- Friends tend to be geneticially similar
-
Knowing just 326 specific microsatellites (i.e. genetic DNA markers) of the 50,000-100,000 that humans typically have,
self-identified race/ethnicity is predictable with >99% accuracy.
- Study: Tang, Hua et al. “Genetic structure, self-identified race/ethnicity, and confounding in case-control association studies.” American journal of human genetics vol. 76,2 (2005): 268-75. doi:10.1086/427888
- See also: Li,
Jun Z et al.
“Worldwide human relationships inferred from genome-wide patterns of variation.”
Science (New York, N.Y.) vol. 319,5866 (2008): 1100-4.
doi:10.1126/science.1153717
- PDF of the study including figure "S3 B".
- As it appeared in the journal (nice, includes additional figures, but lacking others)
-
Genetics strongly influences personality
- "There is now a large body of evidence that supports the conclusion that individual differences in most, if not all, reliably measured psychological traits, normal and abnormal, are substantively influenced by genetic factors." - Study: Bouchard Jr, Thomas. (2004). Genetic Influence on Human Psychological TraitsA Survey. Current Directions in Psychological Science - CURR DIRECTIONS PSYCHOL SCI. 13. 148-151. 10.1111/j.0963-7214.2004.00295.x.
- "there is now strong evidence that virtually all individual psychological differences, when reliably measured, are moderately to substantially heritable." - Bouchard, Thomas J Jr, and Matt McGue. “Genetic and environmental influences on human psychological differences.” Journal of neurobiology vol. 54,1 (2003): 4-45. doi:10.1002/neu.10160 (full study in PDF version)
- Human population planning
-
Natalism
&
Antinatalism
- Pro-Natal / Natalist Policies & their effectiveness
-
Fertility factor:
Things that are correlated, either positively or negativly, with the quantity of children that an individual is likely to have.
-
Positive fertility factors:
- the intention to have children
- religiosity
- marriage
- maternal & social support
- rural residence
- low IQ
- pro-family government programs
- increased food production
- (in high-income countries) quantity of children that one's parents had
-
Negative fertility factors:
-
rising income
- Fertility-development controversy: As a geographic region develops, its fertility declines
- education
- female labor participation
- obesity
- high IQ
- age
- very low level of gender equality
- pollution
-
rising income
-
Positive fertility factors:
-
TFR (Total Fertility Rate):
The average number of children that would be born to a woman over her lifetime (assuming she lives long enough).
A TFR of 2.1 is required to maintain the same population level/quantity over time. 1 for the mother + 1 for the father + 0.1 for unexpected deaths.A TFR <2.1 is called Sub-replacement fertility.A TFR <1.5 is believed to suffer from the Low-TFR / Low-Fertility Trap Hypothesis.
- List of countries & territories by fertility rate: This excludes immigration
- List of countries by population growth rate: This includes both births and immigration/emigration
-
Multiple birth (e.g. twins, triplets, etc) AKA multibirth:
Pros: obvious.Risks (compared to singletons): Estimated that, in 2008, in the US, of all twins, 75% were born via cesarean section; (for singletons, cesarean section births, compared to traditional vaginal births, slightly increases the risks of poor health of both the mother and the child, including worse health outcomes later in life for the child). Because of more children in the womb, thus the mother must consume a proportionally larger quantity of calories; Else incomplete and/or unequal nutrient delivery to the children. Which in turn likely results in: Increased chance of stillbirth (Âżhow much?). Increased risk of cerebral palsy (singleton 0.23%; twins 1.3%; 4.5% triplets), likely due to premature birth and low birth weight.
- Conjoined twins: Twins that are physically combined. For those that are not medically separated, what are the legal implications if one were to commit a crime? In the West, perhaps one could be fined but not incarcerated ("That it is better 100 guilty persons should escape than that one innocent person should suffer is a maxim that has been long and generally approved" - Benjamin Franklin 1785 referring to Blackstone's ratio).
-
Fixation Index: Standard way to measure genetic differentiation between populations. A higher FST value means more genetic difference.
