Selective biological breeding

[Guest all_purpose_sandpaper]

aren't alot of dog strains really fucking inbred?

 

eugenics is completely futile, it's not genes that are holding us back, it's the state of modern society

 

As I understand it, the worst traits are also amplified. Westies were bred for rat-chasing, and suffer form a skin condition. they also freak the fuck out when they smell lamb roasting.

[lumpenprol]

 

lump: intelligence is not a genetic trait.

 

 

what? and you know this because?

 

It's been studied pretty thoroughly by sociologists, and it has been pretty conclusively proven that environment has a much greater impact on a person's intellectual environment than family.

 

I'd like to see the research (though I admit, I probably won't read it, lol). Intelligence has to have a genetic component. It runs in my family (though I didn't get a hefty portion), it runs in my ex-girlfriend's family, and my childhood best friend's family. By the way I have no idea what the last part of your quote means, did you mean to say "intellectual development"? Also I don't buy that environment has a huge impact on a person's plastic intelligence, unless it's regarding nutrition and socialization (if you starve an infant or lock him in a box I'm guessing that affects IQ)

 

Edit: also people seem to be confusing inbreeding with eugenics.

 

The problem with eugenics is ethical, not whether it works or not. Of course it works, and will be refined further in the future whether we like it or not.

[Root5]

I'd like to see the research (though I admit, I probably won't read it, lol). Intelligence has to have a genetic component. It runs in my family (though I didn't get a hefty portion), it runs in my ex-girlfriend's family, and my childhood best friend's family. By the way I have no idea what the last part of your quote means, did you mean to say "intellectual development"? Also I don't buy that environment has a huge impact on a person's plastic intelligence, unless it's regarding nutrition and socialization (if you starve an infant or lock him in a box I'm guessing that affects IQ)

 

Edit: also people seem to be confusing inbreeding with eugenics.

 

The problem with eugenics is ethical, not whether it works or not. Of course it works, and will be refined further in the future whether we like it or not.

 

Citing your own experience of intelligence running in families means absolutely nothing. For all you know, smart parents bring up their children to be smarter. Or it could even be a coincidence. And you are almost certainly biased, because I assume you're just judging intelligence without performing any kinds of tests. If you were checking people for various genes, and testing people with a set of puzzles or math problems or something then that might count as evidence, but as is you haven't really said much.

[GORDO]

 

lump: intelligence is not a genetic trait.

 

 

what? and you know this because?

 

It's been studied pretty thoroughly by sociologists, and it has been pretty conclusively proven that environment has a much greater impact on a person's intellectual environment than family.

 

what do sociologists know about genetics? I'm not trying to start a fight, but I seriously question what you're saying, we can't even properly define what intelligence is and you say we already know there's close to nothing in our genes about it? I agree with lumen there HAS to be a genetic component, after all, what makes species different is the genetic code (as far as we know) and there's all sorts of different intelligence "types" among species.

 

a nature vs. nurture thing, i think it's both.

 

also what is the biggest environmental influence if it's not family? what you are saying makes sense no me to. also, intelligence can also be regarded as a skill that can be 'worked on' hence making any study differentiating influence of genes vs. upbringing very difficult to justify and we are all also familiar with people that are "naturally intelligent" which suggest a genetic component.

 

PS I love how all joshier threads turn into deep discussion that go far beyond what he was asking.

[Guest joshier]

Citing your own experience of intelligence running in families means absolutely nothing. For all you know, smart parents bring up their children to be smarter. Or it could even be a coincidence. And you are almost certainly biased, because I assume you're just judging intelligence without performing any kinds of tests. If you were checking people for various genes, and testing people with a set of puzzles or math problems or something then that might count as evidence, but as is you haven't really said much.

Reminds me of my friend who said "yeah, mazdas are less reliable than fords" because he had seen less broken down, where as I said - well, I've done about 10 hours of research from major studies (such as reliabilityindex.org) to check the status and it appears that his statement was incorrect. Point is, you need a massive body of evidence if you want to prove something like the things we are talking about regarding eugenics.

