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Geneticists And Economists Clash Over "Genoeconomics" Paper
scibri writes "One side is accused of supporting ethnic cleansing; the other of being intellectually naive. Geneticists and economists are struggling to collaborate on research that explores how our genes influence and interact with economic behavior. Top economists are publishing a paper that claims a country's genetic diversity can predict the success of its economy. To critics, the economists' paper seems to suggest that a country's poverty could be the result of its citizens' genetic make-up, and the paper is attracting charges of genetic determinism, and even racism. But the economists say that they have been misunderstood, and are merely using genetics as a proxy for other factors that can drive an economy, such as history and culture."
Maybe it's the other way around, I would say it's more likely that economic success causes immigration, and therefore diversity.
...cannot overcome government policy or lack of policy. I think government policy would dwarf genetics in the economics dept.
Now show me the papers that correlate genetics with government policy.
you see the following:
The paper argues that there are strong links between estimates of genetic diversity for 145 countries and per-capita incomes, even after accounting for myriad factors such as economic-based migration.
Well, I guess scientists had better go back and un-invent and un-discover any empirically verifiable or useful thing they may have invented or discovered that has the potential for misuse.
Religion in most of the world has a huge impact on economic success, as does the availability and quality of education. In addition the current financial state of a region makes a huge difference, when I don't worry about finding food I can read and study more. When clean water and sanitation are taken care of I can focus more on research and development of new ideas and technologies. A person forced to read a holy book instead of a science book probably won't be much help developing the next IPhone,
This is typically due to oppressive rulers and a lack of freedom in their history close in relative time compounded by hundreds of years of being declared not worthy or less then human by more wealthy countries. It has little to do with the pigment of their skin other then how they have been treated by others as well as their own throughout the years..
I thought we already determined that humans were as stupid as Monkeys when it came to economics and assessment of economic risk.
http://www.ted.com/talks/laurie_santos.html
The stupidz. Itz in ur geenz.
It's ok for genes to predicate athletic ability, but not other abilities or behaviours?
Obviously our genes influence other behaviours. The small minded might not like that, but that's the way it is. Those who cry "racism" do a diservice to humanity in general - the bell curve applies to all populations, and the distribution of genes within a population is widely distributed. Studying how those genes interact is a good thing!
..don't panic
driver's licenses don't even have hair or eye colour --- obviously their genetic diversity is low and their economy must be horribly broken w/ nothing worth exporting.
The numbers make that very clear. The relationship is staring us in the face, but it seems hidden in place sight, because it reveals too much about ourselves as we try to shed blame onto something/someone else. You have to steal from people to impoverish their society.
The study of economics without integrating human psychology is not science. It is more like astrology, and about as accurate.
The desire to dominate one's environment is genetic, however. Nature demands it. It is possible that some cultures confront it differently than others, but the variations are minor, and everything else is a revolves around it. We have the ability for everybody to live like kings right now, this moment, but most kings aren't happy without subservience.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
A country can be very diverse and successful. Consider Canada and Singapore.
A country can be racially pure and successful. Consider Denmark and Switzerland (yes I realize they have four languages but they haven't had any immigration for a long time).
Success is cyclic. Today's world beating country is tomorrow's basket case. The Soviet Union was very diverse. It was one of the world's two super powers. Then it was a basket case. Now a more racially pure Russia climbing out of its hole. Similarly Japan. It is very racially pure. It was one of the strongest economies in the world. Now it appears to be on its way down.
For every example one way, there is an example the other way. The study is bunk.
Exactly. Black students perform poorly on standardized tests because of a conspiracy to provide only grape-flavored, mentholated pencils to the test-taking students. That way, the black students never finish the tests because they end up eating the pencils halfway though.
Why, you ask? There was a manufacturing surplus of purple velvet seats and gold rims made for Geo Metros, and they had to be sold. Only the uneducated buy those things.
It's ok for genes to predicate athletic ability, but not other abilities or behaviours?
