HomoSad

Brain drugs such as calming agents or antidepressants can treat Symptoms of mental illness that are caused by chronic stress. It is claimed that psychopaths less often get mentally ill so they should not for themselve need or seek to get a prescription Treatment for a mental illness - and especially not a calming agent (they are adrenaline seekers). In the case of Opiates the realtion is less obvious because they are hig consumers of illegal durgs and drugs that gives highs. The relation between stress and mental Health is the following: Socioeconmic stress triggers mental illness in People that can get stressed and make their course worse (this bad effect of socio economic stress is statistically proofen for example for shizophrenia and the mental health of equal societies is generally and statistically proofen to be better than that of unequal societys ). As explained stress works completely different in psychopaths because they produce adrenaline but not enough cortisol as a Response. And the lack of the later is what should protect them from most stress related illness. Psychologcial Trauma can by the way be somatized and negatively affect the whole Overall Health so other illness besides mental illness might be as well more common in People who can feel stress. Psychopaths in contrast are extraordinarily resilient to punishment which again indicates that they are not prone to stress and Trauma. If one can hence statisticaly link the prescription of drugs that are strongly related to treating illnesses of chronic cortisol stress (must not necesarilly be mental illesses which are the best candidates here, I have to think about this longer)- with the amount of children one has, one can propably skip the study of the genetic Relations for know and nevertheless has a first Impression of what geneticall is going on.

I see why you are sceptic because in other mental problemes a lot more genes seem to be involved. here is the site that made the somewhat dubious claim that only 6 genes are involved in rising the propability (or known to be involved so fare: https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Genes_linked_to_psychopathy ). I know that is is mostly from small isolated populations that new species get created. My fear was however that the genetic make up of ALL humanity has already changed so that future changes can be quicker from now on, even with migration. Up to 5 percent of the Population have some form of psychopathy or sociopathy so the involved genes - which do not even trigger under every Environment - are propably not super rare genes. There is no reason to think however that psychopathy is determined in the next three Generations I guess too. The fitness advantage of not beeing prone to cortisol Health stress should not be very extreme too. (I saw in one of this genetic simulations you pointed me too that they work with fitness increases from a factor of 1 - Population does not change - to 1.1 Population starts to change). However I ask myself how fare politics should think into our "biological future" when deciding what a safe politics and economics should loook like. In Climate Change we try to convince everyone to think more fare than the next election term but it does not happen. I know that the consumption of brain drugs (antidepressants, opiates) is very high in the USA for example - and this could be indirect evidence of social engineering non-psychopathic people into a life stile they are simply not made for in a biological sense (and will not withstand is the long run). Do you - by the way- know any attempts to link the effects of poltics to gene changes for any kind - maybe in some small Island population/something more predictable than whole humanity? P.S. I am a bit slow in thinking. But if there would be anyway to link the genetic data of people they are giving so freely to th genetic heritage companies with the number of children they have at a given age than it should be possible to see if psychopathic gene combinations will become more likely. One would as well be able to compare more equal froms of capitalism like that of your Country with less equal forms such as the US. What one has to carefull about however is to calculate as well if the number of "unknown" extra-martial children is higher for psychopaths (fatherhood test). To have the link to the brain drugs it would be usefull to have a questionary about that.

Thanks very much, I was all the time googling for a "genetic calculator" And this although I am familiar with simulations from my own study subject. That's called a fail I guess. The trait I am looking for is psychopathy. What is your instinct: can a society that prefers violence and inequality (I guess that in unequal societies the abiliy to manipulate will have greater payoffs than in equal ones - as wealth damage can often not be undone in unequal socities while in equal society personal trustability and reliaility should have the greatest long term social pay off ) become more psychopathic in the genetic sense in the next hundred years? P.S. Do you know a simulator that simulates the spread of a polygenetic trait in one population for simplicity? Because in my hypothesis only when at least 3 of this genes combine (meet) there is a chance that the trait of psychopathy really expresses, or lets better say expresses in a way that it provides a survival advantage because even non-psychopaths in the phenotyp sense with the said gene set seem to have survival advantage. I will need to get a lot of data (for example how much of this genes mutations are already there in the present population) and I have to make assumptions on how much of fitness advantage this genes really lend but I guess a project that is emotionally interesting is a good way to start to learn genetics. Am I at least loosely right that if there is a fitness advantage in a particular combination of gene mutations than the growth of people who have the complete combination will at the beginning will be slow (because they rarely meet and the individual mutations on their own might not give an advantage) and than the speed at which they will meet and hence become positively selected will grow exponential over time?

