I agree with DavidB, given the vast emptiness of interstellar space, I don't view it as surprising that aliens haven't visited yet. Also, I think that this virtual reality hypothesis appeals to open-minded people, but we forget that much of humanity is still stuck in the stone age in terms of their attitudes and ways of life. A certain number will not accept or understand other people's desire to stay in virtual reality. Their conservativism might be our savior, as some above have suggested.

I like Steven Pinker's response to this quandry in the Blank Slate. If the psychopath argues that his genes made him commit a violent crime, then the judge could just as easily argue that his genes are making him (or her) throw the criminal in jail. Appealing to genetic causes is not a very strong argument in this case, because one could respond that the rest of the public has a genetically-based instinct to punish criminals, and you're back to square one. Whose genes win out? It comes back to a question of rights. And the fact that most psychopaths can't be rehabilitated is not necessarily a big moral issue, if we are trying to balance the rights of the public versus the rights of the individual. In this case, the right of the public to not be harmed wins out over individual freedom, something that is not problematic to most people. It's only under the false presumption that jail is purely for punishment and/or rehabilitation that this appears to be a major dilemma. Prisons also exist to isolate criminals from their potential victims.

Neat article J. This is the kind of evidence of balancing selection kjmtchl was looking for. I favor this hypothesis as opposed to the mutation-selection balance, which seems to make more sense for psychiatric disorders. Although of course it doesn't have to all-or-nothing in either of these cases.

I think what J. Goard is referring to is something like the "Johnny Depp" theory of male homosexuality. And equally for females, it wouldn't surprise me if women with more masculine traits (i.e. more testosterone and higher sex drive) had more reproductive success than those without. @ ziel, evolution is not a perfecting agent. It isn't a prior a ridiculous idea that some sort of natural tradeoff (e.g. balancing selection) could keep genetic variance in homosexuality in the population. Look at other "imperfections" in the human race like sickle-cell anemia, schizophrenia and myopia, that all have a large genetic component. Indeed, sexuality would seem to be an area of human behavior particularly suited to this form of selection, because its not an entirely quantitative trait.

Interesting article. The elephant in the room still remains however in explaining how this genetic influence on homosexuality is maintained in the population, or could have been selected for in the first place. My assumption is that the genetic influence found in these studies is on other characteristics that lead to homosexuality, but not homosexuality itself. For example, all individuals vary in sex hormone levels and degree of masculinity-femininity. Genes leading to less masculine characteristics than average in men and more masculine characteristics than average in women could lead to them becoming homosexual. These starting differences could also be exaggerated by the environment. I agree with you that choice seems to play no role here, and your analogy with heterosexuals is apt. Why don't you ever hear anyone saying that a person chose to be straight? Because its a ridiculous idea.

Nice article. I'm kind of surprised you didn't talk at all about possible interaction effects with the environment, which may account for a fair bit of the heritability. These rare mutations may only lead to schizophrenia when combined with certain deleterious environments. I believe this is one possible explanation for the higher rates of schizophrenia in urban as oppposed to rural areas. A gene-environment interaction may also be involved in the increase in autism (beyond more inclusive diagnosing). IMO, I think the solution is a bit of all three: rare mutations, many common variants of small effect, and the interaction of these genetic variants with the environment.

I think your account is a pretty plausible one Omar. IMO, women are less likely to hold strong beliefs about most debatable issues (pro or con), because either has the potential of causing conflict within the group, community, family, etc. The only exception might be views that are themselves pro-social, like religion but also newer stuff like new-age woo that sounds all nice and supposedly helps people. In terms of a reference, the psychologist Delroy Paulhus has done some work in this area. Here's what he says in one article on Alpha (egoistic) and Gamma (moralistic) biases: "It may not be a coincidence that Alpha and Gamma are consistent with traditional sex-role distinctions. After all, the traditional male role emphasizes individual achievement outside the home whereas the female role emphasizes maintaining harmony in home, family, and relationships. Not surprisingly, then, the clearest sex differences in traits correspond to these value differences: Males score higher on agency-related values and traits, and women score higher on communal related values and traits (Helgeson, 1997; Schwartz, 1992; Wiggins, 1991). Similarly, men score higher on egoistic biases (Aube & Koestner, 1994; Beyer & Bowden, 1997) and women score higher on Gamma biases (Paulhus, 1988, 1998b). From p. 1047, Egoistic and Moralistic Biases in Self-Perception: The Interplay of Self-Deceptive Styles With Basic Traits and Motives. Journal of Personality, vol. 66, 1998.

