Criminals are Born That Way

It is common to attribute crime to poverty, absent fathers, or poor education. Someone will notice that a lot of prisoners were fatherless, and decude that huge social problems could be solved encouraging fathers or funding school programs. Maybe, but it does not follow.

This essay explains:

The Blank Slate, the idea that differences in human personality and behaviour are entirely the result of that person’s experiences earlier in life, is utterly dominant in swathes of the social sciences, including sociology, criminology, and anthropology. Left-leaning academics adhere to the blank slate because it implies that humans are fully malleable. If a person’s behaviour, good or bad, is entirely the result of how they have been treated, then one can fix all of society’s problems by re-engineering society to give everyone an idyllic upbringing and so produce a utopia. Indeed, the failure to have done that already can only be attributed to the iniquity of the capitalists who thus need to be overthrown and deposed.

We’ve known for decades that this is utterly wrong. By far the biggest influence on a person’s personality and behavioural traits is their genes [1]. Twin studies, corroborated and supported by adoption studies and other types of study, tell us that about 50% of the variation in behavioural traits is attributable to differences in genes. Everything else – including biological randomness in embryonic development, the influences of families, schools and communities, and all the other influences and experiences specific to each person – only adds up to the other 50% [2].

The heritability of criminality is about 40–50%, which means that whether or not a child is likely to grow up to have a criminal record depends primarily on the genes he was born with, and less than that on his upbringing and childhood environment [3]. So why is this totally ignored in most discussions of the causes of crime?

Last month, a fatherless Canadian male transgender dropout shot and killed 6 in a school. It seems obvious that a deranged mom and a missing dad were major causes. Probably so. But we cannot know for sure in an individual case. We can research this by aggregated cases and measuring statistics. When that is done, the genetic causes are apparent, and the others are not.

How Girls Fall Behind in Math

A new Nature article claims to have resolved a nature-nuture debate.

When do girls fall behind in maths? Gigantic study pinpoints the moment

Analysis of almost three million children captures when ‘mathematical gender gap’ first emerges and could help focus efforts to stop girls from falling behind. ...

Boys and girls receive similar maths scores at the start of school, but boys pull ahead of girls after just four months (see ‘Watch the mathematics gender gap emerge’). A more dramatic gap in mathematical performance emerges after 12 months of school, according to the analysis, published on 11 June in Nature1.

“This paper suggests that the gender inequalities in children’s maths performance aren’t innate or inevitable,” says psychologist Jillian Lauer at the University of Cambridge, UK. “If we want to stop girls from falling behind, we need to focus on their early experiences at school.”

The research found that boys and girls get to first grade being equally able to count, but boys pull ahead when asked to do problems like 5+6=11. The poor girls never catch up.

This is ridiculous. Grade schools are much more adapted to teaching girls than boys. I do not think that girls are falling behind because first grade teachers are not teaching them to add well.

I also don't think first grade addition has much to do with long term math abilities.

I met the science writer of this story a long time ago. She might even remember me, even though it has been maybe 25 years. I don't blame her for this. She is just writing up the published research that the Nature editors accepted. I am happy to see she is a successful science writer.

This research is only appearing in the leading British science journal because of the leftist egalitarian implication. Nature even has an editorial:

Close the mathematics gender gap: huge study prompts urgent call to action ...

‘Boys are better at maths’. It’s a stereotype that’s still pervasive among many children, teachers and parents. But is there any truth to it? A study of millions of schoolchildren in France reveals that boys pull ahead of girls in mathematics early, during the first year of school, but suggests that this ‘gender gap’ is not inevitable ...

The lack of differences in achievement at the start of school is an indication that boys have no inherent advantages when it comes to raw ability or interest. That, in turn, indicates that the gap could be reduced, or even erased, if children’s early environment at school and at home is changed. By pinpointing when girls start to fall behind boys, this study should help to focus further research into interventions that could reduce the gap.

Such interventions are needed. Women in many countries are less likely than men to study maths, ...

The latest study is a wake-up call for parents and carers, educators and scientists. The next step is for researchers to develop various interventions and measure their impact before and during the first year of school. For instance, do girls in classes taught by teachers who provide support to reduce anxiety around maths perform better than girls who don’t receive such support?

No, this is crazy stuff. First grade schooling is already girl-oriented. First grade girls do not have math anxiety. It is foolish to even think that this is a problem to be solved. From Wikipedia:

The gender-equality paradox is the finding that various gender differences in personality and occupational choice are larger in more gender equal countries.

The better you teach math, the more you will find performance differences. Face reality.

Trump and the Post-Shame Society

Axios essay:

America is reaching the pinnacle of a post-shame society forged by Donald Trump and reinforced by powerful patrons.

Why it matters: Nearly 50 years after Richard Nixon resigned before ever being charged with a crime, the GOP is a month away from nominating a convicted felon to be president. Polls suggest the race is extremely close.

The big picture: While he may represent the most extreme example, Trump isn't the only one who has realized a lack of shame can be a crucial survival skill. ...

Between the lines: The "never back down" phenomenon has spread to corners of the business world in recent years — led primarily by Elon Musk. ...

The bottom line: If Watergate happened in 2024, there's every chance Nixon would have hung in there.

I think Pres. Nixon should have hung in there. Everybody thinks he was guilty, but nobody can say what he was guilty of. I always thought his biggest crime was obstruction of justice, by telling the FBI that the Watergate break-in was a CIA operation But most of the burglars were CIA operatives, and the FBI is under the Executive Branch, so I think the President can tell the FBI whatever he wants. I do not see why it is a crime.

Axios refers to the Guilt–shame–fear spectrum of cultures:

In cultural anthropology, the distinction between a guilt society or guilt culture, shame society or shame culture, and a fear society or culture of fear, has been used to categorize different cultures.[1] The differences can apply to how behavior is governed with respect to government laws, business rules, or social etiquette. This classification has been applied especially to what anthropologist Ruth Benedict called "apollonian" societies, sorting them according to the emotions they use to control individuals (especially children) and maintaining social order, swaying them into norm obedience and conformity.[2]

America has always been a guilt society. Immigrants from Asia, Africa, and the Arab World are nearly always shame-based, and do not assimilate even after several generations.

