
The genetics of university success - laughingman2
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-32621-w
======
paulpauper
It's not as controversial anymore attributing differences of athletic success
to genes, but academic success is still a thorny issue . My guess is there is
a lot of money and jobs at stake in perpetuating a set of systems and beliefs
that don't work as well as previously thought (sunk cost fallacy comes to
mind).

~~~
wycs
It is startling how ineffective basically all educational interventions are. I
remember reading a quote to this effect in the introduction to the Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire:

“Teaching is a skill we have not yet mastered, save for to those happy people
for whom it is almost superfluous.”

We have known intelligence is heritable for a long time. Anyone who has lived
for a great length of time in a small town has seen this in their neighbours.

We have had twin studies basically confirming it for ages; and soon cognitive
genomics will confirm it beyond the smallest shadow of a doubt.

It is a testament to what epistemic hacks humans are that we allowed these
extreme priors to be overwhelmed by empty political fashion.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Yet there's the exceptional young man from the local solid and dependable farm
family, who got a philosophy degree at Auburn, first in his line to do so.

The political 'fashion' is perhaps more about not pigeonholing people by
fallible means, and more about giving them a chance regardless?

~~~
hh3k0
> Yet there's the exceptional young man from the local solid and dependable
> farm family, who got a philosophy degree at Auburn, first in his line to do
> so.

Why do you associate farmer with lesser intellect?

Change it to:

> Yet there's the exceptional young man from the local family of village
> idiots, who got a philosophy degree at Auburn, first in his line to do so.

Now that'd be surprising.

~~~
LyndsySimon
Agreed. These days, running a farm of any size requires a great deal of
financial planning and a strong work ethic.

I know lots of “farmers”, and I can’t think of any that I would consider to be
of below average intelligence.

------
fallingfrog
One thing to bear in mind is that university success depends more on being
compliant to authority than intelligence, at least until you get to the grad
school level, and maybe then too.

~~~
sonnyblarney
This is cynical in the extreme and essentially not true.

Doing coursework and showing up for class, is not 'compliance to authority' \-
it's just the process - and fyi voluntarily chosen by the student in most
cases.

In most schools you don't even have to show up or do much frankly, you can
just 'write the final' if you think you're a genius.

The workload in most programs surpasses the ability of 'just smart' folks to
wing it, and so grades are definitely a measure of conscientiousness behaviour
in the student as well as intelligence.

After 20 years of hiring I will take the 'good grades, reasonably bright'
student, who was diligent and conscientious over the possibly genius person
who didn't do much. 95% of even eng. work requires diligence, competence,
focus, the ability to work with others, assumption of responsibility and a
hint of leadership. I've never once seen a 'genius move' in my entire career
where the totally brilliant dude made the difference. Maybe in some highly
specific R&D things, but that's rare.

I should add: that 'someone is good at University' doesn't make them a better
person, it doesn't make the more creative, moral, more suited to a whole host
of things, it doesn't mean they're geniuses etc. etc.. It mostly just means
they are 'good at University'. Which might happen to be a good benchmark for
'good at being a white collar employee'.

~~~
bobcostas55
There's a reason the process involves compulsory tedium rather than
skill/knowledge certification.

~~~
sonnyblarney
The process absolutely involves skill and intelligence and most of it is not
tedious. Doing a few sample questions, trying to solve a quadratic is not
'tedious', for example. Neither is coding your first little program.

~~~
radiantswirl
Yeah but all the tedious hoops you must jump through to even get to that point
are absolutely ludicrous and reveal college as the sheeple-manufacturing scam
that everyone now knows it is.

~~~
sonnyblarney
"reveal college as the sheeple-manufacturing scam that everyone now knows it
is."

Though college is not for everyone, it's objectively not a 'sheeple producing
scam', and 'most people' know that. You're entitled to your opinion, surely,
but I don't think you speak for the masses on that one.

------
laughingman2
This study measures academic performance in non-identical twins with identical
twins as the control group. It finds a significant difference in outcomes
between non-identical twins than identical twins suggesting the role of genes
in academic outcomes.

