The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality

by Harden, Kathryn Paige

Published: September 21, 2021

Read: January 6, 2022

★★★★★

Review

One of the biggest secrets of our time is the massive impact genetics and DNA has on personality, intelligence, and outcomes. Despite data accumulating, genetic differences are politically rejected with egalitarianism a foundational idea in the west. This author was a fierce egalitarianism that found the genetic science so destabilizing that she wrestled out the nuisance and clarity on this important issue. In carefully exploring the topic, this book is also a great intro to understanding genes and social research. She does stick very close to egalitarianism and science and tries a little too hard to resist any ideas countering egalitarianism including racial differences and vast genetic impact. But, this book should convince anyone about the importance of genetic differences by softening the emotional and moral rejection most people have. Big Ideas: Two lotteries of birth, natural and social. Both are just luck, not deserved. Even if there are vast genetic differences, how we organize society is a separate political question. We can be antieugenic which means actively countering genetic differences like we do for environment ones.

Notes

Part one taking genetics seriously

2019 top 3 got wealth of bottom 50%
Higher social hierarchy live longer, rich live 15 years longer and healthier
Children in low income show epigenetic signs of aging by 8 years old
Inequality in our society
- Top .1% have increased income by 400% but without college degree haven’t increased real wages since 1960s
- Cult of the smart prizes the traits gained by education, emotional intunement
- 1.7x with bachelors, high school hasn’t budged since 1980s
- Marriage more stratified by education
- Low income report feeling stress and worry and enjoy weekends less, global life satisificstion goes up with income
- Differences, economics look at income differences and psychologists look at cognitive and emotional ability
Two lotteries of birth, natural and social
- Are these inequalities fair?
- Equality of opportunity,
  - what is opportun it u and what does it take
  - People regardless of birth should have same opportunities to lead best life whatever that means
  - Inequality doesn’t matter, but social class tie of inequality, accidents of birth
- Rates of college completion vary by different by family income
  - Top quarter 4x more likely than bottom quarter
  - 62% of richest have bachelors compared to 16 of poorest
  - Correlation
- Unfair inequalities are those tied to conditions of birth
- Genes
  - Polygenic index those with top quarter are 4x more likely to graduate than bottom
  - Outcome of lottery of birth
  - You didn’t pick your environment or genes
In this book, I argue polygenic index is important empirically and morally
How genetics is perceived
- Dangerous, eugenic, and racist fundamentally
- Participants read exact same methods of scientists but one result was genetic weakly indicative of math 4% and another was strongly linked at 26%
  - Egalitarianism rated, a belief in equality for social and political affairs, removing inequality
  - Stronger results, Less equilaitatin and doesn’t believe they should be treated equally and more biased
- Eugenics legacy as core of racist and classist ideologies
  - Validates the social hierarchy
  - Science of improving human genetics
  - Expansive of education called a waste and social programs encourage more undesirable children
  - Feeble minded, crippled, homeless, etc model Law with eugenic sterilization. “Three generations of imbeciles is enough” Virginia
  - Neurmberg laws outlawed marriage between Jews and other and stripped them of rights used laws
  - White supremacists reviewed blue expiring and announced it as the death knoll for social justice
Genetics and egalitarianism
- Difference from the bell curve , which focused on intelligence tests
  - Intelligence test measure aspect of psychology relevant for success in our education and occupations
  - Twins studies are cool
  - Intelligence is hereditary
- Thesis of book: science of human individual differences is compatible with egalitarianism
  - Could grant differences that people don’t deserve economic disadvantage simply because they happen to inherent particular traits
  - Natural lottery, natural and social
- Bell curve reverts to in egalitarianism, “it has become objectionable to say some people are superior, we are comfortable with the idea that some things are better than others not just according to our point of view but enduring standards of merit” to score higher on iq, white, and economic productivity
- In egalitarianism, is about relations between superior and inferior and creates differences in welfare
- Eugenics asserts hierarchy, superior get more and inferior get less as just and necessary
  - Standard rejection has been genetic sameness, all of us are created equal 99.9%
We can’t pretend genetics don’t matter
- Not eugenic to say people differ genetically or causes differences and they are rewarded for it
- Let’s reimagine how systems can benefit everyone
- Why take the risk that genetic research be used again, but there is risk in the way the system is organized now and hobbles advancement in education, psychology
- If you actually want to help people, you have to understand what they need
- White fupermists do love genetic research, but if progressives don’t research it then it doesn’t have proper values
Most counters against genetic differences are wrong
Can’t use genotype studies to determine differences between races, but we keep returning to it
Understanding differences can help us change the world