The guilt mechanism is vastly superior to shame and fear. If you want proof, just ask parents who have tried these three methods. For example:

Shame is a uniquely painful emotion. Unlike guilt, which is linked to specific actions and therefore serves as an effective behavior modification tool, shame is universal. It makes us feel bad about ourselves as people in ways that can lead to self-harm and severe physical effects. When someone feels shame, their heart rate increases, their body temperature elevates, and their muscles contract. Shame-filled people lose sleep and their appetites, becoming irritable, sick, and prone to drug and alcohol abuse. This is all very bad news for parents of young children, who research suggests are neurologically vulnerable to feelings of shame during the first two years of their children’s lives. Why are we wired this way? Because we inherit our shame and because we’re all too willing to entertain the notion that we’re bad parents.

Using guilt teaches kids to think for themselves, and to develop autonomy and responsibility.

This is one of the big differences between Christendom and the rest of the world, and the difference has persisted for a millennium. I suspect that it is in the genes now, as Westerners are much more individualistic than Asians, whether religious or not. It is a good reason for Europe and USA to not allow immigration from shame-based societies.

Genetic Determinism and Free Will

Aporia magazine tackles tricky genetic issues like this:

Warm and caring mothers tend to have more successful children, but this doesn’t necessarily mean there’s an effect of warmth and care. The problem is that warm and caring mothers tend to pass on the sorts of genes that are correlated with being warm and caring. Since people with such traits are often successful in life in other ways, we should expect kids raised by warm and caring mothers to be successful for environmental and genetic reasons. The question then arises: to what degree does each of these influences matter?

In an article in Aporia published last August, Curtis Dunkel mentioned the issue of genetic confounding with respect to supportive parental behaviors.

In other words, good parents have good kids by passing good genes, not by good parenting behaviors.

Sounds a little like genetic determinism. Another article attacks free will:

For libertarian free will not only does not exist, it is utterly incoherent. Many philosophers have eagerly made this point, but few with the panache of Friedrich Nietzsche:

“This causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far, it is a sort of rape and perversion of logic. But the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with just this nonsense. The desire for ‘freedom of the will’ in the superlative metaphysical sense, which still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated; the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one’s actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui and, with more than Baron Münchhausen’s audacity, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness.”

What is more, even if libertarian free will were coherent, it would be undesirable, granting free will only in the way a mischievous genie grants wishes that go badly wrong in popular parables for children. Libertarian free will leads to absurd and unappealing consequences. ...

Libertarian free will is a metaphysical monster invented by philosophers to be hunted and slain by philosophers. A cynic might even contend that its very purpose is to keep philosophers employed by giving them something to refute.

Scathing attack. The article is titled, "in defense of free will". Go figure.

Most people believe in free will, and even believe free will is essential to the human existence. And yet all these smart philosophers reject it.

I understand why parents want to deny genetic influences. Child-rearing is hard work, and they like to believe that the work is doing some good. But why are philosphers so eager to reject free will?

The above complains that free will makes the "universe unpredictable not just in practice, but also in principle." Yes, right, and that is a good thing, not a bad thing.

There is no scientific proof or disproof of free will, so you can believe or disbelieve as you wish. You may choose to believe that you are a puppet in a predetermined universe, if you wish.

New Movie Documentary Against Free Will

There is a new movie on Free Will? A documentary:

No idea is more fundamental to who we are than the idea that we are free to choose what we do and who we will become.

This idea is known as free will and since ancient times humanity has debated whether or not we have it. The question still remains: are we truly free? And in what sense are we free? Are we determined by forced beyond our control? Is free will compatible with determinism? What does quantum mechanics and neuroscience say? Is free will necessary in order for society to function? What implications does free will have on morality, religion, and the criminal justice system?

Free Will? A Documentary explores all of these topics and more. ...

We're gathering some of the best minds available on every side of the issue — libertarians, determinists, and compatibilists — to offer the best arguments from each side. In short, the mission will be to change the cultural zeitgeist on its understanding of free will.

Biology professor Jerry Coyne watched it so we don't have to, and comments:

But everyone else interviewed is a naturalist, all believing that at any one moment you have only one course of action.

Then it is not covering those who believe in (libertarian) free will. If we only have one course of action, then we have no free choices.

There’s a good discussion of the science, including the Libet and more recent Libet-like experiments

The preview mentions these experiments as showing that a decision might take the brain a couple of seconds, so that it is initiated before the brain is aware of a decision having been made. These experiments have been widely misinterpreted, and really don't say anything about free will.

the failure to connect libertarian free will to Abrahamic religions, of which it’s an essential part — a connection that accounts for why more than half of people surveyed in four countries accept libertarian free will.

Free will is essential to Christianty, but not to Judaism or Islam. Moslems think everything is determined by God's will. Some Christians also think that, but only a small minority. Some Jews believe in free will, but it is not important to Judaism.

I thus use “naturalism” (a term that’s not idiosyncraatic; it was suggested by Sean Carroll) to mean “determinism + quantum mechanics”, i.e. the laws of physics. People who hear “determinism” think that at the big bang the entire future of the universe was determined, which isn’t true.

I guess he is trying to say determinism plus indeterminism explains everything.

That’s fine with me, for once you accept naturalism, one can begin dealing with the important social consequences, including how to judge other people in both life and the legal system.

And then he can use his lack of free will to judge others with no free will? He makes no sense.

One of his readers:

Being an atheist I have to accept that free will is an illusion. But this has no relevance to the criminal justice system. ... Criminologists can debate, on free will principles, whether the purpose of prison is deterrence, revenge, or rehabilitation but ordinary people don’t care as long as the sentence provides a just measure of pain.

Wow, these anti-free-will opinions are just leftist atheist talking points. Free will does not just affect the criminal deciding on his crime, it also affects the judge meting out the punishment. If it is meaningless to talk about why the criminal acts, it is also meaningless to talk about the judge.

Sam Harris is a prominent free will critic not in the movie, and he has released a new podcast on the subject. He claims that he has no free will, and not even the feeling of free will. My theory is that his brain was damaged by hallucinogenic drugs.

His podcast was indeed a rehash of his earlier views. He does not mention his reckless experimentation with mind-altering drugs in his youth. But philosoher Daniel Dennett does tell him that some people do not have free will, as they have a neural disability. He subtlely told Harris that he was brain-damaged!