Good find; looks like a decent article up until that crazy sentence. Those in the skeptical community often use the slang "woo" such instances of pseudoscientific nonsense. The sad thing is that many readers of that BBC article will probably take the claim at face value, and start wondering why we in the "West" haven't started using this amazing cure for autism. Maybe they'll even conclude it's another conspiracy like with the vaccines. Sigh.

I haven't observed that personally, the quack she's cites is a man. My impression is actually more the opposite: since the promotion New Age stuff is almost always for commercial purposes, it's more male-dominated, at least at the top level. I'm thinking Kevin Trudeau, Uri Geller, etc. Of course the leading skeptics are men as well: Sagan, Randi, Dawkins, etc. Whether the woman on the street is more likely to believe New Age stuff than men is I suppose a different question. Again, I have no strong inkling in that direction. Maybe because a lot of this New Age stuff is presented as left-friendly, and a lot of women identify with leftism through feminism, so they are more open to these sorts of claims. Oprah in particular seems to capitalize on this trend.

Years ago, I read an undergrad psychology textbook that came right out and said, "When you can't identify the cause of a behavior, you describe the cause as 'genetic'."

Mightn't this just have to do with the demographic aging of the American population? The average age of researchers must also be increasing, not just those who get NIH grants. Part of the trend may be a growing preference among funding bodies for established researchers though, like the trend for older ministers for defence that was discussed a while back.

I find your last comment interesting Razib, couldn't the spike and abatement in violence be explained by the factors outlined by Roth? I mean, the 60's was the time of the counterculture revolution, where a whole generation of young people was trying to stick it to man (i.e. the government). It was an international phenomenon as well, given a baby boom occurred in many countries after WWII. By the 1990s the revolution had mellowed out to a great extent and there was the return to prosperity and more secure feelings about government. 
 
This theory goes nicely with Steven Pinker's about violence too, when he says that it's most prevalent where governments are unstable (or perceived to be). The fact that violence has declined so much over history is largely due to the growth of more robust and organized governments around the world.

Well, he is talking about a field heavily based on statistics (psychometrics), so you wouldn't expect a theoretical physicist to have too many problems. His writing is also littered with numerical and visuo-spatial examples. Thanks for the links though.

@David, I don't think it's the identification of free riders that is the problem, it's more how do you enforce their behavior without wasting resources running around punishing them all the time. A universal code of conduct handed down from the Gods does nicely.

@ Eric: I take your point; there are times where religion does have an individual benefit. But I think the main explanation for the origin of religious organization is at the group level, as in the quote from Descent of Man:  
 
"It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of the same tribe, yet that an increase in the number of well-endowed men and an advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another. A tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection."

Razib: just because religion relies on diverse psychological mechanisms that preceded it does not mean it is not a tightly integrated feature. Religion may be something like an emergent phenomenon at the group level, which is the whole point of invoking group selection. Religion doesn't make sense on the individual level, because it doesn't have a selection advantage there (in fact it may be deleterious). It is only at the level of the tribe or higher that the increased cooperation due to religious-type belief (and their correlates) is proposed to have its effect.

I don't know about the world trend, but the data for America seem to suggest an aging population. People get more conservative as they age, are these results controlled for that?

Razib, those education stats you give make me think that what the survey is capturing in liberalism is more economic liberalism than social liberalism, the former which would be more endorsed by the lower class. The liberal party can be seen a heterogenous group of ivory tower progressives plus lower class people voting self-interestedly on economic issues.  
 
Anyway, the GSS seems to be capturing mainly the lower class group, otherwise you would expect the education level of liberals to be significantly higher than conservatives, and their response on the heritability question closer to the "educated" or "college degree" levels. As it stands the Liberal group looks more similar to the "no college degree" or even "dumb" group.

That's fairly weird how more people pick 50-75% than 25-50%. One would have to assume the vast majority of quantitative traits lie in the 25-50% range (though of course the general populace don't study behavior genetics, and this wasn't exactly a straightforward example). 
 
Liberals seem to be more genetically deterministic than their conservative counterparts, which is also weird since you'd expect they would be more educated (or was this controlling for education?)

The show should be interesting none the less, thanks for the link B.B. Reminds me of a PBS documentary a while back as well.