Chapter 2 the genetic lottery

autism
- Defined as less than 80? Iq
- More than 90% of variability of autism related to genetics
Twin studies study how close fraternal twins are to identical twins
Mother’s of multiple children best estimate the differences of heredity vs environment
Recombination, combined parent dna
- 525 B sperm created after puberty and women born with eggs
- Each pair of parents can produce 70 T genetically unique offspring even before some mutations
- Look how different children within the same family can be
- 1960 to now, selective breeding of cows made a 1 in 1000 milk producing cow average now
Polygenic
- Mendel p plants are single gene traits
- But for humans, we are polygenic and very complex influenced by many genetic variants And we don’t breed true
- Polygenic indexes
  - Equivalent of estimated breeding values in agriculture
  - Higher polygenic index for hieignt means on average more height
Normal distribution can be produced by randomness
- Tails requires bouncing right every time, it can happen
- Mendel inheritance for one or multiple genes will result in bell curve
- How far out into tails can embryos get?
- Standard deviation used to show tail, one sd is more than 84%, two sd is more than 98%
- 7 6 guy was 4.2 sd of height increasing genetic variance , more than 99.999% of people
No part of genome we can take credit, all luck
Differences between one’s generation so siblings and parents is best as harder as culture and society changes.
- Asian more lactose intolerant genetically, but genes don’t correlate to Costco usage though correlation
Wealth at retirement after life of execution
- Bottom 10% had 51k
- Top had 1.3M
- Look at polygenic index of Educational attainment for white in us, Low quartile 475k less wrath than high quartile
- People high don’t necessarily have more schooling and can’t be explained just by that. Even if same educational attainment, a plus 1 sd had 8% increase in wealth
- They looked at families, people with high genes also likely to have parents with high genes so wealth inequality in genes unclear
- Siblings with more polygenic education also had more wealth
Polygenic index is single number that adds up genetic variance person and related to outcome
Genes cause you to be wealthier,
- Could say government agencies try to redistribute should pack up, author disagrees

cookbooks and college

3 variants identified in science correlated with educational attainment
- Education is related to so many things in life
- Not like relationship between genetic disease as future is not predetermined 100%, but important
- Dataset scientists didn’t seem to find this but disprove others
Genes are recipes, some are ingredients and others are order.
- Expression of gene differs by environment
- Does constrain final product, can’t make lemon chicken and get chocolate cookies
- One step fail can mess it up in weird ways like sugar instead of salt
A party isn’t just about the food, was chair of salt content more important for party is pretty dumb q
- Nature and nurture are always both important
How to decide if recipe step important?
- Choose idea that might be important like leak using prior knowledge
- Look at a few restaurants, and measure really deeply. Do recipes without it and with it
- This how a lot of gene research is done
5HTTLP candiadate gene for depression, many ideas and studies showing relation until 2019 paper destroyed it
- Candidate gene approach fails because there isn’t one gene for depression, not Huntington’s
- Need to study many many more people to find effects because each one has minuscule effect
- Abandoning that you can cook anything at all is not the answer and nothing can be known
Need something quick and easy to get massive scale, measurement problem
- Restaurant would be Yelp rating with many thousands of rating averaged
  - Yelp isn’t representive and not everything important and mass market etc
  - Nice consistent pattern with small correlation
- What is unit for happiness? Smart? Crude but perhaps useful, if you recognize flaws
- Measurement is assigning numbers to something and core of science
- Best to talk about studies about X as measured by Y, happiness as measured by happiness survey
- Cookbook analysis of restaurants will just tell you what ingredients are most common for restaurants you have identified as good
Looking at measurement in genetics
- Grwis looks at genomes and correlates it too things we care about, looks at single nucleotide polymorphism, snips
- Snips sure difference between people of g or t, different ones are alleles. Two copies of every gene
- Sex cells have half œ genes, and recombine in sperm and egg
- Law of independent assortment, getting gene a is independent of getting gene b unless they are close to each other on the genome as recombination less likely to split then
  - Genes in linkage are correlated
  - Snips could indicate linkage with some other allele
- Who rises to the top is cultural and could just be environment correlation
- Doesn’t say environment don’t matter
- Each Snip go for a few extra weeks of school at most, small effects
- 2013 Eric said gewish was like looking at pits of cd to see if song is good
Polygenic attainment
- Polygenic associated with thousands of snips
- 1271 genomic significant snips with 1.1 M people
- Lowest had college rate of 11%
- Highest had rate of college of 55%
- Us differences in height are 1/5 of variance in how they weigh
R squared
- Mathematical idea of strength of cooccurence
- 10% of variance captured means a lot of variance, not graduating from hs to PhD
- Three reasons they are lower
  - Lot of varianaibkity to explain as humans very different
  - So many relevant variables
Fragile families study across many ages and surveyed
- Test was to determine outcome with 12k variables, best model predicted 20% of variance
Even small r squared can add up when repeated, small systemic effects accumulate within families. Social pattern of inequality
Are they causal, chp 5-&6
Mechanisms for influencing education, 7
Changing educational trajectory, 8
Polygenic is within the same race usually

