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Genetic Disorder Removes Racial Bias and Social Fear
People who suffer from a rare genetic disorder called Williams Syndrome have a complete lack of social fear. They experience no anxiety or concerns about meeting new people or being put into any social situation, and a new study by Andreia Santos suggests that they also don't have any racial bias. From the article: "Typically, children start overtly gravitating towards their own ethnic groups from the tender age of three. Groups of people from all over the globe and all sorts of cultures show these biases. Even autistic children, who can have severe difficulties with social relationships, show signs of racial stereotypes. But Santos says that the Williams syndrome kids are the first group of humans devoid of such racial bias, although, as we’ll see, not everyone agrees."
I can tell from some the pixels and seeing quite a few shops in my day.
TFA notes this
Santos suggests that children with Williams syndrome don’t develop the same biases that their peers do, because they don’t experience social fear. Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, who led the study, says, “There are hyper-social, very empathetic, very friendly, and do not get danger signals.” And because they’ll freely interact with anyone, they are less likely to cultivate a preference for people of their own ethnic groups. Alternatively, it could be that because they don’t fall prey to stereotypes, they’re more likely to socialise with everyone.
I think that's the cause, not because theres some difference in genes that makes you lose racial bias. They're friendly people and open to anyone. Rasism comes from not being open and friendly to people you think are somehow different.
But their complete lack of social fear is also a bad thing because not everyone are so and they might get hurt because of it. It's better than the other way more with geeky people though - I had trouble speaking to people or be open with them and it obviously got in the way of my relationships too. Somehow that changed when I was put in to social situations (with the help of beer) and got myself in to an relationship. Yes, one girl actually fell in love with me and because I acted like an open and social guy I kind of had to continue doing it. It took its time but it made an everlasting change to me, and now I can talk about things openly, be social and be friendly to people.
You call it a "genetic disorder", I call it the "evolution".
They hate everyone equally.
so it's a disorder not being an ass-hat? and by extension, being a racist bastard is considered normal. who authored this study, the KKK?
And if you perform a racial hate-crime, you can now bang on that drum. "Your honor, I'm genetically inclined toward violence against X-Race"
Nice, real nice. Sheesh...
Life is not for the lazy.
Williams Syndrome is independent of this study...
We should make sure that the entire human population has this "disorder" in no less than five generations.
Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change.
no, it sounds like not being racist is a genetic disorder according to this. of course, i'm too lazy to actually read the article.
No, racism is normal now. Not being racist is a genetic disorder.
Good. Now we can end racism and breed everyone into one uniform Grey Race that will be the future of humankind. We will preserve diversity by creating uniformity. It will be a victory for equality!
Futurist Traditionalism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_Syndrome
"Individuals with Williams syndrome are highly verbal and overly sociable (having what had previously been described as a "cocktail party" type personality), but lack common sense and typically have inhibited intelligence. Individuals with WS hyperfocus on the eyes of others in social engagements."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspberger%27s
"It differs from other autism spectrum disorders by its relative preservation of linguistic and cognitive development. ... Individuals with AS experience difficulties in basic elements of social interaction, which may include a failure to develop friendships or to seek shared enjoyments or achievements with others (for example, showing others objects of interest), a lack of social or emotional reciprocity, and impaired nonverbal behaviors in areas such as eye contact, facial expression, posture, and gesture."
How long until a comprehensive theory of cognition and brain development?
Prof. Terrence Deacon pod casts his anthropology courses from Berkeley. IIRC he suggests, when thinking about nature versus nurture debates, it's necessary to keep in mind that both nature, in terms of genetic predisposition, and nurture, in terms of the impact of environment, both play roles @ 100% each. Much like bipolar disorders and schizophrenia there must be a genetic predisposition but there must also be environmental factors. Suggesting that the gene alone is sufficient might be a bit of an overreach in a creature as complex and socially nested as ourselves.
ideopath @ play
They call it a genetic disorder, I call it growing up.
this reads more towards a nurture than a nature argument. they are saying that people develop prejudices, and that this disorder prevents them from absorbing that sort of thinking from their environment.
Doesn't that just amount to a few beers head start on a trip to the tavern?
