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The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality
A Virginia Living Favorite Book (2021)
A provocative and timely case for how the science of genetics can help create a more just and equal society. 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.
Reclaiming genetic science from the legacy of eugenics, this groundbreaking book offers a bold new vision of a society where everyone thrives, regardless of how one fares in the genetic lottery.
A provocative and timely case for how the science of genetics can help create a more just and equal society. 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.
Reclaiming genetic science from the legacy of eugenics, this groundbreaking book offers a bold new vision of a society where everyone thrives, regardless of how one fares in the genetic lottery.
312 pages, Hardcover
First published September 21, 2021
141 people want to read
About the author
Kathryn Paige Harden
2 books71 followersKathryn Paige Harden is a tenured professor in the Department of Psychology at University of Texas Austin, where she leads the Developmental Behavior Genetics lab and co-directs the Texas Twin Project.
She is the author of The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality (Princeton). Dr. Harden received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Virginia and completed her clinical internship at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School before moving to Austin in 2009. She has published over 100 scientific articles on genetic influences on complex human behavior, including child cognitive development, academic achievement, risk-taking, mental health, sexual activity, and childbearing. Her research has been featured in popular media outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Huffington Post.
In 2017, she was honored with a prestigious national award from the American Psychological Association for her distinguished scientific contributions to the study of genetics and human individual differences. In addition to research, Dr. Harden teaches Introduction to Psychology in a synchronous massive online class format.
She is the author of The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality (Princeton). Dr. Harden received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Virginia and completed her clinical internship at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School before moving to Austin in 2009. She has published over 100 scientific articles on genetic influences on complex human behavior, including child cognitive development, academic achievement, risk-taking, mental health, sexual activity, and childbearing. Her research has been featured in popular media outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Huffington Post.
In 2017, she was honored with a prestigious national award from the American Psychological Association for her distinguished scientific contributions to the study of genetics and human individual differences. In addition to research, Dr. Harden teaches Introduction to Psychology in a synchronous massive online class format.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 243 reviews
September 3, 2021
An accessible primer from a researcher working on the cutting edge of the field, The Genetic Lottery is also a passionate defense of an egalitarian society in a world where not all people are blessed with the same gifts. Harden recognizes what so many people refuse to understand: that denying the influence of genetics in our lives does not make that influence go away. Instead, progressive denialism leaves people of conscience unable to clearly articulate the case for a social system that nurtures all people regardless of circumstance. A world where we are not blessed with the same innate gifts through our genes is a world where the case for a strong social democratic state is much stronger, as such a world is one where no one is fully in control of their lives and thus where no one deserves poverty, hunger, and depravation. Harden's text gives readers the scientific background necessary to understand heritability and the ethical arguments necessary to defend our duty to protect the most disadvantaged among us.
As someone with not just a political and academic interest in this subject, but with the same interests in genetics as everyone and some unusual ones besides, I found The Genetic Lottery timely and moving.
As someone with not just a political and academic interest in this subject, but with the same interests in genetics as everyone and some unusual ones besides, I found The Genetic Lottery timely and moving.
April 2, 2024
Overall this is a well-written book. However, I wouldn't recommend it to a layperson, since the author's sheer ideological bias trumps the science throughout the book. Worse than that, she sometimes lies deliberately about the evidence.
August 11, 2021
I received an advanced copy of this book, and it’s so damned good. For most of my life, I believed in meritocracy even though I’ve personally seen how the “genetic lottery” can screw you. I’m a recovering drug addict who struggles with depression and anxiety, and these run in my family. On top of that, I’m one of those people where I have to work 10x as hard to lose weight. But because of my sobriety, I liked to tell myself that “working hard gets you where you need to go”. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. In this book, Kathryn Paige Harden does an incredible job laying down the foundation about how genes do and don’t affect us. There are many myths and misconceptions she debunks throughout the first part of the book, but she breaks down what the science actually says.
The first half of the book was a bit difficult for me because too much talk about biology and genetics just goes over my head. Despite my lack of comprehension of the topic, the author was able to get the main points across, and she uses epic 90s movie references throughout, which is a great way to teach people. In the second half of the book, she dives into how our views on genetics affect the legal system, moral responsibility, education, job opportunities, and other systemic issues. By the time Kathryn got to the social issues, I couldn’t stop reading the book. I can’t wait for it to launch and for others to learn more about the reality of the genetic lottery so we can work towards more equality rather than basing someone’s value on things outside of their control.
The first half of the book was a bit difficult for me because too much talk about biology and genetics just goes over my head. Despite my lack of comprehension of the topic, the author was able to get the main points across, and she uses epic 90s movie references throughout, which is a great way to teach people. In the second half of the book, she dives into how our views on genetics affect the legal system, moral responsibility, education, job opportunities, and other systemic issues. By the time Kathryn got to the social issues, I couldn’t stop reading the book. I can’t wait for it to launch and for others to learn more about the reality of the genetic lottery so we can work towards more equality rather than basing someone’s value on things outside of their control.
December 13, 2021
Sometimes you get hold of a book, then keep putting off reading it, because it seems like it's going to be hard work. That's what I did with The Genetic Lottery - in a sense I was right. It could have been more accessible in its writing style, but where I was expecting a woke, knee-jerk response to genetics and social equality, what we get instead is a well-reasoned argument for taking a different approach, combined with more in-depth explanation of the traps it is possible to fall into when dealing with the influence of genes on cognitive ability, earning etc. - and how to avoid them.
Kathryn Paige Harden has to tread carefully. Any mention of linking genetics and ability is liable to face an instant accusation of resorting Galtonesque eugenics. However, Harden espouses what she calls anti-eugenics. It is not enough, she suggests to be genetics blind. If we really want equity of opportunity, we need to try to level out genetic favourability just as much as we should try to deal with the impact of social deprivation on opportunity.
Harden shows in some detail how it is possible to discover the level of genetic contribution to anything from height to educational attainment. And though this may well only contribute 10 to 20 per cent of the difference, it has a bigger influence than does, for example, how rich mummy and daddy are. She also makes it very clear that this has nothing to do with race. Although there are some relatively minor genetic differences between groups of people which tend to be labelled as races (the concept of race itself is totally non-scientific), they are trivial compared with genetic differences where these labels don't apply.
Although Harden writes in quite a personal fashion, I did find the text difficult to read - it works around points at length, often without really coming down to a clear conclusion. The reader gets a feeling of where she is going, but it's hard to pin down clear ways forward. She tells us, for example, of the uselessness of a communist regime's levelling down approach to dealing with inequity - but doesn't really give a practical path for doing anything in modern Western society, particularly in the US, with the exception of overhauling its ridiculous healthcare system.
Harden often uses religious examples or metaphors, and to some extent, this book seems like the John the Baptist of the genetic lottery and how to deal with it - it lays some of the groundwork, but doesn't really tell us how to get there. Like many books on climate change, it's a lot better on the problem than the solution. Even so, it is a real eye-opener and an important book. For too long we have assumed that if we could fix the unfairness in the system, we would be fine having a hierarchy based on genetic ability - reward based on talent. Harden underlines the unfairness of this approach, while still recognising that we want the selection of people doing a job like an airline pilot or surgeon to be based on what they can deliver, rather than equity of outcome. It may be that we can never square this particular circle. But it's a topic that benefits from discussion.
Kathryn Paige Harden has to tread carefully. Any mention of linking genetics and ability is liable to face an instant accusation of resorting Galtonesque eugenics. However, Harden espouses what she calls anti-eugenics. It is not enough, she suggests to be genetics blind. If we really want equity of opportunity, we need to try to level out genetic favourability just as much as we should try to deal with the impact of social deprivation on opportunity.
Harden shows in some detail how it is possible to discover the level of genetic contribution to anything from height to educational attainment. And though this may well only contribute 10 to 20 per cent of the difference, it has a bigger influence than does, for example, how rich mummy and daddy are. She also makes it very clear that this has nothing to do with race. Although there are some relatively minor genetic differences between groups of people which tend to be labelled as races (the concept of race itself is totally non-scientific), they are trivial compared with genetic differences where these labels don't apply.
Although Harden writes in quite a personal fashion, I did find the text difficult to read - it works around points at length, often without really coming down to a clear conclusion. The reader gets a feeling of where she is going, but it's hard to pin down clear ways forward. She tells us, for example, of the uselessness of a communist regime's levelling down approach to dealing with inequity - but doesn't really give a practical path for doing anything in modern Western society, particularly in the US, with the exception of overhauling its ridiculous healthcare system.
Harden often uses religious examples or metaphors, and to some extent, this book seems like the John the Baptist of the genetic lottery and how to deal with it - it lays some of the groundwork, but doesn't really tell us how to get there. Like many books on climate change, it's a lot better on the problem than the solution. Even so, it is a real eye-opener and an important book. For too long we have assumed that if we could fix the unfairness in the system, we would be fine having a hierarchy based on genetic ability - reward based on talent. Harden underlines the unfairness of this approach, while still recognising that we want the selection of people doing a job like an airline pilot or surgeon to be based on what they can deliver, rather than equity of outcome. It may be that we can never square this particular circle. But it's a topic that benefits from discussion.
October 12, 2021
This is very easily accessible to lay readers, the science is thoroughly explained.
The author makes every attempt to be understandable and interesting to everyday readers.
The book offers a thorough explanation on DNA, the history of Eugenics, race as it applies to these studies and the historical ties between IQ testing and racism.
I hate the bible quotes and consider them inappropriate for a book on science.
The author makes the case that 'liberals' need to engage in this research or 'racists' will.
The problem is that white liberals as a group aren't necessarily less racist than white conservatives.
It is unrealistic to pretend that a society that is wildly white supremacist, transphobic, homphobic, sexist and ableist will use this science to help when it has been historically been used to incredible harm and fascism is rising globally.
I'm uncomfortable that the metrics used to determine if a trait is lucky is education level and work success, its elitist as fuck🤷🏾♀️
Is it possible this could help, maybe, in some idyllic future after social inequalities have been appropriately solved.
I find the research and research possibilities fascinating. At the same time its important to acknowledge that this measures traits that are considered lucky in our current hierarchical and unfair society. I'm not sure those traits are inherently lucky because our society values them.
This author uses terms like 'lucky' genetic lottery which implies winners which sets up the existence of 'unlucky' genetic lottery 'losers' which leads to marginalization of those deemed unlucky in our current society.
The author agrees with me that hierarchy based on DNA is dangerous & bad but fails to acknowledge that deeming some traits lucky is the path to hierarchy.
If we just want to explore these differences that's fine but once you determine that a particular trait is more desirable and having it makes one 'lucky', we're headed to a hierarchical system which prioritizes those with traits deemed lucky.
I hope one day we are mature enough as a species to look at genetic differences without applying a value statement to those differences.
I also think the author is overstating the idea that dismissing the importance of traits deemed desirable by a white supremacist society is the same as saying everyone is the level same across every metric.
I don't think intelligence is as important as this author does but thats not the same as thinking all people have the same innate level of intelligence.
Thats not it at all. No one is denying that some brains make connections more quickly than others. I'm just denying that ability makes an individual lucky or a genetic lottery winner or whatever tired ass phrasing you want to use.
This isn't a bad introduction to genetics and every attempt is made to both explain why DNA science is linked with Eugenics as well as explain why that history has more to do with social issues than science issues.
I agree its just that research of this kind will be used to harm marginalized peoples even if we restrict all testing and results to white people. Our current society isn't ready for this science and as such I don't think it has value, yet.
This is a science for after the revolution🤷🏾♀️
*I started this book when it was released but wasn't sure if I'd leave a review on this site or not so didn't mark it as I stated reading it.
The author makes every attempt to be understandable and interesting to everyday readers.
The book offers a thorough explanation on DNA, the history of Eugenics, race as it applies to these studies and the historical ties between IQ testing and racism.
I hate the bible quotes and consider them inappropriate for a book on science.
The author makes the case that 'liberals' need to engage in this research or 'racists' will.
The problem is that white liberals as a group aren't necessarily less racist than white conservatives.
It is unrealistic to pretend that a society that is wildly white supremacist, transphobic, homphobic, sexist and ableist will use this science to help when it has been historically been used to incredible harm and fascism is rising globally.
I'm uncomfortable that the metrics used to determine if a trait is lucky is education level and work success, its elitist as fuck🤷🏾♀️
Is it possible this could help, maybe, in some idyllic future after social inequalities have been appropriately solved.
I find the research and research possibilities fascinating. At the same time its important to acknowledge that this measures traits that are considered lucky in our current hierarchical and unfair society. I'm not sure those traits are inherently lucky because our society values them.
This author uses terms like 'lucky' genetic lottery which implies winners which sets up the existence of 'unlucky' genetic lottery 'losers' which leads to marginalization of those deemed unlucky in our current society.
The author agrees with me that hierarchy based on DNA is dangerous & bad but fails to acknowledge that deeming some traits lucky is the path to hierarchy.
If we just want to explore these differences that's fine but once you determine that a particular trait is more desirable and having it makes one 'lucky', we're headed to a hierarchical system which prioritizes those with traits deemed lucky.
I hope one day we are mature enough as a species to look at genetic differences without applying a value statement to those differences.
I also think the author is overstating the idea that dismissing the importance of traits deemed desirable by a white supremacist society is the same as saying everyone is the level same across every metric.
I don't think intelligence is as important as this author does but thats not the same as thinking all people have the same innate level of intelligence.