Obviously our genes influence other behaviours. The small minded might not like that, but that's the way it is. Those who cry "racism" do a diservice to humanity in general - the bell curve applies to all populations, and the distribution of genes within a population is widely distributed. Studying how those genes interact is a good thing!
Yes, absolutely,. The problem arises when some folks insist on making it 100% genes or 100% something else, when in fact reality is a subtle combination of all the above.
That's the danger with attributing genes to behavior - you get the asshatery of the racists and folks who don't understand that behaviour isn't determined be genes like say, Sickle cell anemia where if you have the gene you have sickle cell anemia 100% of the time. Many folks think all genes work like sickle cell anemia and completely miss the subtleties of environmental effects on gene expression.
At least that's how I remember the explanation from a geneticist I once met.
It doesn't take a genius to foresee the sort of controversy this study might raise in the hands of the media. I'm sure the researchers themselves were very careful and conservative with their conclusions, but using race or genetic data as a proxy for something as easily obtainable as immigration history is just inviting trouble.
Countries with greater trade become richer, and outmarriages become more common.
DUH
People don't like to have the concept of their free will undermined. That's why claims like this, true or false, are attacked by many not based on their evidence, but on the consequences of the conclusion. This kind of appeal to consequence is not valid. "X is false, because if it were true, then we wouldn't have free will." The traditional notion of free will is incoherent, and could not be true regardless of whatever studies come out. Unless you believe in immaterial souls (which introduces a whole new set of incoherences) there must be something at the bottom. If it's not genetic determinism (which I doubt), it will be either physical determinism or physical (e.g. quantum) randomness at the bottom deciding every aspect of how the universe propagates, including our decisions. Does this mean we can't have free will? Well if you are talking about the kind of free will that is defined as being uncaused or ungoverned by any lower process, then no we can't have that kind of free will. The question is: Why do we even want that kind of free will? What does it buy us? Everything you feel, experience, and decide is still real, it just doesn't work the way it seems. We can still hold people responsible for their decisions. In fact, it would be crazy not to. I think the biggest reason for pushback against any attacks on the traditional idea of free will is that it undermines the idea that you could have an eternal soul. People are, I dare say, genetically determined, to avoid death. As a thinking species, one of our tools for dealing with death is denial. We don't *really* die. We have eternal life in the next life. See, no need to cry little Suzie, Grandma is in a better place now. We will all see her again one day. It's so tempting to embrace that point of view, especially if you have experienced a life with great hardship and tragedy. But there is literally no good reason to actually believe this if you care, about truth more than comfort, or simply can't tolerate cognitive dissonance.
Funny how those same black students will perform in a statistically insignificant way if they didn't know they were black to begin with. That stench of shit by the way... that's God telling you to change your pants. You've seemed to have soiled yourself as the stress of your delusions overwhelmed you.
Country seems such an arbitrary scale, especially since they vary in size so much. On larger scales this is nonsense, as Africa is the continent with highest human genetic diversity.
Korma: Good
Sorry, but this is yet another modern version of Eugenics being pushed in to your face. Just like "using DNA to determine future criminals" and "Detecting psychopaths by Tweets".
The people working on these papers expressing opinions like this are dangerous and should be locked up. Yes, it's that simple and yes, the propaganda they are spreading is extremely dangerous. If you don't understand the danger, go read a fucking history book and see what happens when people are convinced that genocide or racial superiority are good things.
Education and Society dictate a persons capabilities. If a person has a good education and ample opportunity, they tend to work for the betterment of the society they received their education in and have the opportunities in. If a person lacks education, how can they better society? If a person has education and no opportunity, what choice do they have other than harming society to survive? (And to usurp any stupid arguments you may have regarding farmers not needing education or some such, you are wrong. Farmers need to know how to be farmers, and need to know how to be content to be the best farmer possible. That requires as much education regarding society as a rocket scientist requires, but of course lacking the sciences required by the rocket scientists.)
