This is in fact the fatal flaw of cloning (with respect to producing high achievement individuals): it’s much worse than sexual reproduction at doing so, because it’s lower variance, and variance is your friend if you want rare outcomes!
No. Selection lets you drastically increase the mean of clones in a way at least twice as difficult as for obtaining equally-elite pairs of parents. You can get the tail just as much from increasing the mean as from increasing the variance. Both are your friend. This is also relevant to embryo selection when we consider the values of increasing embryo count/PGS/selection: https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection#optimizing-selection-procedures (It also doesn’t follow that cloning-like approaches using a single parent are unable to exploit any variance-increasing methods, see the gamete-selection section.)
After all, if we’re considering 100 clones of a high-achievement individual being raised by surrogates, the natural comparison is 100 genetic children of two high-achievement individuals being raised by surrogates.
No, it’s not. Who’s the female von Neumann whose eggs you’re thinking of using...?
Selection lets you drastically increase the mean of clones in a way at least twice as difficult as for obtaining equally-elite pairs of parents.
I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about here. What’s “twice as difficult”? Do you mean because you need to find two donors instead of one? I think finding donors is the easiest part, so that doesn’t seem like a problem to me.
(It also doesn’t follow that cloning-like approaches using a single parent are unable to exploit any variance-increasing methods, see the gamete-selection section.)
I was under the impression that we were not considering future technology (such as gamete selection). Cloning primates is current-day technology (though still immature).
Who’s the female von Neumann whose eggs you’re thinking of using...?
The same way you’d find a male donor? Just ask some high achievement women until you find a willing donor (and maybe check for high-achievement relatives and run some polygenic scores, if you want additional confidence). I don’t see why this is a problem.
Note that von Neumann is not a possibility with present-day technology anyway, since he’s dead, and current technology requires a living donor.
Please see the emergenesis link.
Ah, sorry, I missed that when reading your post the first time. It’s true that sufficiently important non-additive effects would overwhelm the disadvantage of lower variance. This becomes a quantitative question: in principle the calculation could come out in favor of either cloning or sexual-reproduction, depending on assumptions.
I had the general impression though that non-additive effects were believed to be of relatively low importance compared to additive effects, but I admit that I don’t know precisely how much lower, and even a small effect could matter when considering extreme outliers.
What’s “twice as difficult”? Do you mean because you need to find two donors instead of one?
Yes, and it means you can’t get a gain by throwing out one donor. If you must include the lower-scoring runner-up of the opposite sex, that drags you further back to the mean. (Note that for all the talk of variability, von Neumann’s descendants aren’t that impressive, and this is true of most such.)
I was under the impression that we were not considering future technology (such as gamete selection).
I was under the impression we were, as no one has cloned a human at all and it is therefore future technology.
I don’t think gamete selection is all that hard or futuristic, either, merely uninvested in. There’s also chemical treatments to increase recombination rate (see the references), which is existing technology in plants/animals.
This becomes a quantitative question: in principle the calculation could come out in favor of either cloning or sexual-reproduction, depending on assumptions.
Indeed. Depending on where you think you can select to for donor cells, how heritable the trait of interest is, how many embryos you select from… Each of these has its own diminishing returns and costs and tradeoffs. Which is why I present many scenarios in my writeups. There is no substitute for working through the math—even simple toy models are indispensable, because intuition is weak here. Clones are really good in some scenarios; and really bad in others. It depends.
I had the general impression though that non-additive effects were believed to be of relatively low importance compared to additive effects, but I admit that I don’t know precisely how much lower, and even a small effect could matter when considering extreme outliers.
I would say that we are pretty sure that non-additive effects are unimportant for IQ. We are also reasonably sure that non-additives have been, overall, greatly overblown (I blame the medical Mendelians for this), at least for those human traits that are easy to measure: for example, Polderman et al 2015 finds no overall evidence for ADE instead of ACE in its twin mega-analysis, or Hivert et al 2020 scans 70 UKBB traits and finds 0% dominance and 6% epistasis. Not much there! We are also reasonably sure that for cases like that, the gap between the SNP additives (global mean ~20%?) & full heritability (~50%) is made up mostly of rare additive variants. Unfortunately, for personality, it happens to be a big exception: the SNP heritabilities can be as low as 0%, pointing to potentially huge roles for epistasis/dominance to explain the identical twin correlations (often >50%). And no one knows how ‘eminence’ works in part because it is intrinsically extremely debatable and hard to measure—but there is clearly a lot of variance unexplained by mere IQ, and other things are necessary, and what everyone tends to conclude (from Galton to Eysenck to Jensen to Simonton on) is that personality and personality-like traits such as motivation is a big part of the missing puzzle. So...