Thats not it at all. No one is denying that some brains make connections more quickly than others. I'm just denying that ability makes an individual lucky or a genetic lottery winner or whatever tired ass phrasing you want to use.
This isn't a bad introduction to genetics and every attempt is made to both explain why DNA science is linked with Eugenics as well as explain why that history has more to do with social issues than science issues.
I agree its just that research of this kind will be used to harm marginalized peoples even if we restrict all testing and results to white people. Our current society isn't ready for this science and as such I don't think it has value, yet.
This is a science for after the revolution🤷🏾♀️
*I started this book when it was released but wasn't sure if I'd leave a review on this site or not so didn't mark it as I stated reading it.
February 8, 2022
Not a bad book, but a very socialist one with egregious reasoning errors and odd strawmen that goes with that. Full review on blog. https://kirkegaard.substack.com/p/wok...
November 10, 2021
I'm planning a longer review, but in the meantime, a placeholder:
As someone with a chronic illness influenced by genes (T1D), and the mother of a child with a genetic syndrome and its attendant disabilities, I have wished for someone to wade into the fraught waters between eugenics on the right and the refusal to consider genes as important to life outcomes on the left. It is impossible to live lives where genes have such obvious and significant impact without feeling abandoned by both sides, frankly; that, on the one hand, we should accept our lesser status and try not to further contaminant the human race with our dirty genes, or on the other, we have certain accessibility rights defined by physical limitations but are never to link them to genetic causes in polite company, or mention the gaps that such a refusal creates in our ability to live good lives.
I think Harden did a marvelous job. What Sarah Blaffer Hrdy did for me in rehabilitating evolutionary biology from its associations with misogyny, Harden does for me with The Genetic Lottery in elegantly discussing how to address genetic causes for social outcomes within a framework of equity and human rights.
If the left wants to say that reality has a liberal bias, then it needs to stop hiding from those parts of reality--including genetics and behavioural genetics--that have been co-opted by the right.
As someone with a chronic illness influenced by genes (T1D), and the mother of a child with a genetic syndrome and its attendant disabilities, I have wished for someone to wade into the fraught waters between eugenics on the right and the refusal to consider genes as important to life outcomes on the left. It is impossible to live lives where genes have such obvious and significant impact without feeling abandoned by both sides, frankly; that, on the one hand, we should accept our lesser status and try not to further contaminant the human race with our dirty genes, or on the other, we have certain accessibility rights defined by physical limitations but are never to link them to genetic causes in polite company, or mention the gaps that such a refusal creates in our ability to live good lives.
I think Harden did a marvelous job. What Sarah Blaffer Hrdy did for me in rehabilitating evolutionary biology from its associations with misogyny, Harden does for me with The Genetic Lottery in elegantly discussing how to address genetic causes for social outcomes within a framework of equity and human rights.
If the left wants to say that reality has a liberal bias, then it needs to stop hiding from those parts of reality--including genetics and behavioural genetics--that have been co-opted by the right.
February 26, 2022
A lay overview of some of what we know about behavioural genetics. It helped me understand the extent to which many ideas about behavioural genetics have been entangled with (& often used by proponents of) eugenic arguments. I particularly appreciated a trichotomy introduced in the final chapter, between "eugenic", "genome blind", and "anti-eugenic" viewpoints. It's a simple model, but helped clarify my thinking, and will certainly stimulate further thought, particularly about the distinctions between genome blind & anti-eugenic.
Also good were the examples of how outcomes may in some sense be genetically "caused", but the actual mechanism is social or technological. Eg a hypothetical society in which red heads were discriminated against by not being given access to proper schooling: their genome would in some sense "cause" lack of education, but of course the mechanism would be social (and quite changeable). The book has many nicely distilled simple models like this; the value isn't usually in the specific examples, of course, but rather in how broadly useful they are as a guard against errors in reasoning.
Also good were the examples of how outcomes may in some sense be genetically "caused", but the actual mechanism is social or technological. Eg a hypothetical society in which red heads were discriminated against by not being given access to proper schooling: their genome would in some sense "cause" lack of education, but of course the mechanism would be social (and quite changeable). The book has many nicely distilled simple models like this; the value isn't usually in the specific examples, of course, but rather in how broadly useful they are as a guard against errors in reasoning.
May 19, 2023
The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality or as it should be subtitled The Case for Why Progressives Should Care About Genetic Differences is likely one of the most important books of 2021. Subsequently, Kathryn Paige Harden received a glossy profile in The New Yorker and interviews all over the podcast-sphere, where she is bravely making the case that social outcomes (i.e. income, educational attainment, mental illness, anti-social behavior, etc) are in part causally influenced (with all the appropriate caveats) by variation in the genome.
In normie world, one might ask oneself, "Why are claims that genetics matter to social outcomes taboo or anathema to progressives anyway?" This would be a good question, but apparently few, especially on the Left, choose to heed the unbridgeable is/ought gap and accept that political positions are moral or otherwise value-based preferences that don't need empirical or scientific rectification to be pursued. But, it seems we are all utilitarians or consequentialists of some sort by default now. And incidentally, many progressives believe their political arguments are predicated on the idea that there are negligible differences between human beings biologically (i.e. Blank Slatism) and that essentially all differences are due to social and environmental inequities. Hence, why Harden's field of behavioral genetics (aka sociobiology, aka social genomics) is often scrutinized suspiciously when not subject to outright condemnation and scorn.
Harden wades into these fraught water with The Genetic Lottery, splitting her book into two parts. Part one makes the scientific case that genetic differences influence important social differences and explores the possible chains of causality and the limitations of the field. Part two argues for how the findings of behavioral genetics should be used to improve sociological research and subsequently egalitarian social policy, including some philosophical justifications largely drawn from the work of John Rawls (the argument here being the genome you inherit is not of your own doing so the lucky windfall of inherited talent isn't meritorious and shouldn't determine social and material status).
Harden's survey of the behavioral genetics literature (GWAS, polygenic risk scores, etc) in part one is excellent. She is able to refute inaccurate deterministic understandings of the genetic effects of common variation on complex traits (some human traits are determined by large effect rare variants, and this is mentioned but is outside the scope of the book), and she is able to respond to critics and skeptics of behavioral genetic science (including those raised by her mentor Eric Turkheimer, who believes somewhat ridiculously that all genetic causal mechanisms must be elucidated before they are to be considered bonafide). Unfortunately, Harden's a bit too sensitive to the latter group and doesn't aggressively put forth all of the very replicable, large effect findings of genetic influence on socially valued traits (she basically avoids classic twin study findings entirely), including sometimes avoiding discussions of hot button traits like IQ and opting for the safer proxy, educational attainment. Harden is also compelled by her audience to condemn controversial work in her or related fields, which sometimes results in unfair mischaracterizations on her part (e.g. her comments on Charles Murray, who is the lightening rod of lightening rods on this topic).
Harden's political musing about hereditarian pessimism (i.e. genes influence outcomes so inequality can't be fixed), egalitarianism, and the boogeyman eugenics (she says we need anti-eugenics taking from the antiracism movement) are a bit inchoate and sometimes seem more like perfunctory cover for her scientific project. Sure the political takeaway from behavioral genetics could be that meritocracy is a deleterious myth because no one is truly self-made, but the takeaway could also be that society should be structured like a liberal meritocracy because it allows the gifted to maximize their talents and create material excess that can be drafted off of and/or redistributed so that a basic minimum of material comfort is achieved by all (this is somewhat analogous to the situation we have in contemporary wealthy Western democracies). Additionally, I didn't like some of the defining down of eugenics that appeared in the book. Eugenics should refer to legal regimes that compel or control or shape reproduction toward discriminatory ends. Otherwise the taboo that should be associated with eugenics will be diluted.
Overall, Harden's work is thought-provoking and very engaging. Behavioral genetic research is prodigiously interesting and socially important. Regardless of one's politics, it is worth thinking about the consequences and import of these findings (the implication I takeaway are quite different than Hardens for example). I do wish Harden's perspective was a bit more informed by related historical, political science, and economic findings, but this may have tempered her political perspective and kept here argument from resonating with her target audience.
More commentary from me on behavioral genetics
In normie world, one might ask oneself, "Why are claims that genetics matter to social outcomes taboo or anathema to progressives anyway?" This would be a good question, but apparently few, especially on the Left, choose to heed the unbridgeable is/ought gap and accept that political positions are moral or otherwise value-based preferences that don't need empirical or scientific rectification to be pursued. But, it seems we are all utilitarians or consequentialists of some sort by default now. And incidentally, many progressives believe their political arguments are predicated on the idea that there are negligible differences between human beings biologically (i.e. Blank Slatism) and that essentially all differences are due to social and environmental inequities. Hence, why Harden's field of behavioral genetics (aka sociobiology, aka social genomics) is often scrutinized suspiciously when not subject to outright condemnation and scorn.
Harden wades into these fraught water with The Genetic Lottery, splitting her book into two parts. Part one makes the scientific case that genetic differences influence important social differences and explores the possible chains of causality and the limitations of the field. Part two argues for how the findings of behavioral genetics should be used to improve sociological research and subsequently egalitarian social policy, including some philosophical justifications largely drawn from the work of John Rawls (the argument here being the genome you inherit is not of your own doing so the lucky windfall of inherited talent isn't meritorious and shouldn't determine social and material status).
Harden's survey of the behavioral genetics literature (GWAS, polygenic risk scores, etc) in part one is excellent. She is able to refute inaccurate deterministic understandings of the genetic effects of common variation on complex traits (some human traits are determined by large effect rare variants, and this is mentioned but is outside the scope of the book), and she is able to respond to critics and skeptics of behavioral genetic science (including those raised by her mentor Eric Turkheimer, who believes somewhat ridiculously that all genetic causal mechanisms must be elucidated before they are to be considered bonafide). Unfortunately, Harden's a bit too sensitive to the latter group and doesn't aggressively put forth all of the very replicable, large effect findings of genetic influence on socially valued traits (she basically avoids classic twin study findings entirely), including sometimes avoiding discussions of hot button traits like IQ and opting for the safer proxy, educational attainment. Harden is also compelled by her audience to condemn controversial work in her or related fields, which sometimes results in unfair mischaracterizations on her part (e.g. her comments on Charles Murray, who is the lightening rod of lightening rods on this topic).
Harden's political musing about hereditarian pessimism (i.e. genes influence outcomes so inequality can't be fixed), egalitarianism, and the boogeyman eugenics (she says we need anti-eugenics taking from the antiracism movement) are a bit inchoate and sometimes seem more like perfunctory cover for her scientific project. Sure the political takeaway from behavioral genetics could be that meritocracy is a deleterious myth because no one is truly self-made, but the takeaway could also be that society should be structured like a liberal meritocracy because it allows the gifted to maximize their talents and create material excess that can be drafted off of and/or redistributed so that a basic minimum of material comfort is achieved by all (this is somewhat analogous to the situation we have in contemporary wealthy Western democracies). Additionally, I didn't like some of the defining down of eugenics that appeared in the book. Eugenics should refer to legal regimes that compel or control or shape reproduction toward discriminatory ends. Otherwise the taboo that should be associated with eugenics will be diluted.
Overall, Harden's work is thought-provoking and very engaging. Behavioral genetic research is prodigiously interesting and socially important. Regardless of one's politics, it is worth thinking about the consequences and import of these findings (the implication I takeaway are quite different than Hardens for example). I do wish Harden's perspective was a bit more informed by related historical, political science, and economic findings, but this may have tempered her political perspective and kept here argument from resonating with her target audience.
More commentary from me on behavioral genetics
October 12, 2021
This book is well researched, intriguing, and bold.
I really learned a lot upon reading it as to how genome studies are used. The basic crux of it is: stop believing in a meritocracy. Because genes dip their toes into every aspect of your life in subtle ways. No, it isn’t one gene, but rather your collection of genes that privileges you.
You may like to think that grit is everything and genes are secondary. Well, guess what. Grit has a genetic component, too. So, everyone who believes their hard work and perseverance got them all they had… well, they are living in a fantasy world of egotism. Your genetics got you a lot of what you have. Your dumb luck.
It’s an intriguing statement. No, it does not divorce environment from genes. They can influence each other too, in convoluted ways. The research is interesting as is the methodology. Sociological studies are hampered by refusing to acknowledge genetics in their equations.
It may not be palatable to believe that genetics has a larger role in success than we imagine, but it is not right to equate genes with self worth either. In fact, it’s eugenics and small minded to believe that. That’s the main takeaways I had. I thought it was very thought provoking. Some of her ideas can be challenging at first to comprehend. But definitely worth reading. Definitely stretched my mind.
I really learned a lot upon reading it as to how genome studies are used. The basic crux of it is: stop believing in a meritocracy. Because genes dip their toes into every aspect of your life in subtle ways. No, it isn’t one gene, but rather your collection of genes that privileges you.
You may like to think that grit is everything and genes are secondary. Well, guess what. Grit has a genetic component, too. So, everyone who believes their hard work and perseverance got them all they had… well, they are living in a fantasy world of egotism. Your genetics got you a lot of what you have. Your dumb luck.
It’s an intriguing statement. No, it does not divorce environment from genes. They can influence each other too, in convoluted ways. The research is interesting as is the methodology. Sociological studies are hampered by refusing to acknowledge genetics in their equations.
