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Better Brain Wiring Linked To Family Genes
Third Position sends this excerpt from PhysOrg:
"How well our brain functions is largely based on our family's genetic makeup, according to a University of Melbourne led study. The study ... provides the first evidence of a genetic effect on how 'cost-efficient' our brain network wiring is, shedding light on some of the brain's make up (abstract). Lead author Dr. Alex Fornito from the Neuropsychiatry Centre at the University of Melbourne said the findings have important implications for understanding why some people are better able to perform certain tasks than others and the genetic basis of mental illnesses and some neurological diseases."
My family tree is a most wretched hive of scum and villainy. Guess that doesn't bode well for me.
That does explain why most of my cousins never left the trailer park, though. I was the anomaly who made it to college. Maybe my wiring shorted out.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Genes responsible for characteristics of living organism.
It is an uncomfortable truth, quite incompatible with any moral basis for meritocracy, that our fate is at worst sealed before we are born, and at best with the support of half a dozen early years of good nutrition and parenting. None of us really deserve our lot: the hardest worker will always be constrained by his mental limitations, while the genius can achieve very much with little effort.
against companies requiring Proof of Sound Wiring.
Yours In Toledo,
K. Trout
At some point there was a genetic glitch that caused humans to have a hard time processing uric acid. The result is gout. There's a side effect though. High uric acid levels have actually been shown to enhance some neurological functions. One famous gout sufferer: Isaac Newton.
Gout is herridtary of course. Some people have genes that offset the glitch better than others, and never get gout.
This uric acid business is just *one* factor. Yes though, we all know intelligence is partly genetic and partly environmental. Take a perfectly normal child and lock them in a closet for a few years, and they are doomed to never reach their full potential. Sadly, we know this from empircal data...
Would this be the basis on autism and asperger's? because I have asperger's and my dad is a little... YA KNOW
This needs more cowbell!!!
This is welcomed news for those who feel their family is genetically better than others.
Even if true, I still believe it is better for society to treat everyone as being equal.
The alternatives are not pretty for anyone.
The only novel contribution the article has to scientific understanding seems to be this gem:
"We found that people differed greatly in terms of how cost-efficient the functioning of their brain networks were, and that over half of these differences could be explained by genes,” said Dr. Fornito.
Please note that the study "compared the brain scans of 38 identical and 26 non-identical twins from the Australian Twin Registry." That is to say, each twin is compared against the other, but not against unrelated people. These individuals had highly similar genetic makeups and likely very similar backgrounds/family environments.
The statement that half of these differences could be explained by genes is EXTREMELY misleading. It implies to the casual reader that half of the brain's efficiency is linked to genes. IT IS NOT THE CASE.
Lets use a real life example.
Couple A goes shopping. The man always buys a suit for $1000. The woman buys a hat for $10 half the time, but nothing at other times.
Couple B goes shopping. The man always buys a suit for $1000. The woman buys a hat for $10 every time.
Average cost of couple A: $1005. Average cost of couple B: $1010
The difference is $5, and all of it is driven by the behavior of the woman in couple A. However, it's blatantly obvious that the women in the couples don't account for anything close to a significant portion of the cost. It's just like how if 90% of the variance in height is explained by genes, it doesn't mean that genes control 90% of your height.
TLDR VERSION: Just because half the difference can be explained by genes doesn't mean that genes account for 50% of the brain efficiency. There is no substitute for raw talent nurtured by a stimulating and engaging environment.
Signatures are the new names.
Takes a lot of nerve to say that.
"To prevent this day from getting any worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD THING" 1GJU8xLuDKDxEs4KLf8fAGyptoDsqvEsBT
Surely this is a joke.
Such bullshit. One step from using head clamps to prove the superior race
Do you give happy endings after the adjustments? My current chiropractor was offended by that question.
no, sadly he is serious. see previous posts: http://slashdot.org/~Dr.Bob%2CDC
> Some of the strongest effects were observed for regions of the prefrontal cortex which play a vital role in planning, strategic thinking, decision-making and memory.
This would suggest that there is actually some small grain of merit in the notion of hereditary leadership. I.E., An excellent leader is likely to have children who are highly *capable* of developing the same level of leadership.
Obviously this doesn't apply if you became a leader by simpering and laughing at the right jokes, but what if the progenitor was rewarded for military leadership and/or pure cunning?
Chiropractic is still often shrouded in a series of ascientific claims, which makes it hard to know whether it works or when it does. Unfortunately, I'm afraid your asserted relation between "pathway smoothing" at the spine level and neofrontal cortex tasks (which, as far as I know, require no spinal activity) sound very much like one of those ascientific claims.