I am not a genetic researcher, more of a layman in this line of study. Some
academics in social media (twitter) handwave and dismiss this research as
inaccurate and they also feel its dangerous for such a study into genes (which
might have ethical implications when applied to social policy) to be done
without adequate interdisciplinary collaborations.

Irrespective of their motivations, I am interested in knowing whether such
criticisms hold good for this study.

~~~
thrower123
I feel like we must have done enough twin studies over the years at this point
to conclusively say that genetic heritage is the most significant factor for a
whole host of ourcomes. Environmental factors are alluring, because they offer
the potential that something can be done, through toil and good works, to
achieve improvements, rather than the more Calvinist tyranny of genetics.

~~~
buboard
Also, future genetic engineering can be used to both fix those unfair
advantages, or even make the inequalities worse.

I feel, at this point, more energy is being spent in preaching things that are
ultimately unscientific , rather than working towards fixing the inequalities.

~~~
mcguire
_Brave New World_. I'm telling you,....

~~~
dorchadas
Everyone argues whether we're more likely to end up _1984_ or _Brave New
World_. In my opinion, we're gonna end up with the worst of both worlds, and
are already well on our way.

------
hacst
I recently read the book "Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are" by Robert
Plomin and it it was quite the eye opener as to how much the nature vs nurture
debate seems to have been overtaken by genetic findings.

According to the book genetics seems to be the single biggest factor for a ton
of things in our psychology. Including various measures of intelligence and
achievement. As a layman the evidence presented seemed quite convincing. The
book mostly refers to big studies with thousands of twins. To separate nature
and nurture studies can do things like tracking twins given up shortly after
birth into two different foster families who never had any contact to their
birth parents later (correlated nature), track the development twins in the
same family (correlated nurture) and so on.

According to Plomin the effects are huge (especially compared to what usually
would be a significant result in a psychology study looking at nurture) and
the controversial nature of such findings made the field extremely rigorous to
the point where it is hard to imagine these results turning out to be wrong.
Apparently it has all been replicated quite a bit by now.

To be honest I found the book quite shocking because it runs counter to so
much that is "common knowledge" and "common sense". It basically mostly
discards influenceable "nurture" as a defining influence at the population
level. Once certain basics are met, relevant environmental influences are
mostly too random to control and much of the rest is indirectly caused by
"nature". "Nature" basically creates its preferred environment (called "nature
of nurture" in the book).

As I am not in the field my ability to verify what the book says is limited.
As far as I can tell Plomin is a very well regarded Psychologist and mostly
know for his involvement in twin studies. If anyone in the field has better
insight on how to evaluate what the book says I would be very interested.

~~~
forapurpose
Plomin himself seems to characterize it differently:

 _Another problem that Plomin encounters with explaining his findings is that
people often confuse group and individual differences – or, to put it another
way, the distinction between means and variances. Thus, the average height of
northern European males has increased by more than 15cm in the past two
centuries. That is obviously due to changes in environment. However, the
variation in height between northern European males is down to genetics. The
same applies to psychological traits.

“The causes of average differences,” he says, “aren’t necessarily related to
causes of individual differences. So that’s why you can say heritability can
be very high for a trait, but the average differences between groups – ethnic
groups, gender – could be entirely environmental; for example, as a result of
discrimination. The confusion between means and variances is a fundamental
misunderstanding.”_

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/sep/29/so-is-it-
nat...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/sep/29/so-is-it-nature-not-
nurture-after-all-genetics-robert-plomin-polygenic-testing)

The above article, and Plomin, were discussed here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18101570](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18101570)

~~~
hacst
That's what I tried to capture with the "at the population level" restriction.
Plomin was quite clear that for the individual all bets are off so sorry if it
sounded like the environment couldn't still screw you over (it definitely
can). The part about inter-group differences is worth emphasizing and I should
have done so.