This is basic sociology and psychology, with countless historical examples showing both sides of the argument. Hell, Socrates discussed the same thing in "The Allegory of the Artisan" (go read Plato's "The Republic" you lazy bastards!) well over 2 thousand years ago. It's not new, yet we still fall prey to the rhetoric of evil greedy people.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
how is that racist? Seriously though, need a clearer mechanism and fewer confounding factors to establish causation. In other news, Facebook use has been correlated with an increase in national foreign debt.
It's not the genes that determines economics. Lets look at an ECONOMIC MODEL(S) for CHINA, HONG KONG, and TAIWAN. Taiwan and Hong Kong was way ahead of China's economy due to their type of laws. Taiwan was way ahead of China because it's capitalistic form of government and Hong Kong has a very high level of security/safety and business types of structure due to influences from United Kingdom.
Let me list the things that would influence the outcome of economics power:
(1) Investments from Private & Public Sectors [Monies to invest from taxes and investors]
(2) Types of Laws and Regulations
(2a) Poor Economic [Lack of oversight and lack of regulations, very low tax rates]
(2b) Economic Power [high taxes=investments, services, & incentives] [lots of oversight and regulations=standards]
(3) Type of language used in the country shapes the behavior and thinking process
(4) The responsibility of Corporations, Billionaires, Millionaires, & Government to look after it's citizens and country. [Ethics, Morale Values]
Why are we arguing about the content of a paper that hasn't yet been released? Why not wait for the paper to come out, read it, then argue about conclusions based on their supporting documentation?
Isn't it widely known among geneticists that Africa is the most genetically diverse place on Earth?
Obviously, African countries rule the world in economic strength....
The authors of the paper come right out and say that they are not arguing for a genetic *cause* to the correlations they measure.
Rather that since genetics and culture are both transmitted along family lines, that genetic diversity within a country is a useful proxy for cultural diversity, and that certain degrees of cultural diversity correlate with improved economic performance.
This has nothing to do with eugenics, and everything to do with a more quantifiable way to study the effect of culture clashes on a country's economy.
This is nothing more than attempt to co-opt the language of science in order to explain away racism.
'Survival of the fittest' became a socio-political banner cry for Western Europeans in the 1870's who were bent on justifying their violent domination of other's resources and bodies. It was a convenient means of obfuscating the cognitive dissonance between the claim to power on the part of monarch's who had conspired with the Vatican for centuries to justify God-given right to power and the obvious philosophical conflicts with so-called New Testament Christian morality.
It's the same zenophobic basis for Truman dropping nuclear weapons on 200,000+ Japanese civilians in order to demonstrate to the Godless Communists of Russia that the United States was superior.
And underneath this thin veneer of ridiculous prejudice is the laughable assertion that 'economics' is a science. All you have to do is pick up any newspaper and read the business section to understand that this isn't so. Financial activity can be predatory or cooperative, and it is always subject to manipulation at the hands of people whose only goal is to amass wealth utilizing whatever means is at hand. It's complex behavior that takes place within a group with rules that are insufficient to preclude 'unfair' advantage.
Sophisticated people like it that way, and so they concoct elaborate arguments to keep it so.
Between a pseudo-science and an immature discipline!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
NOT Flamebait!
While there may be a study of economics out there, the field's leading representatives have become wholly wrapped up in politics. Those representatives are so thoroughly beholden to the political powers that be that they will say nearly ANYTHING to support the existing policies even where the supporting theory is obviously non-viable.
Imagine Carl Sagan talking about the beauty of a million epicycles all different with no rhyme or reason and what a fine sort of matter the crystal spheres must be made of to remain undetectable for all this time except in the way they govern the movements of the heavens around the Earth and you'll have some idea of where the public face of economics is at as a science.
When the real economists start standing up and calling bullshit on the political malpractice of economics, people will come to respect it as a science.
I guess it was European oppression that kept them from developing written language for thousands of years after everyone else.
