Apologies for not posting anything recently. I have something in the works at BigThink and a few more in the pipeline but it has been hard finding the time to blog recently. I hope to be back to it in a couple of weeks.
You don't have to worry about it. I know that it is quite hard to give enough time to blog something. It takes a lot of time that why I am impressed with sites like xlpharmacy facts because they are adding content constantly.
Enormous statistics I like your post. It is good to see you express from the heart and accuracy on this important subject can be easily captured here. MBA Thesis Writing
Last week (May 2 nd 2018) the Guardian published a piece by me headlined “Why genetic IQ differences between ‘races’ are unlikely”. In it, I argued that the genetic architecture and evolutionary history of intelligence make it different from other traits and inherently unlikely to vary systematically for genetic reasons between large population groups. Image credit: https://mashable.com/2013/04/02/obama-brain/#kwOQGJUunEqn I was rather quickly (and, in some cases, rather aggressively) taken to task by a number of population geneticists on Twitter for being vague, overly general and hand-wavy, and for ignoring or not citing relevant papers in population genetics. Or indeed, for being flat out wrong. (See also a critique here ). Some of those criticisms may well be valid, but some reflect the limitations of writing a short piece for the general public, so I wanted to go into more detail here on my reasoning. The other cri...
What if we’ve been thinking about the genetics of intelligence from completely the wrong angle? Intelligence (as indexed by IQ or the general intelligence factor “ g ”) is clearly highly heritable in humans – people who are more genetically similar are also more similar in this factor. (Genetic variance has been estimated as explaining ~75% of variance in g , depending on age and other factors). There must therefore be genetic variants in the population that affect intelligence – so far, so good. But the search for such variants has, at its heart, an implicit assumption: that these variants affect intelligence in a fairly specific way – that they will occur in genes “for intelligence”. An implication of that phrase is that mutations in those genes were positively selected for at some stage in humanity’s descent from our common ancestor with apes, on the basis of conferring increased intelligence . This seems a fairly reasonable leap to make – suc...
Mental illness is surprisingly common. About 10% of the population is affected by it at any one time and up to 25% suffer some kind of mental illness over their lifetime. This has led some people (many people in fact) to surmise that it must exist for a reason – in particular that it must be associated with some kind of evolutionary advantage. Indeed, this is a popular and persistent idea both in scientific circles and in the general public. (See the recent article “ Depression’s Upside ” from the New York Times Magazine, for example). Such theories come in two main varieties – the first, that mental illness confers some specific advantage to those afflicted; and second, that the mutations which cause mental illness in one person’s genetic background may confer an advantage when they are in a different genetic background (balancing selection). Both of these suffer from some misconceptions about how evolution by natural selection works. The intuitive appeal of the “survi...
Looking forward to seeing your BigThoughts :)
ReplyDeleteYou don't have to worry about it. I know that it is quite hard to give enough time to blog something. It takes a lot of time that why I am impressed with sites like xlpharmacy facts because they are adding content constantly.
ReplyDeleteEnormous statistics I like your post. It is good to see you express from the heart and accuracy on this important subject can be easily captured here.
ReplyDeleteMBA Thesis Writing