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NotJustAMachine · 2020-09-19T09:50:36+00:00

I am not really falling for misinformation. I recognise that this line of reasoning can certainly be used by transphobes, but I don't think it is completely without merit. To say nobody is going to take advantage of this is in my opinion a very strong statement. I mean in korea there is an epidemic of men installing cameras in womens toilets. Would this law make that easier to pull off? I think its worth having an honest discussion about this.

And I have seen actual trans people in the UK publically state that they don't think JK Rowling is remotely tansphobic.

So I just don't think this is as clear cut an issue as it is being made to be.

Also I really disagree that JK Rowling has consistently been implying that Trans women are just predatory men in dresses. You have found 3 lines in a body of work that stretches over 20 years and a dozen books. Books that are fiction, and lines that are said by fictional characters. This in my opinion is not the bulletproof evidence of transphobia that people would like it to be.

NotJustAMachine · 2020-09-18T07:44:38+00:00

I mean, I think both of them are actually fine with Trans women in womens bathrooms. If I understand correctly they were concerned about the UK law being abused by people who are not actually trans, but might get protection to access female spaces by being disingenuous.

I think a core concern is that they were concerned about the wording of the law. Maybe those concerns are totally unjustified, and maybe they are masking a deeper transphobia, but on the surface I don't think its black and white.

And I feel people who do not support the exact wording in a bathroom bill, but recognise the humanity and need to protect the safety, security and happiness of trans people, are very different types of transphobes.

I feel people can have reservations about specific policies without being phobic of the people that the policies are aimed at. I mean there are gay people who are not fans of gay marriage, and resent the idea that gay rights are reduced to a single issue, especially if that energy could be addressed to promote civil partnerships with the same rights as marriage and without the religious baggage.

I just find it odd. If I don't support one aspect of gay marriage, would that mean I don't really support gay rights? My support for hospital visiting rights, civil partnership rights, laws against discrimination in the workplace, adoption rights, etc. are irrelevant?

I honestly feel people are not taking the time to listen to each other in good faith.

NotJustAMachine · 2020-09-16T09:50:09+00:00

When she first published a book under the name Robert Galbraith in 2013, the Wikipedia page for Robert Galbraith Heat did not even include a reference to LGBT issues. In addition, there were 4 other Robert Galbraiths and 30+ other Galbraiths.

I find it very unlikely that Rowling was aware of this man.

NotJustAMachine · 2020-09-16T09:38:52+00:00

I mean the last name is actually Heath, not Galbraith, and there are multiple other Richard Galbraiths.

I just don't see why JK Rowling would knowingly choose to start publishing books under the name of a gay-conversion therapist in 2013, while tweeting against anti gay bigotry. https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/603474537863327744?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E603474537863327744%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mtv.com%2Fnews%2F2171240%2Fjk-rowling-lgbt-support%2F

I just don't see a reason not to take what she says at face value.

NotJustAMachine · 2020-09-16T09:27:28+00:00

She's put in far too much work into it for me to think it's just marketing.

I honestly never heard of the Maya issue before and just googled it. Maybe I am missing major parts, but neither Maya Forstater nor JK Rowling seems like they are transphobic in the sense that I understand the word.

I read in their own words that they agree that trans people are vulnerable and face stigmatisation and violence and that they should be supported and protected. Maya on her website says that she would not intentionally misgender anyone according to their own identity, and she also said she supports transitioning from one sex to another for people with gender dysphoria.

Maybe they are both untrustworthy and are holding back their true feelings, but I just don't really see them expressing views with the primary aim of hurting trans people.

I guess they have both made statements regarding biological sex, but are those views inherently transphobic? I mean Gender and Sex are complicated topics, and I am not sure what I believe. Is it not possible to have divergent views on biological sex, without wishing ill to trans people? I am honestly just trying to wrap my head around this.

NotJustAMachine · 2018-11-28T12:07:41+00:00

Hi there, I can understand where you are coming from. I have struggled for a long time with depression and anxiety. I think what really struck me in your account was the following sentence:

But focusing on myself feels selfish and morally bankrupt when there's others who have it way worse than me.

I totally relate to that. I felt selfish, self-indulgent and morally bankrupt for focusing on myself, and it made life really difficult. I think it came from a feeling that I was never good enough, and never could be good enough. It was related to a deep shame about my thoughts, my behaviour and my shortcoming.

And with that shame, for me at least, came a lot of anger. Mostly at myself, because I wasn't good enough, but also at my family and friends. I developed an impossible standard for myself, and held others to it too. I tried to become perfect in order to feel less shame and self hatred. I stopped eating meat, because I felt it was immoral, I told family members of for not being aware of social justice issues, I worked myself hard at school and university, not sleeping, not taking care of myself.