Account -> Discussions -> Disable Sigs
I don't see anything negative about this. So why is this called disorder? If nature had called everything uncommon as disorder, then there wouldn't have been any evolution.
I wonder if this gene will be once of my choices when I go to create my ideal baby...right along with perfect vision, perfect immune system and a 9" penis.
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If they're looking for a media friendly name for the disorder, I suggest "Game Show Host Syndrome."
Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
I'm both socially fearful and racially biased across the entire spectrum. Spend enough time with all manners of humanity and you will be too!
Genetics, bah!
Sounds like some PLUR-filled rave action to me :)
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Who is Wonder? You mean Stevie?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
If you're intrigued by this sort of thing, there's a fantastic SF short by Ted Chiang called "Liking What You See: A Documentary". It's about the consequences and ethics of suppressing a person's ability to recognise (and thus be biased by) physical attractiveness. One of the best things I've ever read.
It's collected in his "Stories of Your Life and Others".
The fear or distrust of "same as us but not one of us" is common.
Many species of social animals (mainly larger predators: wolves, lions, etc.. ) act threatened when confronted with a different pack, pride, colony, etc of their own kind... more so than by the presence of a different species (such as humans).
There's a damn good reason for it too. The group recognizes that other "tribe" of us wants the exact same thing we need to survive.
Quote from Wikipedia:
"Individuals with Williams syndrome are highly verbal and overly sociable (having what had previously been described as a "cocktail party" type personality), but lack common sense and typically have inhibited intelligence."
It seems that the side effect of lacking stereotypical thinking is the lack of common sense.
in seconds on a battlefield or a gunfight. The same genetic/neurological traits that contribute to irrational prejudice are the same ones that contribute to rational fear of others who might be dangerous to us. Since historically, false positives for avoidance weren't weeded out, you get the nut crazy fears along with the normal caution. I really don't know how you could separate out one from another. Both are largely based on behavioral and visual cues.
Still, I won't deny that I envy Wilson syndrome folks that one particular trait, if not the frequent vascular stenoses and other health problems that go with it.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
People who aren't sensibly afraid of others are generally called "Victims".
I hate stupid people though, or worse, smart people with no common sense.
If you think about it, it doesn't matter what race the bully was in school. The bully is still going to exist no matter if the bully is your race or another and it's not like bullying is any better because someone the same race as you is doing it. People who accept racial stereotypes at a young age are naive, adults who continue to cling to race have a mental disorder probably based in genetics.
It's already happening as we speak.
When I was a kid MOST of my friends were of different races so I never learned to feel any sort of bias on that level. But I learned the difference between the types of kids who would bully other kids and the type of kids who didn't and I saw the bullies as "them".
This is a really cool on-line rather objective test for determining what racial color biases you have:
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/
This really really pisses off people who think they have no prejudice.
*** Spoiler Alert ***
To do well on the test (and get a neutral rating), you really have to accept the racial bias you have and actively prompt yourself to counter it.
Race does not have any impact on evolution. It's not a matter of fearing people who look different. That sort of shallow thinking will leave you open to booty traps because any hottie who looks good will be able to get close to you and kill you. Why? Because the enemy is going to come in a beautiful form that you'll accept and slowly poison you.
"But their complete lack of social fear is also a bad thing because not everyone are so and they might get hurt because of it."
If it was possible to use some gen therapy to make the whole mankind this way, it would be a cool thing. Less racism, wars, a lot of evil stuff I guess, more cooperation between people, which is probably more and more required in the future to solve global problems anyway.
Nobody really benefits from racism. Racism is just not a good security policy. It's not like your enemy is going to hire the mercenary that is of the opposite race to kill you. The enemy is going to research you and find out you are racist and hire the mercenary who looks like the authentic perfect ideal race for the target. And of course you'll have no way of dealing with these sorts of attacks because you naively and ignorantly trust your race.
Inherent trust or faith in strangers is a horrible security policy. It's better to be suspicious of all strangers from any race than to trust one race over another. If you don't know them you can't trust them and their body type doesn't make any difference.
