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I don’t understand why more people are not interested in genealogy and dna testing.
If you want to get into dna testing then you should do it soon because it will not survive the PC revolution in the Western world. The evidence seems to be that our genes have a far greater influence on our outcomes in life than was previously thought. But academics involved in this research are being attacked as racists and are being purged from the universities. Anything which goes against PC dogma is taboo.
The latest victim is Steve Hsu a professor in America. I remember him for two very interesting things he said in a podcast. The first was that there are 300,000 Chinese with an IQ over 160 compared with 10,000 in the USA. Most of the great discoveries made in the world have come from over 160 IQ geniuses like Maxwell and Newton so unless the Chinese geniuses are weighed down by the enormous number of Chinese thickos I think we will see exciting technological developments coming from China.
The second thing he mentioned was that there are 100,000 untested "rape kits" in America. Rape kits are evidence from rapes that the police could not afford to prepare for dna testing. I think Hse said the main cost of testing is in the collection and extraction of dna from these kits. He estimated $1,000 for each kit even though the actual testing would only cost $50. I heard this podcast about 2 years ago so the figures might be wrong. Of course, the main cost of all this would be the trials and the imprisonments so it is fairly certain that the kits will be quietly destroyed.
Dna tests are showing that many fathers are not the genetic fathers of their children. I think the rate of this is much higher than was previously estimated. This is causing family disputes and unhappiness. It won’t be long before someone is killed because of a dna test. That might be an excuse for shutting it all down in the UK. Or they could use privacy concerns. You might find it hard to get health or life insurance if your dna profile was made public or hacked.
If you do get a dna test then I would recommend using a service where you can see the individual segments you have received from your ancestors. Ancestry DNA do not give you this information. You would be better off with 23andMe or Myheritage. I can’t say anything about the others because I have not looked at them. With a bit of research you will be able to work out which segment (a contiguous chuck of dna) on each chromosome came from which ancestor going back to about 1800. You could combine this information with health information about your ancestor and the functions of the shared genes. We are still in the dark about what we get from the various genes but I think the Chinese will fill in the gaps in the near future.
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Have you had your dna tested? on 19:42 - Jun 25 with 2069 views
Have you had your dna tested? on 17:51 - Jun 25 by Professor
So you firstly make an assumption Newton, Bach et al were geniuses. We don't know. We can't know.
Out history does not record genius outside western and classical civilisation well. I could talk about islamic science.
I said certain Jewish sects, like some Christian sects and European Royals, where intermarriage in a restricted genetic pool leads to mutational defects. This is widely known and accepted.
So the classical racist US in the IQ test is in the US which in 1972 suggested African Americans are of lower intelligence. This gap had closed by the 1990s as people had begun to have access to better education. I have worked in Africa (Ethiopia and Malawi) and there is no difference in intelligence of the people -just access to opportunity. This is why Black Lives Matter's principles are so important.
In fact having worked with Canadians, Ethiopians, Dutch, Malawians, South Africans, Brazilians, Colombians, Israelis, Americans, French, Germans, Greeks, Filipinos, Thais, Danes, Norwegians, Italians, Latvians, Russians, Ukrainians, Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese and Czechs the one thing that has never struck me is that one nation or race is more or less intelligent. They are all people. They were all different even within any race or nationality.
[Post edited 25 Jun 2020 18:04]
Sometimes people say things that are so outlandish that you wonder if they really said that. “So you firstly make an assumption Newton, Bach et al were geniuses. We don't know.". Maybe, you don't know but to the rest of us it is obvious.
We know they were geniuses from their works. But, in your world, where everyone can do anything with the right education you probably believe that Bach and Newton just studied hard. Do you think that you could take any kid today and with enough support and education they could achieve the equivalent of inventing calculus or composing the St Matthew Passion?
Despite your academic background if everyone seemed equally intelligent to you then I don’t think you have met many highly intelligent people. I’ve known a few and they have astonished me by how quickly they solve any sort of problems. They see what’s wrong instantly and they have time to double check their solutions before I could even understand what the problem was. But, compared to geniuses like Bach and Newton these highly intelligent people are as dumb as rocks.
This interesting video will give you a bit of an idea why Bach was a genius :
Here’s a short explanation of Newton’s genius :
You ask “why would the word of a physicist be accepted on IQ and genetics?”. The answer is that he is a polymath. That’s the thing about really clever people. He might be a great physicist but he might also know more about genetics than most geneticists and more about psychometrics then most psychologists.