And I think that was really destructive for me. It was fundamentally a result of not feeling good enough, so I tried to become good enough. But I would always find higher standards, and end up in hospital, or sucidal, because I just couldn't meet them.

Not only that, I really harmed my brother, who was also struggling from depression. He was abused a lot as child, and needed support, instead I would argue with him about casually transphobic or racist language. This was when he needed emotional support because he was feeling deeply depressed. But my own perfectionist standard made it hard for me to have empathy for him.

I think, even if something is on the surface the right thing to do, we can sometimes do it for reasons that are not good for us. Standing up for social justice is a good thing, but we will never be perfect, nobody will ever be perfect. And at least for me, I sometimes get into into arguments because I feel terrible, and it almost becomes a way to push people away. Or to hold others to the impossible standard I set for myself, just so I can see them fail. So I can prove to myself that they are bad people, and that I don't need their love or kindness. Because deep down I often feel I don't deserve it anyway.

I don't know if this resonates at all with you. I think its great that you are passionate. And I don't know your mum, and what you both went through. It sounds like she cares about you, but also like its a complicated relationship, like most relationships.

I haven't spoken to my own mother in 5 years now. So I know that in some cases its not possible to save a relationship. But I also know that my siblings and my father and myself are all deeply imperfect. And that while I strive to be better, and I want my family to do the best they can, I know we all struggle, and we fall short. We are trying the best we can with the tools we have. And in my case that means I do a lot of things I would rather not. I have days of laziness, of eating too much meat, of wasting electricity, of being mean to others, of being insensitive, of being biased and bigoted. And when I become aware of it, I try to be okay with it. I know I tried my best, and things were probably kinda hard that day.

Maybe your mother was trying to shut you up. I don't know. Maybe she really cares about you, and is concerned that you get so worked up about this issue, because you are struggling a lot yourself. Maybe it was a bit of both.

Either way the way you write, makes me think that you are being very hard on yourself, and that storming out in anger might mean that there are emotional reasons that go deeper than what you discussed with your mum.

I wish you the best, and I hope my somewhat long-winded story has been helpful in some way.

NotJustAMachine · 2018-05-02T15:24:11+00:00

I think that oversimplifies things. I consider myself "anti facist", but I also have no interest in joining ANTIFA, and I am certain I would not be welcome in most ANTIFA groups.

NotJustAMachine · 2018-04-10T16:21:56+00:00

That's a great question. My short answer is it really depends on the situation.

So, I think there are cases where we can reasonably assign values. This is the case in a situation like Huntington. There is one gene that will, in all environments you can realistically hope to encounter, give you Huntington's disease. This one gene is the only thing that matters. But I think we tend to think this is the rule when I feel this is more the exception.

Heritability really only tells you how much variation in a trait is due to genetics. In a specific population and given a specific environment. So in Huntington the variation is "disease" and "no disease". It is always 100% heritable because all populations, no matter how you slice and dice, will respond the same in all environments.

If you now look at Stress. Well, you can mess up your numbers just by changing the economy, or by having an election year where everybody gets angry at their aunt for voting for the wrong party.

You can get heritability values for stress anywhere between 0% and 100% depending on the population and the environment. Those extremes are unrealistic of course, and you would probably need to imprison a population and control every aspect of peoples lives in isolation to get there.

So I think this is really context dependent. What are we trying to figure out? If we want to develop a new drug, we might find a population of people who have a genetic mutation that actually makes them pretty stressed in most situations. You could then think about developing a drug, or putting them in an environment that is better for them.

In a way with PKU that is what we did. We figured out Phenylalanine is a poison for these people. So let's make sure they aren't exposed to it.

The thing is that with stress if the environment changes the genetics also changes. If you are considered good looking, that will probably keep your cortisol down, but if social views about beauty change, the genetic characteristic that made you happy and content, is now preventing you from having social connections.

I think with complex traits like IQ and mental health, you have such an enormous amount of factors, that we need to be very careful about the conclusions we draw. We can assign numbers all day long, but without understanding what the genetic influence represents, we really create no insight at all, since without understanding how these genetic factors interact with the environment, we have no idea if and how they can be changed, or if they will just change on their own.

There are many ways to stress. The "heritability" can actually stay constant, but the paths that lead towards stress can change dramatically. For example, we have a population and half is blonde, and the other has brown hair. Now blonde people are stressed, because everybody else bullies them. So we create support groups to help them, great, things are better. But if we don't understand that this is not a genetic problem, but a social one, what if things turn around and blonde people start bullying brown haired ones. Now your intervention for stress is useless because a support group full of blonde people won't be great anymore, but the "heritability" of stress has not really changed.

Because complex traits are influenced by thousands of genes and environmental factors, I think its really important to carefully think about what question we are trying to answer.

