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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 00:35 - Jun 26 with 1619 views
Your first paragraph is pretty much what they were talking about, you’re quite right.
As for the rest I honestly don’t know much about it. The wife traced her family back to the eighteenth century with the help of a friend who’s into that sort of thing. She did it the old school way though, via the census and the births, weddings and death registers. Pretty time consuming.
An idea isn't responsible for those who believe in it.
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Have you had your dna tested? on 01:18 - Jun 26 with 1586 views
I'm back to the late 1600's, with all 4 lines of my Grandparents. It can be very time consuming and frustrating as you hit brick walls. I've uncovered a few dark family deeds and scandals. The contribution and sacrifice of my bloodline to the Great war and WW2 was previously unknown. Newspaper articles from the last few hundred yrs can be fun to read. Anyone interested in starting, Ancestry and Find My Past both do offers to get you on your way and Roots Chat is a fantastic forum with so many helpful people who love a challenge.
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Have you had your dna tested? on 01:36 - Jun 26 with 1579 views
Yes they probably were. But you don't know that. You make an summation based on record. They have not been tested, we have not met them. If you are as au fait with Popper as you claim you should realise this is induction- you make an assumption without measurable evidence. Being highly likely is not proof (not that actually many things can be when you dig deeper)
2. Race, genetics and intelligence
So there are academic works that run up through the 1990s which 'prove' racial differences. Interesting how these reinforce stereotypes of the lazy Mexican or the dumb 'negro'. used in the US to reinforce segregation through until the 60s. There are two distinct problems with these conclusions. The first is around genetics. As you say in the posts about 23 and me, we are a genetic mix. So are most populations with some exceptions (specific sects and royalty). So in terms of genetics with a mixed population how can you define race? I am sure this was done of basic phenotypes around skin colour not defining race through genetics (which probably can't be done even now). Another issue is that intelligence is likely to be polygenic trait also subject to strong epigenetic change. To find a link to a phenotype one needs a strong quantifiable trait. This is what geneticists call a quantifiable trait locus or QTL. In my work I have spent a lot of time measuring a QTL for geneticist to map functional loci to the chicken genome. These have been a mix of projects using defined inbred lines where we can cross breed the trait to better map-mainly in Salmonella resistance which we can quantify as bacterial load and immune response to infection. This is a clear system. Transferring this to a disease outbreak was much trickier, but we struck lucky with a fowl typhoid (Salmonella Gallinarum) outbreak in Northern Ireland where we could get bacterial load and pathology measurements. We were also able (by having remote and distinct populations) to look at village chickens in Africa following both phenotypic traits selected for (comb type, plumage colour) and show adaptation to disease (as we determined the prevalent infections) at regional and village level. Coincidentally we also were able to show these chicken ecotypes had descended from introductions based on religion. We had Christian and Muslim chickens. So why is this important-well IQ is a subjective test to a greater extent than geneticists use for mapping. Psychologists are very divided on its efficacy (read properly not you tube). So given we cannot clearly define race, we have no QTL and a phenotype that is likely to be highly polygenic and subject to huge epigenetic variation assigning any genetics to intelligence is poor science. Furthermore, most evolutionary biologists (who are usually remarkably clever too) suggest there is no evolutionary advantage to select for lower intelligence. The only way this could happen is if a group are a previous Homo sapiens evolutionary group co-existing. This does not tend to happen, so is unlikely.
The second area is around psychology and sociology. People have re-analysed some of the studies and guess what? Poverty and race are completely interchangeable here. Other work has shown differential IQ in a family group with variable levels of poverty. Indeed, there is also more variation of IQ within a family than between a 'racial group'. As for your assertion that psychologists believe there are racial differences in IQ-a quick scan of current literature (via pubmed and the library) suggest this is frankly rubbish. There are some-chiefly older white, jewish men who seem to perpetuate this.
3. Physicists
Having an 'A' level in physics I tend to agree. Perhaps the greatest influence on me as a scientist was Professor M.H.F. Wilkins. Maurice was a physicist, who had worked on the Manhattan Project. He was one of the founders of the science of Biophysics at Kings College London. Maurice was also very keen on better social responsibility in science. I signed up to take his module in 'Soclal Impact of Biosciences' as an undergraduate in 1988. This introduced me to scientific philosophy. We also discussed the darker sides of bioscience including the Tuskegee Experiment and eugenics. Maurice's opinion was 'Anyone who considers there is any superiority based on differential intelligence of races is very foolish'. He also told us that being in a room full of Nobel Prize winners was very underwhelming. He also was very disappointed in the views of his co-laureate Jim Watson. Watson is one of these older white scientists who cling on to myth of race and intelligence. He has also been revealed as a homophobe and misogynist in recent year.
Eugenics (which is what this is heading for) is nasty thing. Twisted by its proponents for their means.
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Have you had your dna tested? on 09:39 - Jun 26 with 1522 views
I read an article once which detailed the responses of a load of white supremacist types in America who had undergone these tests, to brag about how Aryan their blood lines were obviously.
Highly amusing when many of the tests indicated the presence of Jewish or African genes in their previously pure master race bloodlines. To say that they weren't happy was an understatement.
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Have you had your dna tested? on 12:51 - Jun 26 with 1458 views
Your post is a perfect illustration of why are an ideologue and why most of the academics I have met lack common sense.
