronomical Data / Being a Catalog of the Multifarous and Multitudinous Marvels of the Celestial Vault." And if he says his efforts to embody in Fortran the concepts of Eddington's "Stellar Interiors" and Pauling/Sharp's "Quantum Theory" were completely feckless, puerile, and half-assed, what am I supposed to do? Argue against him?" Prof. Churchill's calm rejoinder will be "Because Churchill/Thompson's "Abode of Self" will surpass "Origin of Species" in the world's esteem, albeit only slightly."
Wow, I'm surprised how terse and lucid my posting turned out. I'm getting better at this.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @SFG, @Diversity Heretic
Given the number and complexity of genes involved I’d say the third-cousin relationships are more likely the natural human pattern-matching faculty going overboard (as it often does), but who knows?
I wish Razib still read this board; he’d probably have something very intelligent to say.
They just don't go around whining about it, so they're effectively invisible.Replies: @Massimo Heitor
It’s common to find adults that wish they could play the piano but can’t. But generally, those adults that can’t play don’t make a remotely serious attempt to practice regularly. Not everyone has the same potential to be great or be a competition class player, but any adult who puts in serious practice effort generally gains basic proficiency.
I think math is the same way. There are adults who feel, gee, it must be nice to be good at calculus but never actually crack a calc book. But anyone who has seriously been drilling calculus books for a length of time will gain basic proficiency.
I'm sure I could become reasonably, basically proficient at most sports if I invested lots of time and effort into practicing them. I'd never be able to compete at a sport, though, at any level beyond pickup games. And I have better things to do with my time that I actually enjoy and that repay me in a variety of more concrete ways.
Math, I very strongly suspect, is similar - some people can't gain basic proficiency without investing more into the acquisition than it would be worth. Just as some people are too klutzy and poorly coordinated to become good at sports.
Well Hitler clearly saw the Germanic/Nordic race as being superior to the Slavic race and tried to do his own version of genetic cleaning.
I agree with racial group genetic IQ differences. I agree that genetics control much of intelligence and personality.
I am skeptical that looking for single base pair or even single gene differences will explain genetic differences in intelligence and personality. This is really a technical skepticism, not a political or ethical skepticism.
I also agree that words control book quality, movie pixel data causes movie quality. Why is one movie good and another movie terrible? If you analyze pixel data, I don't think you will get a useful answer even though those pixels make up the movie.Replies: @rvg, @Peter Johnson
Can you clone white brains and put it in a black body? So the black person has a white brain? I am not a doctor so I am not sure if this makes any sense.
Genes that code for skin color are well known, so it's possible to take a white baby embryo and alter the skin color genes so that the human would have black sub saharan style skin pigmentation. I imagine dark skinned Hindus are largely genetically white people with sub-saharan style skin pigmentation. You could do the same with hair color and hair texture too. You could also reverse it and take a black baby embryo, and disable the skin pigment genes, and have a white skinned baby that is otherwise black. Black albinos are like this.
BTW, human gene modification is technically possible, but it causes unintended changes that can be bad and cause things like cancer, so it's not worth the risk for something like skin color. For now, human gene modification is only being considered to treat serious diseases where the risks are justified. Consider Tay Sachs: for babies born with Tay Sachs, they are guaranteed to die by age four, so a treatment that may cause unintended cancer is worth the risk. And we know exactly what gene causes it. As politically unpopular as gene modification is, dead babies are even more politically unpopular. So that will happen. Editas Medicine, based in Cambridge, MA, is working on human gene treatments like this and is probably closest to having them market ready.
I have heard that scientists recently found genes that code for brain nucleus size which is believed to help some forms of intelligence. BTW, the word "nucleus" in neuroanatomy refers to a cluster of neural cells in the brain and is different from the nucleus of a cell, which is the more common meaning of the same word. Convincing people of changing genes to improve physical brain traits is going to sidestep any race sensitivities or controversy.
There is still anti-GMO sentiment and religious opposition to modifying genes, but realistically, if you start by catering to serious illnesses like Tay Sachs, there will be virtually zero objection to saving dying children. And then you progress to selling treatment to niche early adopter types in a quiet fashion, there won't be serious objection. And then, you can expand on a strictly opt-in basis, where people understand the risks and benefits and really want it. People will get used to it, the mainstream Christians and Catholics will rewrite their rulebooks to embrace it, and the world will be a better place.Replies: @Anonymous
I think this obsession with knowing mathematics is misguided. I have never known anyone who wanted to know more calculus or physics outside of a few math or science professors. If you are that curious about what the subjects entail, then you will read a few books and learn that.