Who are the experts on IQ tests? Psychologists. Most of them believe there are average IQ differences between races. Do you accept that? No. You will only listen to those who confirm what you what to believe. By the way, who are the smartest people in your university? I’ll tell you. The physicists.
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Have you had your dna tested? on 21:50 - Jun 25 with 2005 views
Have you had your dna tested? on 22:14 - Jun 25 by Professor
I am not very intimidating! I’m a short, fat middle aged Welsh scientist.
I will be replying to Arthur in the morning. Enjoying a glass of Pinot Noir.
It is very odd, you come across as a thoroughly decent chap.
There's quite a few posters on here of late though, that are desperately trying to prove how intelligent they are. That's probably the case here, I notice Chaddy having a few pops at you as well recently.
I want a mate like Flashberryjacks, who wears a Barnsley jersey with "Swans are my second team" on the back.
The rise of the internet genius can be traced back (possibly by genetics) to the moment they discovered that there are videos on YouTube that back up every theory, “fact” or supposition you care to think of. There are so many examples on here of people who find a YouTube video and post it here as if it’s proof positive that they were right all along.
Have you had your dna tested? on 22:19 - Jun 25 by Neath_Jack
It is very odd, you come across as a thoroughly decent chap.
There's quite a few posters on here of late though, that are desperately trying to prove how intelligent they are. That's probably the case here, I notice Chaddy having a few pops at you as well recently.
Chad is fine. We have disagreement but I respect her and Lohengrin. I may dislike or disagree with what they say but is reasoned and based on intelligence. I can’t deal with the tinfoil hat brigade though. Loh and I had a good disagreement over the EU but accepted the reasons we had.
I just don’t like the internet trawlers, the armchair epidemiologists and I saw a video.
I never think I am particularly clever. I work and have worked hard for 30 odd years and found a niche in which I found I could make a difference.
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Have you had your dna tested? on 22:35 - Jun 25 with 1929 views
Have you had your dna tested? on 14:47 - Jun 25 by Arthur_from_OTB
I said the cost of the dna tests is in the "collection and extraction" of data. The kits are in thousands of police stations and the dna has to be extracted from the clothing, tools, etc very carefully so it is not contaminated. That is all very time consuming. The actual test is not that expensive but if could be done for a few pennies then the DNA testing companies would charge a lot less than the $50 minimum you see at the moment. Do you expect your electrician to just charge you for a bit cable and a few fuses when you call him out? I guess you are not a Professor of Economics.
When you say there is no evidence of "intelligence and racial genetics" do you mean there is no such thing as intelligence or do you just mean that there is no evidence of intelligence differences between groups of people (let's call them races) that are due to genetics.
That there are average genetic differences between people who come from different parts of the world is obvious. For example, Jewish people will have a much higher chance of having Tay-Sachs disease than black Africans. The reverse applies to sickle cell disease. Whatever intelligence is there seems to be a genetic link. For example, we know that on average intelligent parents will have intelligent children but there is little correlation between the intelligence, as measured by IQ, of adopted children and their parents. There’s a New Scientist link to this here :
The difference between average Jewish intelligence and average Black African intelligence, as measured by IQ and things like Nobel Prize wins, is noticeable to most people who dare to see the world as it is. Are you saying this difference just due to social differences between the two groups and genetic differences have nothing to do with it?
The 300,000 -10,000 difference is a result of the population size difference, as you say, and the average IQ difference between the Chinese and Americans. The Chinese have a higher average IQ than us in the West. You made a derogatory comment about Chinese education but I recently read the blog of Chinese boy who was sent to the UK get A-levels so he could go to university here. In China his parents knew he wasn’t bright enough to get in to any of the top Chinese universities. He came here aged 16 with hardly any English but in two years his A-level results were among the best in the country and he was awarded a scholarship to study at Cambridge. This was someone well below the top rank in China.
If you are going to reply to this then don’t say "I’m a professor of this or that and you must accept whatever I say as truth". In the words of Brian Clough "You can throw your medals in the bin”. I’ve met and worked with more academics than I’ve had hot dinners and as far as I am concerned they are mainly ideologues who lack common sense.
Good evening Mr Gove, I see that you still dislike experts...
It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. - Carl Sagan
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Have you had your dna tested? on 23:07 - Jun 25 with 1907 views
Have you had your dna tested? on 22:34 - Jun 25 by Professor
Chad is fine. We have disagreement but I respect her and Lohengrin. I may dislike or disagree with what they say but is reasoned and based on intelligence. I can’t deal with the tinfoil hat brigade though. Loh and I had a good disagreement over the EU but accepted the reasons we had.