The emergenesis model is the best I’ve seen anyone propose which is consistent with the family-level observations, inadequacy of IQ to explain everything (and far grosser inadequacy of environmental causes like SES), and non-additivity of personality and similar traits. But it hasn’t yet (and may never be given the paucity of data) been pursued to the quantitative point where you could hope to really compare it, which is why I only give numbers for IQ above. That’s where the light from the lamppost is.
Thanks, this discussion has improved my understanding.
And no one knows how ‘eminence’ works in part because it is intrinsically extremely debatable and hard to measure—but there is clearly a lot of variance unexplained by mere IQ, and other things are necessary, and what everyone tends to conclude (from Galton to Eysenck to Simonton on) is that personality and personality-like traits such as motivation is a big part of the missing puzzle.
I’d be curious to know about the genetics of metrics like “number of patents authored”, where it’s measuring productive activity (instead of test performance and educational attainment).
Patents are zero-inflated: most people simply have zero lifetime patents. Not informative.
And when someone does have a patent, what does it mean? Patents are a pretty lousy measure: look at software patents. Sheer fishing expeditions and patent trolling (like Intellectual Ventures, which made patents by getting people around a table to shoot the wind and have a lawyer listen and write down patents for any random idea someone idly speculated about). When you think of eminent figures like Einstein or von Neumann, how many patents do you think they had? Einstein had over 50, but few have any relationship to what he’s famous for, and would he have that many if he hadn’t literally worked in a patent office? And there are loads of people with far more than 50. Von Neumann also had some patents, but again nothing remotely like his stature*. Arguably, after a certain point, having more patents means you are less eminent and you’re some sort of hired gun grinding out paperwork. (I think of this every time I hear about how IBM, or China, incentivizes patents with big bonuses and accordingly received a record number of patents that year. Hasn’t done them much good long-term that I can tell...) And there are many areas of achievement where patents are entirely irrelevant.
If you pulled together a population-sized genealogy or registry (Scandinavia would do the trick, or one of the American genealogies to cross-reference with the USPTO), I don’t know what the results would be in terms of an ACE model, but I don’t think it would change any minds either way about emergenesis.
* The patent von Neumann is best known for is the one he didn’t get but instead torpedoed by publishing about the design of a computer, thereby helping usher in the age of the digital computer immediately instead of it being controlled by a monopolist for decades.
I think of this every time I hear about how IBM, or China, incentivizes patents with big bonuses and accordingly received a record number of patents that year. Hasn’t done them much good long-term that I can tell...
Yeah, I personally have 2 patents to my name through this kind of Goodharting. (Higher management provided the incentives, lower management encouraged me to apply even knowing it probably wasn’t economically worthwhile.)
No. Selection lets you drastically increase the mean of clones in a way at least twice as difficult as for obtaining equally-elite pairs of parents. You can get the tail just as much from increasing the mean as from increasing the variance. Both are your friend. This is also relevant to embryo selection when we consider the values of increasing embryo count/PGS/selection: https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection#optimizing-selection-procedures (It also doesn’t follow that cloning-like approaches using a single parent are unable to exploit any variance-increasing methods, see the gamete-selection section.)
No, it’s not. Who’s the female von Neumann whose eggs you’re thinking of using...?
Please see the emergenesis link.
I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about here. What’s “twice as difficult”? Do you mean because you need to find two donors instead of one? I think finding donors is the easiest part, so that doesn’t seem like a problem to me.
I was under the impression that we were not considering future technology (such as gamete selection). Cloning primates is current-day technology (though still immature).
The same way you’d find a male donor? Just ask some high achievement women until you find a willing donor (and maybe check for high-achievement relatives and run some polygenic scores, if you want additional confidence). I don’t see why this is a problem.
Note that von Neumann is not a possibility with present-day technology anyway, since he’s dead, and current technology requires a living donor.
Ah, sorry, I missed that when reading your post the first time. It’s true that sufficiently important non-additive effects would overwhelm the disadvantage of lower variance. This becomes a quantitative question: in principle the calculation could come out in favor of either cloning or sexual-reproduction, depending on assumptions.
