Hi, I'm Scott Alexander and I will now explain why every disease is in fact just poor genetics by using play-doh statistics to sorta refute a super specific point about schizophrenia heritability. - eviltoast

edited to add tl;dr: Siskind seems ticked off because recent papers on the genetics of schizophrenia are increasingly pointing out that at current miniscule levels of prevalence, even with the commonly accepted 80% heritability, actually developing the disorder is all but impossible unless at least some of the environmental factors are also in play. This is understandably very worrisome, since it indicates that even high heritability issues might be solvable without immediately employing eugenics.

Also notable because I don’t think it’s very often that eugenics grievances breach the surface in such an obvious way in a public siskind post, including the claim that the whole thing is just HBD denialists spreading FUD:

People really hate the finding that most diseases are substantially (often primarily) genetic. There’s a whole toolbox that people in denial about this use to sow doubt. Usually it involves misunderstanding polygenicity/omnigenicity, or confusing GWAS’ current inability to detect a gene with the gene not existing. I hope most people are already wise to these tactics.

  • Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems
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    10 months ago

    Some sociology in the comments

    It’s good to bear in mind that there are important ways in which heredity influences environment: Kids who are physically attractive and above average at motor coordination are more liked by their peers. Physically attractive kids are perceived by teachers as smarter, and are favored. Kids who really are quite smart, even if not physically attractive, are seen as smart by teachers. Simple things like this have a big influence on how many smiling faces kids see in their early years, and that number’s a powerful feature of social environment.

    God I hate these people so fucking much

    • swlabr@awful.systems
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      10 months ago

      heredity influences environment

      smugly “well actually environmental factors are genetic too”

      aaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA