The collective intellect is change-blind. Knowledge gained seems so natural that we forget what it was like not to have it. Piaget says children gain long-term memory at age 4 and don't learn abstract thought until ten; do you remember what it was like not to have abstract thought? We underestimate our intellectual progress because every every sliver of knowledge acquired gets backpropagated unboundedly into the past. For decades, people talked about "the gene for height", "the gene for intelligence", etc. Was the gene for intelligence on chromosome 6? Was it on the X chromosome? What happens if your baby doesn't have the gene for intelligence? Can they still succeed? Meanwhile, the responsible experts were saying traits might be determined by a two-digit number of genes. Human Genome Project leader Francis Collins estimated that there were "about twelve genes" for diabetes, and "all of them will be discovered in the next two years". Quanta Magazine reminds us of a 1999 study which claimed that "perhaps more than fifteen genes" might contribute to autism. By the early 2000s, the American Psychological Association was a little more cautious, was saying intelligence might be linked to "dozens – if not hundreds" of genes.
Full Episode
Welcome to the official Slate Star Codex podcast for September 13th, 2018. Title, The Omnigenic Model as Metaphor for Life. The collective intellect is change blind. Knowledge gained seems so natural that we forget what it was like not to have it. Plaget says children gain long-term memory at age four and don't learn abstract thought until ten.
Do you remember what it was like to not have abstract thought? We underestimate our intellectual progress because every sliver of knowledge acquired gets back propagated unboundedly into the past. For decades, people talked about the gene for height, the gene for intelligence, etc. Was the gene for intelligence on chromosome 6? Was it on the X chromosome? No.
What happens if your baby doesn't have the gene for intelligence? Can they still succeed? Meanwhile, the responsible experts were saying traits might be determined by two-digit number of genes. Human Genome Project leader Francis Collins estimated that there were about 12 genes for diabetes and all of them will be discovered in the next two years. Quantum Magazine reminds us of a 1999 study
which claimed that perhaps more than 15 genes might contribute to autism. By the early 2000s, the American Psychological Association was a little more cautious, was saying intelligence might be linked to dozens, if not hundreds, of genes. The most recent estimate for how many genes are involved in complex traits like height or intelligence is approximately all of them.
By the latest count, about 20,000. From this side of the veil, it all seems so obvious. It's hard to remember back a mere 20 or 30 years ago when people earnestly awaited the gene for depression. It's hard to remember the studies powered to find genes that increased height by an inch or two.
It's hard to remember all the crappy p-hacked results that, okay, we found the gene for extroversion, here it is, It's hard to remember all the editorials in The Guardian about how since nobody had found the gene for IQ yet, genes don't matter, science is fake, and Galileo was a witch. And even remembering those times, they seem incomprehensible. Like, really?
Only a few visionaries consider the hypothesis that the most complex and subtle of human traits might depend on more than one protein? Only the boldest revolutionaries dared to ask whether maybe cystic fibrosis was not the best model for the entirety of human experience. This side of the veil, instead of looking for the gene for intelligence, we try to find polygenic scores.
Given the person's entire genome, what function best predicts their intelligence? The most recent such effort uses over a thousand genes and is able to predict 10% of variability in educational attainment. This isn't much, but it's a heck of a lot better than anyone was able to do under the old dozen genes model. And it's getting better every year in the way healthy paradigms are supposed to.
Genetics is interesting as an example of a science that overcame a diseased paradigm. For years, basically all candidate gene studies were fake. How come we can't find genes for anything was never as popular as where's my flying car as a symbol of how science never advances in the way we optimistically feel like it should. But it could have been. And now it works.
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