Harris did admit that the issue is not just nature-nurture, as quantum mechanics disproved determinism. He also conceded the possibility of a conscious soul, although he is a naturalist with no such beliefs.

He argued that everything is determined by four things: nature, nurture, randomness, and souls. But he says, you get no free will from randomness because you do not throw the dice, and you get none from your soul either, because you do not choose your soul!

Theologians make more sense than this. Who does throw the dice? Who chooses the soul?

The argument can be summarized: Everything is either predictable or unpredictable, and therefore there is no free will. This is obviously false, as a free choice is not predictable by someone else.

He also presented a thought experiment, where a violent intruder breaks into your home with evil intent. You have three weapons to choose from. (1) An ordinary gun, to easily kill him. (2) A cage to imprison his body indefinitely, and prevent future harm. (3) A sci-fi "cure gun" that will permanently alter his brain into being a docile slave with no free will.

Harris asks which will you choose? He argued that the third choice is the preferable and humanitarian choice, as it recognizes that the intruder was just someone with a malfunctioning brain that needed to be fixed.

Wow. First, why is he even presenting us with choices, if we have no free will? Second, is this really his goal, to put everyone in a mental prison?

Netflix has a series called Black Mirror, where in some episodes people are trapped in computer simulations. It is a horror show.

Harris is a monster.

Update: Evolutionist Jerry Coyne plugs the new Robert Sapolsky book against free will

At the “Moving Naturalism Forward”, the late physicist Steve Weinberg professed to me a belief in libertarian free will. See the story I told here (scroll down). In our conversation I ascertained that yes, although Weinberg was a Nobel Laureate in physics, he was resolutely wedded to the idea that he could, at any time, have behaved other than how he did.

Weinberg was maybe the most respected Physicist alive at the time. Funny how Coyne thinks he understands science better than Weinberg.

I was accosted by an angry jazz musician. He said that I had basically ruined his life (I am not exaggerating) by telling him that his “improvisations” were not really improvisations in the sense that he he (in a dualistic way) “decided” what riffs to play, but that they were were the determined product of unconscious processes. I tried to reassure him that they were still the product of his own brain, his own musical background, and his training that allowed him to improvise around what his fellow musicians were playing, but he didn’t find that reassuring. (Even Dawkins jumped in and tried to explain that this didn’t devalue the man’s art or abilities.)

Yes, Coyne was devaluing his music by saying it was all pre-determined.

Eventually my friend appeared and said, “You have to leave.” ...

Needless to say, I was dumbfounded. I’ve gone over this in my mind repeatedly, and I am absolutely sure that I didn’t raise my voice or say anything offensive. I was being booted out of a friend’s house because I had the wrong stand on a metaphysical argument!

Again, such is the rage of those who hear others tell them they have no agency. ...

When I hugged his wife goodbye and thanked her for her hospitality, she said, “Have a nice predetermined life.” How rude can one get?

I think Coyne misinterpreted them. They were not angry at having no agency. They just did not want in their house a pre-programmed robot who denies any personal moral responsibility for his actions.

Harvard Looks Bad at the Supreme Court

I listened to part of the US Supreme Court arguments on Harvard's affirmative action admissions.

Several things seemed odd.

Much of the talk was about "Asians", when they really meant Oriental Americans. No one was willing to discuss the interests of White Americans.

Harvard rated Asian applicants as high in intelligence and academic accomplishments, and low in personality and other subjective factors. The high ratings were taken as factual, while the low ratings were inexplicable, except by personal prejudice.

Why? Isn't it possible that Asians really are high in intelligence and low in personality? We could get into a nature-nurture debate on why Asians rate high academically, but that is beside the point. If they can rate high in some areas, they can rate low in others, without any prejudice.

It appeared that everyone wanted to find a way for Harvard to reach its diversity goals, without racial quotas. Diversity good, explicit racial preferences bad.

But why? They obviously don't believe in diversity for its own sake, as they do not hire any Trump supporters on its faculty. They do not make any effort to admit evangelical Christians or various other underrepresented groups. Diversity is just a code word for anti-White.

I am not sure it is bad to have racial quotas. Most people seem to think that Black colleges are okay. But Harvard takes federal money and is transparently unfair and dishonest with its racial preferences, and most people seem to think Harvard will lose. Harvard acts as if it can lose, and go about doing the same thing anyway, but justifying it differently.

If racial preferences are justified as a remedy for past injustices, when do they end? That is the question no one could answer. Most of Harvard's Black admissions are to those whose families never suffered any injustices. If it were a remedy, it would have ended decades ago.

Western origins go back to Rome and Greece

I mentioned Henrich's theory of the origin of Western individualism, and other behavioral differences from the rest of the world.

Here is another detailed criticism.

There are many issues here, such as whether European marriage customs are the result of Catholic teachings of a millennium ago, or Greek and Roman law of two millennia ago.

Obviously it was some combination.

This research came to light when universities did psychology experiments on student subjects, and then found that their results do not apply to the rest of the world.

The research is much more important than that. It goes to the heart of what made modern civilization possible. We need to figure that out, or else we might be inadvertently undermining civilization. It is also important for understanding cultures from other parts of the world.

There is also a nature-nurture issue, and these authors have only scratched the surface.

The nature-nurture war is over

Professor Robert Plomin writes in SciAm:

During the past four decades, scientists have conducted long-term studies on special relatives like twins and adoptees to test the effects of nature and nurture. This research has built a mountain of evidence showing that genetics contributes importantly to all psychological differences between us. In fact, inherited DNA differences account for about 50 percent of the differences between us, in our personality, mental health and illness, and cognitive abilities and disabilities. ...

A second crucial discovery is that the environment works completely differently from the way environmentalists thought it worked. For most of the 20th century, environmental factors were called nurture because the family was thought to be crucial in determining environmentally who we become. Genetic research has shown that this is not the case. We would essentially be the same person if we had been adopted at birth and raised in a different family. ...

The nature-nurture war is over. Nature wins, hands down.

Yes, that is generally accepted research.

The puzzling thing is that you probably assume that if DNA accounts for 50% of differences, then the environment accounts for the other 50%. The environmental causes in development would include whether you were spanked as a kid, whether you went to fancy schools, whether you played video games, etc. But the truth is that almost nothing is attributable to those measurable environmental factors.