Ancestry and Race

When people hear words like bed and pillow, they will think they heard the word sleep too. It’s activated. In same way genetics, activities racism
No evidence genes explain racial differences
Summary of chapter
- Ancestry isn’t race, and it’s usually white researched
- Individual differences don’t tell us about group differences
- Any result won’t comprise commitment to racial equality
At top level of family tree, ancestors combine and you marry distant cousins as around same culture and family
- Most common ancestor of all humans is in last 15000 BC or 50 AD
- Rare events of mate across world tied us with so many people
- We should feel like we are related to everyone in the world
2 trillion potential ancestors, so likely few connection to ancestry
- Everyone’s family tree converges
- People in different parts of world are genetic different
Use contential geography originally to go with genetic similarity
- Use ancestry or populations word instead of race to talk genetics
This collapse of genetics and race is a mistake
- Some Italians cluster closer to Sweden
- Colonism has many individuals defy barriers
- Race is Inherently hierarchical, historically assigned hierarchy of worse parent race, about social power and fluid
PCA, fundamental component analysis
Ancestry is process based on genealogy and personal, race is pattern based that connects individual to geographic or socially constructed group
- Race don’t stand up under scrutiny
Populations differ
- In genetic variants, 3/4 of variants found in single contention group
- Genetic variants are correlated in different ways, gewis can about correlations so can’t be used across populations
  - European polygenic genes less associated when applied to Africans
  - Eurocentric research, done by and on Europeans, 16% of population and 80% of research of polygenic
    - Example of racist systems reinforcing each other
If x causes difference in individuals, then isn’t a small jump to say group differences have to do with x group differences
- That depends on if X is the biggest factor in difference, could be much more important factors
- Ie foreign born have lower English literacy, but states with more foreign born have higher literacy because immigrants often come to highly educated areas
- Ecological correlation is almost certainly not equal to individual correlations
Racial genetic differences to life outcomes not well founded
But how should we prepare for scientific future when we see differences emerge
- Sam Harris says if you make a list of top 100 things between groups it would be a absolute miracle if they didn’t differ between groups
  - She is skeptical that things will ever best be understood at the genetic level of analysis
- Genetic sameness is shakey moral ground
  - How to be anti racist, a biological anti racist express the idea that people are meaningfully the same in their biology and there are no genetically racial differences
    - Simply false, though race is shaky
- What if scientific evidence shows that racial Europeans is more genetically likely to do better in test scores? How would we deal??
- Equal opportunity produces inequality of the past
- Harris asked, what if the cause of these differences? “the only acceptable answer is Systemic racism, but we will find things out “
  - This is either or, and implies genetics waves social responsibility
    - This misrepresents Harris
- Author thinks racial differences will not show up in important racial groups, but didn’t matter
“individual and racial differences are not the same thing”