Maybe you don't understand. Toddlers have racial biases. Even babies just a few months old will prefer to look at a picture of someone with the same skin color as them. It's built into the way our brain works. These kids don't have that at any age. They also don't have the subconscious biases that 99% of people have, even the people that are nice to everyone and would never say, do, or even think a racist thought.
Your claims are assumptions not facts. Not everybody is born with any instinctual connection to race. I never felt any racial bias and honestly never knew what race was until it was explained to me by adults. Even after it was explained to me I never really felt any deep emotional connection to any of the surface races. Race is just another term for physical beauty and it's shallow and pointless to love a "race" just like it's shallow and pointless to love a body type. You might want to have sex with blondes but you don't have to love blondeness and adopt blondeism at an ideology.
First, this is no news, I'm sure Wikipedia's article already says this, and more I have a friend with William's Syndrome. She is really gifted in languages: I am 18, and consider myself above average with 5 languages. She speaks 9, and now she's learning Russian.
In soviet russia the government regulates the companies.
Out of their responses, 83% were consistent with a pro-white bias. In contrast, the children with Williams syndrome only showed such responses 64% of the time, which wasn’t significantly different from chance.
64% deviates 14% from "pure chance", which would be 50%. The author calls this insignificant difference. But then, add another 19% to that 64% and you get 83%.
So, 14% is insignificant but 19% is an obvious tendency.
That, my friends, is bad statistics.
The truth is that 64% differs from the 50% almost as much as 83% from 64%. Can't jump to conclusions there.
I do think everyone has the gene to discriminate, but we don't all discriminate on the basis of racial stereotypes. You can look at kids and you can see that they don't all instinctually organize based on race. What happens is adults encourage them to organize based on race by telling them that this person is another race than everyone else.
Why would that matter?
Did you know it was wrong at the time you did it, is all that should matter. If you cannot overcome a little genetic inclination you probably should be jailed or euthanized for the protection of others.
It makes sense if birds of a feather flock together but not all dogs form packs based around the color of their fur. There always will be groups but groups form for a variety of reasons. The only reason race is so popular is because of American culture teaching young people and the whole world to believe in race.
What would happen if there were no word for race is, you'd have some kids who would be considered "uglier" than some others, and these "ugly" kids would form bonds with other kids considered "ugly". This would be the logical conclusion if race were removed.
So you'd have the fat kid of one race becoming friends with the skinny kid of another race, while the jocks bully them both. This is what would happen if race did not have a component. With race in the picture now the fat kid and the skinny kid of different races who are both considered ugly by the normal majority would never be able to form a connection because they are of difference races. So keeping the idea of race alive only really benefits the jocks, the cheer leaders, the bullies and all the sort of people that the majority of nerds, dorks and geeks hated in school. It also keeps the nerds, dorks, and geeks from different races from forming connections and defending themselves against the masses.
They don't have any subconscious association between these two words and the races. That part has to be taught. But yes a baby can think that people who look similar to them are beautiful and this isn't so abnormal. It's only abnormal when they think people who look different from them can't be beautiful.
When they turn 13, the girls will let you do anything to them.
I'm not intelligenceist
I hate people who are jerks, or worse, jerks who are cruel
How do you prove it's "race" that the baby thinks is beautiful? You can show a beautiful picture of anything to a baby and the baby could like it and you could show an ugly picture of anything and the baby wont like it.
So if the baby thinks people that look more like themselves are beautiful it's because they've seen more beautiful people who look like themselves in their lifetime. It has nothing to do with race and more to do with the environment of the baby and the people raising it. If you were raised as a baby by parents who have different color skin than yours then you wouldn't be shocked to see people with different color skin at school or anywhere. It's because some families have members who all look so much alike with no diversity that the children get all messed up in the head thinking everyone looks like that.
It's environment and babies do know what their parents look like and do bond with their parents regardless of the race.
Babies prefer to look at people who look like their parents, or who look like they do. It's not because the baby has a concept of race but because the baby probably never has seen someone who looked like that before. If you are a baby surrounded by blonde white people and an asian face is shown to you then you are going to freak out if you've never seen a face like that before even if the face is beautiful.
And the image that's supposed to signify a breaking down of racial boundaries appears to be three-quarters caucasian.
