Great read (or listen)

While it is quite technical in some parts (which I like) the points of this book are laid out clearly and the science is explained wonderfully. I may not 100% Agree with the prescriptions but the values are well thought out and definitely gives food for thought in how we take into account our luck with regards to genetics

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An excellent and insightful book.

I found the book thought provoking. It is a must read for any liberal minded person who has dismissed the study of genetics. A challenging but optimistic vision of the future.

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An annoying book but with some merit

I found much of this book annoying, and other parts interesting and rationally argued. I suspect that the author may have felt the need to demonstrate her left wing credentials to explain genetics, because she would otherwise risk being called a eugenicist. In fact, Ruha Benjamin has already called her a eugenicist, for daring to suggest that genetic information should be collected to determine how much of educational attainment is due to environment and how much due to genes, with the aim of reducing inequality of outcomes.

My advice is to grit your teeth through the annoying bits and listen to the science. In the coming years, knowledge about genetics may revolutionise the way we live and we need to think about how to build a better society to deal with that revolution.

The subject matter of this book was covered, albeit much more elegantly, comprehensively and more dispassionately, by Stephen Pinker in his book, “The Blank Slate”. What Kathryn Paige Harden adds is some useful and interesting additional information about recent developments in genetics, but also some doctrinaire left wing material, unwarranted conclusions and distortions. She is at her strongest when she is talking about science, and scientific research. She can talk intelligently about rational choices, such as the costs and benefits of diverting educational resources from those who have high polygenic scores associated with going further in education to those who do not. There were points when I agreed with some of her personal moral judgements, such as when she talks of explaining to her children the plight of homeless people living under a highway bridge, there simply because of bad luck, much of it, possibly, genetic.

But there are many places where her generalisations, emotive and accusatory language, and frequent distortions and unwarranted conclusions called her objectivity into question for me. Sometimes I wondered who her target audience was, both because of the left wing assumptions that she seems to take as common cause, and because of feeling that my intelligence was insulted - for example by her analogies, which went on too long and seemed too simplistic to me, of genetics with restaurant recipes.,

Here are some of the things that she said that I thought were examples of her unwarranted generalisations, emotive and accusatory language:

- She expressed “disgust” at Jeff Bezos adding billions to his wealth. She doesn’t explain how he added to his wealth - was it simply by benefitting from an increase in the price of Amazon shares? He owns a large proportion of Amazon shares, because he started the business. Why should a share price increase prompt such a violent somatic reaction? If this is a figure of speech, there is no need to express your disagreement by expressing revulsion, as if you have been forced to eat something rotten or poisonous. You would be more persuasive by expressing in rational terms why an alternative system that you envisage would be better and the problems with the current system.

- She cites an outdated and discredited research paper that suggested that a single gene caused depression, and says that only a fool would believe that hypothesis. I do not see why she felt it necessary to discredit someone in such terms. Science involves making hypotheses and testing them. Sometimes scientists get the answers wrong. It does not mean that we need to make a laughing stock of those who in good faith get it wrong, and there was no indication of malice in the researcher concerned, at least none that she presented. One gets the feeling that she does this because she does not understand the arguments very well. Sometimes her best arguments against ideas is that you would be a fool for thinking that thing and you may be a eugenicist.

- She indicates that she believes that people with white skins doing research on the genetics of people with black skins invalidates that research. This does not seem to follow any rules of logic or reason.

I do not believe that she has the breadth of mind to tackle the wider issues to society that arise from genetics. She focusses on fairness but does not appear to understand economics or scarcity, or the impacts of incentives. If peoples’ incentives are removed, it seems likely that we would all be less well off. And if you have redistribution with a completely open system of immigration, which is what the left appears to advocate, then you give away your wealth to the whole world. It seems to me that she will have a hard time influencing people to do that.

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8 people found this helpful