DanArmak comments on When does heritable low fitness need to be explained? - Less Wrong

15 Post author: DanArmak 10 June 2015 12:05AM

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Comment author: gwern 10 June 2015 05:43:52PM 1 point [-]

It's a little weakened by the fact that homosexuality likely has several different possible causes

It does?

Comment author: DanArmak 10 June 2015 07:35:37PM *  0 points [-]

Wikipedia on causes of homosexuality says there are "various biological causes", and quotes:

The American Academy of Pediatrics stated in Pediatrics in 2004:

Sexual orientation probably is not determined by any one factor but by a combination of genetic, hormonal, and environmental influences. In recent decades, biologically based theories have been favored by experts....

The American Psychological Association states "there are probably many reasons for a person's sexual orientation and the reasons may be different for different people

We're interested specifically in the heritable component, which seems to be relatively small. There certainly seem to be some specific genetic loci involved, one on the X chromosome and another probably on chromosome 8.

At least one proposed etiology says the mother's immune reaction to the fetus affects its sexual determination, so we should be looking at genetic correlations in mothers of homosexual children as well as in the children themselves.

Comment author: gwern 11 June 2015 01:29:30AM 5 points [-]

Wikipedia on causes of homosexuality says there are "various biological causes", and quotes:

I don't much care about quotes from very prestigious professional bodies; they are always mealy-mouthed and self-serving, where they do not endorse pleasing claims on radically insufficient evidence (eg diet). What's more relevant is the actual research, like the link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_sexual_orientation ; I'm not too impressed, as it seems to be mostly a laundry list of fairly dubious corrrelations and downstream effects or irrelevant to humans animal research (does anyone think that deleting an entire gene in mice to turn them gay tells us anything relevant about causes in healthy humans?).

Comment author: DanArmak 11 June 2015 07:16:08AM *  1 point [-]

Fair enough. I should rely less on popularized professional consensus in this kind of thing.

Being who you are, it's no surprise that you have this attitude (and correctly so).