Hacker News Reader

Comment by phreeza | Hacker News Reader

Also, they are planning to conduct the largest-scale of correlations between intelligence and genetics so far.

I knew there would be something to worry about, but reading the linked article, I think it's more likely they want to be assured that they can maintain a viable food supply. For example, once they have good wheat genomes, they may be able to engineer varieties of wheat that will be resistant to new strains of rust.

Also, they will be in a great position to reverse engineer everything coming out of Monsanto and other big-time GM food producers. Don't underestimate the benefits of being able to stick closely on the coat-tails of some of the World's smartest genetic engineers.

Do you have a source at all for the intelligence vs genetics study?

It's in the Economist's special report. (Maybe not in this article, but in another of the bunch.)

History has taught me enough to be worried about that.

Movies have taught me enough to be worried about that!

Gattica will happen ... in china apparently.

The title is "Gattaca" for a reason: four bases found in DNA are adenine (abbreviated A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T). It's fantastic movie IMO.

Gattuca would have been an admissable typo.

Well what if you could give your self a brain upgrade via gene therapy? What's so bad about that? I guess many would be upset as it would go against our ideology here in America that frowns on any suggestion that intelligence has innate components.

Fun error message - "This update failed to install successfully. Please try again after reboot"

You seem to be making the rather large assumption that people who aren't intelligent are thus due to genetics. In my experience it's usually their ideology that makes them "stupid". No gene therapy is going to fix that, you'll just be putting an F1 engine in a car that spends all it's time idling.

History has taught you to be worried about people knowing genes (or clusters of genes) which correlate with intelligence, to various degrees?

The record of scientists in examining the links of race and intelligence is not so good. People tend to jump to conclusions even when they think they're being logical.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craniometry

So just because scientists have been wrong on a topic we should stop exploring it when newer measuring tools become available? I encourage this kind of research, just because it will probably show that there is more genetic variation between individuals than between races ;-)

I wasn't drawing the conclusion that we should not explore the question. But I do think people should wonder: With all the useful, actionable questions arising from genetic research, why are we attracted by an unseen force to the particular question of intelligence and race? Why not try to address a question more likely to help people (e.g., the genetic origin of certain diseases)? Why the fascination with this question?

I'm not talking about forbidding certain investigations, just trying to be smart about prioritizing investigations.

You say "...it will probably show that..." -- already injecting preconceived notions of the outcome into the scientific question. This is an example of why investigations into this question seem to reveal more about the investigator than the question.

If that's true, it's disappointing. I was hoping it would be used for something like identifying genetic risk factors for various diseases, or helping the pharma industry develop drug treatments that could be custom-tailored to someone's genome. Instead it looks like we're going to get navel-gazing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com