On an unrelated note, it would be nice if Slashdot gave me a new captcha if I entered it incorrectly instead of an unintelligible error message.
Nobody really benefits from racism
Looking at people today, you might conclude that nobody benefits from obesity. But the physiology that makes us obese probably allowed us to survive where other hominids died out.
It's not like your enemy is going to hire the mercenary that is of the opposite race to kill you.
"Mercenaries" and "hiring" are fairly new concepts. People used to lived in small social groups and fought and killed each other over scarce resources. Trusting people based on similarity of appearance may have been a good heuristic indeed.
Racism is just not a good security policy
Probably not today. But it probably was for most of human evolution.
That's completely ridiculous.
Removing a word for a concept does not remove the concept. People have different skin colors. No amount of wishing will change that fact, nor the fact that we can recognize different skin colors.
Teaching people to ignore the color of other's skin is dangerous. It's equatable to abstinence-only sex ed.
Don't teach people that race doesn't exist. That's dumb. Teach that race does exist, but is ultimately irrelevant.
And, yes, racial stereotypes ARE USEFUL. You meet a random person. They look different than you, and speak in a strange accent. Without the use of racial and cultural stereotypes it would not be possible to conclude where that person is from. There are physical differences between people who come from different areas, and by having a concept of, say, a stereotypical Israeli, or Brasilian, of both physical features and manner of speaking, you are able to determine where that stranger is from. That's just useful information. You can gain knowledge through racial stereotypes. You do not necessarily have to proceed from that point to where you're reaching conclusions about the character of that person based upon that information. It's just that last step there that we have a problem with.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
Evolution, at the most basic level, is the introduction of a mutation into a system. If the mutation is advantageous under the conditions the mutant exists, it will be selected in. If the mutation is disadvantageous or neutral under the conditions the mutant exists, it will be selected out. (In all other cases, the mutant will appear in the next X-Men comic.) Not all mutations are advantageous under all conditions, which is why (for example) you find very few red-heads in Africa compared to the far north of Europe. The mutation is beneficial in the colder, darker climate but becomes disadvantageous under hotter, brighter climates. Thus, it is isolated by geographical constraints.
In this case, if Williams Syndrome has an advantage in some niche in modern society, it'll spread into that niche. Asperger's dominates the children in Silicon Valley because it's an advantageous mutation in that region. Many business leaders (CEOs, CTOs, etc) are sociopaths. Another mutation with a niche that is ideal for it. Artists appear to have some level of manic-depression, etc. If these traits didn't have a niche somewhere, the mutation would eventually die out. Natural Selection forbids the long-term, multi-generational transfer of traits that put those with those traits at a disadvantage. (By long-term, I'm talking thousands to tens of thousands of years.)
Because mutations can - and WILL - occur at every generation, not all mutations are inherited. Because the genes coded in DNA are filtered and processed according to the rules defined by proteins surrounding the DNA, genes that should be disadvantageous might be shut down by environmental factors and thus retained, but I know of no proof that this has actually happened, although there is plenty of proof it is theoretically possible. The same would also apply to advantageous mutations, then. In which case, advantageous mutations require BOTH an environment for them to be advantageous in AND an environment that enables them to operate advantageously. This is a very new field, although it's been around long enough for Slashdot to have covered it twice. (However, for those interested, Slashdot has been around many times longer than this branch of genetics.)
Now it gets really complicated. A trait is not necessarily linked to a single gene. ME (also known as Chronic Fatigue) has been linked to seven independent genes, where a mutation in any of them will cause ME. Other conditions (and you can check a lot of the genetic medical screening websites for examples) require mutations to exist in multiple genes. So you end up producing a complex boolean function to describe the relationship between genetics and traits/conditions. It's not trivial. Which is a big reason why such sites offer probabilities of a condition occurring but can't say if it actually ever will or under what circumstances. We simply don't know the whole function for the vast majority of conditions, so we cannot fully evaluate it. (And, as noted earlier, gene evaluation is dependent on environment, so the probability is only valid for specific environments, which may or may not be determinable for a given trait/condition. In most cases, the company will assume the default expression of a codon, rather than evaluate the metadata. Too complex and would push the prices still higher.)