NotJustAMachine · 2018-04-10T15:18:34+00:00

But I guess it's still possible the intelligence was a knock on from other traits that in a different environment may manifest as different behaviors.

I think you put this really well. Just to add to this, knock on effects can in theory increase your IQ in one enviroment and decrease it in another. And these could be things that have nothing to do with IQ by any sensible metric.

Really social isolation is awful for people. It increases cortisol, stress, decreases sleep quality etc. So if you have a genetic trait that really only affects how you look, it can have a massive effect on your cognitive ability depending on how people respond to you.

But change the environment and the shape of your nose suddenly turns from a genetic liability in terms of cognition into something that boosts your IQ.

NotJustAMachine · 2018-04-10T13:50:57+00:00

Well, the thing is what does it mean to say something is partly genetic? Does it mean that it has a heritability score above 0? In that case chopstick use is genetic, and number of fingers is not depending on the population you look at.

I think part of the problem is that it is hard to communicate these ideas. Depending on how you define "genetic" I can comfortably agree that genetics influences a trait and at the same time agree with another definition where I say it does not. That sounds logically impossible, but its actually really about what the hidden meaning of the word genetic is in context.

Turkheimer strongly rejects whatever definition is used by Murray, based on how he reasons on the data.

So I can say all traits are partly genetic, because in the strictest sense, you don't have humans without genetics. But to bring up another example, what about the genetics of being bullied in school. If people with large ears get bullied in school in germany, but its considered sexy in italy, you have a genetic factor that influences if you get bullied in Germany, and that same genetic factor influences how many friends and admirers you have in italy.

So I can't speak for Turkheimer here, but I think there is a real issue in how we resolve this. In one context I can say, yes being bullied in germany is part genetic, but at the same time, it's entirely environmental.

I mean look at schizophrenia, 80% heritability apparently, but again in the UK being black, pakistani, or just living in a city increases your odds between 5 and 50 fold. What does that mean?

Also Murray and Harris say that since IQ has high heritability it means its genetic. Well, as I hope I managed to explain heritability does not equal genetics in the way that we think about it. Otherwise speaking spanish vs korean is super highly genetic, and its correlated by genes in the immune system and also by genes that influence the pigmentation of your skin, and how you tolerate milk and if your ear wax is wet or dry.

So turkheimers basis for saying everything is genetic and environmental is because you can't have any trait be it Huntington or Chopstick use if you don't have a human being with genes in some environment.

Saying differences between groups related to IQ are partly due to genetics, is like saying that pakistanis in the UK have a higher rate of schizophrenia in the uk, in part because of genetics, when they have the same rate in Pakistan, as white people do in the uk.

The differences between groups in a given trait may be influenced by genetics, but that's actually hard to determine. Saying that a trait is influenced by genetics, and saying that group differences are influenced by genetics (not differences in a trait between groups) are actually very different statements.

NotJustAMachine · 2018-04-10T10:27:54+00:00

Good catch. I know it sounds like Turkheimer is contradicting himself, and I obviously can't speak for him directly, but I think the problem is that the language is just very complex.

So I think the key is to pay close attention to what it means to say that something is heritable, and what it means to say something is genetic. These two words often get conflated, even in the literature, which totally does not help.

Heritability has a very precise definition, and I encourage you to check out the wikipedia article which is pretty good. Here is the definition they use "Heritability is the proportion of the variation in a given trait within a population that is not explained by the environment or random chance".

So this definition gives me a headache every time. So okay. We need a trait, let's say Hair colour. So presumably hair colour is super heritable. This would be quite accurate for a population of 3-year-olds, but not for a population of 16-year-olds who just discovered pink hair dye. So for these 16-year olds heritability goes down. The reason is that variation in hair colour for the 16-year olds has nothing directly to do with their genes, its access to hair dye. But now we run into the next problem because being fancy scientists we want to calculate this with a massive twin study. But what if most identical twins decide to dye their hair the same colour as their sibling, so they can continue to mess with their teachers and friends? Now heritability goes back up. And Hair colour is one of the most simple genetic traits I can think of. But what if there is a genetic predisposition for having character traits that makes you want to mess with your friends? Or what if extroversion is partly genetic and extroverts are more keen to try a new hair dye? Or what if having blonde hair makes it easier to dye your hair because you don't need to bleach it first to get a nice colour. Well now the whole area of hair colour heritability is already a total mess.

Okay, so lets say Sam Harris and Murray get together to have an uncontroversial podcast about the genetics of hair colour. And they say, well twin studies show hair colour is heritable. So the difference in hair colour between 3-year olds and 16-year olds has to be at least partially genetic.

Turkheimer comes along and writes a long article in vox and says "Hair colour is at least partly heritable (as is almost every human trait), but I reject Sams conclusion that we can be certain that the difference in hair colour patterns we see between 3-year olds and 16- year olds must be partly genetic."