To the extent that scientists can measure your psychological and behavior trait causes, they are maybe 50% genetic, 5% environmental, and 45% unexplained. You can think of the unexplained part as "random", but that is just another word for unexplained.

The genes in a population change slowly. A schooling policy towards a particular group is not likely to have noticeable effect. On the other hand, genetic changes can evolve over a millennium or so. So groups can have positive or negative qualities based on centuries of culture.

If you want to change a group for the better, you have to change the culture, start a eugenic plan, and wait a few centuries.

Who can do this today? No one in the West. Maybe China or Singapore or North Korea. The USA spends many billions of dollars on short-term plans that will do no good, and nothing on long-term plans that might do some good.

Five laws of behavioral genetics

J-Man writes:

The five laws of behavioral genetics are:

All human behavioral traits are heritable
The effect of being raised in the same family is smaller than the effect of the genes.
A substantial portion of the variation in complex human behavioral traits is not accounted for by the effects of genes or families.
A typical human behavioral trait is associated with very many genetic variants, each of which accounts for a very small percentage of the behavioral variability.
All phenotypic relationships are to some degree genetically mediated or confounded.

All this means that genes account for much more human behavior than most ppl realize, and family environment counts for less.

J-Man would say that obesity is mostly genetic partially because of genes that control fitness and exercise, but mostly because of genes that control behavior like laziness and overeating. You have some theoretical ability to increase exercise, lower consumption, and lose weight, but if your innate personality traits keep you from sticking to a diet, they you will not take advantage of that ability.

He is a determinist, but that doesn't follow from those laws, as those heritable traits are only 40-80% inherited. Some ppl might alter their behavior enuf to live a longer and healthier life, but it is a small percentage and may not be significant in research studies.

Pastor is confused about LGBT

NPR Radio reports:

As churches seek understanding about the LGBT community, a Dallas pastor wrote a blog post sharing seven things he learned about transgender people.

NPR is cheering him for a blog post with this lesson:

7. Transgender persons are the product of nature much more than nurture. Debate the origins of homosexuality if you’d like and what role nature vs. nurture plays. But for those who are transgender, nature undeniably plays a primary role. According to medical science, chromosomal variances occur within moments of conception, and anatomical development happens within the nine months in the womb. There is no nature vs. nurture argument, except in cases of brain development, which is an emerging field of study.

No, this is not correct. Bruce (aka Caityn) Jenner does not have any "chromosomal variance" or anything like that. There is no medical science that nature plays a primary role.

Medical science says that transgenderism is a mental disorder.

Wingfield concludes:

This last point in particular raises the largest of theological questions. If Christians really believe every person is created in the image of God, how can we damn a baby who comes from the womb with gender dysphoria? My pediatrician friend puts it this way: “We must believe that even if some people got a lower dose of a chromosome, or an enzyme, or a hormonal effect, that does not mean that they got a lower dose of God’s image.”

I don’t know much about transgender issues, but I’m trying to learn — in part because I want to understand the way God has made us. For me, this is a theological quest as much as a biological inquiry or a political cause. How about you?

His theology is as bad as his medical science.

Christianity teaches that Man is afflicted with original sin, ever since Eve ate the forbidden fruit. That sin is determined in the womb.

Medical science has shown that many criminal and sinful tendencies have genetic causes or are determined in the womb.

If this pastor is going to make excuses for all of that, when what is left to preach about?

His other points are dubious also:

4. Transgender persons are not transvestites. Far too many of us mix these up, in part because the words sound similar and we have no real knowledge of either. Cross-dressers, identified in slang as “transvestites,” are people (typically men) who are happy with their gender but derive pleasure from occasionally dressing like the opposite gender. Cross-dressing is about something other than gender identity.

Again, not correct. Many, if not most, are transvestites. Bruce Jenner is an example, as he does not appear to truly identify as a woman. He just likes the act and the attention.

5. Transgender persons are not pedophiles. The typical profile of a pedophile is an adult male who identifies as heterosexual and most likely even is married. There is zero statistical evidence to link transgender persons to pedophilia.

Bruce Jenner also identified as a heterosexual male, and was married 3 times.

I don't know if anyone claims that people with chromosomal abnormalities are more likely to be pedophiles. The concern, I assume, is that men who want to use the ladies bathroom are more likely to be pedophiles, and represent a threat.

With all the debate over policies encouraging people to use opposite-gender bathroom, we ought to have some real data on who wants to do that.

The current Time mag cover story is a pro-trans opinion piece, and says:

For decades, men has sometimes been caught and prosecuted for entering women's restrooms or dressing rooms, either in drag or dressed as men, to watch or film women. The laws and rules requiring sex separation did not prove a deterrent in those cases.

This is like saying: People have committed murder, theft, and other crimes for millennia, and the laws did not prove a deterrent in those cases. Maybe the laws did not deter those particular crimes, but the laws have certainly deterred and reduced crime.

School achievement is heritable

It has long been known that IQ is heritable, but it has also been assumed that school achievement is mostly a function of school quality, tutoring, and hard work, once the IQ effects have been subtracted out. Maybe not.

A British Nature genetics podcast describes new research:

Kat - We often talk about things being “in the genes”, from traits such as eye or hair colour to our risk of diseases. One of the main ways that scientists figure out how much a particular characteristic is down to genetics - known as its heritability - is by comparing identical twins, who share 100 per cent of their genes, with non-identical or fraternal twins, who only have 50 per cent of their DNA in common. Thanks to a unique study tracking thousands of pairs of twins as they grow up, Professor Robert Plomin and his team at King’s College London have now discovered that genetics makes an unexpectedly large contribution to children’s GCSE grades across a wide range of subjects.

Robert - In this twin study which we call the Twin’s Early Development Study which is a study of about 7,000 pairs of twins in the UK, I was interested in focusing on an area that hasn’t been studied much and that’s school achievement. So on the one hand, we know that cognitive ability like intelligence shows substantial genetic influence. But people hadn’t really studied the business end of it in terms of school achievement. And so, we were surprised to find from the very first years of school that school achievement as measured by the national curriculum scores. It’s very highly heritable, like 60 per cent heritable. That means, of the differences in children’s performance in the national curriculum test, over half of those differences between children are due to DNA, genetic differences, between them. So, we’re not identifying the DNA, but we’re using the twin method to estimate, not only the significance, but the effect size of genetic influence on school children. It’s very high.

