A new method for estimating heritability and selection, Evaluating and improving heritability models using summary statistics:
There is currently much debate regarding the best way to model how heritability varies across the genome. The authors of GCTA recommend the GCTA-LDMS-I Model, the authors of LD Score Regression recommend the Baseline LD Model, while we have instead recommended the LDAK Model. Here we provide a statistical framework for assessing heritability models using summary statistics from genome-wide association studies. Using data from studies of 31 complex human traits (average sample size 136,000), we show that the Baseline LD Model is the most realistic of the existing heritability models, but that it can be significantly improved by incorporating features from the LDAK Model. Our framework also provides a method for estimating the selection-related parameter α from summary statistics, finding strong evidence (P<1e-6) of negative selection for traits including height, systolic blood pressure and college education.
The preprint jumped out at me for what they detected selection in (or against). If you look at the details, they actually show selection against “Preference for Evenings.” I don’t know if this is a spurious finding (they talk a bit about population structure in the preprint), but this is really funny to me.
I think the link is wrong:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/736496v1
Just another proof of how bad the Western society and social trends are for its population and human evolution.
Effectively it destroys its genetic base and future, by creating bad incentives for its most productive members.
To elaborate on that, because some people concentrate too much on social welfare and taxes, let me show some of the most shocking examples of what’s going wrong in the West:
There is a whole army of well educated, fairly intelligent and attractive women for which a professional career in a paid job is so much more important than having a family with many children.
Even if they like families and children, they rather work for others than to start their own.
So there is this army of social workers, kindergarten workers, teachers, nurses, doctors, midwives etc. which are all average or above, which take care for other people’s children and families. A lot of them have no children at all, very few more than the usual two. This is a really a huge army of women which invest much of their lifetime to essentially take care for other families and children. They being raised and paid by society to take care, but not to procreate themselves.
The biological consequence is, that they being programmed to deliberately accept cuckoo’s eggs without thinking twice, like the West a whole does.
And I’m not even starting to talk about about those for which “a career”, consumption, “self-actualisation” or pure hedonism is far more important than any kind of idealism and care taking.
Recently I came to the conclusion that beside the obvious social engineering plans, there is another reason why “the elite” pushes this trend: Its cheaper.
To raise a child in the West, with full social and health care, schooling and higher education, is rather expensive. And of course, the mothers won’t be as productive while being pregnant and the children are small too. So its cheaper and more efficient to use the full work force of the population and rather import cheap labour from abroad. Like other products humans have, in that comparison, a different price. Especially if you can choose from those which are adequate material instead of investing in every child without knowing the outcome for sure…
The “education” for the system being most effective among potential high achievers without “ideological immunisation”. This means any kind of college education will be directly correlated to a lower number of children.
there no reason to qualify “the west.” the demographic transition has hit most of the world.
Yet its the “Western model”, largely constructed in its current form in the United States.
And the negative effects being not everywhere the same and not every people is affected at all, for sure not to the same extend.
But you are right that this is a general problem for alk of mankind and most people close their eyes before it.
It makes the advantage of pronatal religious groups much more profound than it would otherwise be too. Because such an ideology seems to be the best immunisation for people with potential.
Another portion is just too stupid and disorganised for an effective family planning.
Bu there are social workers, …
everyone in the future will be laestadian 🙂
I was thinking that the dysgenic trend is very old in the West – after all, in the old days, the best career path for intelligent boys was to become celibate Catholic priests; but then occured to me that this could be a hidden blessing – perhaps there are naturally few positions in society for very intelligent people, and a low natality in the cognitive elite could prevent the problem of overproduction of elites.
I was raised Catholic and am fascinated by the Church’s long history of removing some of the “nerdiest” men from the breeding population. There is a book called ‘Holy Anorexia’ that is on my radar to read. Apparently there were quite a few female anorexics amongst the medieval Italian saints. I am thinking of some studies showing modern female anorexics being more intelligent than average.
23andme’s model predicts an average wake up time of between 8:02 and 8:35 for people in their 30’s. They predict my wake up time at 8:34. I am a 32 year old female who is not married and has no kids, so I suppose I fit the trend.
i have melatonin, benadryl and nyquil on hand at all times. being a night owl will consume your every waking moment! imagine laying down and…going to sleep without a problem. can’t even dream about such a charmed life:)
The trend is old and negative in the West since Catholic times and as a general tendency even older.
But if looking at the West since Christianity, there were negative and positive selective trends.
For example, many losses because of miserable living conditions, especially in the larger settlements, celibacy and a negative attitude towards sexuality and many children were counterbalanced. There were a lot of prohibitions for the poor and still more surviving offspring for those which were average or above. Those were lost again in celibacy, childless lives and urban death, but if not physically, so at least intellectually, the European niveau of the Iron Age could be largely preserved or even improved.
For a relatively short time Protestantism even improved things significantly, so the idea celibacy was in any way positive is completely wrong.
But thats all over since the combination of modern Capitalism and Feminism, together with other factors, made their full impact.
I would date the beginning with about 1900. The wars had a profound impact, but no lasting one over many generations (“baby boomers”).
Lasting effects and huge disturbances were created by two cultural implosions in the 1960s and the second in the 1990s.
Since the 1990s virtually all Europeans and in the same way affected people are demographically and genetically in a free fall.
With some exceptions they shrink at least one quarter per generation and for the higher level parts of the population its more like one half.
I expect most studies done on secular people born after 1900 to reflect recent negative trends.
Basicaly biological success is now to a high portion determined by not following a life concept this society presents as desirable.
For more intelligent people with social options, thats a personal and conscious decision if they were not born in a different ideological framework. This is always bad, because under social pressure most people follow the path of adaptation. Intelligence and will make it just worse, because they weaken natural instincts and increase social adaptation to cultural frameworks, regardless of how useless and destructive they are.
But for sure not the same trends as now were historically active and even less so in prehistory. First glances were delivered with the study on Iceland and recently on the Vikings, but I hope for more to come.
For Europe the trends worsened the closer you come to modern times, but since the 1990s its a demographic and dysgenic free fall and that is unique in every respect considering the circumstances.
It’s not just a genetic, but a cultural loss too. Thats one of the reasons Protestantism did better for a time. Just look up how many great minds were born and raised in protestant pastors families. Or rabbinic families for Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews.
Subtract those in a given time and you can imagine the negative impact it had on Catholics.
The Chinese repeat that European failure if looking at its higher level urban population. They have to civilise new people in every generation and a large portion of their genetic and cultural resources being lost.
The negative trend is younger than in Europe, but faster and more forced. A huge mistake.