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In the coming decades we will gain knowledge of many of the genetic sources of human behavior. We will know that XYZ genes lead to ABC outcomes. We will know how to test for XYZ, and we will know how XYZ are inherited.
There are many beliefs and norms that will be upended by this knowledge. Some examples:
1) Unemployment is caused by laziness
Laziness and lack of aptitude and executive functioning will be proven to have a strong genetic basis, meaning that some people are born unemployable. That is clear now in the most extreme cases of people with cognitive or physical disabilities, but the genetic knowledge will flatten the cliff between "healthy" and "disabled" into a gradual slope.
2) All people are created equal.
We will know exactly how unequally people are created, and we will know with some confidence if person A gets with person B how their offspring will differ from the median of the species along many genetypic and phenotypic dimensions. These phenotypes will include high level social measures such as income potential.
3) Violent actions are a free choice
We already accept mitigating circumstances such as mental illness when assigning guilt. In the future we will know a person's genetic propensity for violence. Penal codes will be modified to deemphasize punishment and rehabilitation, and focus on quarantining violent people.
4) Equality, of opportunity and outcome, will be seen as futile
Rawls posits the veil of ignorance as a means to understand why we should conflate justice and equality. However we will possess too much knowledge to operate under the veil. We will know that you won't be randomly born to any place in society. The very notion of justice will seem quaint when we realize how deterministic most of our lives are.
5) Success in life is due to good character and virtue
Sorry we'll know who will be successful in utero. No reason to laud such people, and no way to emulate them for many.
The data always wins, just like with Galileo and Kepler. Many of the same questions will still apply, and new questions will be asked, but a lot of our current answers will be found wanting.
OR we will just find out how little we actually know and can predict when it comes to the concept of emergent systems.
Whether by god or by nature, we are still more than the sum of our parts.
We're trying to characterize the genome of a single organism. I think we will have the computational power and research resources to accomplish that.
The understanding of social-level phenotypes will be much harder to accomplish, and probably impossible to do with a controlled experiment, but the data we will collect about social outcomes coupled with the genomic data will be big enough to draw some inferences.
I appreciate your hope for the agency of the individual, but I think you are being demure regarding our ability to tease out the sources of social disparity.
So the ole " Nature vs. Nuture " debate will finally conclude forever, eh?
WRONG!
In the case of IQ there's a growing body of evidence that it's about 70% genetic and 30% environmental, as an example.
We should be happy that such debates will be resolved, so we can move on and make better informed choices about how we want to live. I for one don't celebrate ignorance.
We're trying to characterize the genome of a single organism. I think we will have the computational power and research resources to accomplish that.
The understanding of social-level phenotypes will be much harder to accomplish, and probably impossible to do with a controlled experiment, but the data we will collect about social outcomes coupled with the genomic data will be big enough to draw some inferences.
I appreciate your hope for the agency of the individual, but I think you are being demure regarding our ability to tease out the sources of social disparity.
It will certainly be a window into some of the processes that help make us into us but you will never be able to plot the course of a single human's life as all the variables are essentially infinite in number.
And despite many decades of research we have yet to even pin down the "how and why" of our most compelling trait: human consciousness, which kinda sucks because that's really the point of the exercise.
The universe is a bigger (and smaller) place than our simian brains are capable of processing and we may never find the ends because of our limitations. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try anyway, however...
So much more is at stake with this particular data though. And so many have a vested interest in supressing it...
I don't see direct negative outcomes from this knowledge differently from what we currently practice with market economics. I don't think we'll ever institute eugenics or require licenses to have children, for example. That is too expensive to enforce and too morally revolting to too many people.
Rather the danger in this knowledge is indirect, namely that it demoralizes people. Myths help people cope. If you can demystify human disparity it will take moral cudgels away from many factions.
I do see an eventual danger with this attitude, of fatalism and enervation. However the pendulum has swung so far to the other side of belief in volition and broad-based expectations of success that I don't see a danger in pushing this line, right now.
I don't see direct negative outcomes from this knowledge differently from what we currently practice with market economics. I don't think we'll ever institute eugenics or require licenses to have children, for example. That is too expensive to enforce and too morally revolting to too many people.
Rather the danger in this knowledge is indirect, namely that it demoralizes people. Myths help people cope. If you can demystify human disparity it will take moral cudgels away from many factions.
I do see an eventual danger with this attitude, of fatalism and enervation. However the pendulum has swung so far to the other side of belief in volition and broad-based expectations of success that I don't see a danger in pushing this line, right now.
People like their moral cudgels though. Some would sooner strike you dead with their cudgel than let you take it from them with data and logic.
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