It may not be palatable to believe that genetics has a larger role in success than we imagine, but it is not right to equate genes with self worth either. In fact, it’s eugenics and small minded to believe that. That’s the main takeaways I had. I thought it was very thought provoking. Some of her ideas can be challenging at first to comprehend. But definitely worth reading. Definitely stretched my mind.
January 10, 2022
Would it surprise you to learn that intelligent people are more likely to find greater levels of success in school and in their work? No? That seems kind of obvious, actually? Well then, Harden really has nothing to offer you in The Genetic Lottery.
This was a book I had wanted to like. I am optimistic that a greater understanding of genetics could help inform specific solutions that might help those who are currently being left behind. In fairness, Harden does make this point in a late chapter. As a very minor point, she concedes that the most likely contribution genetics can make to debates around inequality is as a control variable in policy studies. But that is clearly not the book she wanted to write.
Instead, she wants you to believe, essentially without evidence, that her research field holds the key to fixing inequalities. We should also use our knowledge of genetics to provide unspecified supports to those who did not win out in the genetic lottery. The fact that genuinely talented people are successful is apparently a societal problem to be corrected. But her thesis has myriad problems, and I am struggling to catalogue them all. Here are a few of the more serious ones:
1) Genetics turn out to actually have much reduced predictive power in more unequal societies (e.g. The United States), whereas it's only in societies which have achieved the sort of leveling she aspires to (e.g. Denmark) that innate gifts are able to shine through. I'm just going to quote her exactly:
Right, so she just demolished her own thesis. Offset genetic luck in order to reduce inequality. Except it turns out that inequality is what mitigates the role of genetic impacts. By contrast, a more equal society nurtures innate gifts, regardless of ethnicity, background, etc. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she does not return to touch on this point anywhere else in the book.
2) The whole house of cards depends on the reader being shocked to discover that people are different, and so have different life outcomes. The reality is that the study of genetics has largely just supplied information about the mechanism, but the practical results of them in terms of differences in our personalities, abilities, etc. were already known due to the fact that even an infant can understand that not everybody is the name.
3) Much of her discussion of education depends upon her assertion that the education system increases inequality. But that has been well studied: it doesn't (at least here in Canada). Educational inequalities decrease during the school year, and then when students return home for the summer differences in their opportunities at home manifest themselves.
3a) She seems to believe that teachers pretty much ignore genetically disfavoured, i.e. weaker students. But, like, that is the job. Any schlep can help the lawyer's kid get good marks. I don't know any teacher, of any level ability, that doesn't aspire to help those that are down on their luck.
4) Most of the time, in addition to a lack of knowledge of any of the fields she comments on outside of her own, she seems unaware that there is another country than the United States. (The blockquote above is a rare exception, and you can see what that did for her.
5) This is a more minor point, but she seems unaware of the research that shows intelligence is not a fixed trait. She dismisses Carol Dweck and her growth mindset with a wave.
6) The sympathetic part of her thesis is that those who are have not been blessed by the genetic lottery are deserving of greater respect. Absolutely, and that belief is what attracted me to this book. I had hoped to find something I could use to aid in my teaching practice, or policies I could advocate for in the political sphere. But her pleas come across as utterly hollow as she wastes no opportunity to take unnecessary potshots at American conservatives, who - let's be real - are disproportionately the sort of disfavored people that she claims to be trying to help. I would also add that random comments about how her daughter goes to a Montessori school (which she makes clear she thinks is way better than public schools) and humblebragging about how she herself did so super well in school and all the scholarships she won but she totally just got lucky etc. etc. etc. rather detract from the main message. Not to mention that the book is essentially an extended (and often explicit) plea for more funding for her research. Contrast this with the warm and compassionate approach of similarly themed but ultimately much better books like Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism (Anne Case and Angus Deaton) or Good Economics for Hard Times (Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo) and you'll get a good sense of what's missing here.
Now, I will say that I modestly enjoyed her discussion of the current science of genetics and statistical analysis; it was an informative primer/refresher of basic concepts, and was almost enough to get me to three stars. But the title of the book, the publisher's blurb, the introduction, and tantalizing hints throughout all promised me this bold new synthesis of genetics, education, and policy. It does not deliver, and does so in a way that is frequently offputting. And I haven't even mentioned her endless jousting with absent critics who are apparently accusing her of being a eugenicist. I'm not saying this is a bad book, but...
(Go read Sapolsky's Behave instead.)
2/5
This was a book I had wanted to like. I am optimistic that a greater understanding of genetics could help inform specific solutions that might help those who are currently being left behind. In fairness, Harden does make this point in a late chapter. As a very minor point, she concedes that the most likely contribution genetics can make to debates around inequality is as a control variable in policy studies. But that is clearly not the book she wanted to write.
Instead, she wants you to believe, essentially without evidence, that her research field holds the key to fixing inequalities. We should also use our knowledge of genetics to provide unspecified supports to those who did not win out in the genetic lottery. The fact that genuinely talented people are successful is apparently a societal problem to be corrected. But her thesis has myriad problems, and I am struggling to catalogue them all. Here are a few of the more serious ones:
1) Genetics turn out to actually have much reduced predictive power in more unequal societies (e.g. The United States), whereas it's only in societies which have achieved the sort of leveling she aspires to (e.g. Denmark) that innate gifts are able to shine through. I'm just going to quote her exactly:
"Despite the mythology of the United States as a 'land of opportunity', it has lower social mobility than other countries; Denmark is an example of a country with higher social mobility. The heritability of educational attainment is actually lower [emphasis hers] in countries with lower social mobility...In a more static society, when education is reproduced from parent to child with little movement upwards or downwards, the genetic lottery makes less of a difference in to a child’s life outcomes. In contrast, when life opportunities depend less on a family’s level of financial and cultural resources, genes can make more of a difference."
Right, so she just demolished her own thesis. Offset genetic luck in order to reduce inequality. Except it turns out that inequality is what mitigates the role of genetic impacts. By contrast, a more equal society nurtures innate gifts, regardless of ethnicity, background, etc. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she does not return to touch on this point anywhere else in the book.
2) The whole house of cards depends on the reader being shocked to discover that people are different, and so have different life outcomes. The reality is that the study of genetics has largely just supplied information about the mechanism, but the practical results of them in terms of differences in our personalities, abilities, etc. were already known due to the fact that even an infant can understand that not everybody is the name.
3) Much of her discussion of education depends upon her assertion that the education system increases inequality. But that has been well studied: it doesn't (at least here in Canada). Educational inequalities decrease during the school year, and then when students return home for the summer differences in their opportunities at home manifest themselves.
3a) She seems to believe that teachers pretty much ignore genetically disfavoured, i.e. weaker students. But, like, that is the job. Any schlep can help the lawyer's kid get good marks. I don't know any teacher, of any level ability, that doesn't aspire to help those that are down on their luck.
4) Most of the time, in addition to a lack of knowledge of any of the fields she comments on outside of her own, she seems unaware that there is another country than the United States. (The blockquote above is a rare exception, and you can see what that did for her.
5) This is a more minor point, but she seems unaware of the research that shows intelligence is not a fixed trait. She dismisses Carol Dweck and her growth mindset with a wave.
6) The sympathetic part of her thesis is that those who are have not been blessed by the genetic lottery are deserving of greater respect. Absolutely, and that belief is what attracted me to this book. I had hoped to find something I could use to aid in my teaching practice, or policies I could advocate for in the political sphere. But her pleas come across as utterly hollow as she wastes no opportunity to take unnecessary potshots at American conservatives, who - let's be real - are disproportionately the sort of disfavored people that she claims to be trying to help. I would also add that random comments about how her daughter goes to a Montessori school (which she makes clear she thinks is way better than public schools) and humblebragging about how she herself did so super well in school and all the scholarships she won but she totally just got lucky etc. etc. etc. rather detract from the main message. Not to mention that the book is essentially an extended (and often explicit) plea for more funding for her research. Contrast this with the warm and compassionate approach of similarly themed but ultimately much better books like Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism (Anne Case and Angus Deaton) or Good Economics for Hard Times (Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo) and you'll get a good sense of what's missing here.
Now, I will say that I modestly enjoyed her discussion of the current science of genetics and statistical analysis; it was an informative primer/refresher of basic concepts, and was almost enough to get me to three stars. But the title of the book, the publisher's blurb, the introduction, and tantalizing hints throughout all promised me this bold new synthesis of genetics, education, and policy. It does not deliver, and does so in a way that is frequently offputting. And I haven't even mentioned her endless jousting with absent critics who are apparently accusing her of being a eugenicist. I'm not saying this is a bad book, but...
(Go read Sapolsky's Behave instead.)
2/5
Read
October 25, 2021(no rating, as some could interpret it as my declaration of agreement/disagreement with a sociopolitical standpoint put in the book)
IMHO it's definitely worth checking. Why so? Because it's probably the very first time when someone with a clear left-wing point of view addresses the matter of genes and DNA (what they determine, what is their impact) w/o immediately falling down into the trap of political correctness. TBH I totally agree with a thesis that no one should be discriminated against because of their DNA (genotype), but the book's scope is much wider.
I'm not saying I do agree with everything I've read in this book. In fact, there is plenty of things I actually disagree with, but the book is written in a way that invites discussion, instead of igniting unnecessary flamewars and spurring potential conflicts. That's a big pro.
What are my key remarks after reading it?
* the concept of "justice" (fixing the inequalities that come e.g. because of natural randomness) by "intervening" freaks me out - when it comes to intervening, I'm with Taleb
* "fixing" inequalities may happen at different "stages" - e.g. by providing children at least some baseline for development at the early stage (especially important for the ones from impoverished families or with various kinds of disabilities), OR by using different criteria (e.g. racial percentages) when recruiting employees/students - I have an impression that for some reason the author (and many other people) do not see fundamental differences between such scenarios
* in one of the final chapters the author (with full authority) claims that "colorblindness theory" is wrong, without providing any reasonable reasoning - TBH I 100% disagree - I actually think that the colorblindness can solve MANY of problems mentioned in this book
* the book is extremely US-centric, which is understandable (Americans have their problems), but many of the problems mentioned (with access to healthcare, education, etc.) have been SOLVED much better in Europe, hereby eliminating inequalities. Instead of thinking that the whole world is just US, maybe pay some attention to others' accomplishments?
* all this talking about fixing the justice, etc. is pretty much self-annihilated by the author bringing back the examples of hiring a pilot (or any other highly specialized, highly responsible role); she literally obliterates the whole reasoning without proposing an alternative solution; yikes!
* the one thing I hope sticks in readers' minds after reading this book is: DNA is not the "prescription" that determines our exact traits (intelligence, height, strength, etc.) - yes, it provides certain advantages and inclinations (and can act as a booster), but there are many more factors (e.g. environmental ones) that play a far more important role
* I think it was the final chapter, where the author raised the topic of using DNA in insurance - I think her way of thinking is too simplified here; The topic deserves a far better analysis.
It's a difficult topic, but also a very important one. I recommend you to get familiar with this book, so you can make your own opinion. Remember - think for yourself. And don't be afraid to avoid sticking to the extremes (either left or right ones) - it's nothing wrong in being a centrist, in fact, it may be a position of reason in many cases :)
IMHO it's definitely worth checking. Why so? Because it's probably the very first time when someone with a clear left-wing point of view addresses the matter of genes and DNA (what they determine, what is their impact) w/o immediately falling down into the trap of political correctness. TBH I totally agree with a thesis that no one should be discriminated against because of their DNA (genotype), but the book's scope is much wider.
I'm not saying I do agree with everything I've read in this book. In fact, there is plenty of things I actually disagree with, but the book is written in a way that invites discussion, instead of igniting unnecessary flamewars and spurring potential conflicts. That's a big pro.
What are my key remarks after reading it?
* the concept of "justice" (fixing the inequalities that come e.g. because of natural randomness) by "intervening" freaks me out - when it comes to intervening, I'm with Taleb
* "fixing" inequalities may happen at different "stages" - e.g. by providing children at least some baseline for development at the early stage (especially important for the ones from impoverished families or with various kinds of disabilities), OR by using different criteria (e.g. racial percentages) when recruiting employees/students - I have an impression that for some reason the author (and many other people) do not see fundamental differences between such scenarios
* in one of the final chapters the author (with full authority) claims that "colorblindness theory" is wrong, without providing any reasonable reasoning - TBH I 100% disagree - I actually think that the colorblindness can solve MANY of problems mentioned in this book
* the book is extremely US-centric, which is understandable (Americans have their problems), but many of the problems mentioned (with access to healthcare, education, etc.) have been SOLVED much better in Europe, hereby eliminating inequalities. Instead of thinking that the whole world is just US, maybe pay some attention to others' accomplishments?
* all this talking about fixing the justice, etc. is pretty much self-annihilated by the author bringing back the examples of hiring a pilot (or any other highly specialized, highly responsible role); she literally obliterates the whole reasoning without proposing an alternative solution; yikes!
* the one thing I hope sticks in readers' minds after reading this book is: DNA is not the "prescription" that determines our exact traits (intelligence, height, strength, etc.) - yes, it provides certain advantages and inclinations (and can act as a booster), but there are many more factors (e.g. environmental ones) that play a far more important role
* I think it was the final chapter, where the author raised the topic of using DNA in insurance - I think her way of thinking is too simplified here; The topic deserves a far better analysis.
