

Childhood Autism and Assortative Mating - victorhn
http://home.uchicago.edu/hgolden/Images/Golden_Assortative_Mating.pdf

======
zach
Don't miss the end (pp. 41-43), where he calculates that the net economic
benefit of mating between "systematizers" as very positive, modeling the
resulting higher wages compared with the cost of autism (as 3-SD systematizing
behavior) and Asperger's syndrome (as a 2.5-sigma trait).

In this model, net economic result is still very positive, even if the
lifetime economic cost for a case of autism is $5 million, and the presence of
Asperger's cancels out any benefit in earning (not likely!)

This is a nice result for the ever-growing industry of online and offline
forums for assortative mating, particularly in this field of interest.

So here's the upshot for economic development organizations: support your
local geek conventions!

~~~
gwern
I thought the net calculation was a little lame.

There's an interesting literature on the relationships between IQ and
economics on both individual and national levels (I've compiled some links in
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/7e1/rationality_quotes_september_201...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/7e1/rationality_quotes_september_2011/4r01)
), but one of the key factors making it difficult is that while it's easy to
observe correlations between IQ measured at some point and later income, it's
not easy to figure out the _additional wealth created_!

Much of IQ's economic benefits seem to be related to zero-sum or positional
games (only a few thousand students can be let into Harvard each year).
However, an additional marginal case of autism is _not_ zero-sum where one
case of autism saves you $5m on, I dunno, Alzheimer's somewhere. It just makes
everyone $5m worse off.

So, it's possible that most of that 'net benefit' is only the 'net benefit' as
considered for the specific person, and a net loss on a society-wide scale
(because while that person may be internalizing the benefit of hundreds of
thousands of dollars, they're not externalizing any of the cost by paying for
that extra autistic kid a few houses over, whose treatment is going to be
subsidized to some degree by other people as well).

Calculating the society-wide gains and losses is much harder, and it seems he
didn't even try.

------
tokenadult
What jumps out immediately at me as I read this paper is that the author is
not a behavioral geneticist, but an economist,

<http://nymag.com/news/media/51015/index3.html>

and most of the people he credits for helping him on the paper are other
economists. He cites psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen a lot, but Baron-Cohen's
view of autism is not yet the mainstream view among autism researchers.

Other economists are examining behavior genetics issues, and one group of
economists has published a paper updating their fellow social scientists on
issues of human behavorial genetics that are little understood among most
social scientists.

Chabris, C. F., Hebert, B. M., Benjamin, D. J., Beauchamp, J., Cesarini, D.,
van der Loos, M., ... & Laibson, D. (2012). Most reported genetic associations
with general intelligence are probably false positives. Psychological Science.

[http://coglab.wjh.harvard.edu/~cfc/Chabris2012a-FalsePositiv...](http://coglab.wjh.harvard.edu/~cfc/Chabris2012a-FalsePositivesGenesIQ.pdf)

"At the time most of the results we attempted to replicate were obtained,
candidate-gene studies of complex traits were commonplace in medical genetics
research. Such studies are now rarely published in leading journals. Our
results add IQ to the list of phenotypes that must be approached with great
caution when considering published molecular genetic associations. In our
view, excitement over the value of behavioral and molecular genetic studies in
the social sciences should be tempered—as it has been in the medical
sciences—by a recognition that, for complex phenotypes, individual common
genetic variants of the sort assayed by SNP microarrays are likely to have
very small effects.

"Associations of candidate genes with psychological traits and other traits
studied in the social sciences should be viewed as tentative until they have
been replicated in multiple large samples. Failing to exercise such caution
may hamper scientific progress by allowing for the proliferation of
potentially false results, which may then influence the research agendas of
scientists who do not realize that the associations they take as a starting
point for their efforts may not be real. And the dissemination of false
results to the public may lead to incorrect perceptions about the state of
knowledge in the field, especially knowledge concerning genetic variants that
have been described as 'genes for' traits on the basis of unintentionally
inflated estimates of effect size and statistical significance."

So my caution here would be that an unpublished working paper like this (a
common form of preliminary sharing of speculative results in the discipline of
economics) is very unlikely to be the definitive word on this interesting
topic.

------
ewheeler
FYI an often cited psychologist in this paper, Simon Baron-Cohen, is the
cousin of actor Sacha Baron Cohen (of Da Ali G Show, Borat, and Bruno fame).

------
squarecat
Interesting that a highly transient society has managed to apparently reduce
genetic diversity to an observable degree in such a short span of time.

Having recently rewatched Gattaca and falling in the Asperger range of ASD, I
can't help but wonder if studies of this nature will nudge us closer to
passive forms of eugenics. We're certainly within the realm of feasibility at
this point...