And the worst news of all - genes don't code for single things and (because their values are determined by dynamic metadata) aren't guaranteed to code for the same thing at different times. This means that you may well have a series of mutations where two independent perfect subsets produce advantageous traits and another perfect subset (which is also a perfect subset of the union of the two advantageous subsets) produces a disadvantageous trait. So long as the two advantages outweigh the single disadvantage, the mutations will be retained. The illusion of the selecting for a disadvantageous trait is then created.
It is entirely possible, in the case of Xenophobia, that something like this has happened. Xenophobia
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I wonder what the implications of a lack of social fear result in. Would these individuals be more likely to commit asocial activities? A lack of fear of being ridiculed might make one of them come up with a radical theory while it might make another commit a crime without thinking of the social implications.
The judge counters with "I am genetically inclined to convict you for that.".
1984 called and they want their idea back.
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
How about the bullies and jocks are a race?
Nothing stops a highly intelligent nerd from digging into someones past on a job interview to find out if they were a jock and if they are outed as a jock then they go on the jock list and cannot be hired to do anything but work Walmart, McDonalds and other jobs specifically designed for the jock population.
How about that?
It's simple. Either you start applying it to the football captain and the cheerleader, or get rid of the word entirely. As it is right now all the dumbest people are the same people who believe in the word the most. The smartest people believe in genetics.
How about the nerds, dorks, and civilized population start calling it like it is and label the bullying jocks/racists/ignorant as a race unto themselves? I'm not going to claim them as one of us, why would you want to see them as one of us? Anyone who believes in these stereotypes so hard should be stereotyped.
I think it’s a disadvantage, if you walk up to any “weird looking” stranger (aka: something you don’t know), and act as if you know it.
The problem is not to learn to know things and people that you are not used to. The problem is to think that they are exactly the same. :)
But despite all the media overkill, actually nobody is completely the same. Ever. And that’s a good thing.
It’s good with everything you don’t know, to be cautious at first.
The only problem is, that we are all trained to think that only looks would decide whether we should be wary. If you’re white, that white guy that looks just like you, but acts differently in that one point, may still stab you in the back, while that black dude who loves the same things that you do, drives you to the hospital...
In short: As usually, it’s not that simple. Ever. :)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
See, modern White Privilege theory defines racism as gaining unearned benefit from belonging to the privileged race. Because whites cannot divorce themselves from this privilege, all whites are racist. Conversely, because Blacks cannot claim white privilege - upon which racism is predicated - Blacks cannot be racist.
Whether these children exhibit racist tendencies is irrelevant. The real question is, "What color is the child's skin?" If it's white, they are racist. ...
Wow. Did I just type all that without laughing? Yes, it was tongue-in-cheek, but if you read Kendall's book, that is her model of racism and white privilege.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
What would happen if there were no word for race is, you'd have some kids who would be considered "uglier" than some others, and these "ugly" kids would form bonds with other kids considered "ugly". This would be the logical conclusion if race were removed.
Actually if we didn't have the word race, we'd just have France's problem of trying to prove racial bias without using the word.
Removing words will not solve the problem. It just makes it harder to talk about it.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
Or at least, if we want to affect racial attitudes, should we be focusing on treating "fear" as well as correcting for the effects of racism? I suppose psychology is very familiar with fear and has some treatment for it.
It would, at least, change the format of diversity/sensitivity training.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
As a matter of curiosity, does it affect one's perception of the Uncanny Valley?
Millions got killed by bullies. They were bullied to death and here is a list of possible reasons:
1. They failed to identify who the bullies are.
2. They lacked the power to stop the bullies from killing them.
3. They lacked the will to do anything about bullying when they saw it and had the power to stop it.
Race has nothing to do with genocide. Genocide is a result of one group of people bullying another group of people to death on a massive scale. Race is just used as an excuse, as is religion, to empower bullies to act.
It's the interaction between predator and prey, bullies and the bullied, that influences evolution. This is why I said it's more accurate to consider the bullies a separate race than to consider people with different physical appearance a separate race because honestly it's the bullies who are going around doing the violent acts.