Chapter 5 a lottery of life changes

correlation doesn’t equal causation, so does gewis cause outcomes
- Europeans are richer and do better in school, so generic Europeans will be correlated with school
1966, Romania outlawed abortion and contraception in most cases causing huge state run orphanage
- Extreme neglect => is there a critical window
- Harlow “harrowing” experiences of monkeys and mother giving attachment theory
- Lottery of children to foster care or leave them in adoption
  - 2007 54 months iq 81 in foster care and 73(lower then 96%) in orphanage
  - Children rescued earlier had higher iqs
- Did going to foster care cause iq increase??
What is a cause?
- Hume on causes
  - Object followed by another, all object similar to first followed by object similar to second(regularity)
  - If first object Had not been, then second object would not be(counterfactual)
- David Lewis: “something that makes a difference, and the difference it makes is from what would have happened without it “
  - X causes Y means of X didn’t happen then less chance of Y
- Fundamental problem of causal inference: we never get to observe what might have been
- Usually we compare different people having X with not X, and average large groups of people should give signal
  - X should be the only thing in common though
    - Ice cream sales correlated with crime because of weather ie more things in common
    - Therefore randomness is important for experiments
- Counterfactual analysis is bedrock of science
Boundaries of counterfactual experiments
- Foster care experiment again
  - Though we agree that the random placement in foster care caused iq increase, we don’t know the mechanism
    - More likely to give iodine in diet
    - Child brain needs to hear words to develop
    - Etc unknown
- Didn’t mean cause determined effect just that it increased its probability
  - Anti depressions don’t always work
- If less than 70 iq can’t be convicted of a crime
- No confident claims about what caused outcome for an individual
  - Can’t say one has a higher iq because they were adopted or how much it raised their iq
- Is it true in all times and places? Don’t know
  - Mechanism understanding helps here, biological more robust
  - Polygenic increase showed up more in women as they have gotten more access to education
  - One Evolutionary biologist thought that any historical experiment without sorting mechanism was “no use at”
Portability of effect is scale, thin vs thick causation
- Thin model of causation, socially and historically specific phenomena.
  - We don’t understand mechanism, probabilistic, not deterministic associated with effect, and unclear portability. But we say it causes it
- Thick causation, Down syndrome is about deterministic portable cause of having more chromosomes.
  - Forward and reverse inference with equally well
  - Law of nature
- We think genes always have to be thick, but it can be thin

Chapter 6 random Assignments by nature

Unethical to modify genes of unborn, luckily we get random change already between siblings and more
- Remember Thin causation, can’t say gene determine anything about your life
Author makes more money than her brother 😂
Does she and her brother have different heights because they inherited different genes?
- Scientists would say it’s the wrong question because many factors pay into it
Instead ask do genes cause difference in height on average?
- IDB, identical by descent in 50% chance for siblings on any sequence. Stochastic process , empirically 37%-62%
  - If less similar if there more differences in height, yes
- Heritability of height, is ratio of siblings differences because for different genes OVER how much people vary in their height generally
- Heritability of height in one study was 80%
Heritability the idea was live for millennia inheritance about continuing social hierarchy
- But this ignores that half of genetic variability is within children
- genetically different people show different phenotypes
Twin studies, usually studied raised together at same time
- There are minor genetic differences between identical twins because of mutations and can be expressed
- Same environments that social scientists care about and social status, fraternal twins share environment and identical share more
2015 nature summarized twins of over 2 million, 7 domains
- Two in personality
- Success in education,
- Labor market
- Social hazards to health lik poor neighborhood
- Last two risk for mental health
- And then social/relationships
- In every domain fraternal twins are more different than identical between 1/4 to 1/2 due to inheritance
- “When people inherit different genes, their lives turn out differently”
Heritable differs across society/culture and what important to it though. Different social structures change it, ie woman
- Some therefore think it’s a waste
- We don’t treat other measures as a waste though it’s time and place specific like geni index of inequality
Twin study
- Assumes identical twins aren’t treated different because of being identical vs fraternal
- Gewis worth at most a few weeks of schooling, 13% of the variance like 11% for family income impact on educational attainment
- 40% of variance due to genes from twin study, this gap from 13% of gewis is the “case of missing heritability”
  - There are unmeasured polygenic indexes or twins overestimate
  - Gewis likely underestimate effect of genes especially rates ones and very weak but nonzero one
  - Gewis also could be picking up correlations in environment/culture
Sibling regression, look at differences of relatives and see similarity
- Looked at Educational attainment, height, BMI, age at first birth in women
- What you could do is use gewis to construct polygenic index construction and then apply it to family members. Within family get less cultural effects
2k fraternal twins 12-21 look at education, height, intelligence, neuritism
- 3.5 in height difference and more if they were more genetically different
- Different in some test scores by .5 sd
- This is some of the most compelling evidence that genetic differences cause different life outcomes
Adoptees , 6k Polygenic index associated with educational attainment but weaker than non adoptees
- So has more of an impact if you are raised by your parent
Both transmitted and untransmitted genes are cultural, but transmitted genes are the ones actually genetic
- You still have educational attainment impact
Inescapable, “genetic differences between people cause difference in educational attainment and many other traits”