Bad sensationalist reporting.
this being used as a justification by bigots.
Yeah, lets not judge people based on personality, intelligence, looks, or anything else that is genetic. In fact, lets not judge people at all. Job interviews will from now on consist of one question: Do you want the job? And their may only be one answer (since we can't judge the works of people, that is the same as judging the people, and jobs are created by the works of people): Yes. Oh what a great world we live in. This is the problem with the whole equal rights for women and minorities thing. It works if the minorities are minoritorious enough, but the logical conclusion is to treat everybody equally since personality and skills are fundamentally the same as race and gender: bits of DNA arranged at random in some chick's womb.
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
Lead author Dr. Alex Fornito from the Neuropsychiatry Centre at the University of Melbourne said the findings have important implications for understanding why some people are better able to perform certain tasks than others and the genetic basis of mental illnesses and some neurological diseases
On a related note, researchers determined that various organ systems in the body have a genetic link as to their functioning. This opens insight to diseases such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease.
that ain't my fault your honor, it's because my family wiring..
cualquier vaina hagase el muerto
A little off topic here. Is it just me or did I already see this posted a month ago? Also before any trolls decide to start combing through the topic history via the "brain" tag, I might save you some time and say that it technically hasn't been posted. I swear though...
It is not unreasonable at all. People perform better at IQ tests if they are offered a financial reward for instance.
Now this is news, indeed.
I've met a lot of people in my life. I've found most of them to be about the same in intelligence. I've rarely met someone dramatically dumber than I am and while I have had the pleasure to meet some bonafide geniuses ( in my opinion ) I never felt like there was a huge gulf between us.
I agree, really smart/dumb people rarely come from dumb/smart families.
However, as far maximizing potential goes, from my life experience it seems most people are held back by factors that can be changed:
- parenting styles
- nutrition
- environment
- education
- work ethic
etc.
clearly he doesn't understand how statistics work and how twin experiments are set up.
But some limits are placed on what you can do, how easy it will be, and how good you'll be.
For a geek analogy you can look at it like D&D stats. What you roll determines what you can be, and how good you'll be at it. If you roll a low int, you can't be a wizard. Roll a medium int and you can be a wizard, but won't be as good as you can be. If you have lots of high rolls, you have a lot of options and will be good at all of them. If you have a lot of low rolls, you have few options and won't be that good.
Well that is how life works in many ways. Your genetics determine a lot about your ability. They don't determine your fate, but they lay out your options in many ways. Other things are factors too, but your genetics determine some limiting factors.
An easy area to see it is athletic ability. To be a superstar athlete it doesn't just take training and practice, it takes the right kind of body and if you don't have it, sorry you'll never be one no matter what you do.
How could we have ended up with being a rather intelligent species during our evolution if it were different?
Have you ever thought about the fact that exactly you are the product of an uninterrupted string of heroes who have managed to fight and survive every hardship the world threw at them for millions of years? And managed not only to survive but to bear and protect their children until they were able to protect themselves and bear their own children and protect them against nature, against animals, against droughts and floods and everything?
On the other hand all of this is irrelevant in the short term. We're not more intelligent than people thousands of years ago and the impact of education and the social environment is much larger than every advantage or disadvantage your genes may give your children. There's no need to be smug or depressed, you are obviously carrying genes of survivors and your children will have everything they need to make their way.
Just be attractive, tall and/or athletic and the smart kid will do your homework for you.
Oh, and genes control that too.
I always knew I was naturally better than everyone else.
Oh, it's a city in Australia, the so-called "Land Downunder"..
Silly me for forgetting that Slashdot is now controlled by Aussiephiles.
The issue here, is that governments are often pressured to take away from people that have honestly labored for what they have, to give to people who are of less merit, and undeserving of those resources. (Be they skill-less and rich, or skill-less and poor. The trend does not discriminate in and of itself.)
This is because really skilled and/or capable people (people who consistently succeed on their own merits, regardless of source for that merit) are a minority, whereas the less skilled (comparably) and the totally skill-less far outnumber them.
Such is typical of any anomalous demographic.
In an ideal situation, the really skilled would be lauded. Their rarity would be naturally self limiting toward their influence in the society, and the normally skillfull would power the society, creating a trend toward being skillfull.
But the reality is of course different. What would happen instead is that the less skilled (Be it by fate, fortune, or choice, does not matter) would demand the boons and perks of the skilled, without gaining any skills themselves other than how to bilk the system.