My ancestors survived by forming a tribe and killing members of the opposing tribe whether they looked like them or not. Tribe is not the same as race. Tribe is a matter of language, culture, and gene pools.
I'm tribal, I'm not racial.
Actually, tests have been done that check for exactly this. Young children consistently will identify with the an illustration of a person the same skin color of them over someone who has a similar body shape to them/their parents. "Race" is artificial but ethnicity is not. It comes down to kinship, if a person has a different skin color than you, they are very likely not related, and therefore a higher risk. This appears to be built-in.
So how would the toddlers react to our friendly neighborhood aliens? We need more robust testing here people! Do they react positively towards the greys, Alf & alf-like (furry), and negatively towards Xenomorphs?
I can't help but think that "bias" is an inappropriate, or at the very least an overly harsh, term. My daughter is clearly more comfortable around Asians, especially if she hears them speaking Chinese. Why? Because my wife is Taiwanese and speaks Chinese to her. It also helps that she was in Taiwan for a few months when her language abilities expanded dramatically. However, she can openly interact with people of any race. It's just that she's immediately comfortable with Chinese people and it takes her a while to get comfortable with other people.
I'd say it's simply a matter of comfort in being surrounded by what seems familiar. What the hell does she know about bias? How could she possibly have formed any opinion at all with people of other races? I'm not Asian but she doesn't necessarily feel comfortable around Caucasians either.
I, myself, went to what a lot of people would consider an inner city school. I was always surrounded by classmates of all races. I never gave it any thought. They were just kids. Certainly race wasn't a factor in me deciding who were my friends.
I think there's a natural tendency to favor that which is most familiar to an individual. It's a security and support mechanism. There's an expectation that people more like you share your interests and face similar challenges. There's a chance for a network there that can be exploited. The same thing happens in the reverse. It's a basic defense mechanism also very prevalent in nature. If notice that thugs tend to walk around dressed in baggy pants and displaying a bad attitude, for example, you're going to associate that look with trouble. Obviously, they're not all troublemakers but inevitably these stereotypes are formed. It's not different than a gazelle realizing that a lion means trouble.
Now, it's the responsibility of a rational adult to understand this and reason that stereotypes aren't necessarily true. And it's their responsibility to understand that it isn't a good thing to limit to yourself to a particular group. And without question, none of this is a justification to subjugate or segregate anyone else.
But it does rub me the wrong way that there seems to be this inclination to look for racism and bigotry everywhere. As I've mentioned previous, it seems to me that children with this disorder are more comfortable with other races simply because they don't feel that need for comfort in the familiar. There's no anxiety in seeking out someone more like themselves, someone it might be easier to make a connection with.
Race is a perfectly valid basis to avoid connections. A white person who does not apply demographic statistics (which people will call racism) will walk through a horrible black neighborhood and get killed, raped, or mugged. It aids human evolution to assume if I'm white and in a black neighborhood in downtown Detroit that every black person in the area is a criminal until proven otherwise.
That isn't racism, it's Statistics 101.
I don't make presumptions on anyone because I've had some disparaging presumptions made against me, that somewhat traumatized me with mindless subconscious impulses to continue and do unto others as they had done to me.
When I was young, my baby-sitters were of India and Hispanic Hindu ancestry, and they were so kind to me and I loved their children. I even was taught to play hockey with a broom, rollerskate, beat Mike Tyson on Nintendo Punchout. Their music I couldn't comprehend at times, but it brightened the environment with their kind of joy despite how rotten their neighbors and their neighbors' cats could be.
Sure, I ascended to the opinion of hating everyone equally, and that's compliant beyond the Hate-Crimes bill to say that I hate the world and children more than race, but above all I hate myself more than all you mother and father-fuckers sons of bastards-bitches-whores-assholes.
I only am pre-dispositioned to an attraction towards white women because I was breast-fed by one in my first year of life, and that all the beauty I see in other races is there where I am not, that I might appreciate the diversity in all the people by not mixing with them and their doing the same in love and effection.
Given that "race" in humans is not a concept supported by science, but by cultural construct (and by inference fear) its hardly surprising.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
It's a good assumption to make if you're in a horrible white neighborhood, also. Actually, if you're out on the streets at 4 am in Detroit, you pretty much don't see anything except the occasional police cruiser. The place is dead. I've never been anywhere so depressing as Detroit at night.
