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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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In other words, no, your religious beliefs are absolutely not genetically heritable in the way that (I think) you are claiming.

I meant heritability of religion in the terms you are describing, and 25-45% range is about what I would have expected. The religiosity gene(s) are what matter, and they don't go away just because theistic religion is declining among certain demographics. A 25-45% heritability of religious impulse still has important implications. Those people want to latch onto something, and if it's not something eugenic then there's a chance it will be something dysgenic. Certainly from the perspective of the DR, the prevailing civic religions that capture the free religious energy of "atheists" is dysgenic as it entails the celebration of and political support for demographic decline. For a longtermist, that should be terrifying and just assuming AI is going to solve it is a dangerous bet.

But the heritability of "Collinsism" or whatever would certainly be near-zero. Their children will not have a lot of incentive to adopt that religion of their parents and a lot of incentive to put it behind them in their identity and their lives.

but what you call 'race formation' is very far from the only viable option for civilization building. If humans in antiquity had decided to invent eugenics rather than writing, we never would have made as much progress as we have now.

The ancients did invent eugenics. It's biblical. In the book of Genesis, Jacob swindles the herd of sheep from his father-in-law by peeling the bark off of a tree, in order to influence the breeding habits of the flock of sheep. Flocks of sheep are often biblical metaphor for humans and, according to the parable, the sheep saw the stripes on the tree from the peeled bark and that altered their mating habits. Jacob directed the mating habits of the herd (with cultural signaling) and acquired the flock.

In ancient Greece, priestly function was inherited. There were numerous fertility cults in ancient Greece and Rome that, through religion, provided breeding models for men and women, including the establishment of a physical ideal for men and women through the images of their gods. There were also caste systems, like the one in ancient Rome that eventually declined in prominence along with the decline of Rome itself. India's caste system was obviously designed with a eugenic function in the consciousness of its creators... and the Brahmin are now entering the American elite in growing numbers, aren't they?

Obviously the ancients did not have the genetic knowledge we do today. But they clearly learned eugenics and transmitted that knowledge through art and religion.

Improvements in AI, synthetic augmentation (neuralink, etc) and social organization could very well eclipse anything you could accomplish with assortative mating given ~25-35 year generation times even if you managed to get everyone on board and biology works as well as you think it will.

The biology of inheritance is certainly more reliable than theoretical improvements in AI. It's far more likely that AI would improve fertility, and therefore the impact of a eugenic-minded strategy, well before it replaces the importance of breeding habits and mate selection altogether (if it ever does, which it likely will not).

I meant heritability of religion in the terms you are describing, and 25-45% range is about what I would have expected.

I see. In that case, I'd ask you what your threshold is for saying something isn't heritable. A trait that is 25% heritable is (in our current environment) going to have much stronger environmental effects, and I assume that most people colloquially wouldn't call that trait 'heritable.'

Certainly from the perspective of the DR, the prevailing civic religions that capture the free religious energy of "atheists" is dysgenic as it entails the celebration of and political support for demographic decline. For a longtermist, that should be terrifying and just assuming AI is going to solve it is a dangerous bet.

Is your argument that 'demographic decline' is inherently dysgenic, or that "atheists" are genetically superior and their relative decline is dysgenic for society as a whole?

Obviously the ancients did not have the genetic knowledge we do today. But they clearly learned eugenics and transmitted that knowledge through art and religion.

Sorry hoss, I ain't buying it. But I don't think either of us would benefit from hashing it out.

The biology of inheritance is certainly more reliable than theoretical improvements in AI.

There are inherent limits to both human biology and biology in general that you aren't going to surpass with some assortative mating, not to mention the fact that you invoke some pretty theoretical technologies like iterated embryo selection from adult induced stem cells yourself.

It's far more likely that AI would improve fertility, and therefore the impact of a eugenic-minded strategy, well before it replaces the importance of breeding habits and mate selection altogether (if it ever does, which it likely will not).

I don't see a path towards AI increasing fertility, but regardless, there's plenty of ways AI (or tech more broadly) can be eugenic on your terms without having an effect on fertility or requiring people to change 'breeding habits or mate selection.'

Is your argument that 'demographic decline' is inherently dysgenic, or that "atheists" are genetically superior and their relative decline is dysgenic for society as a whole?

My argument is that atheists don't lose their religious inclination just because they are on the bandwagon of rejecting Christianity. Their rejection of Christianity doesn't change their genes. Their religious impulse is just directed towards other expressions of religious devotion and cult-like behavior. Many atheists are more "religious" in these terms than Christians- think the die-hard trans activist vs the average Joe who goes to church on Christmas and Easter because that's his family's tradition. There is arguably now greater social pressure for people to be atheist than to be Christian. I am speaking of religiosity as a behavior, not adherence to a specific traditional religion.

Sorry hoss, I ain't buying it. But I don't think either of us would benefit from hashing it out.

