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Lumifer comments on Suppose HBD is True - Less Wrong
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Finding the genetic causation of intelligence would be fantastic.
HBD isn't the idea that there's genetic causation of intelligence, however; it's the idea that the genetic causation factors vary in frequency between population groups (namely, races), and specifically, that certain population groups have lower intelligence as a result in the variance of frequency. To which I must respond that, while it should surprise us if those genetic causation factors don't vary in frequency across population groups, it should also surprise us if the frequency distribution of given genetic factors consistently advantages or disadvantages a single population group. (That is, there should be genetic causal factors which improve intelligence that are more common in black people, as well.)
Which is to say, HBD, as a proper idea rather than racism, suggests we should be mixing races to get the best genetics from every group. Given, as I understand it, that the greatest variance in genetics tends to be in African people, the ideal is probably closer to the African cluster (being larger and thus having more potential for positive factors) than the European cluster.
But that isn't the position HBD advocates generally take, to put it mildly.
Not quite. You are thinking of breeding people to develop a trait (in this case, intelligence) and are correct that you want diversity in your breeding stock. However what that diversity gets you is not just top-end results. It gets you variance -- basically, you'll get a few geniuses and a lot of idiots.
In animal breeding that's not a issue -- you kill off (or prevent from breeding) all the failures and just keep the very few top results. For humans that would be... problematic.
So if you encourage greater variance in outcomes and you keep all of them, the question becomes who breeds faster: idiots or geniuses. Let me point out that I'm not optimistic about that question.
By the way, empirically people with both black and white ancestry have average IQs between the pure blacks and the pure whites. This seems to indicate that you don't get much by cross-breeding.
Sometimes animal breeders find that two different breeds nick meaning their offspring consistently have more desirable traits than either of their parents do. To the best of my knowledge, this hasn't been observed in humans but then again I don't know if anyone has really investigated the possibility.
Not quite. It depends on who the mother is, and who the father is.
But I'm suggesting something slightly different: To the extent we engage in eugenics to improve our genetic lineage, we should be pulling genetics from every stock.
But we don't and are not very likely to start in the near future.
Genetic modification isn't that far away, and in some respects with regard to some conditions genetic culling of reproductive cells is already here. Both are forms of eugenics.
Direct genetic modification CRISPR-style doesn't require any cross-breeding, you just insert the genes you like and delete the ones you dislike.
In any case, this has little to do with the usefulness of HBD claims.
My impression is that breeding from diverse backgrounds gets you hardiness-- mutts are less likely to have the specific genetic ailments you get from purebreds. On the other hand, you're less likely to get extraordinary development of particular traits.
On what is possibly the gripping hand, that's dogs who've been selectively bred, which is not the same as people roughly adapted to different environments.
Yes, but I think this works on a different scale. Purebred domestic animals are usually heavily inbred, precisely to push a particular trait to new heights. In the standard textbook manner this makes the chances of the animal getting multiple copies of some recessive gene skyrocket, thus the fragility.
The human equivalent is marrying your cousins (inbred human populations exist, they usually don't look too good) which is different (scale) than marrying someone from a large enough gene pool (e.g. like all Europeans).