It’s kind of like saying that I wish I could read Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Armenian, Georgian, Arabic, Mongolian, and other languages. Actually, I know I could, because I am generally pretty good at languages and already know (for reading) several non-Roman alphabet languages. But I don’t know these other languages because I don’t have the time.
To the extent that someone is resentful of someone who has a skill they do not have (calculus or physics, to name the two that are constantly referenced) it has to come down to social signaling of status, which includes money, social prestige, and opportunities for sexual misadventures (I’m not sure women are actually attracted to men who know calculus (cross referencing an old National Lampoon ad) but I will concede the point for the sake of the argument.)
In fact, most people learn the things they have to learn to master their jobs, or save work on home or car repair, or what have you. Some people are lucky enough to have time left over after doing the things that they have to do. A smaller fraction of those some people have some brain power left over and are curious and/or ambitious and then turn their free time to learning something that they are interested in learning about. Such people are relatively rare, but even they don’t have the time to learn everything they would want to learn, whether it’s calculus, physics, music performance, or foreign languages.
I get that black people are not likely to be good — generally — at calculus or physics, but the only real upshot of that is that they are unlikely to earn six figure salaries unless they are athletes, or very hard workers, or very lucky. Which means, like most people, they will have to work very hard just to be members of the silent majority middle class, and they won’t have time to study things just for the heck of it. On the other hand, the math / physics people I have known, unless they went into business, weren’t exactly parking Lamborghinis in the driveways of their McMansions. But yet on the other hand once you go into business you aren’t likely to have the time left over to keep up your math studies either.
In short, the limits to learning aren’t just about IQ, there’s also such things as time and money involved, as well as native curiosity, as well as the humdrum necessities of life.
As to the main point, does anyone seriously need to be told that most human qualities are inherited and that people have always evaluated potential spouses (and thus, progeny) on the basis of the intelligence, manners, and conduct (with derivative reputation and social status) of the potential spouse and his or her family?
I've worked in many computer software companies and there are many programmers, managers, and various business types who make over $100K/year and generally have very basic math/science knowledge that they've never used since college.
I love physics, but physics knowledge rarely translates into jobs and salary. Even in academia, where researchers compete for grant money, physics is not a hot area and does not get a lot of dollars. I know Physics PhDs who made relatively little money doing software QA work.
This notion that you need math to make good money, or you need to be a professional athlete, is completely out of touch.Replies: @SPMoore8
By the way, the conclusions you draw from this have nothing to do with the findings themselves. Just because intelligence is partly heritable it doesn't follow that we must therefore build extermination camps or sterilize the less intelligent. Human dignity does not have an IQ cutoff.
In some ways, acceptance of this would be liberating. Say you are a black person with an 85 IQ, just like your parents and siblings. You are constantly being told that you are actually a genius just like the great African geniuses who built the pyramids and yet you find academic work to be incredibly difficult. You are told that white people have cheated you by not teaching you in a culturally appropriate way, which fills you with anger (but nothing anyone tries seems to work). You keep trying and keep running up against intellectual brick walls - calculus, even algebra just don't seem to register - it's as if the teacher is speaking some foreign language that you don't understand and you can never seem to break the code no matter how hard you study. Wouldn't it be better to just accept that you just don't have it in you because you were born that way?
I was always horribly uncoordinated - the last person to be picked for teams in gym class (and no one in my family has ever shown any glimmer of athletic talent). Nor am I particularly musical or artistic (again like the rest of my family) I grew to accept this situation. Although I wish that I had been gifted with more talent in these areas, I had to accept reality and play to my strengths instead.Replies: @Olorin, @Desiderius, @Massimo Heitor, @Stan D Mute, @Reg Cæsar
But progressives all seem to think it does follow. Which makes me even more suspicious, as they seem to think they’re smarter than us. Just what do they have in mind?
Anyone who’s acquainted with a Down syndrome child already knows that.
No one is better qualified to study curves.
“Remember the last time a certain Austrian tried to implement HBD policy in Eastern Europe?”
That doesn’t have anything do with the reality of HBD, HBD research, or forming rational public policy based on the best knowledge we have. Live not by lies.
Don’t get mentally stuck 70 years in the past, where you can’t see anything else and you can’t think looking at anything new. Science marches on, what we know improves. Slowly, but it does.