It's a difficult topic, but also a very important one. I recommend you to get familiar with this book, so you can make your own opinion. Remember - think for yourself. And don't be afraid to avoid sticking to the extremes (either left or right ones) - it's nothing wrong in being a centrist, in fact, it may be a position of reason in many cases :)
February 3, 2022
One of the top 5 books I read last year - a book that will change how you look at inequality, poverty, your own personal traits and career success...
A particularly poignant passage towards the end:
"Some people happen to inherit combinations of genetic variants that, in combination with environments provided by parents and teachers and social institutions, cause them to be more likely to develop a suite of skills and behaviors that are currently valued in the formal education systems of Western capitalist societies. They are not better people. They are not more inherently meritorious. They are simply luckier.
Take the power of the genetic lottery seriously, and you might be faced with the realization that many of the things you pride yourself on, your high vocabulary and your quick processing speed, your orderliness and your “grit,” the fact that you always did well in school, are the consequence of a series of lucky breaks for which you can take no credit. Now, take the Rawlsian thought experiment about the veil of ignorance seriously, and consider: What sort of society would you want if you didn’t know what the outcome of the genetic lottery was going to be?"
A particularly poignant passage towards the end:
"Some people happen to inherit combinations of genetic variants that, in combination with environments provided by parents and teachers and social institutions, cause them to be more likely to develop a suite of skills and behaviors that are currently valued in the formal education systems of Western capitalist societies. They are not better people. They are not more inherently meritorious. They are simply luckier.
Take the power of the genetic lottery seriously, and you might be faced with the realization that many of the things you pride yourself on, your high vocabulary and your quick processing speed, your orderliness and your “grit,” the fact that you always did well in school, are the consequence of a series of lucky breaks for which you can take no credit. Now, take the Rawlsian thought experiment about the veil of ignorance seriously, and consider: What sort of society would you want if you didn’t know what the outcome of the genetic lottery was going to be?"
Want to read
September 8, 2021An interesting profile of the author at the New Yorker:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...
She writes, “Yes, the genetic differences between any two people are tiny when compared to the long stretches of DNA coiled in every human cell. But these differences loom large when trying to understand why, for example, one child has autism and another doesn’t; why one is deaf and another hearing; and—as I will describe in this book—why one child will struggle with school and another will not. Genetic differences between us matter for our lives. They cause differences in things we care about. Building a commitment to egalitarianism on our genetic uniformity is building a house on sand.”
The profile includes her unfortunate encounter with Progressive 'cancel culture.' She self-identifies as a political Progressive. Didn't help her. Well worth reading her profile. Sounds like a very bright scientist, fortunately with Tenure.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...
She writes, “Yes, the genetic differences between any two people are tiny when compared to the long stretches of DNA coiled in every human cell. But these differences loom large when trying to understand why, for example, one child has autism and another doesn’t; why one is deaf and another hearing; and—as I will describe in this book—why one child will struggle with school and another will not. Genetic differences between us matter for our lives. They cause differences in things we care about. Building a commitment to egalitarianism on our genetic uniformity is building a house on sand.”
The profile includes her unfortunate encounter with Progressive 'cancel culture.' She self-identifies as a political Progressive. Didn't help her. Well worth reading her profile. Sounds like a very bright scientist, fortunately with Tenure.
September 28, 2021
The best thing the author does is make it absolutely clear that the era of intellectuals who deny biological causes for social issues are holding us all back from addressing those issues. If there's one lesson you take away from this book, that would be it.
October 12, 2021
Fifteen years ago, I read Kenneth Miller's book Finding Darwin's God (fear not, dear reader, you have not clicked on the wrong link; I will get to genetics anon). Miller, a practicing Catholic and evolutionary biologist, wrote the book during one of the periodic flare ups over the teaching of so-called Intelligent Design in schools. The book is aimed at Christians and aims to show both that acceptance of the textbook theory of evolution is consistent with Christian belief and that the rejection of evolution by some Christian groups was interfering with the goal of spreading the Gospel.
I mention all this because reading Paige Harden's The Genetic Lottery gave me a strong sense of deja vu. Paige's book is basically the same as Miller's, except that instead of Christians her audience is the political left, and it is not evolution in general but behavioral genetics that she is trying to reconcile them to.
The first half of the book lays out the basics of behavioral genetics as a field, and presents the evidence that pretty much all human behaviors (including not only intelligence and success in school but also character traits like diligence and grit and even things like the likelihood of drug abuse or divorce) are all influenced by people's different genes. In the second half of the book, Harden explores why these facts about human genetics have traditionally made left-wingers uncomfortable, and tries to show how acceptance of behavioral genetics arguments are compatible with progressive politics.
I found the first half of the book more persuasive than the second, but since I am not a leftist that may not be a bad sign. Even though I reject leftism, I think it would be good for society if the left became more accepting of the facts of genetics, and so I will not lay out the points where I find her political arguments flawed, confused, or incoherent. Instead, I wish her luck.
I do, however, have one major problem with the book. In making her case, Prof. Harden has a nasty habit of labeling anyone even a millimeter more hereditarian than her as a racist or eugenicist. She accuses the eminent psychologist Robert Plomin of eugenicism for saying that genetic profiles might in the future be used to help select applicants for college or employment. She suggests that the geneticist David Reich wants genetics to be "consistent with the 'Just So' stories told by White people crafting a 'moral apology' for slavery and oppression" because he warned that people needed to be prepared for the possibility that genomics might find differences between groups. She is repeatedly forced into grudging agreement with Charles Murray on a point, only to reaffirm that he is of course really bad.
On a rhetorical level, I can sort of understand why she does this. Prof. Harden is trying to win over progressives who are skeptical of genetic arguments, and she would not make her job easier if she said nice things about conservatives while doing so. Separating her own moderate position from the more "extreme" views of others (even where they do not, in fact, differ that much) is a perfectly understandable tactic.
But Prof. Harden also casts herself not as a Machiavelian but as a moralizer. The book is full of biblical references (reflecting her strict Protestant upbringing) and exhortations to moral values such as truth, public spiritedness, and such. One passage that she could have quoted but does not is Matthew 7:22: "Do unto others as you would have them to do to you." As she describes in the book, Prof. Harden has herself often been accused of racism or eugenics for her views on behavioral genetics. One famous colleague even went so far as to compare her to a Holocaust denier or climate change skeptic. Prof. Harden clearly does not like it when people accuse her of such things based on her sincere (and scientifically mainstream) views about the importance of genes in social outcomes. She should stop doing the same thing to others.
I mention all this because reading Paige Harden's The Genetic Lottery gave me a strong sense of deja vu. Paige's book is basically the same as Miller's, except that instead of Christians her audience is the political left, and it is not evolution in general but behavioral genetics that she is trying to reconcile them to.
The first half of the book lays out the basics of behavioral genetics as a field, and presents the evidence that pretty much all human behaviors (including not only intelligence and success in school but also character traits like diligence and grit and even things like the likelihood of drug abuse or divorce) are all influenced by people's different genes. In the second half of the book, Harden explores why these facts about human genetics have traditionally made left-wingers uncomfortable, and tries to show how acceptance of behavioral genetics arguments are compatible with progressive politics.
I found the first half of the book more persuasive than the second, but since I am not a leftist that may not be a bad sign. Even though I reject leftism, I think it would be good for society if the left became more accepting of the facts of genetics, and so I will not lay out the points where I find her political arguments flawed, confused, or incoherent. Instead, I wish her luck.
I do, however, have one major problem with the book. In making her case, Prof. Harden has a nasty habit of labeling anyone even a millimeter more hereditarian than her as a racist or eugenicist. She accuses the eminent psychologist Robert Plomin of eugenicism for saying that genetic profiles might in the future be used to help select applicants for college or employment. She suggests that the geneticist David Reich wants genetics to be "consistent with the 'Just So' stories told by White people crafting a 'moral apology' for slavery and oppression" because he warned that people needed to be prepared for the possibility that genomics might find differences between groups. She is repeatedly forced into grudging agreement with Charles Murray on a point, only to reaffirm that he is of course really bad.
On a rhetorical level, I can sort of understand why she does this. Prof. Harden is trying to win over progressives who are skeptical of genetic arguments, and she would not make her job easier if she said nice things about conservatives while doing so. Separating her own moderate position from the more "extreme" views of others (even where they do not, in fact, differ that much) is a perfectly understandable tactic.
But Prof. Harden also casts herself not as a Machiavelian but as a moralizer. The book is full of biblical references (reflecting her strict Protestant upbringing) and exhortations to moral values such as truth, public spiritedness, and such. One passage that she could have quoted but does not is Matthew 7:22: "Do unto others as you would have them to do to you." As she describes in the book, Prof. Harden has herself often been accused of racism or eugenics for her views on behavioral genetics. One famous colleague even went so far as to compare her to a Holocaust denier or climate change skeptic. Prof. Harden clearly does not like it when people accuse her of such things based on her sincere (and scientifically mainstream) views about the importance of genes in social outcomes. She should stop doing the same thing to others.
May 24, 2023
If the best non-fiction books for a general audience also provide insights on the scientific process and on ethics, then this book is a must read. Harden combines psychology, genetics, statistics, social philosophy and economics to discuss one of the most important social problems of our time: how can we build a fairer society using actual science rather than ideological pipedreams? She does not shy away from controversy, but her arguments are meticulous and empirically sound. Highly recommended.
January 24, 2022
I like what Harden tries to achieve with "The Genetic Lottery," but I don't think she's quite thought it through in terms of implementation. The book is a good read and reasonably accessible for us lay-plebes - in fact, some of the analogical explanations Harden uses are borderline insulting in how simplistic they are. I also think the book serves a purpose greater than what it sets out to do (even though, ironically, the aimed for purpose is far grander).
So what is the book about then?
Well, half of it is essentially Harden's personal defense that she is not, in fact, a eugenicist. She painstakingly argues for that people have been more or less lucky in the distribution of genes, and that acknowledging this isn't just compatible with equalizing measures, but necessary. She further points out - again and again - that she's not talking about "racial" differences in genetic luck, but in the differences that are gleaned from relatively homogeneous samples - i.e. "white" people (who, admittedly, aren't quite so homogeneous as people sometimes like to think, but still).
Personally, I don't really get the big controversy here. As Harden points out, we don't have any issues with genetic differences causing/affecting physical traits, why wouldn't cognitive traits be affected by genetics as well? Nonetheless, I'd have to be blind, deaf, and illiterate to have missed that people tend to get a little upset when something like that gets pointed out. I also get that Harden feels slighted by being ignored and/or defamed by accusations of racism and eugenics. But anyway, since this wasn't a hard sell for me - quite the opposite, I agreed with her from the start - the lengthy and oversimplified explanations of her position here was a bit of a slog. However, for anyone who thinks it's all about "nurture" in terms of how we turn out, maybe the explanations are useful?
In addition to arguing that genetic differences are real, Harden argues that we should account and compensate for them in providing people with equal outcome (kind of straw-manning and dismissing the "equal opportunity" crowd in the process, essentially arguing that with real equal opportunity, we would see equal outcomes). I'm with her, to a degree. I think it's ludicrous that we punish or reward certain skill-sets so dis-proportionally - especially while simultaneously not offering the same development chances to everyone.
However, I don't quite think she's thought the implementation phase through all the way. For one, her critics are of course right, regardless of her intentions, her results will be used to justify inequalities. That's a given. She's also arguing for "punishing" those with genetic advantages - even if she doesn't see it that way. She clearly doesn't see it this way, so maybe an oversimplified analogy could serve to make my point: Take a household with one special needs child and another child, inevitably, the "genetically advantaged" child gets "punished" for having a sibling that receives special care.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to compensate for genetic, physical, and/or socioeconomic differences - I'm very much in favor of such efforts - but I do think Harden needs to develop her ideas for how to achieve this without screwing over other people too much. In fact, to varying degrees we're already doing this across the world (but for more obvious differences and challenges - special aids for those hard of hearing or seeing, for example).
Finally, I wonder if Harden realizes that in defending herself from potential accusations of racism, social engineering, and eugenics so ardently, she kind of weakens her argument for how genetics might be used to even the playing field. It's another issue I'd like to see her "solve" in future work.
In summary then, I found "The Genetic Lottery" interesting and Harden's arguments compelling, even if I think the book could have benefited from her being less defensive and fleshing out how she imagines the implementation phase. Most importantly though, Harden does us a great service in arguing that humans are not blank slates, and genetics matter. Perhaps nowhere more so than in our efforts to manufacture equality.
So what is the book about then?
Well, half of it is essentially Harden's personal defense that she is not, in fact, a eugenicist. She painstakingly argues for that people have been more or less lucky in the distribution of genes, and that acknowledging this isn't just compatible with equalizing measures, but necessary. She further points out - again and again - that she's not talking about "racial" differences in genetic luck, but in the differences that are gleaned from relatively homogeneous samples - i.e. "white" people (who, admittedly, aren't quite so homogeneous as people sometimes like to think, but still).
Personally, I don't really get the big controversy here. As Harden points out, we don't have any issues with genetic differences causing/affecting physical traits, why wouldn't cognitive traits be affected by genetics as well? Nonetheless, I'd have to be blind, deaf, and illiterate to have missed that people tend to get a little upset when something like that gets pointed out. I also get that Harden feels slighted by being ignored and/or defamed by accusations of racism and eugenics. But anyway, since this wasn't a hard sell for me - quite the opposite, I agreed with her from the start - the lengthy and oversimplified explanations of her position here was a bit of a slog. However, for anyone who thinks it's all about "nurture" in terms of how we turn out, maybe the explanations are useful?