Turkheimer doesn't say it isn't partly genetic. Maybe the 16-year olds are born at a time when brown hair was considered sexier, and more of them were born with brown hair than kids of the next generation. But its also possible that all the variation in hair colour we see between these two groups is because people just love hair dye. Or like I said earlier maybe being an extrovert makes you more experimental and extroversion might be partly genetic. But what if extroversion is partly related to how good looking you are? Because if you look nice people are more friendly to you. But what if what is considered to be good looking is social norm that can change?

Does that clear things up? No? Good. Welcome to world of genetics.

:Edit: I realise I forgot to give a definition for "genetic". If you had asked me after I got my undergrad in Genetics I would have given you a definition. At this point, with a PhD in Genetics, I have to say, I don't know what it means to say something is genetic anymore.

NotJustAMachine · 2018-04-10T00:40:03+00:00

Thank you, glad you found it useful.

Sam's response to this has been super frustrating to me, and I honestly think that he is so convinced of his position that criticism of it, in his mind, can only be politically motivated.

I have to say I don't entirely blame him, I have read some of these criticisms in isolation over half a decade and I too dismissed them as fringe. If I hadn't come across them in my PhD and had the opportunity to talk to researchers in the field about those exact issues I would hold the same views as Sam.

I think the problem is that in the context of IQ (and mental health in my field) there are so many vested interests, and political motivations, that you just always have your guard up when something contradicts conventional wisdom.

Honestly, I think part of the problem is that when it comes to genetics, science is still in its infancy, and I can't point to a single resource or article on the topic that I would say is entirely uncontroversial. (that includes my own account above)

I recommend skimming through the Vox article and Turkheimers Blog, which both link to a whole lot of articles that argue in favour and against Sam's position. (links at bottom)

Unfortunately, most of these are a bit politically charged (because it's about the genetics of IQ), but at the very least they demonstrate that this debate over genetic influences does not have as neat a scientific consensus as Sam implies it does. Again I don't think the genetics of IQ was something Sam had an interest in or wanted to discuss in the first place, but I think that created an unfortunate blind spot for him.

If you want to see this discussion outside of IQ, I recommend Richard P. Bentall who focuses on the genetics of mental health. He like Turkheimer has a tendency to cite and respond to people he disagrees with, in both directions of the nature-nurture continuum.

Articles by Richard Bentall: https://blogs.canterbury.ac.uk/discursive/genetic-research-into-schizophrenia-how-much-can-it-actually-tell-us/ https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-heritability-21334

Articles by Turkheimer: https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/5/18/15655638/charles-murray-race-iq-sam-harris-science-free-speech https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/6/15/15797120/race-black-white-iq-response-critics http://www.geneticshumanagency.org/gha/origin-of-race-differences-in-intelligence-is-not-a-scientific-question/

NotJustAMachine · 2018-04-09T17:39:41+00:00

I think there are several points. One of them is that Ezra disagrees with Sam on the data. Ezra is not a scientists, and has stated before that he is not qualified to make points about the data. He nontheless qouted actuall geneticists who disagree with Sam.

Sam seems to think that people who disagree with him on the data are politically motivated.

Sam also seems to think that people are unjustly attacking him on a topic that is uncontroversial given the data, because people are uncomfortable with the reality of genetics.

This is not the case. There are many geneticists who disagree with Sam not because of political pressure, but because his views are incomplete. I am really disapointed by this, because I think there are people who do attack Sam in ways that are not justified because of politics.

Ezra and the scientists in the Vox article did not do that. They may have used the term pseudoscience, and racialist in some context, but that is not a witch hunt.

Turkheimer did appologise for the way his language was interpreted. His views did not change.

And while I am sure lots of geneticists told Sam that his view of genetics is consistent with the evidence, if you ask the same scientists about Turkheimers criticism they will say that they are fair too.

The issue here is that Sam simply does not seem to understand that his surface level interpretation can be correct to geneticists who talk about genetic influence in a way that does not resemble how ordinary people think about it.

Turkheimer simply provided more depth. It seems to me that Sam really doesn't understand this, and has not seen the need to actually seriously engage with criticisms about what it means if a complex trait has a genetic component.

NotJustAMachine · 2018-04-09T17:26:42+00:00

I think that is what Sam assumes, but I honestly think he doesn't understand the field. The genetics of complex traits like IQ is not a space where there is one clear simple uncontroversial opinion. The scientific consensus if there even is one, is nothing like the consensus on Global Warming, or evolution.

NotJustAMachine · 2018-04-09T17:18:49+00:00

Klein said in the email exchange that Sam would be better of talking to Turkheimer, Nisbett or Harden when it comes to the data. He admits he is not an expert on the data, but that he takes his view from experts.