FST between common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and the bonobo (Pan paniscus) is 0.103
FST between two gorilla species, Gorilla gorilla and Gorilla beringei is 0.04
FST between humans and Neanderthals is <0.08
FST between humans and Homo Erectus is 0.17 -
Gene doping (genetic engineering)
There are multiple different methods: CRISPR/Cas9, ZFN, TALEN, etc.
-
DIY Human CRISPR Guide by PhD Josiah Zayner
-
Myostatic AKA Growth Differentiation Factor 8 (abbreviated GDF8)
: Limits muscles growth
-
Myostatin gene knockout products:
(however, the gene is most influential when muscles are being developed early in life, so using this on adults may not provide the desired results, but would instead need to be used when one is younger)
-
Myostatin gene knockout products:
-
Myostatic AKA Growth Differentiation Factor 8 (abbreviated GDF8)
: Limits muscles growth
- Follistatin: An antagonist to myostatin.
-
DIY Human CRISPR Guide by PhD Josiah Zayner
-
Runaway Selection/Evolution:
- Both males and females rate as more attractive the faces of females with higher reproductive health - Smith, M J Law et al. “Facial appearance is a cue to oestrogen levels in women.” Proceedings. Biological sciences vol. 273,1583 (2006): 135-40. doi:10.1098/rspb.2005.3296
- IQ: Intelligence Quotient
-
Eugenics:
-
Classical:
- Positive: Increase the prevalance of preferred genes / births among those with preferred genes
- Negative: Decrease the prevalance of deleterious/undesired genes / births among those with undesired genes
- Cultural norms (school curricula, media naratives), taxation rules (e.g. exemptions by child), sterilization (forced / voluntary)
-
Modern biotech eugenics:
- Embryo selection (pick among natural variation)
- Genetic editing/synthesis (create new varation)
-
Classical:
- Dysgenics: The opposite of Eugenics
- Devolution
- Founder effect: The loss of genetic variation that occurs when a new population is established by a very small number of individuals from a larger population. Exemplified simply, when a population-group sends a few members to journey out to an isolated area (e.g. forming a colony), their offspring become genetically like the founders of the colony, and over time become more and more divergent from the original group.
- Human cloning
-
Designer baby
-
The "He Jiankui" affair:
Chinese scientist that genetically modified human embryos
(disabling CCR5).
The embryos resulted in purportedly healthy twins, and said scientist was improsioned.
The stated goal was that it was an attempt to increase their resistance to HIV (which one of their parents had).
That said, there is also research that this modification would significantly increase their cognition.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/02/21/137309/the-crispr-twins-had-their-brains-altered/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5213777/
-
The "He Jiankui" affair:
Chinese scientist that genetically modified human embryos
(disabling CCR5).
The embryos resulted in purportedly healthy twins, and said scientist was improsioned.
The stated goal was that it was an attempt to increase their resistance to HIV (which one of their parents had).
That said, there is also research that this modification would significantly increase their cognition.
-
Assisted reproductive technology
-
In vitro fertilisation (IVF)
("in vitro" means "in glass"):
The in-glass (e.g. a petri dish) fusion of sperm and egg.
"in vitro can become genetically specific and allow for the selection of particular genes or expressible traits to be dominantly present in the formed embryo"
Use of IVF may increase chance of pre-term deliveries & lower birth weights. (source?)
IVF step-by-step:- Consultation
- Baseline bloodwork & ultrasound
- Ovarian stimulation injection of the wife, causing increased egg release
- Oocyte maturation
- Egg retrieval from the wife
-
Fertilization using many of the husband's sperm into many of the wife's eggs
-
This process may involve medical staff literally injecting the sperm into the egg.
A drawback of this is that this does all of the hard work for the sperm, thus eliminating the natural "test" that the sperm be both fit enough and willing to swim through the uterus to get to the eggs, and to actually fertilize one.
Thus if this is done using a sperm that is not fit enough to naturally acomplish this task, then this is highly dysgenic, and could long-term result in a population that has only sperm that are unfit/unwilling to naturally (without IVF) reach and fertizie eggs. Thus making IVF a "crutch", and the population effectivly sterile.
-
This process may involve medical staff literally injecting the sperm into the egg.