Remember the last time a certain superpower tried to magically make an easily identifiable subgroup rocket scientists overnight? Oh, wait, it’s still going on and we don’t have to remember.
Most DNA research is driven by crazed lust for windfall profits from proprietary pharmaceuticals. My own CL-du jour is to discover the seat of personality and of "self" itself. Here's what I'm really angling for: I want Prof. Churchill of the Personal Genome Project to walk down the hallway to the office of a particular astrophysicist and request a hair sample and if necessary yank it out. An angry argument would ensue, culminating in "Why should I care if an obscure weirdo allegedly from a branch of my family that I never heard of wants to tell me that he started a spiral notebook fifty years ago titled "Thompson's New Eclectic Compendium of Astronomical Data / Being a Catalog of the Multifarous and Multitudinous Marvels of the Celestial Vault." And if he says his efforts to embody in Fortran the concepts of Eddington's "Stellar Interiors" and Pauling/Sharp's "Quantum Theory" were completely feckless, puerile, and half-assed, what am I supposed to do? Argue against him?" Prof. Churchill's calm rejoinder will be "Because Churchill/Thompson's "Abode of Self" will surpass "Origin of Species" in the world's esteem, albeit only slightly."
Wow, I'm surprised how terse and lucid my posting turned out. I'm getting better at this.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @SFG, @Diversity Heretic
I think that a lot of people have noted that physical and behavioral characteristics often “skip a generation.” Grandchildren often resemble grandparents more than they do their parents. DNA encoding could be a basis for that bit of folk wisdom.
We’ll see about Pinker. He also wrote “The emerging picture is that most behavioral traits are affected by many, many genes, each accounting for a tiny percentage of the variance.” Which means it will be difficult to make generalizations about race and IQ given the enormous number of interlocking variables. There are already genes strongly linked to psychological traits, including IQ scores. Is Pinker himself obfuscating?
“Your comment, like most things, reminds me of Munich, 1938.”
— Bill Kristol
I agree with racial group genetic IQ differences. I agree that genetics control much of intelligence and personality.
I am skeptical that looking for single base pair or even single gene differences will explain genetic differences in intelligence and personality. This is really a technical skepticism, not a political or ethical skepticism.
I also agree that words control book quality, movie pixel data causes movie quality. Why is one movie good and another movie terrible? If you analyze pixel data, I don't think you will get a useful answer even though those pixels make up the movie.Replies: @rvg, @Peter Johnson
It is not necessary to isolate the genes (or allelles?) to show scientifically that ethnic differences in behaviour are in part genetically caused. Finding the individual genes would be great but is not absolutely necessary to confirm the result. For example it is well known that when gasoline prices fall, U.S. aggregate mileage driven tends to increase. However to drill down and measure the driving decision of every US household in response to gasoline prices would be an impossible task. Nonetheless the testable hypothesis (lower gas prices increase miles driven) is statistically confirmed at the aggregate level. Similarly, we know that ethnic differences in behaviour are linked to genetic differences, but have not yet drilled down to all the specific individual genetic mechanisms giving rise to this.
Science isn’t remotely close to doing brain transplants without killing the patient.
Genes that code for skin color are well known, so it’s possible to take a white baby embryo and alter the skin color genes so that the human would have black sub saharan style skin pigmentation. I imagine dark skinned Hindus are largely genetically white people with sub-saharan style skin pigmentation. You could do the same with hair color and hair texture too. You could also reverse it and take a black baby embryo, and disable the skin pigment genes, and have a white skinned baby that is otherwise black. Black albinos are like this.
BTW, human gene modification is technically possible, but it causes unintended changes that can be bad and cause things like cancer, so it’s not worth the risk for something like skin color. For now, human gene modification is only being considered to treat serious diseases where the risks are justified. Consider Tay Sachs: for babies born with Tay Sachs, they are guaranteed to die by age four, so a treatment that may cause unintended cancer is worth the risk. And we know exactly what gene causes it. As politically unpopular as gene modification is, dead babies are even more politically unpopular. So that will happen. Editas Medicine, based in Cambridge, MA, is working on human gene treatments like this and is probably closest to having them market ready.
I have heard that scientists recently found genes that code for brain nucleus size which is believed to help some forms of intelligence. BTW, the word “nucleus” in neuroanatomy refers to a cluster of neural cells in the brain and is different from the nucleus of a cell, which is the more common meaning of the same word. Convincing people of changing genes to improve physical brain traits is going to sidestep any race sensitivities or controversy.