That did not reduce my surprise about the things stated in the book though. If
statements it contains like that after correcting for genetics "the most
important environmental factors, such as our families and schools, account for
less than 5 percent of the differences between us in our mental health or how
well we did at school" and "Genetics accounts for 50 per cent of psychological
differences, not just for mental health and school achievement, but for all
psychological traits, from personality to mental abilities" are true, then I
definitely consider that as going against "common knowledge" and "common
sense". Definitely blew my mind.

Thanks for the links. Totally missed that it was discussed here before.

------
acomjean
What does “smarter” mean. My brother had a friend for whom he built his RC car
because this guy was uable to figure it out(and you want people to Race
against). These were kit cars you build from the ground up with probable 100+
parts.

Yet our non building individual went on to Ivy League universities and did
fantastically well. Still incapable of fixing anything I am told..

23 Page pdf of the manual: [http://www.dirt-
burners.com/rcdox/Manuals/Kyosho/Kit%20manua...](http://www.dirt-
burners.com/rcdox/Manuals/Kyosho/Kit%20manuals/1-10th%20scale/Electric%20powered/3105%20-%20Big%20Brute%20%28EN%29.pdf)

------
21
Related article today: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/us/white-
supremacists-sci...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/us/white-supremacists-
science-genetics.html)

And two days ago: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/17/us/white-supremacists-
sci...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/17/us/white-supremacists-science-
dna.html)

~~~
iguy
What some insiders make of those articles:
[http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-truth-shall-make-
yo...](http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-truth-shall-make-you-
free.html)

------
sjg007
I mean if u have uncontrolled add, depression or anxiety your university
experience will suffer. Also any other long term illness. Success at
university should be a spectrum.

------
amai
When you study the biographies of many successful geniuses (e.g. nobelprize
winners) you will notice that many have been selftaught. They arrive at
university already knowing everything, because they read important literature
much earlier. They might have read books about calculus at the age of 13, read
Einsteins publications at an age of 16 etc. . This gives them a big head start
and that is why most of them succeed easily at university. There might be a
genetic reason, why people do this. But in addition they also need to have
access to important literature early in their life (maybe due to a supporting
teacher or parents, but also simply by free access to university and online
libraries). Otherwise their talent will be wasted.

~~~
Viliam1234
Seems like there should be some parallel education system, which would work
like this:

It would be completely voluntary for the student. The student would come and
say what topic they are interested in. The teacher would give an
exam/interview, to find out what the student already knows (and what they
believe they know, but actually misunderstand). Then the teacher would
recommend books to study, most of which would be available in the local
library. (Also online resources.) The student would read the books at home, or
perhaps in a local quiet place. Then another exam/interview, and another book
recommendation. Optionally, group debates, where multiple students could
discuss the same topic with each other.

------
gdudeman
There is an amazing amount of fixed mindset thinking amongst the armchair
geneticists on hacker news.

Two hundred years ago, the median person could not read. They could not do
algebra.

There is no doubt that some people are born smarter than others. There is no
doubt in my mind that simultaneously we waste much of the potential of many
people in our society and that the median human is capable of much more
learning and output than they produce today.

~~~
wycs
I agree humans are capable of learning, but the growth mindset set claim
people are capable of learning how to learn, for which there is little
evidence.

The rate and extent of knowledge acquisition is limited by one’s general
intelligence. You can not learn your way around a less effective learning
apparatus.

I would also say that we have plucked all the environmental low hanging fruit.
Lack of education may have explained much of the variance in outcomes 200
years ago. It does not today. We are educated to the gills. Dweck’s claims
that we can squeeze more out of this desiccated rag do not ring true, even
before you account for how poorly ideologically-pleasing findings have held up
in the replication crisis.

I don’t think growth mindset interventions are going to do much of anything.

Programs like Head Start have been spectacular failures, which does not seem
to be what growth mindset would predict.

Ultimately we are too focused on environment and have no focus on genomics.

Embryo selection will be far more effective than propagandizing our children
with growth mindset memes, whose workbooks read to me like modern copybook
headings.

1-10 embryo selection gives you 3 to 8 points per generation. This is
basically possible right now. If we had a million genomes tagged with the
donor’s IQ this would for sure be possible right now.

Iterated embryo selection and direct genetic engineering allow get you to many
standard deviations.

Growth mindset is sneezing into a hurricane. And I am not even sure the sneeze
is real.