In addition to arguing that genetic differences are real, Harden argues that we should account and compensate for them in providing people with equal outcome (kind of straw-manning and dismissing the "equal opportunity" crowd in the process, essentially arguing that with real equal opportunity, we would see equal outcomes). I'm with her, to a degree. I think it's ludicrous that we punish or reward certain skill-sets so dis-proportionally - especially while simultaneously not offering the same development chances to everyone.
However, I don't quite think she's thought the implementation phase through all the way. For one, her critics are of course right, regardless of her intentions, her results will be used to justify inequalities. That's a given. She's also arguing for "punishing" those with genetic advantages - even if she doesn't see it that way. She clearly doesn't see it this way, so maybe an oversimplified analogy could serve to make my point: Take a household with one special needs child and another child, inevitably, the "genetically advantaged" child gets "punished" for having a sibling that receives special care.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to compensate for genetic, physical, and/or socioeconomic differences - I'm very much in favor of such efforts - but I do think Harden needs to develop her ideas for how to achieve this without screwing over other people too much. In fact, to varying degrees we're already doing this across the world (but for more obvious differences and challenges - special aids for those hard of hearing or seeing, for example).
Finally, I wonder if Harden realizes that in defending herself from potential accusations of racism, social engineering, and eugenics so ardently, she kind of weakens her argument for how genetics might be used to even the playing field. It's another issue I'd like to see her "solve" in future work.
In summary then, I found "The Genetic Lottery" interesting and Harden's arguments compelling, even if I think the book could have benefited from her being less defensive and fleshing out how she imagines the implementation phase. Most importantly though, Harden does us a great service in arguing that humans are not blank slates, and genetics matter. Perhaps nowhere more so than in our efforts to manufacture equality.
Want to read
September 8, 2021“The Genetic Lottery” reflects her years spent wandering in the desert. The book does not shy away from technical details, but it wears its learning lightly; alongside Harden’s frequent Biblical allusions are references to the movies “Clueless” and “Sliding Doors.”
In: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...
November 5, 2021
This book contains very clear explanations of GWAS, SNPs, polygenic indices, twin studies, non-shared environments, and many other concepts a lay person needs to know about to begin to understand behavioral genetics (says this lay person, so noted). And the second part of the book offers a thoughtful argument about what America needs to do with all this information, to create a better society. The author, through this book and through her articles and interviews, has really made me think a lot. I do not agree with her completely, but I am in awe of her ability to explain things and I admire her pro-activity in terms of writing this book to share her thoughts on very important and often contentious subjects.
October 22, 2024
الحياة ، بالطبع ، غير عادلة - بما في ذلك طول عمر المرء. عبر العديد من الأنواع ، من القوارض إلى الأرانب إلى الرئيسيات ، تعيش الحيوانات ذات الترتيب الأعلى في التسلسل الهرمي الاجتماعي حياة أطول وأكثر صحة .في الولايات المتحدة ، يعيش أغنى الرجال ، في المتوسط ، 15 عامًا أكثر من أفقرهم . قد يكون مرور جمل عبر ثقب إبرة أسهل من دخول رجل ثري إلى بوابات الجنة ، لكن الرجل الغني لديه العزاء بكونه قادرًا على تأخير يوم موته.
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Kathryn Harden
The Genetic Lottery
Translated By #Maher_Razouk
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Kathryn Harden
The Genetic Lottery
Translated By #Maher_Razouk
January 30, 2022
Instead of reading the book, save time and get the general idea by reading
The New Yorker
article about Harden's work. You won't miss anything.
Your responses to this quiz are likely to influence your opinion of this book:
1. Should people's status in society correspond with their natural ability?
2. Should people and social groups be treated equally, independently of ability?
3. Should some people be treated as superior to others, given their hard-wired talent?
4. Should society allow some people to have more power and success than others--as the law of nature?
5. Should society strive to level the playing field, to make things just? (11)
Science (particularly genetics and neuroscience), environmentalism, and Diversity-Inclusion-Race-Equity (DIRE) are the leading candidates to supplant traditional religious paths for explanations about how we arrived at this point in time and place, establishing a sense of purpose and meaning and right relationship to the interconnected web of life or some subset of it, why bad things happen, why some people have more than others, and how to make a better world. These new ideologies have varying degrees of success in providing a sense of community, establishing in-group and out-group identities, doctrines and dogmas, and even ritualistic formulas. They cannot provide the most essential of religion's functions, however: transcendence. Science can be as easily manipulated as religion. If you don't know about lysenkoism; it refers to Lysenko, the Stalinist agronomist who predicated agricultural policy on the theory politically congenial to communism that plants from the same “class” never compete with one another. It resulted in famine and the deaths of tens of millions.
Harden is a psychologist who works in the field of behavior genetics, "which investigates the influence of genes on character traits." This would seem to indicate that most of the book makes empirical assertions, but the science isn't anywhere near there yet. We have here a book at the dawn of the science of genetics, which I suppose can be rather thrilling until the reader pauses to realize how much of this deals with unproven hypotheses. We know for sure at least that "the mechanisms linking genes to education start very early in development," namely in the womb. Exposure to drugs, stress, lead, etc. can adversely affect development and the inheritance [or not] of pernicious or auspicious genetic combinations that affect cognitive and non-cognitive skills. Harden tells us over and over again that most aspects of who we are proceed from our genes, which means it comes down to random luck. But what are the implications of that fact?
The central question Harden wants us to consider is that posed by David Reich in his op-ed NYT piece, "How should we prepare for the likelihood that in the coming years, genetic studies will show that many traits are influenced by genetic variations, and that these traits will differ on average across human populations? It will be impossible--indeed, anti-scientific, foolish and absurd--to deny those differences."
(Keep in mind that the characteristics a society values are astonishingly dynamic. Certainly, the standards of beauty shift dramatically over time and place. Currently, we value the ability to perform certain tasks quickly and accurately. Computer technology also values precision in hand-eye coordination with on-screen tasks, but it has not always and everywhere been thus.)
Returning to the question, how should we deal with inequalities that are caused by differences in biology? In the 1980s, gay males used "science" as the foundation for their push for acceptance of their sexual orientation by stating that there was a gay gene (no; we now know there isn't); that homosexuality is biological, fixed in the womb (axiomatically and definitely not true for females, whose sexuality is far more fluid and who often deliberately choose to orient toward females); and that 10% of the population is homosexual (again, no; more recent research finds 6.2% in the U.S. and 4.5% in the U.K.; a huge, but HUGE difference). Nevertheless, the mere claim to a scientific basis that didn't exist in reality was the successful rationale for greater acceptance. So why does this not happen with, say, the scientific basis for intelligence of the kind measured by the SAT or GCSE? Or what about the scientific basis for why East African runners beat all others?
Like a politician, Harden answers the question she wishes she were asked. She repeats many, many times in this book her view that "our responsibility [is] to arrange society so that it benefits all people, not just people with a certain set of genetic characteristics." What does this mean, precisely? That is the subject of Part Two.
Part Two ventures into that ultracrepidarian territory: the implications of such genetic findings for ethics and that new religion, equity. Alas, Harden is not an ethicist; this is not her expertise, and it shows; there is so much to take issue with here.
If a criminal perpetrator has a certain version of the MAOA gene, which is thought to correlate with criminal behavior, does that serve as an excuse? Harden says, "genetic information is dismissed when we want to punish people" (195); but "We should not interpret genetic influences as deterministic." What do you think the probability will be of the data not being misused in a fatalistic way?
Then, "If you take genetics seriously as a source of differences between people, then what does that mean (if anything) about the responsibility that we bear for how our lives turn out?"
What are the ethical ramifications of this? Should we test people for that version of the MAOA gene and incarcerate them pre-emptively?
It's the same with fMRIs and neuroscience. Many, many people have asserted that once we unlock the secrets of the brain, we can take pre-emptive action. Think concentration camps. There is no room for free will, consciousness, karma, morality, religion and spirituality, lessons the soul must learn; no, it all comes down to genes and/or the brain.
Follow this logic:
1. "[G]enetics should be taken seriously as an accident of birth that influences one's educational trajectories," and "The educated are rewarded not just with more money and more stable employment, but with better health and well-being" (194). "Behavioral choices shape life trajectories," and those are shaped by genes, which means luck.
2. "Emphasizing the role of luck increases support for redistribution" of freedom, resources and welfare and in a survey in Norway, half the respondents stated that "inequalities that stem from factors outside of a person's control should be eliminated."
3. Genetics is a matter of luck. People believe that unearned advantage is unfair and should be corrected. Ergo, we must reorganize society to compensate for luck or lack thereof.
Comrade, this equality of outcomes is what communism has sought to do, inflicting misery upon millions. There are many, many other ethical corollaries beside the one she posits to the premise that genetics influences everything and is a random advantage.
Of course, Harden is well aware of the dangers posed by eugenics and "inquiries into the genetic differences among us...appropriated to justify inequalities in the distribution of social power" [Elizabeth Anderson would add: freedoms, resources, and welfare]. She wants to be sure you don't venture down that path.
Harden writes, "I hope to start the conversation about what it means for science and policy to be actively anti-eugenicist, by offering five general principles," from three perspectives: the eugenic, the genome blind, and the preferred anti-eugenic.
1. "Stop wasting time, money, talent, and tools that can be used to improve people's lives." "Use genetic data to accelerate the search for effective interventions to improve people's lives and reduce inequality of outcome."
--Recall Lysenkoism. See how well the effort for equal outcomes worked in Maoist China, the USSR, Cuba, and everywhere else it has been tried.
2. "Use genetic information to improve opportunity....maximize the real capabilities of people to achieve social roles and positions," not "classify people."
--We naturally classify people. It's evolutionary biology to protect our group and defend against the out-group that competes for food, mates, resources, etc. And genetics is particularly apt for classification: people who have this particular expression of this gene and people who don't.
3. "Use genetic information for equity not exclusion." "Create healthcare, housing, lending, and insurance systems where everyone is included regardless of the outcome of the genetic lottery."
--This isn't logical. Actuarial science determines statistical probability regarding who is a risk for any number of issues, like foreclosure or non-repayment, and who isn't. We are to ignore this data? That is the cause of the mortgage crisis of 2008.
4. "Don't mistake being lucky for being good." "Recognize genetics as a type of luck in life outcomes, undermining the meritocratic logic that people deserve their successes and failures on the basis of succeeding in school."
--But genetics is not deterministic, we are meant to know. Do we segregate by genetics so that lottery winners study together so they can zoom ahead, and lottery losers study together, so their feelings aren't hurt?
5. "Consider what you would do if you didn't know who you would be." "Society should be structured to work to the advantage of people who were least advantaged in the genetic lottery."
--Again, communism provided a vision for how this might look.
__________
The final page could well be a sermon conjoining the religions of genetics and DIRE (Diversity-Inclusion-Race-Equity), employing the language of the current anti-racism ideology.
Best to stick with The New Yorker article and skip the details.
Your responses to this quiz are likely to influence your opinion of this book:
1. Should people's status in society correspond with their natural ability?
2. Should people and social groups be treated equally, independently of ability?
3. Should some people be treated as superior to others, given their hard-wired talent?
4. Should society allow some people to have more power and success than others--as the law of nature?
5. Should society strive to level the playing field, to make things just? (11)
Science (particularly genetics and neuroscience), environmentalism, and Diversity-Inclusion-Race-Equity (DIRE) are the leading candidates to supplant traditional religious paths for explanations about how we arrived at this point in time and place, establishing a sense of purpose and meaning and right relationship to the interconnected web of life or some subset of it, why bad things happen, why some people have more than others, and how to make a better world. These new ideologies have varying degrees of success in providing a sense of community, establishing in-group and out-group identities, doctrines and dogmas, and even ritualistic formulas. They cannot provide the most essential of religion's functions, however: transcendence. Science can be as easily manipulated as religion. If you don't know about lysenkoism; it refers to Lysenko, the Stalinist agronomist who predicated agricultural policy on the theory politically congenial to communism that plants from the same “class” never compete with one another. It resulted in famine and the deaths of tens of millions.
Harden is a psychologist who works in the field of behavior genetics, "which investigates the influence of genes on character traits." This would seem to indicate that most of the book makes empirical assertions, but the science isn't anywhere near there yet. We have here a book at the dawn of the science of genetics, which I suppose can be rather thrilling until the reader pauses to realize how much of this deals with unproven hypotheses. We know for sure at least that "the mechanisms linking genes to education start very early in development," namely in the womb. Exposure to drugs, stress, lead, etc. can adversely affect development and the inheritance [or not] of pernicious or auspicious genetic combinations that affect cognitive and non-cognitive skills. Harden tells us over and over again that most aspects of who we are proceed from our genes, which means it comes down to random luck. But what are the implications of that fact?
The central question Harden wants us to consider is that posed by David Reich in his op-ed NYT piece, "How should we prepare for the likelihood that in the coming years, genetic studies will show that many traits are influenced by genetic variations, and that these traits will differ on average across human populations? It will be impossible--indeed, anti-scientific, foolish and absurd--to deny those differences."
(Keep in mind that the characteristics a society values are astonishingly dynamic. Certainly, the standards of beauty shift dramatically over time and place. Currently, we value the ability to perform certain tasks quickly and accurately. Computer technology also values precision in hand-eye coordination with on-screen tasks, but it has not always and everywhere been thus.)