[Guest all_purpose_sandpaper]

my uncle used psychological training on his kids--memory wizardry at a young age. i can't prove anything more than they are all in university at an exceptionally young age.

 

edit: everyone else in my fam is a moran.

[Guest joshier]

stolen reply:

You've proposed a difficult experiment for several reasons.

 

It requires a few hundred of a species for long term inbreeding to not be an issue, and far more for serious selective breeding over generations to work.

 

The number of generations needed for substantial change is relatively large, and species capable of developing new tools from previously unused environmental resources, or communicating ideas by actions or language that humans can learn to discern, tend to require life spans long enough to explore thoughts and mechanical possibilities. That combination tends to require evaluation beyond the life of any one human, and in turn favor industrial use based breeding or in the wild natural selection over controlled experiments.

 

We're not without studies of humans as regional subjects, just one of which some friends were discussing this week:

 

http://www.isteve.com/iq_table.htm

 

A bird breeder friend's public "small population" Wiki and hosted listserver are here: (Rex also has a private Wiki with some interesting statistical explorations of human society and breeding, intelligence trends, projections, and Monte Carlo studies. He's a rather extreme IQ retired math professor who keeps his mind alert doing programming to test various statistical ideas.)

 

http://nosyntax.net/

 

http://www.nosyntax.net/fbwiki/index.php/Special:Allpages

 

There are also those pesky unexpected or secondary consequences issues, even if things seem "successful" selecting over generations for certain target traits:

 

http://www.nosyntax.net/fbwiki/index.php/The_Genetics_of_Captive_Propagation_Part_2

 

In theory octopus would be easier to work with than dogs because of a 2 year average life span, but more difficult for them to develop skills that required long term experience, and more difficult because of human communication styles. 100 generations is still a bit more than any single controlled study could manage in grant or academic based programs.

 

All that points me back at the idea of trying to understand why existing populations that have self-selected in nature or been domesticated have developed in the ways they have, rather than trying controlled studies that couldn't be done in a human lifetime.

 

Another option is to compare similar domesticated or industrialized species (eg, dogs) with feral similar breeds, eg wolves and coyotes. My impression is that you'd find all of them have developed various forms of intelligence, and that the comparison (hypothesis to test) would be to relate subspecies or regional small pop groups to specific forms of enhanced skills or intelligences.

[GORDO]

/thread

[YEK]

i was watching a show and it was about a man who ran a sperm donor company and he had sperm from exceptionally ____________________ men. good looking, smart etc.

 

that's all

[Guest all_purpose_sandpaper]

Citing your own experience of intelligence running in families means absolutely nothing. For all you know, smart parents bring up their children to be smarter. Or it could even be a coincidence. And you are almost certainly biased, because I assume you're just judging intelligence without performing any kinds of tests. If you were checking people for various genes, and testing people with a set of puzzles or math problems or something then that might count as evidence, but as is you haven't really said much.

Reminds me of my friend who said "yeah, mazdas are less reliable than fords" because he had seen less broken down, where as I said - well, I've done about 10 hours of research from major studies (such as reliabilityindex.org) to check the status and it appears that his statement was incorrect. Point is, you need a massive body of evidence if you want to prove something like the things we are talking about regarding eugenics.

 

yes but which is easier to fix? a Ford. not to discredit the above \thread though.

[chenGOD]

Sorry the last part of my statement should have read "environment has a much bigger impact on a person's intellectual achievement than genetics".

 

Is there an intelligence gene?

http://neurophilosophy.wordpress.com/2006/05/03/there-is-no-intelligence-gene/

 

http://scienceray.com/biology/human-biology/is-there-an-intelligence-gene/

 

So there is a genetic function to intelligence but there is no single gene (which I stated incorrectly, so I apologize for that). However, i will stand by my statement that social environment plays a much stronger role than genetics.