~~~
monetus
Have you ever seen the movie gattacca? What are your thoughts on the moral
behind it, if you don't mind my asking?

~~~
wycs
I thought it was a good movie but morally backwards. Once we have the ability
to select against alleles that decrease happiness, intelligence, health,
sanity, and longevity we are are morally obliged to do so. His mother’s choice
was as monstrous as refusing to let your child learn to read.

Would you subject your child to a 1 in 1000 chance of being brutally
disfigured? Well genetic defects that cause much the same thing are more
common than that.

The use of genetic measures over measures of the phenotype in that movie was
silly. Cognitive genomics will never be as accurate as an IQ test. It would be
a mistake to, for example, replace the SAT with a spit swab, even in a society
with genetic engineering.

~~~
forapurpose
More important is basic human self-determination and freedom. I understand
these comments are your opinions, but who are you to decide for me? Why should
I be subject to your opinions, any more than you should be subject to mine if
we disagree (and we do)?

~~~
radiantswirl
Whoever is higher on the dominance hierarchy gets to subject others to their
opinions. On HN it's a non issue

And for the record GATTACA is the story of a misguided insufferable asshole
violating regulations and probably getting his entire team killed 5 minutes
after the movie ends due to his heart condition.

~~~
forapurpose
> Whoever is higher on the dominance hierarchy gets to subject others to their
> opinions.

That's a bizarre statement in the modern world. In the modern world, we vote
on whose opinion carries the day, and that is only in the unusual cases where
government has power in the matter (because we have freedom and civil rights).

~~~
monetus
Our governments have moved to democratic republics, for the most part, but our
workplaces are still generally heirarchies and feudalism. I see what he is
saying. I see what your point is though, I think. Even in heirarchies, we are
supposed to have freedom.

I very much want to experiment with cooperatives, and things like
[https://pol.is/home](https://pol.is/home)

------
Viliam1234
Note that a gene "against university success" does not necessarily have to be
related to anything you understand as a part of education (e.g. intelligence,
conscientiousness, conformity).

For example, imagine that universities are discriminating against... let's use
a completely random example here... Asians. In such case, if you measure how
individual genes relate to university success, it will turn out that
statistically, genes for being Asian are negatively correlated with university
success. But that doesn't say anything about Asians' ability to learn or
follow instructions, only how the current system is treating them.

Or if you take a country where women are not allowed to study at a university,
or course the sexual Y chromosome will be among the ones most strongly
correlated with university success.

So even if you find out that a certain gene is good or bad for university
success, you still don't know whether this is about what the gene does, or
about how the academic establishment treats people having the gene.

------
laughingman3
It's easier to control access to resources when you can imply, and then
systematically impose, some way to exclude others from those resources.
Emphasis on genetic determinism will just be another tool to do that.

------
mcguire
_Brave New World_... it's not just a user's manual.

~~~
dorchadas
Exactly. We're heading to a mix of the worst of _Brave New World_ and the
worst of _1984_. Coupled with generic other dystopian realities, such as _The
Last Book in the Universe_ where the elite live in a perfect society separated
from the rest, who live in a very dystopian one.

------
unknownkadath
I have several objections to the paper and to some of the responses here; in
fact, it's really got me hot under the collar. It is not clear that this study
can support such sweeping claims. Further, due to the fast-moving nature of
this forum and the high velocity of misinformation, particularly among certain
elements of the online media
([https://www.xkcd.com/882/](https://www.xkcd.com/882/)), I feel that I must
take the time to reply now rather than waiting till this evening if I want
anyone to read this reply, and so I must attempt to digest a very dry, verbose
work of dubious quality as well a substantial related literature ASAP, and I
resent like hell having to waste some prime work hours to do it. Therefore, I
apologize in advance if I seem a bit short-tempered, unfair, uneven, or less-
than-rigorous in this response.

