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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   22994 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026

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If heritability did all that you claim, the children of doctors would breeze through medical entrance exams and the selection would be costless. The fact that they don't, that even doctor-parented children grind in coaching alongside everyone else, is itself evidence that selection does something beyond filtering for pedigree.

The folk conception of biology and evolution that people have is still very Lamarckian in this way. Even among intelligent families, children are still very much a crapshoot. I’ve wondered at times though whether you can breed out some of the most fundamental characteristics in humans.

In any population, you can select for a certain trait and by encouraging its reproduction within the population, greatly increasing the frequency of its heritability and expression. Could you theoretically do the opposite? Take say a trait from the big 5 like neuroticism. If you outright banned the reproduction of all highly neurotic people, could you with time extinguish that feature of human personality entirely or merely suppress the strength of its intensity and the frequency of its appearance?

Looking at other animals, how many species could you confidently express have “personality” in a way that’s as discernible with what you find in humans?

You're looking at polygenic selection, which would be significantly slower than selecting for traits dominated by a handful of genes. But in principle? Absolutely. It would just be a massive pain in the ass, but we've done it for dogs and cattle. There is evidence for weak selection for specific personality traits over human evolution, but I forget the specifics.

CC for @Tretiak below.

When it comes to trait-based selection, whether a trait is polygenic, monogenic—or anything in between—the genetic architecture doesn't matter for the response to selection. Only thing that matters is heritability and selection differential (how "drastic" your selection is).

Breeder's Equation for a quantitative/continuous trait (e.g., neuroticism) is R = h^2 * S, where R is the response to selection, h^2 heritability, and S the selection differential (how different the mean of the selected parents is relative to the general population).

Heritability would be the dominant form of the equation, but you also can’t factor out the epigenetic influence (I would think) unless gene expression itself can be further reduced to strict biological determinants. Which is to say gene expression is also heritable. I understand what you’re saying here but I’m still unsure as to whether it answers the question or not. Or maybe it’s a poorly formed question. I probably don’t have the background here that you do.

Incidentally what does the equation say about people of exceptionally gifted talents that have no known biological pedigree found within their family ancestry?

Epigenetic variance explains ~0% of phenotypic variance. You should probably just not refer to it again and epistemically audit whatever process led you to mention it like it was important.

That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about its role in gene expression.

It doesn't have a significant role if it doesn't cause significant differences in phenotype, because heritability is high.

It doesn’t play a direct role in the inheritance of certain traits but it impacts the ability to express them.

You're not understanding. Epigenetic variance explains ~0% of phenotypic variance, so it doesn't impact gene expression between people do a significant extent. Has nothing to do with between-generations.

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