As such, people who REALLY DO work hard to get what they have, often have it yanked out from under them by either greedy rich bastards, or by well meaning but politicially enabled robber barrons who think they are helping the poor.
Note: By this I mean things like the following scenario-- Hard working and brilliant inventor creates a new invention that could revolutionize the world--- Huge patent troll sues him into oblivion, gobbles down the invention he worked hard to create, gets richer at his expense, and he gets nothing. Possibly jail time, and a lifetime of debt.
Brilliant chemisty is on the verge of creating a new plastic derived exclusively from waste cellulose and plant oil that biodegrades safely. Goes to jail for owning chemical glassware for suspicion of creating drugs.
And or-- Hard working person manages to beat the odds, and get a useful start in the business world. As the business succeeds, laws intended to keep the ultra-wealthy from being too powerful come to bear against him, and push him back into the poor house. Whatever he used to get ahead is siezed by government of larger enterprise.
This is because of the EXTREME divide between rich and poor-- Any measure of success would cross that line. (How do you discriminate against the 1% population that owns >90% of wealth, without discriminating against the small demographic of upwardly mobile citizens that alone would be able to erode that state?)
EG-- both sides of the knife keep the creme from rising, which is exactly what it was meant to do. The rich stay rich, the poor stay poor, and both actively engineer the situation, knowingly or unknowingly.
A true meritocracy would be radically different from what we have today, and would certainly be even MORE exclusive than the plutocracy we have right now... [Which would be bad!] You can always get money (Illegally, or legally, does not matter really once you have enough of it, which is why lazy and unscrupulous rich fuckers thrive in it. It is also why there is a tiny glimmer of chance that poor people can become upwardly mobile.) but you cannot magically become truly elite without real talent, or the means to hone it. Practice all you want, you wont become Beethoven or Bach unless you have talen; Paint all you want, you wont become a Rembrant without innate talent, which is naturally rare.
As such, a meritocracy would be riddled with REAL ivory tower mentalities, and as your oponent above points out, this is how the fuedal system started. All royal dynasties come from a skilled warrior, or from a wise administrator who unites a divided population.
What would come out of a meritocracy would be the decendents of really smart and capable people riding the coat-tails of those people's legacies, rather than forging their own--- because they are statistically unlikely to be able to do so-- coupled with the sense of entitlement that being r
My parents and grandparents never exhibited any signs of extraordinary intelligence - yet both me and my sister are IQ150+ and pursuit scientific and engineering careers very well, thank you. The difference being that we got educations whereas they were farmers.
To me that proves that environment is FAR FAR more important than heritage. By orders of magnitude.
It's just like how if 90% of the variance in height is explained by genes, it doesn't mean that genes control 90% of your height.
Does this mean that the difference between my height and a mouse's height is not controlled by genes?
TLDR VERSION: Just because half the difference can be explained by genes doesn't mean that genes account for 50% of the brain efficiency. There is no substitute for raw talent nurtured by a stimulating and engaging environment.
Hmmm, I wonder where did this raw talent thingie come from?
Genetic may gives patterns and draft how one may develop some of the many kinds of abilities and qualities.
There are no such thing as useless or valueless quality a human can have in the void. All these get values or weight from the social and cultural environment. As for the physical smartness/cuteness you mention. It show it's value in the kind of society that value it as some visual/perceivable sign of other expected qualities. And these expectations are strongly rooted to culture and surrounding dominant genetic heritage.
Some genetic patterns may be considered as bad as disabilities or illness, like 21 trisomy in most if not every where in the world. That as an extreme example of maybe strong or evident consensus still enlight the fact that, 21 trisomycs show some very uncommon and strong social abilities, and the kind of intelligence and smartness they develop is only a weakness in front of the dominant other kind, as a matter of incompatibility. In a world where natural selection would have reversed the majority with 21 trisomy as the dominant genetic pattern, the other kind of here considered healthy would certainly be the disabled and mentally ill then.
Léa Gris
I never suggested such a thing.
In the Feudal system the ruling class had no merits bred or otherwise making them fit to run the show. Unless hemophilia is a merit.
Unless hemophilia is a merit.
Speaking of Roger Ailes, he's a good example of why material success should not be conflated with merit. I know very many meritorious people - clear thinkers, egalitarian, very highly intelligent, good parents and SOs- who are completely divorced from material success. Meanwhile, Roger Ailes. Shawn Hannity. Rush Limbaugh.
What is meritorious? The answer to that question has changed since 1000 BC. What type of person was constituted a "good citizen" back then and- entertaining the hypothesis from this article for a moment was guided to being such by inherited characteristics of his brain - are today on the FBI's Most Wanted List, guided there by the same genes.