Returning to the question, how should we deal with inequalities that are caused by differences in biology? In the 1980s, gay males used "science" as the foundation for their push for acceptance of their sexual orientation by stating that there was a gay gene (no; we now know there isn't); that homosexuality is biological, fixed in the womb (axiomatically and definitely not true for females, whose sexuality is far more fluid and who often deliberately choose to orient toward females); and that 10% of the population is homosexual (again, no; more recent research finds 6.2% in the U.S. and 4.5% in the U.K.; a huge, but HUGE difference). Nevertheless, the mere claim to a scientific basis that didn't exist in reality was the successful rationale for greater acceptance. So why does this not happen with, say, the scientific basis for intelligence of the kind measured by the SAT or GCSE? Or what about the scientific basis for why East African runners beat all others?
Like a politician, Harden answers the question she wishes she were asked. She repeats many, many times in this book her view that "our responsibility [is] to arrange society so that it benefits all people, not just people with a certain set of genetic characteristics." What does this mean, precisely? That is the subject of Part Two.
Part Two ventures into that ultracrepidarian territory: the implications of such genetic findings for ethics and that new religion, equity. Alas, Harden is not an ethicist; this is not her expertise, and it shows; there is so much to take issue with here.
If a criminal perpetrator has a certain version of the MAOA gene, which is thought to correlate with criminal behavior, does that serve as an excuse? Harden says, "genetic information is dismissed when we want to punish people" (195); but "We should not interpret genetic influences as deterministic." What do you think the probability will be of the data not being misused in a fatalistic way?
Then, "If you take genetics seriously as a source of differences between people, then what does that mean (if anything) about the responsibility that we bear for how our lives turn out?"
What are the ethical ramifications of this? Should we test people for that version of the MAOA gene and incarcerate them pre-emptively?
It's the same with fMRIs and neuroscience. Many, many people have asserted that once we unlock the secrets of the brain, we can take pre-emptive action. Think concentration camps. There is no room for free will, consciousness, karma, morality, religion and spirituality, lessons the soul must learn; no, it all comes down to genes and/or the brain.
Follow this logic:
1. "[G]enetics should be taken seriously as an accident of birth that influences one's educational trajectories," and "The educated are rewarded not just with more money and more stable employment, but with better health and well-being" (194). "Behavioral choices shape life trajectories," and those are shaped by genes, which means luck.
2. "Emphasizing the role of luck increases support for redistribution" of freedom, resources and welfare and in a survey in Norway, half the respondents stated that "inequalities that stem from factors outside of a person's control should be eliminated."
3. Genetics is a matter of luck. People believe that unearned advantage is unfair and should be corrected. Ergo, we must reorganize society to compensate for luck or lack thereof.
Comrade, this equality of outcomes is what communism has sought to do, inflicting misery upon millions. There are many, many other ethical corollaries beside the one she posits to the premise that genetics influences everything and is a random advantage.
Of course, Harden is well aware of the dangers posed by eugenics and "inquiries into the genetic differences among us...appropriated to justify inequalities in the distribution of social power" [Elizabeth Anderson would add: freedoms, resources, and welfare]. She wants to be sure you don't venture down that path.
Harden writes, "I hope to start the conversation about what it means for science and policy to be actively anti-eugenicist, by offering five general principles," from three perspectives: the eugenic, the genome blind, and the preferred anti-eugenic.
1. "Stop wasting time, money, talent, and tools that can be used to improve people's lives." "Use genetic data to accelerate the search for effective interventions to improve people's lives and reduce inequality of outcome."
--Recall Lysenkoism. See how well the effort for equal outcomes worked in Maoist China, the USSR, Cuba, and everywhere else it has been tried.
2. "Use genetic information to improve opportunity....maximize the real capabilities of people to achieve social roles and positions," not "classify people."
--We naturally classify people. It's evolutionary biology to protect our group and defend against the out-group that competes for food, mates, resources, etc. And genetics is particularly apt for classification: people who have this particular expression of this gene and people who don't.
3. "Use genetic information for equity not exclusion." "Create healthcare, housing, lending, and insurance systems where everyone is included regardless of the outcome of the genetic lottery."
--This isn't logical. Actuarial science determines statistical probability regarding who is a risk for any number of issues, like foreclosure or non-repayment, and who isn't. We are to ignore this data? That is the cause of the mortgage crisis of 2008.
4. "Don't mistake being lucky for being good." "Recognize genetics as a type of luck in life outcomes, undermining the meritocratic logic that people deserve their successes and failures on the basis of succeeding in school."
--But genetics is not deterministic, we are meant to know. Do we segregate by genetics so that lottery winners study together so they can zoom ahead, and lottery losers study together, so their feelings aren't hurt?
5. "Consider what you would do if you didn't know who you would be." "Society should be structured to work to the advantage of people who were least advantaged in the genetic lottery."
--Again, communism provided a vision for how this might look.
__________
The final page could well be a sermon conjoining the religions of genetics and DIRE (Diversity-Inclusion-Race-Equity), employing the language of the current anti-racism ideology.
Best to stick with The New Yorker article and skip the details.
March 5, 2022
Books on genetics are inherently controversial: Stephen Jay Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man" and Murray/Herrstein's "The Bell Curve" ruffled feathers for different reasons. I think Kathryn Paige Harden threads the needle perfectly for such a thorny topic in "The Genetic Lottery".
In this book, Harden doesn't shy away from either the moral challenges of genetic research or the reality that genes impact all human traits. She also describes how our common understanding about genetic inheritance is far too simplistic and unnuanced.
She also provides tentative answers to how genetics can be incorporated into society ethically. You'll have to read the entire book to truly appreciate her arguments, which ultimately support using genetics to understand human behaviour, traits, and achievements within a clear ethical framework. (Spoiler: her conclusion is similar to Rawls' veil of ignorance idea).
I would recommend reading this alongside Robert Plomin's "Blueprint" for contrast, both of which offer thoughtful discussions about the science of genetics.
In this book, Harden doesn't shy away from either the moral challenges of genetic research or the reality that genes impact all human traits. She also describes how our common understanding about genetic inheritance is far too simplistic and unnuanced.
She also provides tentative answers to how genetics can be incorporated into society ethically. You'll have to read the entire book to truly appreciate her arguments, which ultimately support using genetics to understand human behaviour, traits, and achievements within a clear ethical framework. (Spoiler: her conclusion is similar to Rawls' veil of ignorance idea).
I would recommend reading this alongside Robert Plomin's "Blueprint" for contrast, both of which offer thoughtful discussions about the science of genetics.
October 20, 2021
Elementary discussion of human genetics (though if you're not familiar with SNPs or genome-wide association studies, you might find the discussion useful).
The impact of genetics on people's life outcomes is a prickly topic. Which is probably why the author takes a defensive and rather combative tone throughout the book. (A whopping big topic in human genetics, and the one that generates the most heat, is DNA's impact on intelligence and educational outcomes -- but you probably guessed that already).
The author (rightly) stresses that everyone's genetic inheritance is a matter of luck. And she advocates giving extra help to those who have inherited "unlucky" genes (i.e., genes that leave them less able to compete and succeed in our increasingly education-stratified society). I don't disagree. But I doubt her argument will convince many people. If basic empathy hasn't led the reader to want a more decent society for everyone, will a polygenic index convince them?
The impact of genetics on people's life outcomes is a prickly topic. Which is probably why the author takes a defensive and rather combative tone throughout the book. (A whopping big topic in human genetics, and the one that generates the most heat, is DNA's impact on intelligence and educational outcomes -- but you probably guessed that already).
The author (rightly) stresses that everyone's genetic inheritance is a matter of luck. And she advocates giving extra help to those who have inherited "unlucky" genes (i.e., genes that leave them less able to compete and succeed in our increasingly education-stratified society). I don't disagree. But I doubt her argument will convince many people. If basic empathy hasn't led the reader to want a more decent society for everyone, will a polygenic index convince them?
October 11, 2021
Interesting topic, and I agree with the message, but it was maybe a little dry/academic. Part of it is that a surprisingly large part of the book is dedicated to ensuring that the authors' point is not misconstrued. Given the nature of the subject matter, I understand the why she did this, but having so much of the book be about what she is not arguing for kinda makes it drag.
October 22, 2021
It's not often I read non-fiction that affects me so profoundly. In a book that is half pop-science and half political philosophy, Harden has shifted my perception of merit, luck, and equality in a way that makes her ideas impossible to ignore.
December 13, 2022
"Difference without Hierarchy" (p. 210).
This is a decidedly progressive (politically liberal/democratic) discussion of the importance of biosocial research for social justice and socioeconomic equality, which emphasizes an undeniable fact: Collusion among scientists to ignore heritable individual differences means that most social research is biased because of genetic confounding (i.e., genes are common causes of many other things, making them appear related). Beyond wasting time and money, the key consequence is "evidence-based" policies (e.g., educational interventions) that don't work because they are based on mirage empirical relationships—correlations that are erroneously presumed to be causal, but that in reality are spurious (fully or partly) due to genes. Building on the premise that "everything is heritable" (p. 275), Kathryn Paige Harden's central argument is that social scientists must use relevant polygenic indexes (e.g., for educational attainment) as control variables in their research, so that they can accurately identify the environmental causes of social problems and then develop effective policies to address them.
"The question becomes, then: How can public spaces and working conditions and access to medical care and legal codes and social norms be reimagined, such that the 'arbitrariness of nature' is not crystallized into an inflexible caste system?" (p. 230).
The book provides readers a great, cooking-language-infused introduction to candidate gene research, twin studies, and polygenic scores, while also demolishing the racist myth that racial gaps in behavior and life outcomes trace to genetic racial differences. Kathryn Paige Harden provides a decisive response to eugenic psuedoscience, to conservative misinterpretations of individual differences (e.g., The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life), and to liberal progressives' willful ignorance about heritable traits. Along the way, she discusses numerous noteworthy research findings (e.g., the Free Will Coefficient, studies showing that people endorse genetic explanations more for positive than negative behaviors, experimental evidence that compared to institutional care in an orphanage, foster care significantly improves children's IQ).
(Note: I'm a politically liberal social scientist.)
This is a decidedly progressive (politically liberal/democratic) discussion of the importance of biosocial research for social justice and socioeconomic equality, which emphasizes an undeniable fact: Collusion among scientists to ignore heritable individual differences means that most social research is biased because of genetic confounding (i.e., genes are common causes of many other things, making them appear related). Beyond wasting time and money, the key consequence is "evidence-based" policies (e.g., educational interventions) that don't work because they are based on mirage empirical relationships—correlations that are erroneously presumed to be causal, but that in reality are spurious (fully or partly) due to genes. Building on the premise that "everything is heritable" (p. 275), Kathryn Paige Harden's central argument is that social scientists must use relevant polygenic indexes (e.g., for educational attainment) as control variables in their research, so that they can accurately identify the environmental causes of social problems and then develop effective policies to address them.
"The question becomes, then: How can public spaces and working conditions and access to medical care and legal codes and social norms be reimagined, such that the 'arbitrariness of nature' is not crystallized into an inflexible caste system?" (p. 230).
The book provides readers a great, cooking-language-infused introduction to candidate gene research, twin studies, and polygenic scores, while also demolishing the racist myth that racial gaps in behavior and life outcomes trace to genetic racial differences. Kathryn Paige Harden provides a decisive response to eugenic psuedoscience, to conservative misinterpretations of individual differences (e.g., The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life), and to liberal progressives' willful ignorance about heritable traits. Along the way, she discusses numerous noteworthy research findings (e.g., the Free Will Coefficient, studies showing that people endorse genetic explanations more for positive than negative behaviors, experimental evidence that compared to institutional care in an orphanage, foster care significantly improves children's IQ).
(Note: I'm a politically liberal social scientist.)
October 29, 2021
This is not a scientific work.
Behavioral genetics may be science or it may not be, and some of the statements in this book may or may not be true---I honestly do not know enough about the field to say---but there is no sense of scientific inquiry in this book. There is no sense of doubting, which is the essence of science. In fact, the behavioral psychologists have a way of writing which offends my delicate physicist's sensibilities. I'll tell you what I mean: Turkheimer, Harden's supervisor, in a commonly cited paper in the field and this book, posits Three Laws of Behavioral Genetics. Like Newton, you see. The gall of these people. Laws? "The nature-nurture debate is over. The bottom line is that everything is heritable... All human behavioral traits are heritable... The point is that now that the empirical facts are in and no longer a matter of serious debate, it's time to turn attention to what [it] means." If you are an academic, ask yourself whether this kind of pronouncement would be acceptable in your field, or whether you'd get laughed out of the room.
There's a lot of good salesmanship here: Another technique, which is not coincidentally also common to evangelical proselytizing, is convincing the reader that they already know what Harden is telling them. Mothers of multiple children, she claims, have a good sense of the heritability of various traits. People in general, one of the graphs shows, do a good job of estimate the amount of heritability for various traits, from psychological to sexual to pathological. But how? People have sequencers in their eyeballs? If it takes this enormous machinery, millions of genomes, and hundreds of authors to tease out small effects, what the hell is this folksy stuff supposed to mean? How a scientist can write this kind of thing, I don't know.