I had the general impression though that non-additive effects were believed to be of relatively low importance compared to additive effects, but I admit that I don’t know precisely how much lower, and even a small effect could matter when considering extreme outliers.
Yes, and it means you can’t get a gain by throwing out one donor. If you must include the lower-scoring runner-up of the opposite sex, that drags you further back to the mean. (Note that for all the talk of variability, von Neumann’s descendants aren’t that impressive, and this is true of most such.)
I was under the impression we were, as no one has cloned a human at all and it is therefore future technology.
I don’t think gamete selection is all that hard or futuristic, either, merely uninvested in. There’s also chemical treatments to increase recombination rate (see the references), which is existing technology in plants/animals.
Indeed. Depending on where you think you can select to for donor cells, how heritable the trait of interest is, how many embryos you select from… Each of these has its own diminishing returns and costs and tradeoffs. Which is why I present many scenarios in my writeups. There is no substitute for working through the math—even simple toy models are indispensable, because intuition is weak here. Clones are really good in some scenarios; and really bad in others. It depends.
I would say that we are pretty sure that non-additive effects are unimportant for IQ. We are also reasonably sure that non-additives have been, overall, greatly overblown (I blame the medical Mendelians for this), at least for those human traits that are easy to measure: for example, Polderman et al 2015 finds no overall evidence for ADE instead of ACE in its twin mega-analysis, or Hivert et al 2020 scans 70 UKBB traits and finds 0% dominance and 6% epistasis. Not much there! We are also reasonably sure that for cases like that, the gap between the SNP additives (global mean ~20%?) & full heritability (~50%) is made up mostly of rare additive variants. Unfortunately, for personality, it happens to be a big exception: the SNP heritabilities can be as low as 0%, pointing to potentially huge roles for epistasis/dominance to explain the identical twin correlations (often >50%). And no one knows how ‘eminence’ works in part because it is intrinsically extremely debatable and hard to measure—but there is clearly a lot of variance unexplained by mere IQ, and other things are necessary, and what everyone tends to conclude (from Galton to Eysenck to Jensen to Simonton on) is that personality and personality-like traits such as motivation is a big part of the missing puzzle. So...
The emergenesis model is the best I’ve seen anyone propose which is consistent with the family-level observations, inadequacy of IQ to explain everything (and far grosser inadequacy of environmental causes like SES), and non-additivity of personality and similar traits. But it hasn’t yet (and may never be given the paucity of data) been pursued to the quantitative point where you could hope to really compare it, which is why I only give numbers for IQ above. That’s where the light from the lamppost is.
Thanks, this discussion has improved my understanding.
I’d be curious to know about the genetics of metrics like “number of patents authored”, where it’s measuring productive activity (instead of test performance and educational attainment).
That’s an example of what I mean by debatable.
Patents are zero-inflated: most people simply have zero lifetime patents. Not informative.
And when someone does have a patent, what does it mean? Patents are a pretty lousy measure: look at software patents. Sheer fishing expeditions and patent trolling (like Intellectual Ventures, which made patents by getting people around a table to shoot the wind and have a lawyer listen and write down patents for any random idea someone idly speculated about). When you think of eminent figures like Einstein or von Neumann, how many patents do you think they had? Einstein had over 50, but few have any relationship to what he’s famous for, and would he have that many if he hadn’t literally worked in a patent office? And there are loads of people with far more than 50. Von Neumann also had some patents, but again nothing remotely like his stature*. Arguably, after a certain point, having more patents means you are less eminent and you’re some sort of hired gun grinding out paperwork. (I think of this every time I hear about how IBM, or China, incentivizes patents with big bonuses and accordingly received a record number of patents that year. Hasn’t done them much good long-term that I can tell...) And there are many areas of achievement where patents are entirely irrelevant.
If you pulled together a population-sized genealogy or registry (Scandinavia would do the trick, or one of the American genealogies to cross-reference with the USPTO), I don’t know what the results would be in terms of an ACE model, but I don’t think it would change any minds either way about emergenesis.
* The patent von Neumann is best known for is the one he didn’t get but instead torpedoed by publishing about the design of a computer, thereby helping usher in the age of the digital computer immediately instead of it being controlled by a monopolist for decades.
Yeah, I personally have 2 patents to my name through this kind of Goodharting. (Higher management provided the incentives, lower management encouraged me to apply even knowing it probably wasn’t economically worthwhile.)