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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35015 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

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From a twin study on crime:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25936380/

Results: For all criminal convictions, heritability was estimated at around 45% in both sexes, with the shared environment accounting for 18% of the variance in liability in females and 27% in males. The correlation of these risk factors across sexes was estimated at +0.63. In men, the magnitudes of genetic and environmental influence were similar in the three criminal conviction subtypes. However, for violent and white-collar convictions, nearly half and one-third of the genetic effects were respectively unique to that criminal subtype. About half of the familial environmental effects were unique to property convictions.

Heritability of crime is high. The main benefit of locking people up is that it prevents people with outlier poor mental traits from reproducing. Criminals tend to be psychopathic, lack impulse control, and be low in intelligence. Keeping men with outlier levels of those traits far away from women between 18-and 45 makes sense. The studies he cites are too short term, they don't take multigeneration effects into account.

As for air pollution, reducing crime is an effective way to combat it. Public transit, walkable cities and bicycle commuting become more attractive the fewer criminals are on the streets. If people don't have to live way outside the city to be in an area with low crime, fewer people will drive. Fewer people walk and bicycle and more people will be fat. Crime is a cause of many of the other problems because it creates a low trust society in which people atomize. Cartel-controlled parts of Mexico are not going to have fantastic universities, infrastructure or other institutions since some much energy gets soaked into cartel-wars and their fallout. A well functioning society requires trust, it requires people to feel a sense of common good and to cooperate. Crime and corruption undermine that. A cop taking a bribe is far more damaging than the direct damage caused by the cop not doing his job.

Heritability of crime is high. The main benefit of locking people up is that it prevents people with outlier poor mental traits from reproducing. Criminals tend to be psychopathic, lack impulse control, and be low in intelligence

Indeed. The claim that crime is in large part or even entirely socially determined has always struck me as very insulting to the many working class people who are not criminals. It almost seems to imply that the only difference between them and a bank robber is a lost job, which seems profoundly dismissive of their values and scruples. Acknowledging a degree of essentialism is more respectful in my mind.

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