Please. Society is too fast moving and changeable to identify a certain type of brain with "merit", excepting the extremes.
Even in the course of a single human lifespan the definition changes enough to make "successful" old people appear to be barbarians to young people- the Koch brothers being a case in point.
Human society progresses because old people become feeble and die, leaving young people who do not share their idea of "merit" in charge.
In the early nineties Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray made the same claim in their book The Bell Curve - Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life.
Their book was roundly condemned in the media with few people brave enough to even comment on their arguments, most preferring to question the motivation of the authors while making comparisons with discredited research on the subject carried out by the Nazis.
From time to time the subject bubbles to the surface but nobody in a position of authority is willing to carry the ball and run with it.
In truth the idea that one's intelligence is linked to one's genetic make up is the only reasonable explanation for the lack of social mobility in society. Without it we have to accept that those in power are constantly manoeuvring, using their wealth, to prevent the rest of us from having an equal share of the cake.
I suspect that the truth is a mix of the two but I doubt there will be much rational debate on the subject and there will be few politicians willing to throw away their careers by acknowledging that the people in the ghettos are there because they were just plain stupid from birth.
The ghetto dwellers aren't so stupid that they will vote for someone who actually calls them stupid - and so we carry on pretending that we are all potential geniuses and that the stupid people deserve a better go of it.
Of course, some people confuse an expensive education with intelligence, but that's another matter.
The issue here, is that governments are often pressured to take away from people that have honestly labored for what they have, to give to people who are of less merit, and undeserving of those resources. (Be they skill-less and rich, or skill-less and poor. The trend does not discriminate in and of itself.)
This is because really skilled and/or capable people (people who consistently succeed on their own merits, regardless of source for that merit) are a minority, whereas the less skilled (comparably) and the totally skill-less far outnumber them.
Such is typical of any anomalous demographic.
In an ideal situation, the really skilled would be lauded. Their rarity would be naturally self limiting toward their influence in the society, and the normally skillfull would power the society, creating a trend toward being skillfull.
But the reality is of course different. What would happen instead is that the less skilled (Be it by fate, fortune, or choice, does not matter) would demand the boons and perks of the skilled, without gaining any skills themselves other than how to bilk the system.
As such, people who REALLY DO work hard to get what they have, often have it yanked out from under them by either greedy rich bastards, or by well meaning but politicially enabled robber barrons who think they are helping the poor.
Note: By this I mean things like the following scenario-- Hard working and brilliant inventor creates a new invention that could revolutionize the world--- Huge patent troll sues him into oblivion, gobbles down the invention he worked hard to create, gets richer at his expense, and he gets nothing. Possibly jail time, and a lifetime of debt.
Brilliant chemisty is on the verge of creating a new plastic derived exclusively from waste cellulose and plant oil that biodegrades safely. Goes to jail for owning chemical glassware for suspicion of creating drugs.
And or-- Hard working person manages to beat the odds, and get a useful start in the business world. As the business succeeds, laws intended to keep the ultra-wealthy from being too powerful come to bear against him, and push him back into the poor house. Whatever he used to get ahead is siezed by government of larger enterprise.
This is because of the EXTREME divide between rich and poor-- Any measure of success would cross that line. (How do you discriminate against the 1% population that owns >90% of wealth, without discriminating against the small demographic of upwardly mobile citizens that alone would be able to erode that state?)
EG-- both sides of the knife keep the creme from rising, which is exactly what it was meant to do. The rich stay rich, the poor stay poor, and both actively engineer the situation, knowingly or unknowingly.
A true meritocracy would be radically different from what we have today, and would certainly be even MORE exclusive than the plutocracy we have right now... [Which would be bad!] You can always get money (Illegally, or legally, does not matter really once you have enough of it, which is why lazy and unscrupulous rich fuckers thrive in it. It is also why there is a tiny glimmer of chance that poor people can become upwardly mobile.) but you cannot magically become truly elite without real talent, or the means to hone it. Practice all you want, you wont become Beethoven or Bach unless you have talen; Paint all you want, you wont become a Rembrant without innate talent, which is naturally rare.
As such, a meritocracy would be riddled with REAL ivory tower mentalities, and as your oponent above points out, this is how the fuedal system started. All royal dynasties come from a skilled warrior, or from a wise administrator who unites a divided population.
What would come out of a meritocracy would be the decendents of really smart and capable people riding the coat-tails of those people's legacies, rather than forging their own--- because they are statistically unlikely to be able to do so-- coupled with the sense of en