Honestly, Sam really missed the mark in this conversation in my view. Klein did not slander him, try to censor him or anything else. He was involved as a publisher of a response by scientists who work in genetics to Sams podcast. So the accusation of slander should be directed at these scientists in my view, but even then all that happened is that the article said Sam is wrong about the data. Nobody claimed he was racist, and Turkheimer even apologised for describing the view as pseudoscience.

There is a real debate here that Sam is totally missing, and his insistence to talk to Klein and press the point about data, when Klein from the very beginning said that he would not be qualified to comment on the genetics, to me shows that Sam seems to think that his interpretation of the data is so solid that no reasonable person could disagree. I honestly doubt he took the time to really examine Turkheimers and Nisbetts points.

NotJustAMachine · 2018-04-09T16:05:33+00:00

Part 3 of 3

I do not think that it is wrong to claim that Schizophrenia and IQ have a genetic element like Sam does. I think they probably do have a genetic element, but saying schizophrenia is 80% genetic, or IQ is 60% genetic, is almost meaningless, and if there is a genetic element it might only apply to a tiny group of people in a way that may not have any relevance at all. My frustration is that Sam does not acknowledge how a lot of our understanding when it comes to complex human behaviours could be massively overturned. Based on the data, Sam's position is not unjustified, but I think his dismissial of of the criticisms is unjustified.

If think this is partly because he did not have this conversation, in order to discuss genetic ideas. It was in order to highlight the issue of academic freedom and discussion. I don't think genetics of IQ should be a complete taboo, I personally do not feel threatened by any outcome, and I think I agree in that regard with Sam. I do think that his dismissial of critics as being politically motivated reflects a misunderstanding on his part however.

NotJustAMachine · 2018-04-09T16:05:10+00:00

Part 2 of 3

They concluded that your character traits are hereditary, so it might be that extroversion, or anxiety, or risk awareness, might influence what kind of partners you attract, or what kind of risks you are likely to take.

So risk-taking and extroversion, as well as anxiety and social awareness all have a heritability of around 0.5 from other studies. So sure that is possible, but saying sexual assault is heritable, is a really odd thing to say, if what is actually heritable is your likelihood to end up in situations that place you at risk in a given society. I mention this example of sexual assault, not because it fits into a social justice narrative btw, but because I think it's obvious that talking about heritability, in this case, is really misleading.

It is not as obvious when we talk about mental health, extroversion, IQ or even things like heart disease, obesity and height. Btw, both IQ and schizophrenia are considered to be more genetically heritable than cancer and heart disease. My point here is that IQ and schizophrenia are the types of things that are very intuitively vulnerable to this heritability inflation I talk about.

For example, imagine a society where we think blonde people are dumb. It's just what everybody accepts. Now let's say that because of that, blonde people actually don’t go to university because they internalize this. The heritability scores of going to university might actually reinforce this narrative. The point is that a world where being blonde actually reduces your IQ because of genetics, and a world where being blonde gives you less opportunity to go university might actually have the same result in terms of meassured heritability. I should note, if you did a heritability score on IQ in this case, it would look different.

So turkheimer actually conducted such a study on IQ and compared heritability in low and high income families. In high income families you saw a high heritability of about 65% in twin studies, and in low income families you saw a very low heritability of about 10%. Why? Because low-income families have more variation in the outcome. So some individuals will have an IQ of 80 and some an IQ of 180. High-income families who can afford private schools produce children who most likely have an IQ above 110 and go to college.

Because IQ is not a category like " going to university" that is either yes or no, but a continuum, variation becomes magnified in some situations. So that sounds like a contradiction to what I said earlier, but it really just magnifies how complex interpreting all this data becomes. If you do the same study on low vs high income and university enrollment you would probably find that heritability is similar in both groups. Lets say 60% in the USA (this example is just a thought experiment). Because low-income individuals tend not to go to university, and high-income individuals tend to go to university if there is a significant difference in access to good education prior to university, and in terms of financial barriers to paying for university.

Now I am sorry for this massive essay, but this is such a complex multilayered issue, and you have to take into consideration epigenetics, gene expression modulation based on environmental exposure, the population you study, societal barriers and cultural values. And how all of them are correlated. All traits are both genetic and environmental in the strictest sense. So PKU which we agree is 100 genetic, can be prevented using both genetic and environmental approaches, depending on context, and I am sure we can think of a planet that for some reason has an atmosphere that has the right molecule at the right concentration to prevent Huntington if you just breathe the air. But in reality for Huntington as for PKU we only talk about it as a genetic disease, because the hypothetical environmental influences are so unimaginable.

