DNA is Not Destiny

DNA is Not Destiny

Why it started with Chapter 6
I started to write these notes until I read half of the book. I can’t exactly remember the contents but it left a good impression for me. So, I decided to finish it and make some notes now.

Chapter 6: Race and Ancestry

It is interesting to know about our biological race from DNA testing. It may look cool if the biological identity feat your social identity and could have a positive effect on you, like the girl known that she has Native American DNA and made a closer relationship with other native Americans. The problem is that when the biological identity collided with your social identity, Wayne Joseph for instance, who was identified as African American and advocating for this group but actually has no DNA comes from Africa. It just like you are been told that your father is not your biological father or your son/daughter is not yours.

It is hard to imaging for us cause we humans have and need a strong sense of belonging.

• Japanese believe that their intestine is longer for Westerners for fitting the rice diet rather than bread. As a result, they suggested that ban American beef since it is not suitable for the Japanese intestine.

Biological identity & Social identify, why is it matters?
Statistics show:

• people who read about races is the product of the social culture rather than gene are more willing to make friends with Blacks.
• Asian Americans read about race is the product of the social culture rather than gene are more confident to blend in American culture and community.

Author has divided the topics of social & biological effects. For me, I prefer to take them as a whole. One should be the product of the interaction between natural and nurture. But it is too complicated to talk about the knowledge we have at present. And maybe this is why the author prefers to talking with them respectively in this book o.

Chapter 7: Essences and the Seductive Allure of Eugenics

In the western world, eugenic is a contemptuous idea since it connected the Nazis. But it is much temper in Asian areas.

Intelligence and Essences

The experiment about comprising or disorganizing students made different consequences on American students and Japanese students. American students preferred to gain confidence from the comprises and try to practice the same project because they believe they are good at it. But people who were criticized prefer to picking up other works and give up what they don’t good at. But the controversial results present at Japanese students who prefer to practice more with the project which had negative feedback.

This is interesting. Because though teachers and parents are debated about this topic for many years but almost none of them are holding the view from students. If they are restricted to their personal experience and may cause problems on their students, like prevent their students to make progress or give up the project too early.

How Heritable is IQ?

The author mentioned about the difference in heritability of IQ among wealthier and poor populations. The index is as high as 80% in wealthier communities but as low as 10% in poor groups. It is interesting to see that those two groups have such disparity. And this is the reason why I’m always taking care of all kinds of statistic reports or results weather are they significantly or not.

As I always said, I strongly believe that humans are the product of the interaction of DNA and environment. For the first sight, I thought that one possibility is that the most of wealthier parents were well educated and so, they have touched their limits of IQ. As a result, their offspring are closing to them. For poor communities, some of them are not well educated, or may even have poor health. Both of these can affect the results of the IQ test. On the other hand, education is easy to get compared with the old days and so, developed (educated) kids were easy to show smarter than their parents who are far from to touch their IQ limits.