And it seems inevitable that gene therapy will add enhancement directly into your dna making it permanent.

yes. mebee i’ll post about it….

Moving on to politics, in one of your posts 6 months back regarding race, multiculturalism, and PC issues, you’ve stated the current edifice of contradictions and illogicness on such issues can’t persist, and that eventually it’ll collapse and new political paradigm(s) will arise to replace them. You’ve hinted(?) that you came to certain conclusions of what they potentially would be like. Would it be possible for you to state those predictions out in the not too distant future?

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ylhlc/iama_geneticist_who_studies_the_genetic_basis_for/

My advice, if you want to get into the head of a Roman, learn Latin, then read:

De Bello Gallico – by Caesar

In continuation from the last open thread, where I asked about your reading history with ancient Greco Roman historians…..

Any take home messages did you derive from reading them that surprised or intrigued you? Were there some insights or perspectives you’ve realized after reading them that may not have been initially apparent?

I for instance am in favor of abortion on demand, paid for by the government, under any circumstances.

However personally I would never agree to any child I fathered being aborted – unless it suffered from Down Syndrome or other similar conditions.

re: abortion. many liberal pro-choicers don’t even try to understand other perspectives on the terms of those who are pro-life (as opposed their vision of what pro-lifers are). i don’t want to open a discussion on this, i’m stating this as a fact. this is one area where jonathan haidt’s observation that liberals tend to have no good model of conservatives rings true. not that pro-lifers don’t do the same thing, but only a small minority of the readership here is pro-life, so that’s not a major issue.

On top: “Don’t ban me, bro!”

Below: Helix pic.

That is all.

And seriously, my comment was “patronizing” and yet you claim I “didn’t understand” your not-very-complex comparison? Cuomo’s view is the only reasonable one, It is not inconsistent and is hardly a “farce”. And the libertarian comment was clearly referencing the rape “exception” to the pro-life stance. Why would a libertarian need to make an exception in the first place? I would really like to hear a response to that. I can’t believe this is the second time you close a thread right after my comment.

Interesting that you were so outraged by my comment, but you were totally cool with the kindergarten level “two wrongs don’t make a right” comment i.e.if a woman is raped and she doesn’t then want to carry the rapist’s spawn for 9 mos and then push it out through her vagina she is a selfish baby-killer. I guess this person thinks Romney’s kids are selfish baby killers too, but funny that so few people get worked up about that.

Unbelievable stuff. No wonder intelligent, self-respecting women apparently avoid this weblog like the plague.

If you are in need of Survey questions, how about some like:

Which would you LEAST like living next door to you:
1. Mormon
2. Atheist
3. Christian
4. Jew
5. Muslim

And also:
Which would you LEAST like living next door to you:
1. Capitalist
2. Socialist/Marxist/Communist
3. Anarchist
4. Minarchist
5. Libertarian

For the record I’m a Minarchist

Minarchism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minarchism

Or those questions could be, which would you MOST like living next door to you.

I strongly agree wit this:

So in some areas i think it will be less a case of genetics pointing to new solutions to old problems but genetics showing why the old solutions for old problems worked.

If early farming spread fairly rapidly east to west but much more slowly into the colder north then in theory there would have been a moment in time where there was (in simple terms) one broad latitudinal band of farmers and another of hunter-gatherers. If – although crops didn’t yet grow well in those latitudes – domesticated animals were introduced into the forager zone at one or more locations (for whatever reason) which triggered a pastoralist, particularly cattle-raising culture then i think you’d expect a population boom in the forager zone which could have expanded very rapidly east-west (because of the combination of being pastoralist and the low population density of the forager population at the time) but also back down south into the farmer zone.

One thing i wonder though is if this happened when farming was still relatively new then what was the population density in the farming zone – outside places like the fertile crescent, Nile, Ganges etc? If it was still relatively empty then i wonder if in some places – especially if the land best suited to farming was different to the land best suited to cattle-raising – it may have been more of a barging-in than a blood and guts invasion.

.
@2 “given that some religions seem to have a need for “purity” and avoiding things which are “unclean”, is it possible that religious instincts conferred a survival advantage as people settled and urbanized and humanity’s environment became more germ-ridden?”

Religion based dietary and hygiene rules would be a neat and convenient way for the brighter element among a population to get the less bright to adopt adaptive behavior to a higher degree than they otherwise would. This aspect of religion would effectively be getting lower IQ people to act like higher IQ people through their religiosity and should have led to lower IQ people with high religiosity having a fitness advantage over those with low religiosity. (This last point would only apply if the religious rules in question were adaptive on balance and would be proportional to how adaptive the religious rules in question were.)

The brighter element didn’t need those rules to be based on religion but they accepted the restrictions of the religion for the benefit of the group (at least in this aspect). This traditional form has reversed in the west since the 60s as the elites have wanted the freedom to do things which have negative consequences inversely proportional to IQ regardless of the effect this has had on the left side of the bell curve.

.
@17 “I was slightly surprised that 72% in the Telegraph poll disagree that we should even _consider_ genetically screening for preferred behavioural traits. I suspect many of them would if given the choice.”

Well if you changed the wording to “do you trust the current ruling class in any way shape or form” which is the implicit question then i’m surprised it was only 72%. Maybe most of the other 28% hadn’t translated the question?

I think eugenics based on criminal behavior is best done on the basis of criminal behavior i.e. prison i.e. locking the criminally inclined up during their prime reproductive years so they have less kids.

What i think genetics will show is there were good reasons for a lot of traditional views – even if the people who espoused those views didn’t know what those logical reasons were – because those views had *evolved* over time through trial and error. So in some areas i think it will be less a case of genetics pointing to new solutions to old problems but genetics showing why the old solutions for old problems worked.

My take is that it’s better NOT to read PZ MYers, as anyone who writes:

You can’t pretend to be color-blind or sex-blind in a culture that privileges white maleness!

Is effectively a troll.

His readership is of the low-brow, sensationalist type by and large… so just skip his BS is best