Posted: Jul 28, 2015 12:12 am
Oldskeptic wrote:Sadegh wrote:http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/23/genes-influence-academic-ability-across-all-subjects-latest-study-shows
Of course this gets posted on The Guardian and the storm of analmad in the comment section is just golden.
I really cannot wait to see the day when prospective parents will be able to alter or select embryos to be brought to term based on detailed genetic knowledge, such is as being unearthed by the Beijing Genomics Institute's Cognitive Genomics branch, in order to enhance the intelligence of the resulting children.
And I can't help but think that this will never come to pass. Not necessarily for ethical reasons, but I do see them as playing a part, especially when the outcomes of these experiments prove less than successful. Success could not be guaranteed. There are just too many variables, and combinations of the all possible alleles for all the gene cites might as well be described as infinite. Furthermore a gene cite and or allele that is responsible for one bit of intelligence could also be responsible for one or more traits that are related to intelligence, but could also be responsible for unrelated traits. This possibility was excellently demonstrated by accident in Dmitri Belyaev's selective breeding experiment with foxes.
There seem to be suites of genes not just individual genes. In Belyaev's experiments he selectively bred for tameness, and he got the results he hoped for and expected. But he also got things he didn't expect. Along with tameness he got tails that curled up instead of down, he got wagging tails, he got floppy ears, he got piebald coloration, and he got higher intelligence/trainability. In effect he turned wild foxes into border collies. All from only selecting for tameness.
I'm reminded of the following:
That he got such results as he did from traditional breeding is hardly surprising because of the quantity of genes affected in each go.
Do you think these other organisms that are currently being genetically modified, successfully, don't broadly speaking have the same sort of complex gene-gene interactions that exist in humans? And do you think no one is aware of or cataloguing information about them in general? I would say not:
http://biology.stackexchange.com/questi ... ork-graphs
Per your reasoning, traditional breeding, to say nothing of highly targeted genetic modifications, which of course have been done quite successfully in the past decades, should only ever wreak havoc on the tremendously fragile and volatile systems biology of the cell.
Would you know it: I had this very same argument with a New Ager going and comparing Monsanto to Sauron by the way.
Oldskeptic wrote:Who are these people raging that intelligence isn't heritable?
You can see them trying feebly to make their point in the comments section on that Guardian article. I've come across numerous people who have flatly denied that heredity has much of anything to do with intelligence.
Oldskeptic wrote:And it appears to me that you are falling for what amounts to more bad science.
No, I'm not falling for "bad science", I'm falling for bringing into the human realm what has already been done successfully in other organisms.
Because it's not like there has been no success in giving other mammals enhanced intelligence:
http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014 ... rning-mice
Or strength:
http://www.salk.edu/news/pressrelease_d ... ess_id=530
It's going to happen eventually. I suspect the People's Republic of China will be the first out of the gate. Then everyone else will be forced to keep up.