Chapter 7, the mystery of how

author didn’t have much, but she had a near perfect score on SAT
Merit scholarship improves us news ranks, so colleges do it
Genetic causes must happen entirely under the skin right, nah it’s about interaction with our institutions and people
1972, thought experiment what if you don’t send red hairs to school then red hair would be correlated with less reading scores
- Causal chains - red hair shows red color and creates biases that has socia policy
- Levels of analysis - objects in each layer are part of next layer so proteins vs appearance vs people is just one level. Any statement implies it’s one of the best levels of analysis
- Alternative possible worlds- there is another possible world where the causal chain is broken
ADHD isn’t purely personal or social
Is it red heads can’t go to school or Huntington’s? How can the causal chain best be broken or strengthen?
Eugenic thinkers has implied a specific causal chain
- Short causal chain by developing intelligence
- Intelligence best understood at organism level of intelligence not social
- Dystopian changes required for political changes
- Ie genes cause social class and some are just better than others
- politics against it are fighting a losing battle
5 things we know about genes and educational outcomes
- in the brain
  - Bioannotation analysis, Genes are Preferential expressed across body, given gewis can look at where changes are usually
    - Gewis associated with educational attainment are in the brain and neurons
- Start very early before even born
  - Preferential expressed prenatally
  - No genetic effects at 10 months for intelligent tasks but yes at 2 years
  - Correlated with talking before 3
- About intelligence developed by iq
  - 12 children tests of executive function 8-15 year old, if you do well are one you do good on the others usually, aggregated score scores test is general Ed
    - Gemeral EF is nearly 100% heritable, all difference are due to genetic differences. Identical twins are nearly identical , fraternal twins are correlated 0.5 half as similar
    - PERFECT HERITABILITY FOR BEHAVIORAL TRAIT
    - General EF correlated between 0.4 and 0.5 with state tests
  - As early as 5, polygenic index affects iq tests
- Also development of non cognitive skills
  - “It takes more than intelligence to act intelligently” - dvotersky
  - Motivation, perseverance, tenacity, non cognitive is a misnomer more emotional
  - “How Child succeed” and “grit”, growth mindset
  - People were quick to use this as opposition to genetics(not good luck or good genes), “talent is really about deliberate practice”
    - Incorrect
  - 60% heritable consistent with iq(60-80%)
  - Gewis of educational attainment also correlated with interpersonal skills(friendly, confident, cooperative, communicative) children seem to adults at age 9, 12 adhd, 15 want to work in high status
  - Remove test performance gewis and see how gewis for educational attainment helps
  - Genetic association, look at what traits most correlate with the gewis educational attainment
    - Openness to experience, novel, curious
    - Defer gratification
    - Less risk taking in general
  - Higher risk for many other disorders including skezopherina, bipolar, ocd
- Understanding requires understanding social institutions
- Genetic effects on cognitive ability only get stronger with time
  - Genetic Effects on cognitive abilities only get stronger over time, from Britton to around age 10
  - Genetic effects on openness and orderly Ed’s increase until age 30
  - Study parents
    - Children smarter at 2, got more cognitive simulation from parents at age 4 even controlling for previous parenting behavior
    - Parents with More cognitive simulation at age 2, had kids more reading at age 4, even controlling for previous cognitive function
    - Children who babble better makes parents respond back
  - Study went to family and looked at warmth, tidy house, cognitively simulating
    - Only cognitively stimulating like activities and toys were associated with both parent genetics and educational attainment
  - Math path chain
    - Most phds took calc in hs, but 2018 only 15% of hs seniors completed it and even less previously
    - 44% in geometry in 9th grade will take calc
    - Genetic stratification at beginning of hs