Intelligence is a socially defined construct - think of it like this: we need to agree on what should be included in the measurement of intelligence, therefore it is socially-defined.

 

Environment: think of it like this: a kid who grows up in a wealthy family where the parents have time to spend with their children, who read as part of daily activities, and have more than likely gone to university, will almost certainly have a better foundation to start with.

Nature is played out within nurture, i.e. intelligence develops within a social context. Two kids might score the same on some form of measured test, but as the kid with the more affluent family is allowed more opportunities he will most likely develop his measured intelligence faster and further than the kid whose parents both work and come home too exhausted to help with the homework.

[GORDO]

OK i would agree with all that.

 

but still there's has to be traits that can be passed genetically that help some of the stuff intelligence is made of.

[Guest all_purpose_sandpaper]

Environment: think of it like this: a kid who grows up in a wealthy family where the parents have time to spend with their children, who read as part of daily activities, and have more than likely gone to university, will almost certainly have a better foundation to start with.

Nature is played out within nurture, i.e. intelligence develops within a social context. Two kids might score the same on some form of measured test, but as the kid with the more affluent family is allowed more opportunities he will most likely develop his measured intelligence faster and further than the kid whose parents both work and come home too exhausted to help with the homework.

 

I believe the uncle memory training was executed over breakfast. Had something to do with cereal boxes. Bottom line: poor are open for business.

[Guest joshier]

another ripped off reply:

Octopi are an interesting case. My advisor knew someone who worked with them and told me stories about how intelligent they are. For example, they could tell when it was feeding time based on the unique vibrations of the specific person walking towards the tank. On one occasion, an octopus used one tentacle to "distract" a nearby researcher and the other to swipe an object out of his hand. They are clearly very intelligent for invertebrates.

 

Intelligence, however, is a tricky subject. As you eluded to, it is defined by the tasks you define. Intelligence in general is defined by humans and is a very subjective, controversial subject. I'm sure you are aware of the controversies surrounding academic testing and cultural biases. Developing a standard definition of intelligence, especially for an aquatic slug, would be a daunting task. The mere fact that there are variations in intelligence in nature suggests there is a genetic component to it and natural selection can and has acted on it. It would therefore be perfectly reasonable to attempt your experiment.

 

Artificial selection experiments have been done. Dogs are of course an excellent example. One consideration is the amount of genetic diversity present in the population. The equation r=h*s predicts the evolutionary response of selection. R=response, which would be increasing intelligence. H=heritability, which is the contribution of genetics to the trait. S=selection, which is your removal of undesirable traits. R and S are straightforward but H is tricky. Any time you remove animals from a natural population of large breeding size into the lab and start a small captive breeding program you are messing with H. This is called a bottleneck. This is why cheetahs are 99% genetically identical to each other because they underwent a bottleneck in nature. Their evolution is therefore hampered. Limiting the genetic diversity will limit your potential evolutionary outcomes. As you continue to select for optimal phenotypes your population's genetic diversity will become exhausted fail to respond. Why aren't mice as large as elephants? Surely they would be better off fighting off cats. Artificial selection experiments have selected for larger mice and eventually they become sterile. There is no substitute for a large, natural population's ability to respond to natural selection.

 

One solution to the above problem is to give the population sufficient time to build up more genetic diversity through mutation. Which direction that diversity will go in is unknown. It is likely that their intelligence will be constrained by their morphology and physiology and "max out" barring any evolutionary novelty. Human intelligence, for example, is owed largely to our capacity for speech and written language. The evolution of our opposable thumb and vocal cord were therefore very important.

 

Of course this all depends on how you define intelligence. I see no reason why you couldn't select for octopi to carry out increasingly complex spatial or mathematical tasks. These tasks will ultimately be designed and interpreted by the observer and therefore limited by the observer's intelligence. Maybe the octopi are processing the info in a novel way more complicated than the human mind. We would have no way of knowing.