So, we’ve been following them all along and now that they hit 16, we wanted to use the GCSE scores - there aren’t many countries where the same national tests are administered to everybody. And so, what we’ve found is the same sort of thing that GCSE scores are highly heritable. But what's new is that all the tests – there's over 80 subjects that people can take for GCSEs - and all of them are highly heritable. That surprised me because I would’ve thought the STEM subjects – science, technology, engineering, math – would be more heritable for some reason maybe because it involves intelligence to a greater extent than drama and art. This is just totally exposing my biases of course as a scientist, but it wasn’t true. They are all equally heritable. It’s interesting that scores are as equally heritable despite the fact that some children are getting tutors and going to schools that have prepped them for GCSEs. Schools – we make a big deal about schools - you just say what school our kids in explain far less than 20 per cent of the variance. Explaining 50 per cent of the variance with genetic differences is extraordinary when education totally ignores genetics. In teacher training or whatever, not a word is said about genetics. And so, I'm just saying genetics is very important.

But what's really novel about this study is a little bit harder to understand and that is to say, “Okay, genetics affects all of these GCSE subjects” but is it different genes for every one? Are there genes for drama, genes for music, and genes for math? And the answer is definitely not. The same genes are affecting performance on all of these GCSE scores. The differences are probably more environmental. If you're good at drama and not good at math, that’s probably more of an environmental thing. But the genetic action has to do with what's in common in performance across all of these things.

Kat - Is it not just that they're just generally smart? They’ve got good intelligence genes?

Robert - That’s what most people would say and so, what we did is we took out intelligence. We corrected for intelligence. You can correct scores for age and sex, and you can correct scores for intelligence. So, you can take these GCSE scores and make them independent of intelligence, statistically. And then the interesting thing was that we got the same results. So, everything is equally heritable, independent of intelligence, and what's even more surprising, again, it’s the same genes that affect all of those intelligence corrected GCSE scores. So what that means is that, your hypothesis is a good one that a lot of what the genetic correlation among all these GCSE scores is about intelligence. But what's amazing is you take out intelligence and you find, yes, there's still genetic influence, but it also works in a very general way and that’s suggests it’s like an academic ability, genetically driven academic ability.

Here is a new American study that seems to get similar results.

People are spooked by studies like this, but it seems essential to understanding what schools are doing for us. Maybe schools ought to track kids according to genetics, or use other strategies that take genes into account for better results.

My guess is that people are afraid that there might be racial implications.

Most measurable human traits are heritable, so maybe this should not be surprising. But we spend maybe a trillion dollars a year on schooling. Shouldn't we have a better idea of what causes success in school?

Suppressing science to promote egalitarianism

Leftist pseudoscience philosopher Massimo Pigliucci

From my standpoint as a biologist it is hard to conceive of any major aspect of being human that is not the result of nature-nurture interactions (as opposed to straight influences of either nature or nurture), even though these are hopelessly complex to disentangle empirically. We know this to be the case for pretty much every other species on the planet that we have been able to properly study, so why should it be different for Homo sapiens?

The problem with the extreme naturist position, then, is twofold: on the one hand, it is based on often shaky science — consider for instance neuroscientist Cordelia Fine’s masterful debunking of what she calls neurobiological “delusions of gender” [11]. On the other hand, far too many naturists, while claiming the (alleged) objective mantle of science, reveal themselves to be sympathetic to sexist or racist, and certainly politically regressive positions (for instance Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein, authors of the infamous The Bell Curve). Even when this is not the case, their research provides easy cover for the most vicious sexist and racist sub-cultures of our society.

Murray and Herrnstein always argued for traits being a combination of nature and nurture, just as the biologists say. So what is the objection?

Leftist soft-subject professors like him nearly always argue fallaciously. Here he announces disagreement with the political views of authors who make a social science argument, and then uses name-calling against those who follow the work. It is a form of guilt-by-association, except that Pigliucci is blaming the authors for who might have read the book.

It is true that nearly all human and animal traits are a combination of nature and nurture. A recent article says Ape study shows anxiety and depression are inherited . Most people are surprised at how much is inherited.

Pigliucci is one of these anti-science leftists who likes to downplay any genetic or nature human influences because it conflicts with his cultural Marxism.

Moreover, all of this, it seems to me, is entirely unnecessary: from a philosophical, and particularly an ethical, perspective, the biological bases of human behaviors are irrelevant to how we ought to treat other human beings. Whether women, or gays, or transgenders, statistically adopt certain behaviors because of culture, genes, epigenes or — again, more likely — an inextricably complex interaction among those factors, who cares?

First, most real scientists favor pursuing knowledge regardless of whether it promotes personal political views.

Second, nearly all those who promote gay rights do so based on a theory that sexual preferences are innate. Even the recent US Supreme Court marriage decision mentioned that.

Third, even if you believe that all people should be treated the same, then how would you even know if you are doing that or not, unless you are aware of underlying causes of behavior? If, say, you are trying to figure out why one group has higher unemployment than another, it may be because the groups are different or that they are treated differently. You cannot tell unless you study the group differences.

Fourth, no one really treats all people alike. That is just Marxist nonsense.

Update: A reader points out that Pigliucci's main argument for "The false dichotomy of nature-nurture" is based on a misunderstanding of the word dichotomy. The dictionary defines it as:

being twofold; a classification into two opposed parts or subclasses ("The dichotomy between eastern and western culture")

a difference between two opposite things : a division into two opposite groups M-W

a division into two especially mutually exclusive or contradictory groups or entities ; also : the process or practice of making such a division

There certainly is a dichotomy between nature (genes) and nurture (environment). Nature and nurture are opposites, and twin studies and other studies do indeed divide between nature and nurture.

The word does not in any way imply that a trait must be entirely nature or entirely nurture. Some are, such as eye color being entirely nature and spoken language (like English or Chinese) being entirely nurture. Most other traits are some combination, with maybe subtle interactions. It is really not that difficult to understand, unless it upsets your Marxist egalitarian anti-science worldview.