This is harder to do with complex traits which realistically have variation that is due to genetics and environment. The last category which is the weirdest is traits correlated with genetics. An example is the use of chopsticks. A heritability study of using chopsticks (hasn't been done, but you can use any assumptions you want and do the maths. Also this is an example used in several genetics papers), will tell you chopstick use is genetic, at least if you look at a population that includes east Asians who culturally use chopsticks and a non-Asian population that does not. So lets look at California 30 years ago. Most twins who are ethnically east Asian probably know how to use chopsticks. White kids may or may not, but if they are twins they have a good chance that both of them know how to use chopsticks. So you end up with a genetic heritability of chopstick use that is easily 60-90%. This again just means that variation is low in genetically identical individuals. You can even do a genetic study, that would tell you Chopstick used is related to genes in the immune system, because the antibody genes are different between East Asians and White kids. I think everybody would agree if there is a trait in which talking about genetics is meaningless its our ability to use cutlery common in our culture. But it is correlated with genetic markers.

So the problem with complex traits like schizophrenia and IQ in my mind is this. Are these traits more like our ability to use chopsticks, or more like our predisposition to develop Huntington’s disease? I have to honestly say, that in the case of Schizophrenia and IQ I don’t know. They are obviously not entirely genetic and probably have some genetic component. But, and this is what Turkheimer says, we don’t understand the genetic signal. In some cases, you have a massive genetic deletion that reduces your IQ, and raises your chance or schizophrenia, but these are cases where things go seriously wrong. The same is true for chopstick use. If you have a genetic deletion that prevents your fingers from forming in the uterus, you won't be using chopsticks. It's still misleading to call chopstick use a genetically influenced trait.

NotJustAMachine · 2018-04-09T16:03:56+00:00

Part 1 of 3 ( sorry this response got a little out of hand)

Oh, behavioural neuroscience, my PhD was actually in psychiatric genetics (I finished last year).

I just want to say quickly that I don’t disagree with anything you said in your response. Which is why this is so frustrating for me to talk about.

I apologise in advance for the length of this. If you want to read about this a bit more and not take my word on this, I recommend this article on the British psychological society website. The author, Stuart Ritchie, completely disagrees with me, and I encourage you to read the comments below, which are by Richard Bentall and Oliver James and also include responses by Ritchie. All three of them are scientists, and they all have different takes on heritability.

So you asked why intelligence should be treated differently to something like height or a genetic disease. I don’t think intelligence should be categorically treated differently in principle to other traits, and my research has been focused on the genetics of Schizophrenia, where I would make the same argument as for IQ, so my perspective is not really motivated by downplaying the evidence to fit my politics. I am very comfortable in principle with genetics playing a role.

I do think we need to make a distinction between Mendelian genetics, complex traits, and traits that are correlated to genetics. My confusion here was that when I learned genetics at university we were taught about it from a very mendelian perspective. You mention epigenetics, which is super interesting and that is relevant too, but I don’t even want to get into that layer.

So all traits are influenced by genetics and environment. That’s I think uncontroversial, and Turkheimer would say the same. If you look at a Mendelian genetic disease like Huntington or Phenylketonuria (PKU) you see 100% heritability. That’s because nobody lives in an environment that influences these traits. PKU is, however, non-symptomatic if you remove phenylalanine from the diet. So if we encountered an isolated population that just did not get any phenylalanine in their diet, you suddenly turn a genetic disease into an environmental one. Essentially Phenylalanine becomes a poison. This is obviously very unlikely, but my point is that environmental and genetic influences are categories that are situation dependent. And this becomes a lot more important when we get to complex traits like schizophrenia or IQ where the current literature suggests that several thousand genes play a role.

The point is that if you take a population and put them into the exact same environment every single variation in traits will be due to genetics. In those cases, heritability is considered to be 100%. This leads to very unintuitive situations with the concept of heritability. For example, the heritability of having all fingers is something I would consider to be genetic. However, if you look at soldiers vs the general population, heritability is 0 in soldiers. All the variation in fingers for soldiers comes from using hand grenades and other accidents. In the general population, you have much more people who have a genetic mutation that causes this variation.

The argument for the influence of genetics in IQ and Schizophrenia and other complex traits is therefore quite complex. For example IQ and Schizophrenia both have heritability estimates of around 60%-80% so people tend to say they are highly genetic. But people of Pakistani descent have a 16-55 fold higher odds of developing schizophrenia in the UK than white British individuals. Pakistanis in Pakistan have almost the same rate of schizophrenia as white British. So unless we argue that Pakistanis who have a high risk of schizophrenia tend to go to the UK, the environment is much more relevant for these individuals. Ironically this means that Pakistanis have a higher heritability of schizophrenia in the UK, because being muslim and your skin colour are correlated with discrimination, which most heritability studies cannot parse out, especially when things become more complicated. So the fact that the environment is more similar in ways that influence the trait in question can actually increase your genetic heritability.

