In an op-ed in the New York Times Kathryn Paige Harden urges progressives to “embrace the genetics of education”:
On Monday, scientists published a study in Nature Genetics that analyzed the genes of 1.1 million people of European ancestry, including over 300,000 23andMe customers. Over 99 percent of our DNA is identical in all humans, but researchers focused on the remaining 1 percent and found thousands of DNA variants that are correlated with educational attainment. This information can be combined into a single number, called a polygenic score. In Americans with European ancestry, just over 10 percent of people with a low polygenic score completed college, compared with 55 percent of people with a high polygenic score. This genetic disparity in college completion is as big as the disparity between rich and poor students in America.
coming dangerously close to one of the genuine third rails in modern discourse. Comments are much as you’d expect, ranging from acceptance, rejection, and everything in between including smug acceptance, particularly among those whom I doubt are progressives, to angry rejection, from those whom I suspect are. Here’s a comment I found especially good:
The bottom line is: do we agree every human being equally deserves a decent life though human beings are not equally endowed with intelligence, drive, physical and mental health, or sociability? If we do, we must decide what the elements of a decent life are and pursue policies that ensure everyone can have them. If we don’t, we let capitalism run amok, let the strong survive and the weak perish.
I agree with that although my notion of a “decent life” and the commenter’s probably differ and, even more importantly, the opinions on the subject undoubtedly vary between those who want to ensure that everyone can lead a decent life and those who want to be ensured to live their decent lives. I’m also curious about what the commenter meant by “every” and “deserves”. Whatever the case our present policies spend hugely more ensuring that those who are tasked with ensuring the decent lives of third parties are paid well enough than actually ensuring those decent lives.
Equally deserving is accurately described by Epictetus:
“These reasonings do not cohere: I am richer than you, therefore I am better than you. I am more eloquent than you, therefore I am better than you. On the contrary these rather cohere: I am richer than you, therefore my possessions are greater than yours. I am more eloquent than you, therefor my speech is superior to yours. But I am neither possession nor speech.”
Digging through the comments section in search of gold, usually a fool’s task . . .. 😉 I thought the comment was good, though the writer appears to see this as a call for a new or better-suited safety net, while I think it’s a call for a more diverse economy.
If you’re a liberal or a social democrat, it’s a call for a more expansive welfare state. If you’re a socialist, it’s a call for a more decentralized economy and democratic control of the workplace.
Not really clear what polygenic score means and what it is measuring. Maybe a really low score means you are more likely to be very short and ugly. I wouldn’t make much of this as a single study, but your broader point stands. If we continue to settle out into a 2 or 3 tiered society, how do we make it work for those at the bottom? We go way out of our way to help those at the top. What we can we do for everyone else?
Steve
@Ben, and conservatives see at a call to cut marginal tax rates?
Granted its a short comment, but the writer appears IQ disparity directly onto the framework of wealth/income disparity. I think these two things don’t necessarily have a strong correlation.
@steve, polygenetic merely refers to multiple genes. IQ cannot be sourced to specific genes, but by small variations among multiple genes at different locations. I haven’t read any of the links because I don’t think that aspect is new, but presumably the study offers have employed algorithms to reduce this complexity to a score.
Because of the complexity, I don’t think the rich will be able to buy intelligence. The best they can do is breed with intelligent people, but this is subject to regression to the mean.
The “blank slate” theory is being whittled away slowly but surely. I think you previously posted on David Reich’s oped a couple of months ago which fits well with this.
Looking at the piece: I see they don’t use IQ at all, just educational attainment, which was probably easier to get.
It would be interesting to test how adoption fits with this theory. Since I was adopted, I’ll volunteer.
Andy
Have you seen the current movie/documentary about the NY Jewish adoption agency study of twins/triplets?
Drew,
No, I haven’t, I’ll have to look that up, thanks.
The Neubauer study.
More here.
@PD
So far as I can determine I’m one of the only conservatives left.
As for intelligence: we still don’t have a working definition of what it is, and IQ tests tell us nothing about it. They only tell us how we’ll we’ve been trained in the skills being tested.
Sounds like genetics gives the “master race” new legs. Look at the bright side, us dummies won’t have to try to master the fields out of our genetic reach.