Stats for nerds
2recommend
3mentions
3people
2021–2023years
67% recommend33% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Exactly! We are all already the beneficiaries and casualties of the unearned rewards and punishments due to the randomized genetic combination we received at conception. Kathryn Paige Harden brilliantly explains this ethical challenge in her book, “The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality”, https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691190808/th...
> In recent years, scientists like Kathryn Paige Harden have shown that DNA makes us different, in our personalities and in our health—and in ways that matter for educational and economic success in our current society.
> In The Genetic Lottery, Harden introduces readers to the latest genetic science, dismantling dangerous ideas about racial superiority and challenging us to grapple with what equality really means in a world where people are born different. Weaving together personal stories with scientific evidence, Harden shows why our refusal to recognize the power of DNA perpetuates the myth of meritocracy, and argues that we must acknowledge the role of genetic luck if we are ever to create a fair society.
As a professor of clinical psychology, Harden is well situated to introduce us laypersons to the overwhelming strong evidence that genes matter. Notably, even biological siblings only share 50% of their genes with each other. Therefore the randomization in genetic combination alone can create differences in innate strengths and weaknesses among children with the same parents. A lottery is the appropriate metaphor for the lack of control any of us have in the genes we’re bestowed at conception.
Genetic engineering may offer an equalizer, but that presents its own ethical challenges. Harden instead argues that we should design a sufficiently robust welfare state to counteract these natural inequities. She presents a Rawlian framework (ie, veil of ignorance) to argue for why we should not accept genetic privileges and disadvantages anymore than we’d accept other injustices.
- A few books I enjoyed:
- The Case against Education by Bryan Caplan, discussing the merits of signalling theory (the point of education is to signal your intelligence and conscientiousness) as opposed to human capital theory (education genuinely makes you a better worker with more skills). Didn't find it totally convincing but it was a fun and interesting read.
- The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality by Kathryn Harden, a wonderful book on how hereditary IQ is, and why that is a good case for redistribution, given that IQ is so predictive of wealth/income
- The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson, a biography of Jennifer Doudna, the woman who founded CRISPR and won the Nobel prize. Great read, thrilling.
- My Struggle book 1, by Karl Ove Knausgård. Haven't finished this yet, just started it a few days ago - about 300 pages in. Great, great novel, one of the best I've read in a while.
- The book The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality by Kathryn Paige Harden does. It’s written by a progressive for progressives. It’s not logically sound and admits to taking such a position on faith in the service of being anti-racist.