Let’s start with Popper. I wrote that I was familiar with Popper but I didn’t say I was a Popperian. Have you not just made "an assumption without measurable evidence" yourself. Popper, to my mind, was a one idea man and falsificationism is a useful idea but if you dig into his works a bit deeper you will discover that he didn’t believe that animals and humans used induction at all. I will try to find the quote if you doubt me. Animal learning and our behaviour in everyday life are based on induction. This is why I say most academics lack common sense and their wisdom is usually confined to their narrow academic speciality.
When it comes to diseases in chickens I would accept what you say as gospel but when it comes to matters outside your expertise then your medals and your arguments from authority count for nothing. As far as I am concerned you are on the same level playing field as the duck man on here who waddles about asking questions but not reading the answers. I exaggerate. You are still above him. At least you don’t down arrow me at every opportunity.
I’ve created hundreds of family trees and it is all done by looking for confirming cases rather than setting up an hypothesis and then trying to falsify it. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve come across disconfirming evidence that would lead most reasonable people to give up a line of research. For example, I track someone to right parish but he has the wrong first name and the occupation doesn’t match but a feeling together with an almost unconscious calculation of probability tells me to carry on and eventually I find that I was right.
When you say I can’t say Newton and Bach were geniuses because “They have not been tested” that is silly. Their works are the test and they stand as a proxy for an intelligence test. It is a bit like saying we can’t tell if Shakespeare had a high verbal IQ because he’s never been tested and there’s always the possibility that he could have been an illiterate moron.
I explained the genetic mix question earlier. We are all descended from people from all over the world but we only have significant segments from recent ancestors because half of the dna in each chromosome is lost every generation. As you know the Y chromosome works differently and that shows that our ancient ancestors lived in groups who shared the same Y chromosome characteristics, i.e. not mixed as we are today.
Little is known about epigentics at the moment so there is no reliable evidence for or against any of the claims you or I might make. Your point about polygenic phenotypes is ludicrous. You seem to be saying that we can’t say intelligence is genetic because intelligence involves too many genes. I recently watched a very interesting lecture on Youtube by Daniela Witten, daughter of physics genius Ed Witten, on how they are using statistical learning and network theory to discover what combinations of genes are related to diseases when these diseases involve tens of thousands of genes. The Chinese are doing the same with Intelligence.
Your claim about poverty and race being interchangeable doesn’t hold water. Children from middle class black families in the US score lower on IQ tests then children from poor white families.
When you say there is “no evolutionary advantage to select for lower intelligence” you must realise that is wrong. Being poor and often less intelligence doesn’t stop people having lots of kids. Haven’t you noticed that better educated career women have fewer children than those who left school without any qualifications. Intelligence would be a long way below physical strength and looks when it comes to evolutionary advantage in most parts of the world. However when it comes to living in the colder parts of the Northern Hemisphere then intelligence would come more into play.
Your claim that it is only older Jewish men who believe there are IQ differences between races is not true. You are right that some psychologist will not admit to believing this but that is only because they do not want to lose their jobs. This an interesting statement about what many prominent psychologists believed about IQ and race in 1994.
26 years is way out of date. The principles of genetics are exactly the same in birds and mammals. The principles of how you link a genotype are identical. Genealogy is nothing to do with this. You are clearly an intelligent and well read person. But there are gaps in your knowledge and understanding of genetics.
The one thing you are right about is the use of AI and machine learning to interrogate data in a much more efficient way. Increasing in use, though still has a few issues with reliability
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Have you had your dna tested? on 15:58 - Jun 26 with 1350 views
When it comes to diseases in chickens I would accept what you say as gospel but when it comes to matters outside your expertise then your medals and your arguments from authority count for nothing. As far as I am concerned you are on the same level playing field as the duck man on here who waddles about asking questions but not reading the answers. I exaggerate. You are still above him. At least you don’t down arrow me at every opportunity.
I have read your answers but not the whole website I admit. There's some questions that you refuse to answer, such as on what thread were you called a racist for opposing BLM and what were the two Russian intelligence operatives doing 500 yards away from Skripal's house at the time he was poisoned. I understand your reluctance to answer though as I don't believe the first example happened, at least I can't find it. As for the second, it's going to be very difficult for you to come up with anything credible, not that it normally stops you.
BTW I have never down arrowed any of your posts. I don't down arrow anybody. Perhaps you can find an example of me doing so?
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Have you had your dna tested? on 17:23 - Jun 26 with 1324 views
I had no evidence it was you I just wanted to narrow down the field. Thank you for that information. If the guilty person is reading this thread then if you stop down arrowing me now that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you, but if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you and I will down arrow you until you look like a cross between St Sebastian and a pin cushion. I jest, of course. Who cares about down arrows?
Now back to Salisbury. First of all they couldn’t have gone to house because they would have been on Skripals cctv or the cctv of someone in the street. What were they doing there? There’s a small chance they were tourists. They could also have been doing spying work unrelated to Skripal and the Skripals were used to frame them. They could just have been couriers working for some dodgy oligarch living in the Salisbury area. There are some Russian oligarchs living near me. The Uk is full of Russians. I chat to one most days. My favourite theory is that Skripal wanted to defect back to Russia but our secret services stopped him and set up a situation to blame the Russians for a chemical attack.
All these are just fanciful theories. I don’t know what happened. All I do know is that the official story doesn’t make sense and in the words of that great and learned woman Judge Judy "If something does not make sense then it is a lie".
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