You are just willfully blind then. You think those caste systems which have persisted for thousands of years were just put in place and persisted for shits and giggles?

The Indian caste system was established 3,000 years ago, after the Aryan invasion, and Brahmins in India to this day have more Aryan DNA than the lower castes:

Among the upper castes the genetic distance between Brahmins and Europeans (0.10) is smaller than that between either the Kshatriya and Europeans (0.12) or the Vysya and Europeans (0.16). Assuming that contemporary Europeans reflect West Eurasian affinities, these data indicate that the amount of West Eurasian admixture with Indian populations may have been proportionate to caste rank.

They are unambiguous proof of eugenic thinking in ancient time, and society was almost entirely organized around these systems in many cases. They didn't understand genes but they clearly understood the importance of inheritance. The ancient Greeks, Romans, Jews, Indians, all of them attributed spiritual quality to what we understand as the science of inheritance, and they organized their religion and society around that understanding. The United States is likely less eugenically minded than any of these other civilizations at their height, as eugenic thinking is taboo today whereas it was the center of their religions and civic societies.

there's plenty of ways AI (or tech more broadly) can be eugenic on your terms without having an effect on fertility or requiring people to change 'breeding habits or mate selection.'

You are just using a "magic wand" to dismiss the issue. We don't know exactly how or when this "magic wand" will be sufficiently developed and integrated into society to have what impacts. We don't know if there will be political will to use these tools properly, for all we know AI will be used to suppress eugenically-minded behavior. Even rationalists are extremely fearful of eugenic thinking, judging by the EA forum, so how are the powers that be going to use AI on this front? It's a total unknown. I obviously do not oppose the involvement of AI in these initiatives, but to take it for granted that the theoretical advancements are already a substitute for culture, a substitute for evolution, is not at all certain and would far more likely complement such cultural changes along these lines.

Cultural changes towards eugenically-minded thinking would assist the development of AI towards these ends and reduce the risk of "AI alignment" being deployed against it.

The last absurdity with you and other posters saying "whatever AI will solve it" is you are still acknowledging the importance of the issue! You are just saying that culture and mate selection and breeding habits are already deprecated by theoretical advancements in AI. That is just completely absurd. We are already seeing geopolitical implications of a couple generations of assortative mating habits in Israel. It would not take 8 generations for other movements like this to make major political and geopolitical impacts.

I'm not sure that the Indian caste system is the best argument for eugenics or even a central example of it. Sure, the maintenance of genetically distinct Jati over thousands of years of close contact is impressive in its own way, but the end result seems to me more dystopian than anything else, with a tiny population of highly successful Brahmins lording it over a majority living in worse squalor than most of Africa. Meanwhile China, where there was to my knowledge no intentional eugenics of the sort you attribute to other ancient societies, has today a much more uniformly successful population than India by nearly any metric you care to use. Even if the average Brahmin is smarter than the average Chinese person, which I could believe (are there any IQ statistics on Indian subgroups?), I can't say I think it was worth it.

I did not bring it up as an argument for eugenics, I am citing it to prove eugenic thinking in ancient time. I am not familiar with Chinese history except that it's a long history of being conquered and subjugated, making their genetic lineage not very straightforward. I seriously doubt there were no elements of eugenic societal organizations there, i.e. inherited priestly or chieftain function, but I don't know nearly as much about that ancient history and there is already a huge wealth of examples in ancient Aryan civilizations to prove the point I was making.

Saying that the Indian caste system is not a central example of eugenic thinking... again, I just have to scratch my head wondering what you are smoking to not see this tradition as a central example of eugenic thinking. Not necessarily something to emulate, but to disprove the point he was making "oh, it's better the ancients invented writing than eugenics." They did invent eugenics, and it was central to their religions and civic society.

We could do much better with technology and knowledge of the biology of inheritance. But eugenic thinking is at least as old as writing.

The religiosity gene(s) are what matter

They are not "religiosity genes". All of these people, if born in 2000 BC, would be religious. Almost all would be christian in pre-enlightenment Europe. There are a variety of alleles that have small effects - maybe a low score on the many intelligence / educational attainment correlated ones means you sort into low SES groups in life, which is correlated with religiosity. This would not cause religiosity in 2000 BC. Maybe a bunch of alleles that (possibly in turn indirectly) make one more willing to dissent from one's group might decrease religiosity in 2000BC, but increase it today. It's much worse than that though, these genes help cause the incredibly complex biological mechanisms that relate to human thought, which we do not understand - so understanding mechanistically how this SNP correlates with that isn't happening any time soon. But even with what we do understand, there are many more causal pathways between some SNP and religiosity that take circuitous paths depending on the current environment, than ones directly causing 'religiosity'. I think this is what the phenotypic null hypothesis bit was about.

Also, whites aren't going to have more "religiosity genes" than indians or blacks.