Parental contribution is mainly genetic

Bryan Caplan argues that reading helps kids more than anything:

The big result is the lack of results. Controlling for family and child background, time in school and studying barely help - and television viewing barely hurts. Contrary to wishful assertions that exercising the body improves the mind, sports don't matter either. Out of nineteen activities, only two predict greater academic success across the board: reading and visiting.

The estimated effect of visiting is modest. Reading, however, is a huge deal.

Visiting refers to certain organized out-of-school activities.

A Nature study reports:

Meta-analysis of the heritability of human traits based on fifty years of twin studies

Despite a century of research on complex traits in humans, the relative importance and specific nature of the influences of genes and environment on human traits remain controversial. We report a meta-analysis of twin correlations and reported variance components for 17,804 traits from 2,748 publications including 14,558,903 partly dependent twin pairs, virtually all published twin studies of complex traits. Estimates of heritability cluster strongly within functional domains, and across all traits the reported heritability is 49%.

You can download the full article here.

People think that kids are shaped by schools, TV, parenting, etc. The data says that these things matter less than you think.

Saying that heritability is 50% makes it sounds as if parenting and schooling are the other 50%. But other studies show that the other 50% is mostly measurement error and unkown factors, as the measurable aspect of the environment seem to have very little effect.

Four Laws of Behavior Genetics

SciAm writer John Horgan notes that the evidence for behavior genes has a history of being over-hyped:

In 1990 The New York Times published a front-page article by Lawrence Altman, a reporter with a medical degree, announcing that scientists had discovered “a link between alcoholism and a specific gene.”

That was merely one in a string of reports in which the Times and other major media hyped what turned out to be erroneous claims linking complex traits and disorders—from homosexuality and high intelligence to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder—to specific genes.

I thought those days were over, and that scientists and the media have learned to doubt extremely reductionist genetic accounts of complex traits and behaviors. I was wrong. Last Sunday, the “Opinion” section of the Times published an essay, “The Feel-Good Gene,” which states:

“For the first time, scientists have demonstrated that a genetic variation in the brain makes some people inherently less anxious, and more able to forget fearful and unpleasant experiences. This lucky genetic mutation produces higher levels of anandamide–the so-called bliss molecule and our natural marijuana–in our brains. In short, some people are prone to be less anxious simply because they won the genetic sweepstakes and randomly got a genetic mutation that has nothing at all to do with strength of character.”

The evidence for the "feel-good gene," which supposedly reduces anxiety, is flimsy, just like the evidence linking specific genes to high intelligence, violent aggression, homosexuality, bipolar disorder and countless other complex human traits and ailments. ...

Last fall, I quoted from a 2012 editorial in Behavior Genetics: “The literature on candidate gene associations is full of reports that have not stood up to rigorous replication. This is the case both for straightforward main effects and for candidate gene-by-environment interactions… As a result, the psychiatric and behavior genetics literature has become confusing and it now seems likely that many of the published findings of the last decade are wrong or misleading and have not contributed to real advances in knowledge.”

That is correct, but only part of the story as there have been real advances in the field. Razib Khan reports:

* First Law. All human behavioral traits are heritable.

* Second Law. The effect of being raised in the same family is smaller than the effect of genes.

* Third Law. A substantial portion of the variation in complex human behavioral traits is not accounted for by the effects of genes or families.

* Fourth Law. A typical human behavioral trait is associated with very many genetic variants, each of which accounts for a very small percentage of the behavioral variability.

Researchers model behavior by assuming that it is determined by genes, family upbringing, and random factors. Twin studies have proved that the genetic influence is huge, and the family upbringing appears to be negligible. DNA studies have failed to find any individual genes with a large effect. Larger scale studies are starting to show that a combination of many small genetic effects can be significant. For more on what randomness means here, see my 2015 essay.

Parents are usually convinced that their child-rearing is the biggest influence on their kids, but this is an illusion, according to the research.

10,000-hour rule disproved

The NY Times reports on new research in the nature-nurture debate:

Scientists have long argued over the relative contributions of practice and native talent to the development of elite performance. This debate swings back and forth every century, it seems, but a paper in the current issue of the journal Psychological Science illustrates where the discussion now stands and hints — more tantalizingly, for people who just want to do their best — at where the research will go next.

The value-of-practice debate has reached a stalemate. In a landmark 1993 study of musicians, a research team led by K. Anders Ericsson, a psychologist now at Florida State University, found that practice time explained almost all the difference (about 80 percent) between elite performers and committed amateurs. The finding rippled quickly through the popular culture, perhaps most visibly as the apparent inspiration for the “10,000-hour rule” in Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling “Outliers” — a rough average of the amount of practice time required for expert performance.

The new paper, the most comprehensive review of relevant research to date, comes to a different conclusion. Compiling results from 88 studies across a wide range of skills, it estimates that practice time explains about 20 percent to 25 percent of the difference in performance in music, sports and games like chess. In academics, the number is much lower — 4 percent — in part because it’s hard to assess the effect of previous knowledge, the authors wrote.

The NY Times podcast described this as "dispiriting". Apparently a lot of people prefer a fantasy in which they could be LeBron James if only they practiced enough. That fantasy seems more dispiriting to me.

Using gendered role models is sexist

Thew xkcd comic says:

For a long time, sexism, a lack of role models, and institutional hostility largely kept women from pursuing serious chess careers.

This seems unlikely to me. Chess is more sexist now, as there are separate chess tournaments for women. The above comment is sexist for suggesting women cannot be successful in chess unless they have same-gendered role models. I doubt that Bobby Fischer or Judit Polgar were following role models.

We non-Africans are part Neanderthal

For decades we have been told that anatomically modern humans emerged from Africa about 50k to 100k years ago, and that there has been no human evolution since. But there has been overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the latest being this:

Neanderthals died out long ago, but their genes live on in us. Scientists studying human chromosomes say they've discovered a surprising amount of Neanderthal DNA in our genes. And these aren't just random fragments; they help shape what we look like today, including our hair and skin.

These genes crept into our DNA tens of thousands of years ago, during occasional sexual encounters between Neanderthals and human ancestors who lived in Europe at the time. They show up today in their descendants, people of European and Asian descent.