 

Another consideration is the impact of the environment. Phenotypes are the result of genotype and environment (P=G+E). I have discussed the impact of G. Phenotypes, be they body mass or intelligence, have a strong environmental component. Consider identical twins; one placed on a high fat diet and the other on a lean diet. Despite sharing G, E will cause them to have a different P. I mention this because E is extremely dynamic and can fluctuate through time. This is my area of interest. Regarding intelligence, fluctuations in E can have dramatic effects of intelligent outcomes. We have plenty of example of feral children and orphans who fail to achieve language or social skills because they were not educated during early critical periods of development. I cited one experiment in my masters work in which prey preference in squid was determined by the type of prey they were exposed to early in development. Given two prey types, a slow and stealthy type, squid exposed to the stealthier pretty item during early development preferred the stealthy one as adults. Unexposed squid preferred the slow one. This is because the exposed squid “learned” a quite efficient technique for capturing the stealthy prey. It would therefore be important to consider these tasks from early on in development, not just adulthood.

 

The bottom line is intelligence has an ecological context. There are many cognitive tasks performed by birds, fish, insects, ect that I would challenge any human to perform. Does this make them more "intelligent" than us? It does within their ecological context. I often have lay people ask me why fish aren't evolving to become humans. I then ask them how they would fare if I dropped them from a helicopter into the middle of the pacific ocean.

[lumpenprol]

Citing your own experience of intelligence running in families means absolutely nothing. For all you know, smart parents bring up their children to be smarter. Or it could even be a coincidence. And you are almost certainly biased, because I assume you're just judging intelligence without performing any kinds of tests. If you were checking people for various genes, and testing people with a set of puzzles or math problems or something then that might count as evidence, but as is you haven't really said much.

Reminds me of my friend who said "yeah, mazdas are less reliable than fords" because he had seen less broken down, where as I said - well, I've done about 10 hours of research from major studies (such as reliabilityindex.org) to check the status and it appears that his statement was incorrect. Point is, you need a massive body of evidence if you want to prove something like the things we are talking about regarding eugenics.

 

lol, I said it was anecdotal. But I still think I'm right, in the limited way I meant - intelligence is coded for, just like hair color, eye color, tay-sachs, sickle cell anemia, certain kinds of cancer, etc...doesn't mean it's always expressed. And yes I also believe in different kinds of intelligence, but for the sake of argument it's probably best to focus on the measurable kind.

 

What possible reason is there for eugenics not working? The reason it's inefficient is you don't know all the things that are coded for inside of each sperm and egg, so it's trial and error. And of course eugenics as a field is basically dead in its tracks due to ethical concerns (rightly so, IMO). But science is only going to continue whittling down the unknown factors smaller and smaller. "Gattaca" was a pretty good example of one possible future, I thought...

 

I remember when this came up before gb3 knew a lot about the hidden history of eugenics in the US, interesting stuff...

[Guest all_purpose_sandpaper]

I see no reason why you couldn't select for octopi to carry out increasingly complex spatial or mathematical tasks. These tasks will ultimately be designed and interpreted by the observer and therefore limited by the observer's intelligence. Maybe the octopi are processing the info in a novel way more complicated than the human mind. We would have no way of knowing.

 

This is interesting. Where are these quotes coming from?

[lumpenprol]

another ripped off reply:

 

 

that's interesting but it's basically a list of caveats and tangents. I'm assuming any breeder of anything worth his salt knows about the perils of inbreeding. And plastic, adaptable problem-solving skills are measurable, why not? Nature/environment is certainly important but I don't buy that it trumps genetics. I had a nurturing upbringing but I'm no Stephen Hawking.

 

edit: btw, octopi are damn cool. I used to observe them while scuba diving in Monterey. You just need to play with them for a while to see how clever they are (of course there are lots of videos of them online opening jars and solving puzzles).

[chenGOD]

Environment: think of it like this: a kid who grows up in a wealthy family where the parents have time to spend with their children, who read as part of daily activities, and have more than likely gone to university, will almost certainly have a better foundation to start with.