First, the paper itself. The buried lede is certainly the fact that previous,
purely genetic studies based on bulk sequencing alone could only find a 5%
variation in poly-genetic scores in the metrics for years of educational
attainment ("EduYears") selected by Smith-Wooley et al (refered to from here
on as the "authors"). Other papers cited by the authors find values above and
below this number, but not exceeding %20. The papers broadest, proudest claim,
that around %50 of various sorts of educational attainment (with correlations
of 0.27–0.76 distributed across various "university success" variables) is
determined genetically, is derived entirely from their twin study. Twin
studies, at their core, analyse differences between sets of fraternal and
identical twins. Fraternal twins share around %50 of their DNA on average,
like most siblings. Identical twins share nearly 100%. Since both members of a
twin set are assumed to experience an equal environment (the Equal Environment
Assumption, or EEA), then differential phenotypes exhibited by fraternal twins
and not identical twins can be explained entirely by genetic differences, or
so it is claimed.

However, the validity of twin studies isn't settled science, and ought not be
held in the same regards as, say, a computer-verified proof of the four-color
theorem or the discovery of the Higgs Boson. In particular, there exists a
large body of work questioning the validity of the EEA in particular(e.g.
[https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/morris-
singer/files/2008.p...](https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/morris-
singer/files/2008.pdf)). There are questions about whether twin studies
capture the actual (rather than assumed) genetic differences between different
types of twins, issues regarding potentially-heritable epigenetic markers, and
the differences between additive vs Mendelian and epistatic inheritances.
These problems, in addition to other sources of error, when left unaddressed
and compounded over several layers of statistical analysis, severely weaken
any hypothesis built upon the assumption of their absence. With twin studies,
these issues seem to be especially apparent surrounding studies that focus on
the heritability of mental disorders. You don't have to believe me, though. As
always, you should do your own research.

Many of these problems can be remediated with additional research. For
example, researchers can use questionnaires for the twin sets' families in
order to ferret out unexpected violations of the EEA and unusual genetic
circumstances. However this study seems to have been going after low-hanging
fruit, using mostly archived data to reach its conclusions.

Regarding the responses, I see a field of slain straw-men as far as the eye
can see, and a I see a collossal tower of ick being built on a foundation of
shifting sand. It is disingenuous in the extreme to equate Enlightenment
ideals ("All men are created equal") with some sort bizzare desire for a
Harrison Bergeron knock-off fantasy. Literally no one wants that. Further, the
idea that people should be uncomfortable with genetic reductionist thinking
seems to me to be common sense in light of the horrors of the first half of
the twentieth century. Throw in the casual attacks on public education at all
levels, and implications that we should bow down to a Calvinist tyranny of
genetics," and I really have to wonder what is going on here.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a beautiful little ubermenchlet who just awoke
from a nap to play with.

~~~
bobcostas55
About the EEA, scroll down to "Assumption 2" here:
[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1745-9125.1...](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1745-9125.12049)

PGS variance explained and twin study heritability estimates can't really be
compared, the former is just a floor which will be raised with larger sample
sizes.

~~~
unknownkadath
This article, and the Barnes and Simon article it is critiquing, are not
exactly casual reading, friend. Are you the author of this article? Could you
break it down a bit for an interested outsider?

In particular, if the EEA is not so important, what is the value of including
fraternal twins at all, compared to, say, other close siblings? And doesn't it
raise questions if a mathematical model gives the same results regardless of
whether or not the assumptions used in its development are followed?

Also, what do you think of Barnes and Simon's reply:

[https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/heritable/2015-burt.pdf](https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/heritable/2015-burt.pdf)

I understand if you don't have time to answer in detail, all of the relevant
paper is probably pushing 100 pages of dense inside baseball at this point. I
merely wish for the folks with, ahem, deep convictions about heritability up-
thread to understand that this paper isn't as unassailable as its press
releases are making it out to be.