~~~
Symmetry
Wait, isn't this an example of a genetic diversity increase?

~~~
squarecat
I will freely admit that most of what I attempted to read beyond the first few
pages was over my head (and certainly my attention span), but the gist of my
interpretation would be that humans are increasingly mating with sameness in
mind, or as I will henceforth (egotastically--not a typo) call "self-
identifying physiopsychological compatibility".

~~~
aidenn0
But increased mating with sameness in mind causes increased variability in
phenotype. For example heights in the US span a larger range now.

------
felicopter
Relevant to this issue is that the more brain you devote to analytic thinking,
the less you have for empathetic thinking, according to the findings described
here: Empathy Represses Analytic Thought, and Vice Versa: Brain Physiology
Limits Simultaneous Use of Both Networks
[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121030161416.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121030161416.htm)

------
patrickgzill
He has limited his data to the USA; but should we not also see increases in
Europe and UK as well, given the similar shifts in society and the manner in
which people choose their spouses?

If there were other factors that were found in the USA but not found in other
countries (whatever that may be, environmental or otherwise) then there would
be statistically significant divergence.

~~~
_hiss
In this article it appears that similar results were found in the Netherlands.

[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2089358-3,0...](http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2089358-3,00.html)

------
mistermcgruff
Both my wife and I lean toward the academic. I went to MIT, and we have an ASD
son. This research is fascinating. And I think the Time article on it
([http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2089358,00....](http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2089358,00.html))
is a good starting place. A while back the "Einstein Syndrome" book did a
light treatment on this topic but for speech delays. Ultimately, I think the
whole concept of an autism spectrum is helpful and harmful, because severe
kiddos are so different from high-functioning (e.g. nerds) ones.

------
aes256
> Among the 1337 block groups [...]

Teehee. Interesting paper.

------
hanleybrand
I might be missing something, but doesn't assortative mating in itself
guarantee that certain hereditable characteristics would be more likely to
flourish?

Also, I thought it was funny that one of the researchers cited (Simon Baron-
Cohen) is a cousin of the Baron-Cohen you've probably heard from before,
especially since I've long sensed a whiff of spectrum disorder in the whole
Ali G/Borat schtick.

------
mpyne
Interesting paper!

I have an autistic son (and my second might have something similar but much
milder) and I suppose I would meet the "systemitizing" criterion (my wife
wouldn't, but that doesn't really argue against the conclusion of the paper).
Of course, anecdote != data, etc.

------
jrl
Very interesting. I wonder what other researchers think about this.

------
brador
Interesting, but correlation does not imply causation. Yet, unfortunately,
that is the first response many will have to reading this.

~~~
Symmetry
No, but correlation correlates with causation because causation causes
correlation. Correlation between A and doesn't tell you if its (A->B) or
(B->A) or (C->A and C->B)[1]. And robust correlation pretty much does imply
that causation is happening somewhere. So then you have to look at the
plausibility of each of those to try to figure out which it is. And since
(assortative mating) -> (reinforced traits) has a clear and reasonable
mechanism it has a serious leg up here.

[1] Interestingly (A->C and B->C) doesn't cause correlation between A and B
despite causing correlation between A and C and B and C. Which is how you can
figure out causation from enough correlation datapoints.

~~~
dllthomas
> No, but correlation correlates with causation because causation causes
> correlation.

Ow. Correct, but ow.

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herbivore
Sometime in the future it will become clear that one of the causes of autism
is traumatic experiences during labor and within the first few weeks of life.
And the reason why boys are 4 times more likely than girls to be autistic is
because of the trauma caused by circumcision.

I can't point at any scientific studies. This is purely speculation based on
years of research and observation on my end. I don't have autistic children,
but I know people who do.

~~~
prodigal_erik
Circumcision is barbaric but very old. Why didn't it have this effect until a
few decades ago?