The snippets that come from Neanderthals can be identified because a few years ago, scientists were able to extract DNA from Neanderthal remains and read out their genetic blueprint.

A startling 20 percent of Neanderthal genes live on in us today, according to a published Wednesday in Science magazine. Researchers found that out by combing through the genes of more than 600 living people.

By "our genes", NPR radio means the genes of non-Africans. The NY Times made a similar mistake.

The out-of-Africa folks are always telling us that all humans are the same, while the scientific evidence is always pointing to variation among humans. Many have trouble accepting the variation:

continuing on from the other day, jamie bartlett and timothy stanley are flat-out wrong that human biodiversity (hbd) is “neo-fascist” “bad science.” human biodiversity is simply the diversity found among and between human populations that has a biological basis.

Steven Pinker is one of those academic leftists who reluctantly accepts biological differences, but announces:

2014 - WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT?
Behavior = Genes + Environment

He merely points to technical difficulties in giving precise definitions to Genes and Environment. But he cannot dispute that behavior is some complex combination of nature and nuture. While no one has figured out how individual genes affect behavior, there is strong evidence that psychometrics are heritable. The heritability of behavior traits is typically about 50%, with the rest usually assumed to be environmental but maybe just random.

Update: John Hawks explains Multiregional vs. Out of Africa in 2005, and comments in 2010 that recent DNA evidence shows Multiregional evolution lives! Wikipedia says that Out Of Africa is the most widely accepted theory, with the main rival being Multiregional origin of modern humans. I have a feeling that the Out Of Africa folks will never admit to being wrong.

Update: The LA Times reported:

Mating between Neanderthals and the ancestors of Europeans and East Asians gave our forebears important evolutionary advantages but may have created a lot of sterile males, wiping out much of that primitive DNA, new genetic studies suggest.

The comparison of Neanderthal and modern human genomes, published online Wednesday in the journals Nature and Science, identified specific sequences of altered DNA that both Neanderthals and several hundred modern Europeans and Asians had in common.

This is misleading. The DNA comparison proves that Neanderthals are among the ancestors of Europeans. The first sentence is written as if the Neanderthals and European ancestors were two different groups. Then it goes on to mention "primitive DNA", whatever that is.

Gene and IQ tests are scary

A gene-testing company blog writes:

They’re interested in exploring their own genetic information because knowing gives them the power to take action. ...

But not everyone sees things in that way. Some people don’t want to know. ...

It is interesting to look a little deeper at this notion of why some people want to know and some others don’t. If you talk to someone who has tested, they’re often baffled as to why someone wouldn’t want to know. Conversely, if you talk to someone who doesn’t want to get tested, he or she seem incredulous that anyone would want to find out they had a genetic risk for any disease.

This is strange. You do not find people who are similarly reluctant to learn their blood pressure or cholesterol count.

The print article says:

But I appreciate the advice from Duke's Don Taylor most. "It's possible the best thing you can do is burn that damn report and never think of it again.

There is something about gene tests and IQ tests that is very scary to people. The above hostility to DNA tests seems quite irrational, as the info in question is that not that much different from learning the health of your relatives. Eg, if your parents have heart disease, then you are at higher risk for heart disease.

The whole business plan of 23andme.com is based on convincing people to share genetic info, and yet the company was apparently unable to find one person to make his gene data public. The site has some health info about a fictionalized Mendel family, but not the actual genome data. I would think that the principals of the company would post their genomes, to show that the data is nothing to be scared about.

What is the downside to posting your genome on a public web site? If you have an unknown illegitimate child somewhere, he might find you. Or the police might match you to a cold case murder. Or you could be Angelina Jolie and people could find out that you have an inherited susceptibility for breast cancer.

The College Board SAT test is no longer called an aptitude test, because people were scared that it was too much like an IQ test.

Another article says it is bad to let kids think that some are more intelligent than others:

The idea that math ability is mostly genetic is one dark facet of a larger fallacy that intelligence is mostly genetic. ...

A body of research on conceptions of ability has shown two orientations toward ability. Students with an Incremental orientation believe ability (intelligence) to be malleable, a quality that increases with effort. Students with an Entity orientation believe ability to be nonmalleable, a fixed quality of self that does not increase with effort. ...

Convincing students that they could make themselves smarter by hard work led them to work harder and get higher grades. The intervention had the biggest effect for students who started out believing intelligence was genetic.

The authors teach math and claim that A students think that they are acing math because they are smarter, but it is actually because they work harder:

The well-prepared kids, not realizing that the B students were simply unprepared, assume that they are “math people,” and work hard in the future, cementing their advantage.

This is supposed to convince us that it is better to tell kids that success is a function of hard work, not talent. But the argument seems to imply that some kids are indeed doing better because they believe that they are developing their natural talents.

Of course school performance, as well as almost all other behaviors, is a complex combination of nature and nurture. That has been known since ancient times. The highest achievers in sports, math, or anything else have superior talent and training. The idea that success is merely a matter of 10,000 hours of work is a foolish myth. It is hard to imagine any scenario in which getting a DNA or aptitude test is harmful.

Lack of women in hard sciences

The NY Times has a long article complaining that women are not encouraged enough in science:

Even at the very highest levels, test scores might be irrelevant; apparently, Richard Feynman’s I.Q. was a less-than-remarkable 125.

The most powerful determinant of whether a woman goes on in science might be whether anyone encourages her to go on. ...

As so many studies have demonstrated, success in math and the hard sciences, far from being a matter of gender, is almost entirely dependent on culture — a culture that teaches girls math isn’t cool and no one will date them if they excel in physics; a culture in which professors rarely encourage their female students to continue on for advanced degrees; a culture in which success in graduate school is a matter of isolation, competition and ridiculously long hours in the lab; a culture in which female scientists are hired less frequently than men, earn less money and are allotted fewer resources.

Maybe Feynman tested a 125 on one test, but he tested a whole lot higher on some other tests.

Maybe women only go into science if they are encouraged to do so, but I very much doubt that about men. Our culture also teaches boys that math isn't cool and that no one will date them if they major in physics. Boys go into science because they love the subject.

The complaint about a TV sitcom is especially bizarre. The men are ridiculed much more than the women.