Only one of those 3 propositions is correct :
* infinite growth is possible is a finite world
* economics is a science
* Duke Nukem Forever has been released
Yes. The world's longest-lived and wealthiest societies in all of history prove your thesis. NOT!
Egypt commanded through 3 principal epochs - over 3000 years of culturally continuous and reasonably enlightened civilization, outstripping the dreams of wealth in over that period.
They were able to accomplish this without your revolting melanin-deficiency.
This is but one example. Somehow, northern barbarians - who until a few short centuries ago, slept in the straw, still matted with their own dinner-filth - think they are the center of the universe. The maths and science they inherited from central and south asia have been used to rip the planet to shreds. Then they blame the victim as proof of their moral superiority.
Pathetic.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
East Africa was literate a millennium before Europe.
North Africa and West Asia invented literacy.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
So the Scandinavian countries and the UK should be home to the superpowers and the US should be lagging far behind, with Australia being a poverty-ridden hellhole, right? Native Americans aren't a bunch of pasty white folks...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Did you RTFA? I guess not.
They're not saying that genetics *causes* economic success, merely that it can be used to predict it. The difference is important.
it could also be quite convincingly argued that an economic lens is not really the most appropriate one through which to view history...
The ancient Egyptians had mind-boggling knowledge of astronomy, geometry - they knew pi, zero, the golden section - as well as a highly developed cursive script, and construction techniques that we still can't get anywhere near today.
I'm guess what I'm saying is that economic measures are already biased; the global economic structures currently in force are products of western civilisation which prides economy and wealth over other things which different cultures hold dear.
Hej! Nasi tu byli!
Don't tell me there's not a genetic component to any of this, because there is. Women are less greedy, less warlike, less anti-social, more responsible, more cooperative, more egalitarian and fairer by a large measure ON AVERAGE than men. It's not a plot on the part of women to make men look bad.
If we're going to survive, we need to start taking responsibility for what we create. What is created now is something fit for an environment long past- one where destructive weapons and destructive practices only had so much power. Now that power is infinite and the world is populated by people who never evolved to survive their ability to wield that power.
Yeah, this is the most serious challenge facing humanity and in some sense the final challenge. If we don't destroy ourselves first, it's one we have to solve and where we have to go.
We people are not created equal. There are obvious, undeniable visible differences between races such as skin color and facial features. There are also undeniable physical differences between races. Dark people generally more easily develop muscle tissue and are stronger. The world record holder of the 100 meters sprint is and likely always will be a black person. Lighter skinned people have more ability to abstract, invent and plan ahead, skills that contribute to a persons intelligence.
In this time and age of political correctness we do not wish to label an entire race as being "less intelligent" than the other. It feels wrong to label dark skinned people as "less intelligent" than whites. This desire to treat all men as equal with respect of intelligence is exactly the root of the problem. Intelligence so highly regarded in our society that it has become the most important attribute by which we value a person. We see intelligence as a highly desirable property of a human being and the lack of it is looked down upon. Saying that darker skinned people are on the average less intelligent than lighter skinned people is synonymous with saying that dark skinned people are insuperior to light skinned people. Obviously this very wrong and exactly this narrow view is what makes any research on the relation between race and intelligence very uncomfortable and controversial. Scientifically speaking, intelligence is just another inheritable property just like traits such as length, hair color, eye color and of course skin color.
Is there an explanation for light skinned people to be on average more intelligent than dark skinned people? Perhaps there is. To put it really simplistically - in the jungle, whenever you get hungry, you hunt down and kill an animal and you will eat. To survive it is crucial to be fast, strong, agile, and as long as that makes it possible to survive, having the ability to plan or invent is only a small advantage towards survival and creating more offspring. If however the environment becomes more challenging, for instance away from the tropics, there will be seasons to deal with. Food will not be as abundant. Planning ahead for food (for instance by farming) will now be a crucial advantage as well as the ability to design and create tools is. Building proper shelter is more challenging but when done well, again greatly increases chances on survival. In general, further north where the environment is more challenging, the people that planned and invented will have created by far the most offspring. And for some reason skin color changed from dark to light on our path towards the north, making the difference in intelligence a difference in traits, i.e., appearance.