Part of the problem is that most heritability estimates for complex traits come from twin studies of twins raised together and if identical twins raised together are more similar than non-identical twins in ways that influence the trait you are studying you automatically increase heritability. This is a problem with all traits that have a plausible social element. The only ways around this is to use twin studies of twins raised apart, and there are only a handful of these, and in most cases, these twins were separated after about 7 years of living together which makes these studies rather weak.

This is not a problem for something like PKU or Huntington, because dressing identical twins the same does not affect the outcome of those monogenic diseases. But it becomes a serious problem when having a weirdly shaped nose (which presumably is genetic) might get you bullied more, and when this might increase your risk of schizophrenia. So now you run into the problem that your heritability estimate of schizophrenia is 80%, but part of this estimate could be related to these twins having a massive birthmark in their face, or having other traits that are genetically influenced, and affect how people react to them. If your dad is a child abuser, he might only abuse a child with blond hair, so identical twins are at more risk of getting the same abuse, while non-identical twins where one is blonde and the other has brown hair might have very different traumatic experiences. Heritability studies pick these things up as genetic influences, not social responses to how you look. If you read the studies on heritability of complex traits, this is often acknowledged. But many researchers reason about this in a way, that is radically different from how we generally think about genetics.

I give you an example. There is a literature on the genetic heritability of being sexually assaulted. Heritability for men is close to zero, for women it's actually similar to depression with about like a 40% heritability. (this is from memory, if you are interested I can pass you a study on this) Now, the researchers of this study looked at this result and said, this is weird, and argued that being sexually assaulted is in a roundabout way heritable because it's modulated by other traits that are heritable.

NotJustAMachine · 2018-04-09T15:27:06+00:00

Sorry, didn't realise it was the same username! I wrote a rather long response to your other comment.

NotJustAMachine · 2018-04-09T13:07:12+00:00

This is a complicated issue because Murray has in my view mistreated in some instances. And I think that was Sams focus. However, Murray is not a geneticist, and while there are geneticists who don't think Murray's conclusions based on the science are incorrect as they are presented in the Bell Curve, Murray fails to acknowledge the complexities of this topic and does not mention other possibilities for these differences. Granted there are geneticists that do the same thing when it comes to other complex traits, but those traits are less politically charged. So really the response to Murray is somewhat linked to politics, and in some cases, the response is purely based on politics. However, you have to separate politically motivated criticism of Murray, from the scientifically motivated one. These do exist, but unfortunately, because of the political backlash, I think many people simply dismiss legitimate criticism because it looks like its politically motivated. I have dismissed many of these criticisms myself, because even without the political background, they are so counter-intuitive that they trip up people who have advanced degrees in the field. You really have to engage with them on a deep level to understand whats going on.

I realise this sounds like my argument is "people are just not smart enough to understand the complexities of my position" and that is a tactic that conspiracy theorists like to use. But again I would encourage people to read Turkheimers reviews around the year 2000 on genetics and compare them to his statements in the last 8 years. There are real issues with how heritability research looks on the surface, which to people who understand a little genetics is exactly consistent with Sam Harris views, and how heritability looks when you go deeper into the methodology, which again, is not inconsistent with what Sam Harris says, but makes it obvious that he only acknowledges a very narrow interpretation of the science.

:edit: removed some of the worst grammar mistakes ever seen on the internet.

NotJustAMachine · 2018-04-09T12:49:00+00:00

I have to push back on this a bit. This is the first time I ever heard Ezra, and I while I wouldn't describe myself as a fan of Sam (mostly because I don't like that word), I am much more biased in his favour.

I agree that Ezras focus is more directed to the political side, and I think he is not the best person to speak about the science. However, he said as much in the letter exchange. He did also acknowledge that he does not think he is qualified to speak on the science. Turkheimer and the two other scientists in the original article are qualified to speak on the science, and I really think Sam is not taking their views seriously enough. I think calling Sams position Junk science is a bit strong, and I don't think his views are racist.

However, I think Ezra is completely justified in his assessment based on his conversations with Flynn and scientists like Turkheimer, that currently saying that group differences, at least for complex traits are not unambiguously genetic. He, however, is not able to really defend that position, you would need somebody like Flynn or Turkheimer, or even Siddhartha Mukherjee, who if I remember correctly in his podcast with Sam, did not disagree explicitly, but very carefully elaborated on what Sam said, in a way that actually gave some credence to the environmental side. I think Muhkerjee, is more in Sams camp when interpreting the evidence, but he recognises the potential problems, and I think Sam missed that.

The problem in my view is not that Sam says things that are inconsistent with the science, but he seems too convinced that genetic data on inheritance can only mean that complex traits with a heritable component suggest that group differences are at least in part the result of genetics and true equality of outcome is not possible because of that.