In the first section, Harden goes over the various methodological techniques that her field depend on, the main attraction being the Genome Wide Association Study, which the book takes pains to tell you is pronounced Gee-Was, saving its readers the embaressment of calling it something dumb like Guh-wuss or Gee-Double-U-A-Ess in front of their friends.
GWAS is the method that produces all these nifty "polygenic indices," and on whose authority the majority of the book's conclusions rests. After decades of chasing false leads about individual genes contributing to intelligence, as Harden herself points out, the field was rescued by "big data,"one of the 21st-century's biggest scams. Throw about 1,000,000 genomes and associated traits into a big black box that finds correlations, and you get polygenic scores. Wouldn't you know it, it correlates which just about any darn thing you want it to correlate with. Very good for publishing and academic careers! ``Everything is heritable,'' as they say, which translates to ``everything is publishable.'' And indeed, close to everything has been: Polygenic index papers have become a small industry.
Here is a telling example: Height is supposed to be the canonical polygenic trait, and Harden indeed mentions height and the GWAS studies involved. Yet there is no mention of the series of papers that were published in 2019 that found that previous polygenic scores associated with height were overestimated, and the polygenic signal was gone. Previously undetected levels of stratification were partly at fault---The method inflates even very small errors. Another big source of error was... a computer bug, which was fortunate enough to produce the results the researchers were looking for.
I'm not suggesting height isn't polygenic; it almost certainly is. I am suggesting that this method is not as robust as Harden would have you think. Yes, Harden addresses the method's most well-known (and honestly, convenient) shortcoming: Its results so far only apply to those with recent European descent; the method requires homogenous populations, so results cannot be easily ``ported'' to other populations. But otherwise, there is no sense that this method is anything other than perfect. There is no sense that there are problems with the methodology, or that something less than total certainty in its power is warranted. I've read several of the papers cited in this book, some of which count Harden herself as co-author, and they tend to be much more sanguine about the power of their method.
You see, I'm not an expert on GWAS; it's not my field. I also suspect that many who claim to be experts in it, and who use its results, don't really understand it either. But I am enough of a scientist to be left deeply skeptical of its claims. That skepticism is my right, as it should be everyone's. Hell, not "right"---duty. And it should be this book's responsibility to address and share that skepticism, even to nourish it. This book fails to do that.
In fact, it tends to do something rather ugly instead. It tries to psychoanalyse why you may not agree with it. I found this a particularly bizarre aspect of the book. Harden tacitly dismisses the idea that there could be healthy scientific skepticism of this method that is independent of its moral conclusions. No: You don't agree with it either because you are clinging to the idea of meritocracy or because you want to believe it, but you don't want to be associate with Bad Men like Murray and Harris. I don't find this kind of rhetorical device very impressive in a "scientific" text.
So we come to the moral aspect of the book, its second and weakest part. Harden produces three positions, in analogy with the current thinking of how we should deal with race: Eugenic, Genome-Blind, and Anti-Eugenic. If you remember your three little bears, you know how this goes: Too much genetics, not enough, and juuuuust right.
But the Anti-Eugenic recommendations are pretty weak. There's one example of where polygenic scores might help, essentially showing that abstinence education is pointless, and that's pretty much it. There's a truly bizarre section which criticizes GINA, a law that prohibits discrimination based on genetic information as being the equivalent of "race-blind" policies. Is tracking down every last bit of variance in social experiments important for academics in those fields? Sure, why not. Is it as important for society? I don't see it, and I think the book makes a weak case for it.
Behavioral genetics may be science or it may not be, and some of the statements in this book may or may not be true---I honestly do not know enough about the field to say---but there is no sense of scientific inquiry in this book. There is no sense of doubting, which is the essence of science. In fact, the behavioral psychologists have a way of writing which offends my delicate physicist's sensibilities. I'll tell you what I mean: Turkheimer, Harden's supervisor, in a commonly cited paper in the field and this book, posits Three Laws of Behavioral Genetics. Like Newton, you see. The gall of these people. Laws? "The nature-nurture debate is over. The bottom line is that everything is heritable... All human behavioral traits are heritable... The point is that now that the empirical facts are in and no longer a matter of serious debate, it's time to turn attention to what [it] means." If you are an academic, ask yourself whether this kind of pronouncement would be acceptable in your field, or whether you'd get laughed out of the room.
There's a lot of good salesmanship here: Another technique, which is not coincidentally also common to evangelical proselytizing, is convincing the reader that they already know what Harden is telling them. Mothers of multiple children, she claims, have a good sense of the heritability of various traits. People in general, one of the graphs shows, do a good job of estimate the amount of heritability for various traits, from psychological to sexual to pathological. But how? People have sequencers in their eyeballs? If it takes this enormous machinery, millions of genomes, and hundreds of authors to tease out small effects, what the hell is this folksy stuff supposed to mean? How a scientist can write this kind of thing, I don't know.
In the first section, Harden goes over the various methodological techniques that her field depend on, the main attraction being the Genome Wide Association Study, which the book takes pains to tell you is pronounced Gee-Was, saving its readers the embaressment of calling it something dumb like Guh-wuss or Gee-Double-U-A-Ess in front of their friends.
GWAS is the method that produces all these nifty "polygenic indices," and on whose authority the majority of the book's conclusions rests. After decades of chasing false leads about individual genes contributing to intelligence, as Harden herself points out, the field was rescued by "big data,"one of the 21st-century's biggest scams. Throw about 1,000,000 genomes and associated traits into a big black box that finds correlations, and you get polygenic scores. Wouldn't you know it, it correlates which just about any darn thing you want it to correlate with. Very good for publishing and academic careers! ``Everything is heritable,'' as they say, which translates to ``everything is publishable.'' And indeed, close to everything has been: Polygenic index papers have become a small industry.
Here is a telling example: Height is supposed to be the canonical polygenic trait, and Harden indeed mentions height and the GWAS studies involved. Yet there is no mention of the series of papers that were published in 2019 that found that previous polygenic scores associated with height were overestimated, and the polygenic signal was gone. Previously undetected levels of stratification were partly at fault---The method inflates even very small errors. Another big source of error was... a computer bug, which was fortunate enough to produce the results the researchers were looking for.
I'm not suggesting height isn't polygenic; it almost certainly is. I am suggesting that this method is not as robust as Harden would have you think. Yes, Harden addresses the method's most well-known (and honestly, convenient) shortcoming: Its results so far only apply to those with recent European descent; the method requires homogenous populations, so results cannot be easily ``ported'' to other populations. But otherwise, there is no sense that this method is anything other than perfect. There is no sense that there are problems with the methodology, or that something less than total certainty in its power is warranted. I've read several of the papers cited in this book, some of which count Harden herself as co-author, and they tend to be much more sanguine about the power of their method.
You see, I'm not an expert on GWAS; it's not my field. I also suspect that many who claim to be experts in it, and who use its results, don't really understand it either. But I am enough of a scientist to be left deeply skeptical of its claims. That skepticism is my right, as it should be everyone's. Hell, not "right"---duty. And it should be this book's responsibility to address and share that skepticism, even to nourish it. This book fails to do that.
In fact, it tends to do something rather ugly instead. It tries to psychoanalyse why you may not agree with it. I found this a particularly bizarre aspect of the book. Harden tacitly dismisses the idea that there could be healthy scientific skepticism of this method that is independent of its moral conclusions. No: You don't agree with it either because you are clinging to the idea of meritocracy or because you want to believe it, but you don't want to be associate with Bad Men like Murray and Harris. I don't find this kind of rhetorical device very impressive in a "scientific" text.
So we come to the moral aspect of the book, its second and weakest part. Harden produces three positions, in analogy with the current thinking of how we should deal with race: Eugenic, Genome-Blind, and Anti-Eugenic. If you remember your three little bears, you know how this goes: Too much genetics, not enough, and juuuuust right.
But the Anti-Eugenic recommendations are pretty weak. There's one example of where polygenic scores might help, essentially showing that abstinence education is pointless, and that's pretty much it. There's a truly bizarre section which criticizes GINA, a law that prohibits discrimination based on genetic information as being the equivalent of "race-blind" policies. Is tracking down every last bit of variance in social experiments important for academics in those fields? Sure, why not. Is it as important for society? I don't see it, and I think the book makes a weak case for it.
November 21, 2021
The main thrust of this book is that genetics -- a factor outside any individual's control -- matter for all sorts of outcomes we can measure in the world such as educational attainment.
I got the sense this book was just not written for me. Anyone who has taken biology 101 knows that genotype influences phenotype. Rather, it's a response to a certain element that holds any admission of genetic inequality is a truth too ugly to bear. Historically the fact kinds of inequalities have been used to push very ugly political programs and things like eugenics policies and so many research inquiries into the genetic basis of things like intelligence have been swept under the rug.
If you need convincing though that genes matter then this book is for you. If you have some basic scientific literacy, probably no need.
The author does take things further into an exploration of what the implications of this truth should be for public policy and the arguments are interesting but nothing stuck with me as especially groundbreaking. A lot of Rawls-influenced thinking.
---------
It was worrisome to me that someone who is really on the cutting edge is still using SNP-based genotyping. We live in 2021 for pete's sake, spring for the whole genomes! Let's get at some of the gnarlier stuff like copy number variation and rare variants please! Who knows what obvious associations we are missing because of the variables we aren't measuring. (not a criticism of the author, I know this is more expensive than a SNP array but really let's just do this correctly in the future)
One sentence cast doubt on Harden's credibility throughout:
"The suggestion from some conservative academics that we might edit children's genomes to increase their IQs is not just scientifically unfeasible; it is scientifically absurd" [160]
Actually you're scientifically absurd Paige Harden! Were you not reading about He Jiankui? Of course this is going to be possible and probably is today. I don't know where this came from.
I got the sense this book was just not written for me. Anyone who has taken biology 101 knows that genotype influences phenotype. Rather, it's a response to a certain element that holds any admission of genetic inequality is a truth too ugly to bear. Historically the fact kinds of inequalities have been used to push very ugly political programs and things like eugenics policies and so many research inquiries into the genetic basis of things like intelligence have been swept under the rug.
If you need convincing though that genes matter then this book is for you. If you have some basic scientific literacy, probably no need.
The author does take things further into an exploration of what the implications of this truth should be for public policy and the arguments are interesting but nothing stuck with me as especially groundbreaking. A lot of Rawls-influenced thinking.
---------
It was worrisome to me that someone who is really on the cutting edge is still using SNP-based genotyping. We live in 2021 for pete's sake, spring for the whole genomes! Let's get at some of the gnarlier stuff like copy number variation and rare variants please! Who knows what obvious associations we are missing because of the variables we aren't measuring. (not a criticism of the author, I know this is more expensive than a SNP array but really let's just do this correctly in the future)
One sentence cast doubt on Harden's credibility throughout:
"The suggestion from some conservative academics that we might edit children's genomes to increase their IQs is not just scientifically unfeasible; it is scientifically absurd" [160]
Actually you're scientifically absurd Paige Harden! Were you not reading about He Jiankui? Of course this is going to be possible and probably is today. I don't know where this came from.
August 19, 2022
Kathryn Paige Harden’s book, The Genetic Lottery, aims to disrupt more than 100 years of scientific discourse on the role of innate human ability and intelligence, with its dark roots in the eugenics movement of Francis Galton and his book Hereditary Genius.
Harden, who surveys this history at the beginning of her book, is forced to acknowledge these prejudiced scientists as her forbears. So as she takes careful aim at how our genes influence various life outcomes, she also seeks to flip the script. She wants to hold up a mirror to society to show how we have built a castle of rewards and punishments built on the sand of a vacuous value-system. Harden wants to prove with science what satirists have suspected since the first jester appeared before the first king–life is unfair, fame and fortune are fickle, and those who make moral justifications for why are the worst kind of hypocrites.
Harden seeks to demonstrate via a survey of the literature that genes are a kind of “cards-you’re-dealt” of the poker game (or the tarot deck that preceded it). They effect health, appearance, emotions, character, intelligence, lifespan, career, marriage–basically everything. And while we resemble our parents’ “cards” to a certain degree, there’s trillions of possible combinations stemming from the two decks of mom and pop. Simple statistics say some people are going to be really unlucky and some really lucky–that’s just how the game works.
In 21st-century America, why this idea should even muster a shrug is beyond me. Every day we’re bombarded by images of athletes, musicians, actors, models, CEOs, and influencers who are just like us, except a lot luckier. Surely the concept is intuitively obvious. Yet Harden wants us to feel surprised at how capricious and unfair this all is, even if it’s the system we’ve been living under since birth. Didn’t Shakespeare call fortune a strumpet?
The problem is, of course, Harden is a scientist, not a playwright, so when she writes a book stating the obvious, people absolutely lose their minds. Those on the left mischaracterize her as a eugenist, or perhaps an apologist for one, and those on the right attack her for failing to be the social darwinist they hope her to be.
Keenly aware that the last breakthrough book in this field, The Bell Curve, earned its authors permanent pariah status for its motivated reasoning in service of white supremacy, Harden is keen to tack the other direction, seeking to justify much greater and more comprehensive interventions, especially in the area of public education. While she does not promote a specific agenda in any detail, she is clearly unhappy about politically-convenient social programs, such as the sex-ed program in her home state of Texas that stresses abstinence.
