Population differences are important when working with genome-wide association studies, because a model "trained on" one population won't perform as well against the "test set" of a different population. Suppose you do a big study and find a bunch of SNPs that correlate with a trait, like schizophrenia or liking opera. The frequencies of those SNPs for two populations from the same continent (like Japanese and Chinese) will hugely correlate (Pearson's _r_ ≈ 0.97), but for more genetically-distant populations from different continents, the correlation will still be big but not huge (like _r_ ≈ 0.8 or whatever).
-What do these differences in SNP frequencies mean in practice?? We ... don't know yet. At least some population differences are fairly well-understood: I'd tell you about sickle-cell and lactase persistence, except [then I would have to scream](/2017/Dec/interlude-xi/). There are some cases where we see populations independently evolve different adaptations that solve the same problem: people in Tibet and Peru have both adapted to high altitudes, but the Tibetans did it by breathing faster and the Peruvians did it with more hemoglobin!
+What do these differences in SNP frequencies mean in practice?? We ... don't know yet. At least some population differences are fairly well-understood: I'd tell you about sickle-cell and lactase persistence, except [then I would have to scream](/2017/Dec/interlude-xi/). There are some cases where we see populations independently evolve different adaptations that solve the same problem: people living on the plateaus of Tibet and Peru have both adapted to high altitudes, but the Tibetans did it by breathing faster and the Peruvians did it with more hemoglobin!
Sorry, "the Tibetans did it with ..." is sloppy phrasing on my part; what I actually mean is that the Tibetans who weren't genetically predisposed to breathe faster were more likely to die without leaving children behind. That's how evolution works!
[TODO: link, Cynthia M. Beall, "Two Routes to Functional Adaptation", double-check what "resting ventilation" means]
-The third part of the book is about genetic influences on class structure! Untangling the true causes of human variation is a really hard technical philosophy problem, but behavioral geneticists have at least gotten started on the problem with their simple _ACE_ model.
+The third part of the book is about genetic influences on class structure! Untangling the true causes of human variation is a really hard technical philosophy problem, but behavioral geneticists have at least gotten started with their simple _ACE_ model. It works like this: first, assume that genetic variation for a trait is _additive_ (if you have the appropriate SNP, you get more of the trait), rather than exhibiting epistasis () or Mendelian dominance ().
[p. 212-4: A + C + E model and comparing identical and fraternal twins (different from twins raised apart)]
[ACE model assumes no assortative mating, which leads to an underestimate of A: because it makes fraternal twins resemble each other for non-environmental reasons]
Tags: cathartic, news
Status: draft
-Google [recently](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22373635) [sent](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/f6pyiu/cloud_vision_api_will_not_return_gendered_labels/) out an email to their [Cloud Vision API](https://cloud.google.com/vision) customers, notifying them that the service will stop returning "woman" or "man" labels for people in photos. Being charitable, I can think of reasons why I might defend or support such a decision. Detecting the _sex_ of humans in images is going to significantly less reliable than just picking out the humans in the photo, and the way the machines do sex-classification is going to depend on their training corpus, which might contain embedded cultural prejudices that [Google might not want to](https://ai.google/principles/) inadvertently use their technological hegemony to reproduce and amplify. Just using a "person" label dodges the whole problem.
+Google [recently](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22373635) [sent](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/f6pyiu/cloud_vision_api_will_not_return_gendered_labels/) out an email to their [Cloud Vision API](https://cloud.google.com/vision) customers, notifying them that the service will stop returning "woman" or "man" labels for people in photos. Being charitable (as one does), I can think of reasons why I might defend or support such a decision. Detecting the _sex_ of humans in images is going to significantly less reliable than just picking out the humans in the photo, and the way the machines do sex-classification is going to depend on their training corpus, which might contain embedded cultural prejudices that [Google might not want to](https://ai.google/principles/) inadvertently use their technological hegemony to reproduce and amplify. Just using a "person" label dodges the whole problem.
I think of my experience playing with [FaceApp](https://www.faceapp.com/), the _uniquely best piece of software in the world_, which lets the user apply neural-network-based transformations to their photos to see how their opposite-sex analogue would look! (Okay, the software actually has lots of transformations and filters available—
"Given that a person's gender cannot be inferred by appearance [...]" reads the email. _Cannot_ be inferred.
This is [Cultural Revolution](https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2671118186) shit! This is [Lysenko](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism)-tier mindfuckery up in here!
+
+coronavirus, Elizabeth Warren
I mean, it's an explanation, but that's different from an excuse: being a jerk [has consequences](https://xkcd.com/1357/), and you need to take the consequences like a man.
-This, then, is the mindset of a soldier (though our [beautiful cutting weapons](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/24/guided-by-the-beauty-of-our-weapons/) be words instead of swords): to inflict pain, to incur guilt—and yet to have [only tactical](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2020/02/relationship-outcomes-are-not-particularly-sensitive-to-small-variations-in-verbal-ability/) regrets. Given the chance to do it all over again, you would—but solely to be more skillful in projecting rhetorical force to secure the objective—to say more clearly what _needed to be said_. Not to inflict less pain or incur less guilt.
+This, then, is the mindset of a soldier (though our [beautiful cutting weapons](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/24/guided-by-the-beauty-of-our-weapons/) be words instead of swords): to inflict pain, to incur guilt—and yet to have [only tactical](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2020/02/relationship-outcomes-are-not-particularly-sensitive-to-small-variations-in-verbal-ability/) regrets. Given the chance to do it all over again, you would—but solely to be more skillful in projecting rhetorical force to secure the objective, to say more clearly what _needed to be said_. Not to inflict less pain or incur less guilt.
Tags: epistemology
Status: draft
-"I mean, if that explanation actually makes you feel happier, then fine ..."
+"I mean, if that explanation actually makes you feel happier, then fine."
"Feeling happier isn't what explanations are for. Explanations are for [predicting our observations](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/a7n8GdKiAZRX86T5A/making-beliefs-pay-rent-in-anticipated-experiences).
https://twitter.com/TomChivers/status/1204715688759365633
-"often seem to have a fixation with categorization common among those on the autism spectrum." https://www.transgendermap.com/politics/sexology/autogynephilia/activists/
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+"often seem to have a fixation with categorization common among those on the autism spectrum." https://www.transgendermap.com/politics/sexology/autogynephilia/activists/
+
+People liked the _Origins of Unfairness_ review—
+https://twitter.com/cailinmeister/status/1220087579225145344
+https://twitter.com/DRMacIver/status/1228233783045787648
+https://twitter.com/conmccashin/status/1226170284308344833
+https://twitter.com/hgetson/status/1226068206349144065
+https://twitter.com/KSpeicher/status/1225535875880300544
+https://twitter.com/linton7119/status/1223621246304366594
Eugenics
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2020/02/20/discovery-institute-makes-hay-of-dawkins-tweet-and-a-geneticist-mistakenly-says-that-artificial-selection-wont-work-in-humans/
+
+
+Footnote 4 to the introduction of Part III recaps the argument. If the black/white IQ gap in the U.S. were caused by racism, you'd predict that blacks would have higher IQs in countries where they're the ruling majority, like in Haiti or most of sub-Saharan Africa, but they don't. You might think racism affects IQ by means of its affect on socioeconomic status (SES), but adjusting for parental SES only diminishes the gap by a third.
+
+You might think that the tests are culturally biased, but if that were true, you'd expect the distortion
+
+(And on the hereditarian model, parental SES could be caused by parental cognitive abilities.)
+
+
+https://www.unz.com/article/a-troublesome-intelligence/
+
+https://www.unz.com/author/chanda-chisala/
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