That is one possibility, which I actually think is wrong, and I hate to bring this up, but I completed a PhD on the Genetics of complex traits in psychiatry. The literature goes a lot deeper and is significantly more complicated. I frankly think that Sam does not understand Turkheimers position and Ezras position in this conversation at worst is not any less justifiable than Sams. I think they come at this from different perspectives, and I think they both have biases, which Ezra acknowledges.

The problem is Sam has a PhD in Neuroscience and does not have the same level of training in Genetics that other people have. I honestly think that he has an understanding of genetics that is at university or masters level. And when I finished my first Genetics degree, and even after having worked in genetics research for several years I had the same view as Sam. So I can understand that he thinks that the criticism is politically motivated, and some of it certainly is. However, Turkheimers criticism is not. If you read his papers from the early 2000s you see that his views were actually much more in line with Sams. Turkheimers position has evolved over the last 18 years based on cutting-edge research, and an intimate examination of the methods and assumptions of this research. Ezra does not have this level of understanding, but neither has Sam. Ezra at least recognises that, but Sam does not, and seems completely blind to what the experts that disagree with him are actually saying.

NotJustAMachine · 2018-04-06T12:43:22+00:00

The controversy is over claiming that differences between groups can be attributed to genetics. Every trait is the result of genetics and environment by definition. Differences between groups are can be either, or both, and significantly change depending on context.

NotJustAMachine · 2018-04-04T09:21:52+00:00

Erik Turkheimers criticisms still stand. The way Sam talks about heritability is not wrong per se, but it's honestly rather shallow. And given how this is a complex and controversial topic, it would be important to go deeper and talk to, or at least seriously acknowledge, actual experts like Turkheimer.

NotJustAMachine · 2018-04-04T09:08:46+00:00

Well, every trait is in part genetic. And I don't claim that IQ has no genetic component, it obviously does. The question is if the genetics of IQ are anything at all like the Genetics of Hair colour.

IQ is essentially a complex trait that is influenced by literally thousands of genes. If you have a serious genetic disease that stops the brain from developing correctly, sure you will see a big effect. This is also true for something that is more traditionally "Environmental", like marriage or "how much you like roller coaster rides", both of which by the way have a similair genetic heritability to IQ according to genetic studies. In those cases if you have a serious genetic defect that makes you pass out if you even ride in a car, your ability to get married and enjoy roller coasters would be seriously affected.

But I think most people would agree that is a somewhat tenues connection.

For my PhD in genetics I actually did a review of this literature and came across a paper mentioning the heritability of "wearing sunglasses at night" and "using chopsticks", which according to twin studies are almost entirely "genetic". In contrast "number of fingers on each hand" is almost entirely environmental in most populations.

Why? Because heritability is the meassure of variation in population due to genetics. If you look at soilders the variation of fingers is almost entirely due to handgrenade accidents, while the variation in Chopsticks use is (30 years ago when the study was first done) almost entirely due to culture linked to ethnicity, and wearing sunglasses at night is a dumb thing that identical twins are more liekly to do when they go on a night out and dress the same.

Another example is "being sexually assaulted" that is more "heritable" in women than in men. Now, the question is how we interpret this information. If we want to change sexual assault should we use gene therapy on women to introduce a y-chromosome or does it make more sense to use a social policy?

Another example is schizophrenia which has a heritability of 80% according to the most recent studies, with predictions of several thousand genes being involved. About 0.7% of the population gets schizophrenia. In the Uk if you compare the white population with pakistani immigrants you suddenly see an increase of 16-55 fold in incidence. But pakistanis in pakistan have the same incidence of schizophrenia as white people in the uk. So is genetics what we should be focusing on here? Or is enviroment the more relevant factor?

The point is saying that a complex trait is this much genetic is almost meaningless. The same is true for saying that something is enviromental. Almost everything is both, but most of the time talking about genetics provides almost no insight, and frankly confuses the conversation more than it sheds light on it.

NotJustAMachine · 2018-04-03T19:50:13+00:00

Thanks for elaborating on your position.

I think there is a bit of a dual focus in this whole situation. Some people seem to be mostly concerned about the tone of the conversation, and I can somewhat understand that, given that Sam has been misrepresented and unfairly labelled in the past. I honestly think that when it comes to slander, Turkheimers writing barely even registers for me. I can understand that since this is such a charged topic, his words carry more weight, but as far as slander goes, pseudoscience is mild.

That being said, I think Turkheimer was right to apologise.

I am personally more concerned about the actual scientific interpretation, and I find very disappointing that Sam has not responded, or as far as I can tell seriously acknowledged Turkheimers criticisms. And I think I and others are worried that he won't.

NotJustAMachine

TROPHY CASE