Harden is also impatient with literal lip service, such as the well-intentioned but absurd interventions concocted to address the “word gap” between rich mothers and poor mothers that was briefly touted by fashionable think tanks and charitable foundations as the root cause for large discrepancies in lifetime educational outcomes of these mothers’ offspring. Unfortunately, the studies themselves that purported to prove it crumbled under the crucible of reproducibility. Harden suggests, convincingly, that the low quality of so many social science studies has at it root an unwillingness to control for genetic factors.
Harden isn’t trying to suggest that poor mothers inevitably have stupid children, or that interventions aimed at poor families are a waste of money. Quite the contrary, in fact. She suggests, paragraph by paragraph, chapter by chapter, that our society was never truly interested in tackling inequality in the first place, and most of the interventions we offer are band-aids at best, and wishful thinking at worst. She does not suggest that these charities and institutions are themselves symptoms of the problem, though Harden’s prose betrays no obligation to complete its lines of reasoning.
Were we to take Harden’s ideas seriously, her conclusions would directly compel a single course of intervention for society: aggressive expansion of the welfare state and a redistribution of wealth that have only ever been attempted outside democratically-operated countries. Were Harden to have thought this through and opened with this thesis, the book would be bolder, better, and certainly more entertaining. For Harden is, whether she knows it or not, a utopianist, who, like B.F. Skinner before her, truly believes science can help us reimagine society in a way that benefits everyone. She’s not, at heart anyway, an incrementalist. If life is a board game, Harden thinks we’re all suckers playing Monopoly–and we’d be better off playing a game with very different rules.
Unlike the dystopian critic Aldous Huxley, whose cautionary vision of social darwinism has withstood nearly a century of scrutiny that the science of its time has withered under, Harden isn’t willing to give up on better living through chemistry. While she leaves breadcrumbs all over her book about the sweep and reach of her ideal reform, we must reach the last page for Harden to spell it out for us:
Some people happen to inherit combinations of genetic variants that, in combination with environments…cause them to be more likely to develop a suite of skills and behaviors that are currently valued in…Western capitalist societies. They are not better people. They are not more inherently meritorious.
Now just because you think athletes and influencers shouldn’t be lauded as epitomes human virtue doesn’t automatically cast you a Marxist. But the dig at “Western capitalist societies”, especially in its pluralized form, does clear the floor for a broad, systemic critique of the global political-economic hegemony–the whole kit and kaboodle, as it were. Harden could benefit from being more open about it.
Earlier passages that condemn soviet-style totalitarianism are particularly difficult to square, in this light. For example, she summarizes a study on Romanian orphanages and springboards into a fascinating discussion on how the state can suppress human potential. She observes with respect to human intelligence, totalitarian societies produce not only fewer “lucky” people, on average, but a lot more “unlucky” ones overall. She then cites the geneticist Richard Lewontin, who offers a “garden” metaphor for human genetics in his own writing. Lewontin suggests that a well-maintained garden actually promotes greater variability in plant height than a poorly-maintained one, with the insinuation that Western societies are working correctly when they produce a greater diversity of outcomes.
Lewontin was surely aware that the garden is one of the oldest symbols in Western civilization, though Harden does not dwell on his literary provocations. Yet to this reader, government-as-gardener conjures Plato’s Republic and its ideal society ruled by a philosopher-king that has no need for artists, poets, and other dissimulators.
Which is the great weakness of the book. Harden can’t articulate what her vision for an ideal society is because she does not herself know it. She hasn’t read enough outside STEM fields to have an opinion yet. With only the briefest asides for Dostoevsky and the Bible, Harden has brought a knife to a gunfight. Who is she to point at the hypocrisy and decadence of Western society as if she herself discovered it? Whence Chaucer? Whence Austen? Has the PhD in psychology even cracked the man who largely founded her field, the good Dr. Freud? Why not start with Civilization and its Discontents?
Harden could have written a different book, one that attempted to survey trends in genetic psychology that allows readers to draw their own conclusions. Perhaps Harden felt that such a book would play into the hands of neonazis, as, she concedes, her academic research regularly has. But, as is so often the case with controversial ideas, hers cause her to swerve in the opposite direction. Too bad she drives right into a territory she knows little about.
Over and over again she tells us how important STEM is to success in life and how our society is failing us in the way it picks STEM favorites and tosses everyone else by the wayside. But at the same time, she tells what society selects for isn’t what is most important in life: “intelligence tests don’t tell you that a person is valuable, but they do tell you about whether a person can do (some) things that are valued” (italics hers). Can’t the same be said of STEM? Can’t it only tell us about the former, and not the latter?
And if intelligence–and the STEM riches is delivers–isn’t the most important thing in life, then, what is? These problems may be new to her, but they’re not new, they are older than Christ. At least she has passing familiarity with that particular social critic, whose millenarian ideas her unconfronted and largely unexplored reflexes inadvertently echo. Saying every single person deserves dignity and respect is still a revolutionary idea, two thousand years later.
Eugenicism may also be comparatively new, but the evil it articulates is ancient. It’s the same old story: societies always and inevitably have winners and losers, but only in a properly structured society will the winners be empowered, via their innate and natural nobility, to solve the problem of the losers better than the losers could ever solve for themselves. Change “winners” to “gentry” and “losers” to “peasants” and you have feudalism. A search-and-replace later, you get colonialism, or fascism, whatever other “system” you want where the few rule the many through a system of inherited privilege.
This is the argument Harden never addresses, because she lacks the breadth of education to be aware of it. It’s not that she’s not smart, it’s just she hasn’t yet been granted access to a large enough garden. Instead, Harden ends up calling for more solutions that got us into this mess in the first place–those implemented by experts like her–intelligent people with exceptional credentials, granted access to comprehensive and accurate data, genetics not excluded. The problem is that a society run in this manner is not a democracy. For the sake of ours, I hope Harden and her peers learn to appreciate that.
Harden, who surveys this history at the beginning of her book, is forced to acknowledge these prejudiced scientists as her forbears. So as she takes careful aim at how our genes influence various life outcomes, she also seeks to flip the script. She wants to hold up a mirror to society to show how we have built a castle of rewards and punishments built on the sand of a vacuous value-system. Harden wants to prove with science what satirists have suspected since the first jester appeared before the first king–life is unfair, fame and fortune are fickle, and those who make moral justifications for why are the worst kind of hypocrites.
Harden seeks to demonstrate via a survey of the literature that genes are a kind of “cards-you’re-dealt” of the poker game (or the tarot deck that preceded it). They effect health, appearance, emotions, character, intelligence, lifespan, career, marriage–basically everything. And while we resemble our parents’ “cards” to a certain degree, there’s trillions of possible combinations stemming from the two decks of mom and pop. Simple statistics say some people are going to be really unlucky and some really lucky–that’s just how the game works.
In 21st-century America, why this idea should even muster a shrug is beyond me. Every day we’re bombarded by images of athletes, musicians, actors, models, CEOs, and influencers who are just like us, except a lot luckier. Surely the concept is intuitively obvious. Yet Harden wants us to feel surprised at how capricious and unfair this all is, even if it’s the system we’ve been living under since birth. Didn’t Shakespeare call fortune a strumpet?
The problem is, of course, Harden is a scientist, not a playwright, so when she writes a book stating the obvious, people absolutely lose their minds. Those on the left mischaracterize her as a eugenist, or perhaps an apologist for one, and those on the right attack her for failing to be the social darwinist they hope her to be.
Keenly aware that the last breakthrough book in this field, The Bell Curve, earned its authors permanent pariah status for its motivated reasoning in service of white supremacy, Harden is keen to tack the other direction, seeking to justify much greater and more comprehensive interventions, especially in the area of public education. While she does not promote a specific agenda in any detail, she is clearly unhappy about politically-convenient social programs, such as the sex-ed program in her home state of Texas that stresses abstinence.
Harden is also impatient with literal lip service, such as the well-intentioned but absurd interventions concocted to address the “word gap” between rich mothers and poor mothers that was briefly touted by fashionable think tanks and charitable foundations as the root cause for large discrepancies in lifetime educational outcomes of these mothers’ offspring. Unfortunately, the studies themselves that purported to prove it crumbled under the crucible of reproducibility. Harden suggests, convincingly, that the low quality of so many social science studies has at it root an unwillingness to control for genetic factors.
Harden isn’t trying to suggest that poor mothers inevitably have stupid children, or that interventions aimed at poor families are a waste of money. Quite the contrary, in fact. She suggests, paragraph by paragraph, chapter by chapter, that our society was never truly interested in tackling inequality in the first place, and most of the interventions we offer are band-aids at best, and wishful thinking at worst. She does not suggest that these charities and institutions are themselves symptoms of the problem, though Harden’s prose betrays no obligation to complete its lines of reasoning.
Were we to take Harden’s ideas seriously, her conclusions would directly compel a single course of intervention for society: aggressive expansion of the welfare state and a redistribution of wealth that have only ever been attempted outside democratically-operated countries. Were Harden to have thought this through and opened with this thesis, the book would be bolder, better, and certainly more entertaining. For Harden is, whether she knows it or not, a utopianist, who, like B.F. Skinner before her, truly believes science can help us reimagine society in a way that benefits everyone. She’s not, at heart anyway, an incrementalist. If life is a board game, Harden thinks we’re all suckers playing Monopoly–and we’d be better off playing a game with very different rules.
Unlike the dystopian critic Aldous Huxley, whose cautionary vision of social darwinism has withstood nearly a century of scrutiny that the science of its time has withered under, Harden isn’t willing to give up on better living through chemistry. While she leaves breadcrumbs all over her book about the sweep and reach of her ideal reform, we must reach the last page for Harden to spell it out for us:
Some people happen to inherit combinations of genetic variants that, in combination with environments…cause them to be more likely to develop a suite of skills and behaviors that are currently valued in…Western capitalist societies. They are not better people. They are not more inherently meritorious.
Now just because you think athletes and influencers shouldn’t be lauded as epitomes human virtue doesn’t automatically cast you a Marxist. But the dig at “Western capitalist societies”, especially in its pluralized form, does clear the floor for a broad, systemic critique of the global political-economic hegemony–the whole kit and kaboodle, as it were. Harden could benefit from being more open about it.
Earlier passages that condemn soviet-style totalitarianism are particularly difficult to square, in this light. For example, she summarizes a study on Romanian orphanages and springboards into a fascinating discussion on how the state can suppress human potential. She observes with respect to human intelligence, totalitarian societies produce not only fewer “lucky” people, on average, but a lot more “unlucky” ones overall. She then cites the geneticist Richard Lewontin, who offers a “garden” metaphor for human genetics in his own writing. Lewontin suggests that a well-maintained garden actually promotes greater variability in plant height than a poorly-maintained one, with the insinuation that Western societies are working correctly when they produce a greater diversity of outcomes.
Lewontin was surely aware that the garden is one of the oldest symbols in Western civilization, though Harden does not dwell on his literary provocations. Yet to this reader, government-as-gardener conjures Plato’s Republic and its ideal society ruled by a philosopher-king that has no need for artists, poets, and other dissimulators.
Which is the great weakness of the book. Harden can’t articulate what her vision for an ideal society is because she does not herself know it. She hasn’t read enough outside STEM fields to have an opinion yet. With only the briefest asides for Dostoevsky and the Bible, Harden has brought a knife to a gunfight. Who is she to point at the hypocrisy and decadence of Western society as if she herself discovered it? Whence Chaucer? Whence Austen? Has the PhD in psychology even cracked the man who largely founded her field, the good Dr. Freud? Why not start with Civilization and its Discontents?
Harden could have written a different book, one that attempted to survey trends in genetic psychology that allows readers to draw their own conclusions. Perhaps Harden felt that such a book would play into the hands of neonazis, as, she concedes, her academic research regularly has. But, as is so often the case with controversial ideas, hers cause her to swerve in the opposite direction. Too bad she drives right into a territory she knows little about.
Over and over again she tells us how important STEM is to success in life and how our society is failing us in the way it picks STEM favorites and tosses everyone else by the wayside. But at the same time, she tells what society selects for isn’t what is most important in life: “intelligence tests don’t tell you that a person is valuable, but they do tell you about whether a person can do (some) things that are valued” (italics hers). Can’t the same be said of STEM? Can’t it only tell us about the former, and not the latter?
And if intelligence–and the STEM riches is delivers–isn’t the most important thing in life, then, what is? These problems may be new to her, but they’re not new, they are older than Christ. At least she has passing familiarity with that particular social critic, whose millenarian ideas her unconfronted and largely unexplored reflexes inadvertently echo. Saying every single person deserves dignity and respect is still a revolutionary idea, two thousand years later.
Eugenicism may also be comparatively new, but the evil it articulates is ancient. It’s the same old story: societies always and inevitably have winners and losers, but only in a properly structured society will the winners be empowered, via their innate and natural nobility, to solve the problem of the losers better than the losers could ever solve for themselves. Change “winners” to “gentry” and “losers” to “peasants” and you have feudalism. A search-and-replace later, you get colonialism, or fascism, whatever other “system” you want where the few rule the many through a system of inherited privilege.
This is the argument Harden never addresses, because she lacks the breadth of education to be aware of it. It’s not that she’s not smart, it’s just she hasn’t yet been granted access to a large enough garden. Instead, Harden ends up calling for more solutions that got us into this mess in the first place–those implemented by experts like her–intelligent people with exceptional credentials, granted access to comprehensive and accurate data, genetics not excluded. The problem is that a society run in this manner is not a democracy. For the sake of ours, I hope Harden and her peers learn to appreciate that.
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