- Wait ~6 days for fertilizaed eggs to grow
-
Selection of fertilized eggs:
- Either as simple as verifying the normal quantity of chromosomes (2), thus avoiding many disorders
- or as advanced as sequencing the DNA of each one and selecting from the genes / traits available
- Embryo transfer back into the wife
- Wait 2 weeks
-
Pregnancy test
- If successful, congratulations!
- If unsuccessful, go back to the fertilization step (as there are likely still many collected eggs)
-
3-Parent Child:
Having 3 genetic parents (1 father & 2 partial mothers) is possible,
standard practice in bovine breeding (method "pronuclear transfer"),
and has been performed in humans (method "oocyte spindle transfer").
This includes- 1 "primary"/"nucleal"/"nuclear" partial-mother, whom provides the nucleus and thus provides the nuclear genome which is >99.9% of the maternal-genetic-donation (meaning >99.9% of what a normal mother would genetically gift to the child)
- and 1 "secondary"/"mitochondrial" partial-mother, whom provides the mitochondria and thus provides the mitochondrial genome which includes <0.01% of the maternal-genetic-donation (meaning <0.01% of what a normal mother would genetically gift to the child)
Though there are multiple methods ("pronuclear transfer", "oocyte spindle transfer", etc.), the typical method is "pronuclear transfer", which adds a few additional steps to the IVF process. The additional steps include, in addition to some of the husband's sperm fertalizing eggs from the primary partial-mother, some of the husband's sperm are used also to fertilize eggs from the secondary partial-mother.
Then, from each, the cells' nucleuses are extracted from the cells; The cells retain their mitocondia. The primary-partial-mother's nucleus is inserted into the secondary-partial-mother's cell (now the only nucleus within it). This hybrid cell still has the mitocondia of the secondary-partial-mother.
Both the primary-partial-mother's now nucleaus-less cell, and the secondary-partial-mother's nucleus are discarded.This hybrid cell is now implanted into whichever woman is to carry the pregnancy.
The maternal-genetic-donation (what a normal mother would genetically gift to the child) comes >99.9% from the nucleus, and <0.01% from the mitochondria, this causes two partial-mothers.
The other method, "oocyte spindle transfer", is the same except that the nucleaus is transfered to form the hybrid-cell and then only said hyubrid is fertilized. For ethical and religious reasons this may be preferrable due to only 1 fertilization occuring, and thus no fertilized eggs are intentionaly discarded.
- Gestational surrogacy
- See also Spontaneous conception: Use of assisted reproductive technology to conceive and birth a child, causes natural (non-ART) births to become easier.
-
In vitro fertilisation (IVF)
("in vitro" means "in glass"):
The in-glass (e.g. a petri dish) fusion of sperm and egg.
- Fertility tourism
-
Birth tourism:
The practice of traveling to another country for the purpose of giving
birth in that country.
Motivations may include:
- to obtain citizenship for the child in a country with birthright citizenship
- to help their parents obtain permanent residency in the country
- to circumvent their home country's offspring quantity limit (e.g. China)
- Multiple citizenship
- The most common birth month (at least in the US) is September, meaning the most common conception month is December, which coincides with the end of No Nut November.
- There are more ethnic Mongolians within China's autonomous region "Inner Mongolia" than there are total humans within Mongolia.
-
More diverse neighborhoods have lower social cohesion
- Study: Neal, Zachary P, and Jennifer Watling Neal. “The (in)compatibility of diversity and sense of community.” American journal of community psychology vol. 53,1-2 (2014): 1-12. doi:10.1007/s10464-013-9608-0
- PDF of the full study: https://web.archive.org/web/20160220040347/https://www.msu.edu/~zpneal/publications/neal-diversitysoc.pdf)
-
Diversity
reduces social solidatiry, social cohesion, trust, altruism, community cooperation, and friends
- Study Putnam. “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-First Century The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture.” Scandinavian political studies. 30.2 137–174. Web.
- Study Abascal, Maria, and Delia Baldassarri. “Love Thy Neighbor? Ethnoracial Diversity and Trust Reexamined.” AJS; American journal of sociology vol. 121,3 (2015): 722-82. doi:10.1086/683144
- Diversity increases psychotic experiences.
- Both religous-diversity and ethnic-diversity reduces care for the environment.