I just don’t like the internet trawlers, the armchair epidemiologists and I saw a video.
I never think I am particularly clever. I work and have worked hard for 30 odd years and found a niche in which I found I could make a difference.
Prof, as regards those DNA ancestry kits you see advertised, I was listening to a piece on the BBC World Service a week or so ago and the gist of it was how unreliable they are. The journalist submitted either four or five different samples to different (seemingly reputable companies) and received wildly different results back for the money. Are people being fleeced?
Just as a quick aside Lisa and I would probably disagree on the colour of an orange at the minute but on the subject of Bach I suspect we’d agree, he was undeniably rather special.
An idea isn't responsible for those who believe in it.
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Have you had your dna tested? on 23:17 - Jun 25 with 1884 views
Have you had your dna tested? on 22:22 - Jun 25 by exiledclaseboy
The rise of the internet genius can be traced back (possibly by genetics) to the moment they discovered that there are videos on YouTube that back up every theory, “fact” or supposition you care to think of. There are so many examples on here of people who find a YouTube video and post it here as if it’s proof positive that they were right all along.
Have you had your dna tested? on 16:37 - Jun 25 by Professor
I'll just say it again-there is not link between genetics (of a population) and intelligence. Not to say that's the case for an individual
Your recent contributions to this forum are second to none, Prof. The way you deconstruct proof by YouTube arguments with patience, despite your expertise, is commendable.
Have you had your dna tested? on 23:15 - Jun 25 by Lohengrin
Prof, as regards those DNA ancestry kits you see advertised, I was listening to a piece on the BBC World Service a week or so ago and the gist of it was how unreliable they are. The journalist submitted either four or five different samples to different (seemingly reputable companies) and received wildly different results back for the money. Are people being fleeced?
Just as a quick aside Lisa and I would probably disagree on the colour of an orange at the minute but on the subject of Bach I suspect we’d agree, he was undeniably rather special.
If you view it as a bit of fun then that’s fine- a bit like a palm reading. The genomics people think they are a joke.
I must admit, to my shame, I am not a great lover of classical music. I guess I am odd as I did when young. Poisoned by punk and psychedelic rock
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Have you had your dna tested? on 23:37 - Jun 25 with 1847 views
Have you had your dna tested? on 23:22 - Jun 25 by Professor
If you view it as a bit of fun then that’s fine- a bit like a palm reading. The genomics people think they are a joke.
I must admit, to my shame, I am not a great lover of classical music. I guess I am odd as I did when young. Poisoned by punk and psychedelic rock
I suspected as much. I’ll not make any claim to know the first thing about science but the laughter of the people on the BBC who did told me all I needed to know about the kits.
This is well worth your time though, Prof. Clare is a wonderful Welsh writer. I think you, or anybody else who may stumble across this post, will get a lot out of it.
An idea isn't responsible for those who believe in it.
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Have you had your dna tested? on 23:47 - Jun 25 with 1837 views
Have you had your dna tested? on 23:15 - Jun 25 by Lohengrin
Prof, as regards those DNA ancestry kits you see advertised, I was listening to a piece on the BBC World Service a week or so ago and the gist of it was how unreliable they are. The journalist submitted either four or five different samples to different (seemingly reputable companies) and received wildly different results back for the money. Are people being fleeced?
Just as a quick aside Lisa and I would probably disagree on the colour of an orange at the minute but on the subject of Bach I suspect we’d agree, he was undeniably rather special.
You are referring to the race part of the test where they say 10% of your DNA is from Africa, etc. There are different percentages from the various testing companies because they are using different databases. It is not very accurate.
The part of DNA testing that is accurate and which I find the most interesting is the cousin finder. You can see what dna you share with your cousins and you will be able to find common ancestors. If you have already made some work on your family tree this will confirm your work and it will allow you to extend your tree back. For example, I now know who all my ancestors are going back to the end of the 18th century.
When you go back to the 18th century and even to the start of the 19th century, if you are a young person, you will find that you don’t have any dna from some of your ancestors. We all have black, Chinese and even Eskimo ancestors. For example, they might have been Roman soldiers or early Chinese sailors but we probably wouldn’t have any dna from them. The soldier’s or sailor’s dna in each chromosome has a 50% chance of being passed down to the next generation. After perhaps 80 generations that dna is gone.
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Have you had your dna tested? on 23:50 - Jun 25 with 1832 views
I have an IQ score of 144, and I'm pretty much a loser.. I don't believe intelligence exists though.. it's just a gimmick and a whole meritocracy issue.
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