There is still anti-GMO sentiment and religious opposition to modifying genes, but realistically, if you start by catering to serious illnesses like Tay Sachs, there will be virtually zero objection to saving dying children. And then you progress to selling treatment to niche early adopter types in a quiet fashion, there won’t be serious objection. And then, you can expand on a strictly opt-in basis, where people understand the risks and benefits and really want it. People will get used to it, the mainstream Christians and Catholics will rewrite their rulebooks to embrace it, and the world will be a better place.
Everyone is time limited and can’t learn everything they want, but most regular westerners can pick a small number of hobbies or interests to invest time and effort into.
I agree completely. This is exactly what I was saying.
I know white+black city unionized utility workers that make $150k/year. I know white+black public school principals that make six figure salaries. I know a guy who made several million dollars doing swimming pool installation. I know guys who do construction contracting and make over $300k on a good year. I know high energy wheeler deeler salesmen types who found some niche business and make $400k on a good year but have bust years where they make nothing.
I’ve worked in many computer software companies and there are many programmers, managers, and various business types who make over $100K/year and generally have very basic math/science knowledge that they’ve never used since college.
I love physics, but physics knowledge rarely translates into jobs and salary. Even in academia, where researchers compete for grant money, physics is not a hot area and does not get a lot of dollars. I know Physics PhDs who made relatively little money doing software QA work.
This notion that you need math to make good money, or you need to be a professional athlete, is completely out of touch.
I agree, but the way the argument goes around here, is that (a) black people aren't smart enough to do calculus or physics, (b) that's why they are a persistent underclass in America (quite leap in there.) As you correctly point out, there are many ways to make a six figure salary (which is solid middle class) that don't require either. And, in fact, if you learn a skill and work hard most people can make $50 K a year which is solidly middle class, even if on the lower end. And calculus or physics has nothing to do with that either.
It follows therefore that no specific benefit economic benefit accrues to studying either calculus or physics, it's basically only good for bragging rights. So then, query: why the perceived resentment towards people who have Mastered these Mysteries? Probably because the resentful ones think that higher math will lead to higher salaries but at least high social prestige. You have helped demonstrate that the first is untrue; I also think the second is untrue.Replies: @Massimo Heitor
I've worked in many computer software companies and there are many programmers, managers, and various business types who make over $100K/year and generally have very basic math/science knowledge that they've never used since college.
I love physics, but physics knowledge rarely translates into jobs and salary. Even in academia, where researchers compete for grant money, physics is not a hot area and does not get a lot of dollars. I know Physics PhDs who made relatively little money doing software QA work.
This notion that you need math to make good money, or you need to be a professional athlete, is completely out of touch.Replies: @SPMoore8
This notion that you need math to make good money, or you need to be a professional athlete, is completely out of touch.
I agree, but the way the argument goes around here, is that (a) black people aren’t smart enough to do calculus or physics, (b) that’s why they are a persistent underclass in America (quite leap in there.) As you correctly point out, there are many ways to make a six figure salary (which is solid middle class) that don’t require either. And, in fact, if you learn a skill and work hard most people can make $50 K a year which is solidly middle class, even if on the lower end. And calculus or physics has nothing to do with that either.
It follows therefore that no specific benefit economic benefit accrues to studying either calculus or physics, it’s basically only good for bragging rights. So then, query: why the perceived resentment towards people who have Mastered these Mysteries? Probably because the resentful ones think that higher math will lead to higher salaries but at least high social prestige. You have helped demonstrate that the first is untrue; I also think the second is untrue.
STEM skills/credentials are both underrated for how awesome they can be and overrated in that companies will frequently give status and salary preference to STEM types those skills aren't relevant to the job.
I see many software companies, that pay big salaries to get fancy PhD candidates because it sounds good on paper and when giving office tours, but often the academic skill sets aren't even used, and people who contribute more to the company often get less pay and recognition.On one hand, I dislike the idea of resenting the happiness of others. On the other hand:
I can understand resentment when STEM candidates get automatic status/rank/pay over non-STEM candidates without real justification.