I agree with you. However, I'm sure the defense will just add this new study to the hopper when pleading "temporary insanity".
Life is not for the lazy.
A person who is fatter than me or who has a different body type is very likely not related.
Um, Huh? Because fatness is purely genetic? I know so many families where some are fat and some are skinny.
I thought this was interesting until I read the wikipedia article.
(I understand the article discusses racial bias rather than racism.)
Racism is promoted by fear. The experience of chaos or mistreatment in formative years causes a sense of poor self-esteem and a belief that generally the world is malicious.
Combine that social fear with the human tendency towards groupism, throw in some bullying (gives the bully a comfortingly elevated sense of self-worth by placing them superiorly to their victims), and racism can easily result.
Genetic Mutation Not Required To Reduce Racism
Improve self-esteem, lessen unreasonable fear. Adequate self-worth and reasonable fear undermine the urges that push people towards racism.
Show children (and others) that you care about them. Be consistent, not chaotic or prone to emotional explosion.
I cannot understand why being without a racial bias and without social fear is called a disorder. It is just a difference. OR am I missing something?
That is all.
Most violance and abuse happens via family members.
Because stranger danger saves us from attacks from strangers.
Or would you prefer if she hugs some well-dressed banker, who wants to sell her some 100% risk free investments?
I understand that these Williams people treat all them the same way. They would be caught unguarded by bankers, homeless AND family members. Do you trust the proverbial used car dealer? She would.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
A person who is fatter than me or who has a different body type is very likely not related.
Um, Huh? Because fatness is purely genetic? I know so many families where some are fat and some are skinny.
And I know some families which have a range of skin colors, body types, hair color and eye color. Thanks for taking the bait.
I'm saying relying on race in a medical context is as stupid as just looking at a persons weight or size and determining their health. Yes most of the time an obese individual is unhealthy, but this isn't always the case and we should not diagnose individuals merely by looking at them.
There is no link between physical appearance and race. You can look one race and have the genes of another which means race as a concept is unscientific and bogus. You do have genes but the genes you have aren't going to be known merely by looking at someone.
Sure you can see their race but their race isn't their genes.
What I'm saying is none of these social constructs are based on science and just like the racist or the jock or whomever can try to use stereotypes to hurt one group of people, the group of people they use stereotypes on can just as easily create and use stereotypes as a weapon against them. And I'd go so far as to say this would be the ethical thing to do because the only way to show a bully why something is wrong is to do it to them so they can experience how it feels.
When the jock gets passed up on a job for being too blonde, too fit, too good looking, he will know how it feels and will learn "THATS WRONG!" and when this happens eventually he will learn "THAT IS BULLSHIT! RACE IS BULLSHIT!". But until he learns that I'm fine with discriminating against him because if someone believes stereotypes should apply to others, it should apply to them as well.
So why should I hire a racist? If they believe in races over believing in genetics then they are no better than individuals who don't believe in evolution. As far as I'm concerned they behave as a race, and they think and act alike so the stereotype applies until they decide to grow up.
The worst thing you can do is simply sit back and let the dumbest most retarded ignorant among us take control of and hijack all the stereotypes, do all the discrimination, and create countless numbers of victims without consequence. So would I hire someone who I suspect to be a racist? Sure I'd hire this person, but they shouldn't expect to get a high salary or get promoted, they can be the janitor.
And this is completely ethical because only the enlightened should be rewarded. Ignorance should never be rewarded and this is the problem with concepts like race, it primarily rewards the ignorant at the expense of the intelligent.
Ev-ly wons a little bit lasist
. .
The only reason race is so popular is because of American culture teaching young people and the whole world to believe in race.
I can assure you that the culture of my country (which is rather racist) is definitely not so because of "American culture teaching to believe in race".
In fact, if anything, it's rather racist towards Americans (more as culture rather than ethnicity) themselves.
You think like a ReThuglican Jew
The more reason for inter racial relationships, so all children eventually turn out light brown. Instantly (well after a couple of generations) no ethnic bias, not based on the colour of skin anyway; quite sure people will find other attributes on which to discriminate on.