For another view:

Why the differing results? First, because different samples differ. Second, because there were some selection effects in the previous paper which may have accounted for the reduction in the gap. Third, because the male/female ratio always becomes higher the higher you set the level for mathematical achievement, so some of these fluctuating results may depend on how high the bar is set. That last result may tell you all you need to know. Being very, very good at mathematics is a man thing.

As Nature magazine explains, this is one of several related taboo subjects, where scientists avoid the subject or say nonsense.

Here are the four questions in Nature's poll.

Should scientists refrain from studying the genetics of intelligence?
Should scientists refrain from studying the genetics of race?
Should scientists refrain from studying the genetics of violence?
Should scientists refrain from studying the genetics of sexuality?

If these subjects are so taboo, you will have a hard time getting straight answers.

A black law professor Osagie K. Obasogie shows his hostility to these taboos in a SciAm article:

As we consider Edwards’s legacy in light of his recent passing, it is important to think critically about the relationship between Edwards’s development of IVF and his participation in an organization that was dedicated to promoting one of the most dangerous ideas in human history: that science should be used to control human reproduction in order to breed preferred types of people.

Coined by Galton in the late 1800s to mean "well-born," eugenics became a dominant aspect of Western intellectual life and social policy during the first half of the 20th century. It started with the seemingly simple proposition that one's social position is rooted in heritable qualities of character and intellect.

Of course IVF (test-tube baby) technology uses science to improve human reproduction. Would Obasogie prefer that science make people worse?

A recent Freakonomic podcast was about how windfalls from an 1850 Georgia lottery failed to show any noticeable benefit on succeeding generations:

DUBNER: It’s funny, Hoyt, because we actually had a listener write to us recently and say, you know, I really like your show, but god it’s depressing. It’s like you take all this good news out there, and all these good ideas, and good plans, and nice intentions and show how, you know, people game the system, or they don’t work. Now, I disputed this a little bit. I actually think that we’re extremely optimistic and kind of hunting always for ideas that do work well. But I’ll be honest with you, you’ve depressed the crap out of me, Hoyt. Because you’ve taken a very basic idea and belief, which is that poverty is addressable by a very simple intervention, which is giving money to poor people, and you’re saying based on this evidence that’s just not a solid argument, at least when made that narrowly, right?

BLEAKLEY: No, that’s right. There may be something that you can give to them, but money is not that something, at least in this episode.

DUBNER: Alright, let me ask you this, not that this is going to be any less depressing, but it might be a little more entertaining. Have you looked at all on literature on modern lotteries and what happens to people who win them, and whether they do a better job of encouraging human capital acquisition among their offspring?

BLEAKLEY: Oh, no if you want to be depressed you should read either the academic literature or the journalistic accounts of lottery winners because they basically waste it, right, blow through the money very quickly and often times end up worse than how they started, many of them.

So why is this depressing? I would find it depressing if my station in life would somehow be determined by whether my great-grandfather won some stupid lottery.

Defining contra-causal free will

Leftist-atheist-evolutionist Jerry Coyne writes:

when I assert that one doesn’t have free will, I am arguing about classical dualistic free will. So when I ask whether we have free will, I am adhering to Anthony Cashmore’s definition (in bold):

I believe that free will is better defined as a belief that there is a component to biological behavior that is something more than the unavoidable consequences of the genetic and environmental history of the individual and the possible stochastic laws of nature. ...

And yes, I know you can define free will so that we have it by definition—it’s our ability to make apparent choices without having a gun to our head, or our evolved ability to consider many factors before “deciding” on a course of action, or the fact that a mammal named Jerry is seen to make decisions, and so on. Hell, I could define free will as simply “it looks to an outsider as if we’re making choices,” and then everyone has it!

To me, the important task of philosophers should not be finding some new definition of free will so that the masses can think that they have it and thus be reassured (after all, false reassurance is what theologians do), but letting people know that our decisions are behavioral outcomes of physical processes in our brain, determined by the laws of physics or indeterminate according to quantum mechanics. Either way, dualism is dead, and educating people about this is the most important thing philosophers can do vis-à-vis the free will question. ...

Sam Harris is right. We are puppets of our genes and environments, and it’s bloody well time we admitted that.

His argument is essentially to say that if you define free will to mean a conscious ability to violate scientific laws, then there is no free will because nothing can violate scientific laws. From this he wants to deny individual responsibility.

Fine. There is no contra-causal free will. There is only the kind of free will that allows us to make choices and decisions. For this to be a scientific matter, there needs to be some experiments that are strong enough to imply his conclusions. I do not see any.

The LA Times reports:

Pedophilia once was thought to stem from psychological influences early in life. Now, many experts view it as a deep-rooted predisposition that does not change.

Like many forms of sexual deviance, pedophilia once was thought to stem from psychological influences early in life. Now, many experts view it as a sexual orientation as immutable as heterosexuality or homosexuality. It is a deep-rooted predisposition — limited almost entirely to men — that becomes clear during puberty and does not change.

The best estimates are that between 1% and 5% of men are pedophiles, meaning that they have a dominant attraction to prepubescent children.

Not all pedophiles molest children. Nor are all child molesters pedophiles. Studies show that about half of all molesters are not sexually attracted to their victims. They often have personality disorders or violent streaks, and their victims are typically family members.

By contrast, pedophiles tend to think of children as romantic partners and look beyond immediate relatives. They include chronic abusers familiar from the headlines — Catholic priests, coaches and generations of Boy Scout leaders.

So do pedophiles really not have any free choice to do what they do? I do not believe it. I believe that people do have the free will to make choices, unless I see some very convincing evidence otherwise.

The UK BBC reports on a new study of mouse genes influencing behavior:

Researchers reporting in Nature crossed mouse breeds and measured the burrows the resulting mice made.

The study has behaivoural implications of many animals, including humans.

"Modular" genetic regions even relate to specific burrow parts, it suggests.

The findings bear out an idea first put forward by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, called "the extended phenotype".

It suggests that our view of genes as controlling only proteins in an individual is tremendously limited, and that genes "express" themselves in a rich variety of behaviours - or in this case, homes.

Human behavior is influenced by genes also, but this is nowhere close to denying free will.

Update: Coyne complains that no one should criticize him anonymously. Okay, I use my real name here. He banned me from his blog (that he does not like to call a blog), so I don't post there.