I can understand resentment towards academia. STEM professors are in a hyper competitive space and they do some absolutely amazing stuff, so I have a deep respect for them. At the same time, they have outrageous levels of status/respect, it's very socially elite/exclusive, they get outrageously high salaries, and outrageous levels of autonomy, flexibility, and freedom. It's a very desirable lifestyle if you can get in.Replies: @Spmoore8
I think math is the same way. There are adults who feel, gee, it must be nice to be good at calculus but never actually crack a calc book. But anyone who has seriously been drilling calculus books for a length of time will gain basic proficiency.Replies: @Melendwyr
I imagine it’s rather like athletics: people who have talent benefit from developing it, and so invest time and energy in doing so, while people who aren’t so gifted don’t consider the opportunity cost to be worth the gain.
I’m sure I could become reasonably, basically proficient at most sports if I invested lots of time and effort into practicing them. I’d never be able to compete at a sport, though, at any level beyond pickup games. And I have better things to do with my time that I actually enjoy and that repay me in a variety of more concrete ways.
Math, I very strongly suspect, is similar – some people can’t gain basic proficiency without investing more into the acquisition than it would be worth. Just as some people are too klutzy and poorly coordinated to become good at sports.
You’re boring.
I agree, but the way the argument goes around here, is that (a) black people aren't smart enough to do calculus or physics, (b) that's why they are a persistent underclass in America (quite leap in there.) As you correctly point out, there are many ways to make a six figure salary (which is solid middle class) that don't require either. And, in fact, if you learn a skill and work hard most people can make $50 K a year which is solidly middle class, even if on the lower end. And calculus or physics has nothing to do with that either.
It follows therefore that no specific benefit economic benefit accrues to studying either calculus or physics, it's basically only good for bragging rights. So then, query: why the perceived resentment towards people who have Mastered these Mysteries? Probably because the resentful ones think that higher math will lead to higher salaries but at least high social prestige. You have helped demonstrate that the first is untrue; I also think the second is untrue.Replies: @Massimo Heitor
I disagree. STEM skills/credentials absolutely have status and career benefits. Most successful people find success without fancy STEM skills, but STEM skills absolutely give huge benefits.
STEM skills/credentials are both underrated for how awesome they can be and overrated in that companies will frequently give status and salary preference to STEM types those skills aren’t relevant to the job.
I see many software companies, that pay big salaries to get fancy PhD candidates because it sounds good on paper and when giving office tours, but often the academic skill sets aren’t even used, and people who contribute more to the company often get less pay and recognition.
On one hand, I dislike the idea of resenting the happiness of others. On the other hand:
I can understand resentment when STEM candidates get automatic status/rank/pay over non-STEM candidates without real justification.
I can understand resentment towards academia. STEM professors are in a hyper competitive space and they do some absolutely amazing stuff, so I have a deep respect for them. At the same time, they have outrageous levels of status/respect, it’s very socially elite/exclusive, they get outrageously high salaries, and outrageous levels of autonomy, flexibility, and freedom. It’s a very desirable lifestyle if you can get in.
Furthermore, my own experience with STEM academicians is not as you describe it. Sure, the top flight types seem to have it made - if you think that Christakis guy at Yale "has it made." The STEM profs and fellows I knew lived rather modest lives. But they knew calc and physics.
I think if someone wants to master those things that's great. But my experience is that, absent other skills and qualifications, it doesn't translate to the street or bank account. We will just have to disagree about that.
By the same token I remain bewildered by the envy people have towards the academy. But again all I can react to is what I saw for myself and others decades ago.
People just mean doing well in typical Calculus I/II classes. You’re setting the bar too high, I think. At most schools there’s a “business calculus,” usually very easy, cookbook type class. Then there’s regular calculus (that’s what everyone usually refers to) that is more for STEM grads that’s much harder and more in depth, but usually without rigorous proofs. That stuff is saved for later classes like real analysis for the actual math majors since it’s overkill for the engineers and everyone else. There’s a lot of middle ground between mindless plug and chug and knowing all the formal proofs.
STEM skills/credentials are both underrated for how awesome they can be and overrated in that companies will frequently give status and salary preference to STEM types those skills aren't relevant to the job.
I see many software companies, that pay big salaries to get fancy PhD candidates because it sounds good on paper and when giving office tours, but often the academic skill sets aren't even used, and people who contribute more to the company often get less pay and recognition.On one hand, I dislike the idea of resenting the happiness of others. On the other hand:
I can understand resentment when STEM candidates get automatic status/rank/pay over non-STEM candidates without real justification.