Interesting, but incomplete.
Given the small sample that I read about in the article*, I don't believe the conclusion they reach is supportable.
To really get a significant sample they'd have to test very large populations of both WS and non-WS populations for the presence or absence of those genes (as a whole and in part) and also test for any differences between children with only partially missing gene sequences as well as the full set. I also suspect that there are probably a lot more genetic interactions than they have accounted for, in that many of the "symptoms" they claim also show up in other people without having that particular set of genetic abnormalities.
Without seeing a more detailed treatment of the subject it's hard to determine what's really happening here.
Most of the traits that are named in the article - and those espoused by a few posters here who claim to have children diagnosed with this syndrome, are present in many people in part without the rest being present**. So to me this study even if it was properly done seems to only have touched upon a part of how the gene sequences they are looking at express.
* "Robert Livingston from Northwestern University agrees. He says, “I think that it’s problematic to make strong conclusions on the basis of null findings, particularly with a sample as small as 20 WS children.”"
** Elfin faces (which have other genetic associations), perfect pitch/musical ability (ditto), etc...
Disclaimer: I am not a scientist involved in genetic research, JASPSP (Just Another Slashdot Poster Sans Portfolio)
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
From my reading on the subject - brief, granted - not all of those symptoms manifest in all of the people studied, but many of the symptoms are apparent partially in many normal people as well as people with other genetic abnormalities.
I would like to know where you found the connective tissues issue citation, I can't find anything that says it is "always" a symptom. ditto with below average IQ; there is mention of learning disorders, but not all people with learning disorders have lower IQs (IQ is not a good measure of people with savant abilities, anyway, which some people with WS appear to exhibit)
I have yet to see any studies suggesting increased incidence of heart disease among people with the "syndrome".
I'm interested in finding out more about this, mostly because I exhibit many of the "symptoms" - not all - that they consider.
I would also like to know what exactly the term "normal" means - since it seems to me that the deeper we delve into human genetics, the less meaningful is the term... ;-)
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
did the test, and they say:
"Most respondents find it easier to associate Aboriginal Australians with Bad and White Australians with Good compared to the reverse."
I suspect the results would be much stronger if they used modern photos, rather than archival B&W photos of full-bloods.
Or maybe a echo Wooshing'ooshing'shwing'ing kind of noise as does one of those Noisemaker-Tubes people swing over the heads at a basket/base-ball game to annoy people? I know it sure annoyed Shatan when he found out that God made man to be male AND female... I'm looking for that 4chan up-skirt image I saved, of a majestic 13-inch ovipossitor above of a pair of handsome testicles above unusual divide of durable pink cuntlery all in a Swiss army-knife aryan of mature Babes...
People who suffer from a rare genetic disorder called Williams Syndrome have a complete lack of social fear.
Or, social fear is normal and those insufferable socialising managers really suffer from a malady. If only these idiots were forced into lunatic asylums... Where they belong...
Typically, children start overtly gravitating towards their own ethnic groups from the tender age of three.
Breaking ethnic bias is a thing for the cultured among us. The ultimate cure for racism is getting to know the world. Or, as Mark Twain said eloquently: "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts."
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
in the future, everyone will be puerto rican
puerto rico is a large genetic pool of people who for historic and geographic reasons are pretty much 1/3 taino (substituting for east asian, if you will grant me the conceit), 1/3 european, and 1/3 black
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...is it that certain people get their panties in a twist over inter-racial marriages? What could possibly motivate such a bizarre aversion?
In fact, if anything, it's rather racist towards Americans (more as culture rather than ethnicity) themselves.
Sounds more like tribalism?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
You are saying personalized medicine is better than race based medicine? That I can agree with.
I'm against the concept of race based medicine because it's not personalized enough.
"If it weren't for a certain amount of paranoia, prejudice, and fear we would all succumb to an early death."
This gene won't last long in the cold, cruel world.
No world peace for you!
All people who don't live in Mississippi.
I find all of you irrational 'neurotypicals' horrifying.
Not only do I have no ratial bias, I have no bias whatsoever and see no difference say between a human and the sound of a knatts fart.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.