Racism is not the problem, because there are races. However, generalizing is. Regarding any "white" person to be more intelligent and hence superior to any "black" person is a generalization and rightfully offensive and upsetting. There are plenty stupid white people and intelligent black people around to disprove that.
Also I haven't discussed Asians which are in some aspects more intelligent than Caucasians. I haven't discussed jews - some of the biggest scientists ever to have lived on the planet were jews or of jewish descent. Perhaps jews are capable of reaching the highest levels of abstract thinking.
But if we would turn back the clock 100,000 years and be back in the jungle, the ability to run away from a tiger and climb a tree might be a better asset than having an IQ of 105.
My karma ran over your dogma
And uses economic means for post-colonial extraction and suppression of material from resource-rich populations, without requisite compensation.
It calls this "development".
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
After blinking my eyes at your post, I realized that you made a good example, but one which runs counter to your point. You see, just as their detractors worry about the consequences after this paper, I focused on the factors leading up to your example.
Why are men more greedy, more warlike, more competitive and hierarchical? Certainly, genes could be part of it, but the current discussion points to nurture being a strong component. So let's rephrase that: what compels men to acquire resources and climb over his fellow men? The answer is women. A man would be happy living in a hut, if he had a loving wife. Acquiring said wife, however, has required everything you denounced.
I will not deny the statistics you claim, but leaving the discussion at just that would be disingenuous.
I'm not sure what developing a written language has to do with not being able to trade in the same markets or largely being relegated to tribal survival, being a laborer, or servant for someone else. The oppression isn't limited to coming from Europeans either. Class systems and corruption in even democratic governments can cause oppression when it's result is subjugating the majority of the populace.
Being an American and having seen the huge disparity between the insanely poor working their asses off and insanely rich with more free time than they know what to do with, I can assure you that genetics is not a factor aside from having lucky blood lineage and thus family ties.
The real issue is that some (too many) economists like to present their discipline as a hard science. It's not. It's a social science. The one that makes the most use of mathematical models, but a social science nonetheless, along with ethnology, sociology, psychology etc. Most actual, serious economists are fully aware of that.
There's nothing like $HOME
T lst Grks nvntd vwls...
but they forgot the vowels!
As for East Africa, that is Ethiopia, their writing system is not older than Linear A, for sure.
Oh, come on, Slashdot! I'm not allowed to use an ordered list in my comments?
You are, but their POS stylesheet hides the numbers. If, for example, I "Disable Styles" in Safari 6's Develop menu, your list magically becomes numbered - the page looks completely like ass, but at least the fucking ordered lists are numbered, not just ordered. At least as I read, for example, the HTML 4 section on lists, "visual user agents" should "number ordered list items". I guess a stylesheet are supposed to be able to override any aspect of presentation in the spec, but it's still really bogus to have a stylesheet that turns off numbering for ordered list items.
(And Slashdot should allow titles to be a bit longer, assuming this isn't some unfortunate interaction between Slashdot and Safari - the box in which to type the title has some extra space at the end even with my longest-I-could-type title which, alas, required me to abbreviate "rendered" as "rendered".)
Note: I do not condone slavery or appartheid as a form of politics, but it is just a theory for the results
Maybe what the researchers have found (given the history of humanity) is that in a country with several ethnics groups you can have a ruling elite that concentrates capital and act as a whole to keep their privileges, and an oppressed, cheap workforce without rights to be used as a source of "profits"
That said, anyway it probably is just a structural development; Great Britain and Germany in XIX century, and Great Britain and Japan in XX century could not have been any more homogeneous yet they did way better than said, the heterogeneous Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires.