Nature is played out within nurture, i.e. intelligence develops within a social context. Two kids might score the same on some form of measured test, but as the kid with the more affluent family is allowed more opportunities he will most likely develop his measured intelligence faster and further than the kid whose parents both work and come home too exhausted to help with the homework.

 

I believe the uncle memory training was executed over breakfast. Had something to do with cereal boxes. Bottom line: poor are open for business.

 

of course there are exceptional cases. In general though, you'll find social patterns hold true.

Also, I'm not saying the poor are dumb, I'm saying that their social environment makes it harder for them to develop measurable intelligence.

 

 

 

I remember when this came up before gb3 knew a lot about the hidden history of eugenics in the US, interesting stuff...

 

 

the Nazis based much of their eugenics research off of what was going on in Alberta in the 1920s/30s. Go Canada!

 

Also: what skills do you measure? you're defining them within a society, so by definition they are socially-defined.

 

Stephen Hawking is an outlier.

Read the links I posted. they're short and easy to digest. They're from science backgrounds, not sociological backgrounds, and even they say that genetics is not the most important part.

[lumpenprol]

everyone with unusually high intelligence is an outlier. Just like people with unusually large dicks.

 

btw, I skimmed those two links, the problem is I'm not claiming there's a single intelligence gene, maybe that was a miscommunication. I'm saying it can be selected for, if one were to choose to do so, and that it can run in families, proof it's genetically-related.

[chenGOD]

I bet if you took the people with unusually high intelligence, the vast majority of them came up in well nurtured environments...:)

Families who are successful and have time to help their kids develop their own intelligence?

Correlation doesn't equal causation. I'm not arguing that there isn't a genetic component to it, I'm saying the nurture is more important. I'll dig up some more studies to back up my assertions :)

[Guest all_purpose_sandpaper]

I bet if you took the people with unusually high intelligence, the vast majority of them came up in well nurtured environments...:)

 

quantifiable by achievement?

[Siegecow]

I bet if you took the people with unusually high intelligence, the vast majority of them came up in well nurtured environments...:)

 

intelligence is kind of a broad term, and i think history has proven that very intelligent people are often made from living extremely challenging lives.

[Guest joshier]

I see no reason why you couldn't select for octopi to carry out increasingly complex spatial or mathematical tasks. These tasks will ultimately be designed and interpreted by the observer and therefore limited by the observer's intelligence. Maybe the octopi are processing the info in a novel way more complicated than the human mind. We would have no way of knowing.

 

This is interesting. Where are these quotes coming from?

People I have asked with the same question, bit like a mailing list.

 

of course there are exceptional cases. In general though, you'll find social patterns hold true.

Also, I'm not saying the poor are dumb, I'm saying that their social environment makes it harder for them to develop measurable intelligence.

It also has to be said that the poorer people can (and often do..) work harder because they want to work up to that position by having been told they cannot have it, driving them to get it. Examples; Gattaca film, trent reznor being in a poor family and countless other examples.

[chenGOD]

I bet if you took the people with unusually high intelligence, the vast majority of them came up in well nurtured environments...:)

 

quantifiable by achievement?

 

 

I bet if you took the people with unusually high intelligence, the vast majority of them came up in well nurtured environments...:)

 

intelligence is kind of a broad term, and i think history has proven that very intelligent people are often made from living extremely challenging lives.

 

How we quantify intelligence is part of what makes nature the more important factor.

You guys are talking about specific examples, I'm talking about society.

[lumpenprol]

I bet if you took the people with unusually high intelligence, the vast majority of them came up in well nurtured environments...:)

 

sure, i mentioned socialization and nutrition previously, I also don't doubt there is some cultural bias in say, IQ tests, at the very least in the sense that the type of people who take them are the only ones likely to give a shit. A pacific islander with no formal education isn't likely to be interested in finding patterns in a series of wavy lines. All that said, I know too many people who come from families where the father/grandfather/uncle/cousins/brothers are brilliant for it to be a fluke.