How Eugenicists Confounded Understanding of Heritability (and Genetics)
The Science Wars Part 16
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A friend of mine recently shared this Substack article via Facebook.
It took me a moment to realize that I have previously read some of Sasha's work (perhaps because some of it is relevant to my wife's work as a P53 researcher). He seems to be one of the "good guys" in the sense that he was not brainwashed by the eugenicists of generations past.
Do not lose hope—there are a lot of very smart people in science.
Aside observation: I can still post a link to anyone else's Substack articles, and an open window appears (as above). But I am the only person I have talked to who cannot create such a window with my own articles. This has been going on since my research into the military health database (DMED).
Nature vs. Nurture and Genetics vs. Heritability
The answer to the "nature vs. nurture" debate has always been "some of both and any attempt at measurement would see weights between the two shifting." I'm not even going to bother defending that position, though I might write about it some day if it feels important to do so.
The story about genetics vs. heritability takes a more twisted path that almost certainly relates to something like an arrogant intelligentsia of twisted eugenicists (probably a narcissistic feedback loop) who elevated themselves to the positions of gods and then pitched a multi-generational Cybernetic plan to the oligarchs of their era.
The motivations of those eugenics @$$holes was likely somewhat like that of the Transylvanian cannon maker Orbán who, seeking status and profit for himself, sold heavy cannons to Mehmed II to be used by the Ottomans during the 1453 siege of Constantinople. Bro also died during the siege. Call it a cautionary tale.
Unfortunately, the carrot offered to the modern oligarchs, with parallels to the story of Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang, was some form of immortality—-either for bloodlines or through some imagined transhumanist alchemy that is almost certainly unachievable. These powerful oligarchs not only mobilized their wealth toward the goal, they likely planned wars and massacres all over the world while inventing bloated government "socialism" to socialize the costs of their New World Order projects.
How does this relate to a misunderstanding of the heritability/genetics gap?
Many people—many "educated" people—think of only genetics when they think of heritability. This is the result of more than a century of propaganda. And some of the scientists may very well have eaten their own horse$#!t with a grin while believing they were special enough and deserving of so much money.
You can simply read the definitions of heritability and genetics to see the difference, and perhaps realize why heritability need not be genetic. But that may not be enough for most people to shake the dissonance of a misleading education. So, I'm going to provide a simple example that hopefully shatters the illusion for some people:
ZIP CODE
Yeah. Zip code is highly heritable. And unless there is some Zipf's law level weirdness that we haven't stumbled upon yet, zip codes have absolutely nothing to do with genetics. Nothing. Whatsoever.
And yet, if one of your parents has zip code X, your zip code is far more likely to be X or very close to X than around some other neighborhood in the (U.S. zip code) list of 5-digit integers.
At this point, there will be people thinking, "Okay, sure, but stuff like IQ is still genetic because I know so because it is…"
This would be the time to stop and read through all of my education articles.
IQ is a ratio of academic attainment relative to age, measured using questions specific to modernity (and correlate eerily with the Cybernetics goals of eugenicists and their Kunlangeta masters). There is certainly heritability in IQ measurement, but it is hard to determine how much of that relates to environmental similarity. Even physical similarity might make a difference. In a world in which 20% of seven footers play in the NBA, men with otherwise similar minds who grow to be 5' 4" are more likely to spend time in books searching for a way to provide for a family. Such effects will increase the appearance of genetic weights to heritability in twin studies.
Observation: Heritability sometimes represents genetics, but there is no rule as to how much, and there is no rule that the proportion will remain static.
Sadly, this distracts us from the simple recognition that a single change in our educational processes results in a two standard deviation (30 IQ points) improvement among students. I believe that the totality of improvements is at least three standard deviations (45 IQ points) and most likely five or more (75+ IQ points). That the Molochian Cybernetic demon that surrounds us fights these observations is a large part of what forces me to take up positions that get attacked with that time-honored thought-terminating cliche of "conspiracy theory."
In reference to Gusev's article, I agree with most of it, except that I'm going to quibble about the notion that every experience has an "infinitesimal" effect on outcomes that could stack up to explain the so-called missing heritability problem. I strongly believe that trauma accounts for the majority of the measurement gap, and all other experiences have infinitesimal effects.
FWIW, I also think that trauma, not vegetable oil or even smart phones, is the primary driver of rising obesity, but I'll defend that position on a day when I do not have such a long list of higher priorities. This is at least a large part of why it is that I began focusing more of my attention on cults that lead people into lifestyles that result in exploding rates of child trauma.
Hi Mathew,
Synchronicity strikes. I am helping young parents with a few local start-up schools. They are supplemental schools rather than alternative because the target students are roughly the equivalence of American primary and Jr. High students and they must go to the compulsory, Prussian style schools dictated by the Ministry of (mis)Education. So we are just trying to undo some of the emotional damage/trauma of brute memorization for standardized tests. Maybe provide a more individually empowering link between homeschooling and the compulsory system.
Skimming through a couple of links brought me to some of your posts before I had started following you ... and was pleased to see that "kulangeta" was prominent in your analysis of the perverse incentives behind the Prussian system. I read Lobaczewski's book on ponerology a year or so ago, and though I agree that the sociopath in the family closet is a fractal of what has been going on at larger scales, I disagree with him in that science is the right domain or heuristics for evil any more than there can be a science of happiness, or that the kulangeta are intellectually degenerate compared to the empathetically neurotypical. On the contrary, without normal neural pathways for empathy, they excel at observation, mimicry, and long term planning ... though in an ultimately self-destructive way. I guess a big question is how many innocents will be outsourced as collateral damage before the next Tower of Babel fall?
I remembered Bloom's Taxonomy from grad school (education) which is a big help in designing a curriculum that empowers the kids, but am having a bit more trouble convincing the parents of the importance of entire empathy-driven communities (rather than just schools) for facilitating the maturation of morally autonomous members of the community. The parents know something is wrong with Japan's collectivist style of Prussian education, but that is how they were raised too.
Somewhat revealing ... of the 39 languages that wiki has for "Bloom's Taxonomy", Japanese is not one of them. It is a learning process for us all, but fun. Now having the kids work in small groups to craft (and sing) their own lyrics to this little ditty ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-diB65scQU
In light of Klaus Schwab's command to "be happy", I suppose I will have to craft my own verse or two. 😅
Cheers
Mathew, thank you for pursuing what you value and being willing to condense for others the totality of what you can pack tighter. You are a great teacher and I appreciate your worth and your dignity. I find my own ideas challenged by your critiques in a rich and respectful way, and I wish my lifestyle enabled more time for me to spend tracking your conceptual deployment and strategy as a model for your praxis, because the truth you are tracking is clearly driving you towards a honed Bigger Picture idea of such high dimensional resolution because of the topologies inherent within the networks of your graphs comprising all these Finer Details. This is when I find it important to think this situation with Col John Boyd, through whom I find a truth that rings very true with what I take is where you want all these stacks to come together for people to work and operate in decentralized, localized groups towards a shared truth in overtaking and overcoming those who seek our collective enslavement and degradation through malicious, soulless indifference or worse.
Keeping teaching others how to judge their own synthesis, their own work!