Why can't
Racism is wrong right up to the point where data indicates it is accurate. We shouldn't redefine reality for the sake of avoiding racism. Although this doesn't sound like racism so much as geneticism.
I realize it is far more pc to say to everything is about personal drive and nurture but nature may just be a factor as well.
"Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." Just don't discount malice.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
True eugenics would also begin to cross borders and races, breeding whatever best du jour inheritable traits were available in the current pool. Ask yourself this: Has the breeding of "pures" in the pursuit of an AKC papered pooch resulted in better or worse canine genetic lines? Genetic diversity is all earthly species' best shot at persevering through the environmental obstacle course we call real life.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
US, incredibly diverse genetically -- economically powerful.
Japan, incredibly homogeneous genetically -- economically powerful.
North and South Korea, incredibly homogeneous genetically -- one powerful, one dying on the vine.
So much for that theory.
Hmmmm. Maybe economic and other freedoms have something to do with it.
Oh, by the way, humans are dual reproducing data sets -- the DNA and the memes in the head. I'm so god damned sick of biologists thinking the reproducing data streams are all DNA. IDIOTS!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Honey, if this is about that paternity thing, Uncle Daddy has already told you that's an Attorney General witch hunt.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Of the airs, and you folks are above waaay to good to shill for 15.9994 after this post, I prefer an air of self-importance. I have observed a correlation bordering on causation regarding the strength of personal conviction versus an ability to sell it to others.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
It is a common error to attribute Achaeans - and the Dorians, too, really - to "Europe". One may do so, based on the southeastern-most hump of that continent, surely.
But the intellectual world in which they were grown, and the tradition they embellished and elevated was not indigenous to the Balkans. It was rather a part of the Indo-Aryan world, which acquired a unique synthesis of Egyptian, Levantine and Mesopotamian influences.
"Greece" as it was understood as the Hellenic world? As much a part of Asia Minor as of Europe.
Sparta and Athens become important after Ionia - which was the real incubator of Doric civilization and passed the legacy to Attica. Given the proximity to Phoenica, this is the natural route for an alphabet to move from the Levant to the Greeks.
Later, despite the ahistoric and anachronistic term Graeco-Roman - the Romans did almost nothing to transmit and develop Greek science and culture. This was left to the Persian and Arab world - who became the first society to cultivate both Platonic and Aristotelian schools - and were the causal for their living preservation and transmission to Europe in later centuries.
Yet this crucial - and golden age - of "western"or "European" tradition is discredited. Again, by the descendants of illiterate tribesmen and petty war lords, who appropriate a history, and call it their special, providential inheritance.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
They were able to accomplish this without your revolting melanin-deficiency.
Looking at the Fayum mummy portraits and other ancient Egyptian artwork, especially depicting women (men are depicted as tanned from field work), I'd say you're wrong.
Copts (native Egyptians who still speak something approximating the ancient tongue) have somewhat lighter skin than the present Egyptian Arab majority, similar skin colour to Turks and Greeks. I'm not saying it was because they had light brown skin rather than mid brown skin that they were able to pyramids, but they were not dark.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
If it's true, what is done with a truth can be evil, neutral, helpful, etc. - it is interesting to find out what is what, consequences to people be damned, that's another question for people besides me to care about, because I don't.
The concept of race exists because different groups of people look different. And if we look different, then why can't we behave differently?
I'm fully prepared to accept that much of our behaviour is genetic. Obviously it won't mean that different races have different worth. But it might explain why we do things differently (especially if were to be analysed on a individual level). And that might in turn give us insight in how better to help our fellows. It might also help people be more accepting of each other, in much the same way that people are usually more patient with someone who has been diagnosed with some trait/dysfunction/disease/sensitivity/strength/etc.
The trick is to be accepting of ourselves and each other, regardless of faults or strengths. To keep out bigotry, don't look at groups of humans as discrete entities, but rather as fuzzy groups of individuals where each individual has their own personal worth. (The groups are fuzzy due to crossbreeding in genetics, culture, technology, etc.)