I can understand resentment towards academia. STEM professors are in a hyper competitive space and they do some absolutely amazing stuff, so I have a deep respect for them. At the same time, they have outrageous levels of status/respect, it's very socially elite/exclusive, they get outrageously high salaries, and outrageous levels of autonomy, flexibility, and freedom. It's a very desirable lifestyle if you can get in.Replies: @Spmoore8
You are now talking about the elite, but applies to all members of the elite, including lawyers, doctors, and wealthy people generally. Again, you don’t need calculus or physics for that.
Furthermore, my own experience with STEM academicians is not as you describe it. Sure, the top flight types seem to have it made – if you think that Christakis guy at Yale “has it made.” The STEM profs and fellows I knew lived rather modest lives. But they knew calc and physics.
I think if someone wants to master those things that’s great. But my experience is that, absent other skills and qualifications, it doesn’t translate to the street or bank account. We will just have to disagree about that.
By the same token I remain bewildered by the envy people have towards the academy. But again all I can react to is what I saw for myself and others decades ago.
It is a mind blowing scientific breakthrough. The actual paper is behind a paywall and the abstract is well named, so to understand the findings go to James Thompson's blog.
There is a huge variation in genetic in human intelligence and HBDers as well as psychometric studies have been saying it for years. Now, finally now the scientific proof is coming out. Just read what James Thompson has to say, he quotes at length from the article which is going to open up the doors to a brave new world, where folks like Steve Sailer will have scientific proof to back up his HBD claims.
We live in interesting times. No doubt Razib Khan and Greg Cochran will have their take on what this all means coming out shortly. Honestly Pinker brilliant as he is, influential as he is, he isn't on the hunt for IQ genes, he isn't a geneticist. In a nutshell there are no individual genes with large impact on IQ. What this study has found is that there is a large group of genes that together create an optimum combination that cause a better functioning human brain.Replies: @Anonymous
The study didn’t claim to have found anywhere close to all of the genes that affect intelligence. The authors studied people with mental retardation and seizure disorders, so they have found a subset of total intelligence-mediating genes that are involved in those disorders among the group of people in the study.
Genes that code for skin color are well known, so it's possible to take a white baby embryo and alter the skin color genes so that the human would have black sub saharan style skin pigmentation. I imagine dark skinned Hindus are largely genetically white people with sub-saharan style skin pigmentation. You could do the same with hair color and hair texture too. You could also reverse it and take a black baby embryo, and disable the skin pigment genes, and have a white skinned baby that is otherwise black. Black albinos are like this.
BTW, human gene modification is technically possible, but it causes unintended changes that can be bad and cause things like cancer, so it's not worth the risk for something like skin color. For now, human gene modification is only being considered to treat serious diseases where the risks are justified. Consider Tay Sachs: for babies born with Tay Sachs, they are guaranteed to die by age four, so a treatment that may cause unintended cancer is worth the risk. And we know exactly what gene causes it. As politically unpopular as gene modification is, dead babies are even more politically unpopular. So that will happen. Editas Medicine, based in Cambridge, MA, is working on human gene treatments like this and is probably closest to having them market ready.
I have heard that scientists recently found genes that code for brain nucleus size which is believed to help some forms of intelligence. BTW, the word "nucleus" in neuroanatomy refers to a cluster of neural cells in the brain and is different from the nucleus of a cell, which is the more common meaning of the same word. Convincing people of changing genes to improve physical brain traits is going to sidestep any race sensitivities or controversy.
There is still anti-GMO sentiment and religious opposition to modifying genes, but realistically, if you start by catering to serious illnesses like Tay Sachs, there will be virtually zero objection to saving dying children. And then you progress to selling treatment to niche early adopter types in a quiet fashion, there won't be serious objection. And then, you can expand on a strictly opt-in basis, where people understand the risks and benefits and really want it. People will get used to it, the mainstream Christians and Catholics will rewrite their rulebooks to embrace it, and the world will be a better place.Replies: @Anonymous
The unintended mutations caused by current gene editing techniques could cause a lot more problems than just unintended cancer. The unintended mutations found in the Chinese embryo study weren’t just in tumor suppressor genes or the like. For a Tay-Sachs child to undergo gene editing to correct the inborn anomaly but experience another lethal mutation, whether cancer causing or not, is still sufficiently likely to as to make nothing at Editas close to market-ready. There is also the problem that the desired modification failed to occur in many of the embryos in the Chinese study. I believe the success rate wasn’t much better than 50%. It’s very interesting work, but not ready for prime time. When it gets closer, there would still be limitations that would make the techniques viable only for early embryos. I don’t think that adult patients will be going in for genetic editing treatments anytime soon.