The source for the farmer IQ dip is here: https://www.princeton.edu/news/2013/08/29/poor-concentration-poverty-reduces-brainpower-needed-navigating-other-areas-life (I remebered it wrongly: it is a 13 Point Dip and not 15 Points so good that you asked for the source. I was arguably a bit lazy yeserday because I had to type everything on a Smartphone and that gives me back pain). The rest is a hypothesis (what you call speculation) based on some scientifically known facts: Economomical inequal societies are more violent than societies which are just poor and this is one of the most robust findings of social Sciences: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/08/income-inequality-murder-homicide-rates There is as well this very famous Monkey Experiment that Shows what our natural reaction to inequality normally would be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg Now in Theory any Society could be very unequal socially but in practice only wealthy societies can be it (one small Group for example has metal weapons and now bullies the other who has not - if no one would know how to make a metal weapon such a problem would never have arived. If all have the same weapons than just numbers of Group members would Count for power diferences and alliances and hence Group number can Change. So one would be carefull of how fare to let the violence escalate). It is a dificult to test hypothesis but it might be possible to compare the genetic make up of societies which have been economically unequal for very Long time and isolated societies who haven't. Because islands population tend to have some inbreeding and there could be other variables involved in why a particular tribe on a particular Island became very violent or non violent this method is propably not entirely safe. Better would be if we would know the Genome of a certain area over the last 5000 years - but unluckily it degenerates over time. The best evidence I have comes from a study of how a tribe of Primates changed over time. At a certain Point the most violent male members of the tribe died because they all did eat meat that was infected by a disease while the peacefull males did not. The tribe became much more peacefull and this sticked over Generations. The biologist said that this has to do with culture mainly (one would not eliminate a polygenetic trait by just eliminating one Generation and one Generation of males) but culture means here that genes of agression where propably not avtivated in the Infant apes once the male tyrants where gone. So this is a possible example of a negative Feedback loop started by a violent Change in genetic composition of the group. https://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/science/no-time-for-bullies-baboons-retool-their-culture.html To see real changes in polygenetics trait by natural selection it can take several thousands years but what I still try to find out is if psychopathy is really so strongly polygenetic or not. All I know so fare is that six genes are involved but not what that means in Terms of Speed of possible Change ( I have a life science degree but not in genetics). In my opinion all our economic, religious and political ideologies should be re-evaluated in Terms of our biology - are they in line with our natural biological requirements or are they just a mixture of elite interests - the interest of our most agressive and loud "baboon" bullies together with lofty dreams of the very protected of how we want to be but in reality can't be? Or even worse are this idelogies, as I sugest and in the Long run, solely in the interest of a new species in the making that is much more psychopathic? With the new weapon Technologies (drones, Biopweapons) it's possible that the psychopaths at some Point conciously decide they want to be a new species - and get rid of the old species that they see as inferior. And they do the later, be assured of that. The non-psychopathic rich that supported psychopathic ideologies (of merciless competition) without recognizing that danger would than be destroyed by what they fianced together with all there Children, Grand children etc. It's said one lives on in ones Children, so... This is a very Special Scenario but back to everyday reality: What Kind of economy will bring out the best in us and what the worst and over the longer run? I learned some economics at the University. It is all about mathematics, and a bit About choices but it does not care what a human is really made of. In Germany one says that some scientists live in "an ivory Tower". That means their Research is very esoteric and fare removed from the reality of human life. This is the best description of the continous deniable of biology in economics I see. Mabye when facing genetics the People are just not ready to addmit that they are much less masters of themselves than they thought.

Intelligence is polygenetic - means there are a lot of genes that can help or hinder the IQ. Now this genes can be switched on or off by epigenetics - which it makes it all the more difficult to find out why one person is intelligent or not. A pretty deciding factor however seems to be neither genes nor epigenetics but stress in the here and now. There has been done a study on the IQ of Indian farmers when they just had their harvest - and their livelihood is halfway secure - and when they are in the period of sowing/waiting where they have least grain left and no security that their investment of sowing will pay off. There IQ is 15 points higher in the economically secure period than in the period of fear. Economic inequality is hence the most stupid thing humanity ever invented. Because as you see it does not only destroy the IQ of many good people. It as well activates the psychopathic genes (you do not automatically become a psychopath even if you have the genes for it). The later can ultimately destroy our species because the more unequal and violent our societies become the more useful activated psychopathy is. This gives the psychopaths genes a survival advantage and a self feeding circle is created (positive feedback loop - anyone familiar with complex systems will immediately get a chill on the spine when he hears that term). I hence fear our species is on genetic auto-destruct since the first really wealthy (and hence really unequal) civilization arrived.

What do you mean by destroyed? If you mix 2 billion DNA molecules of one person with one DNA molecule of another person the later will surely be hard to find - but that does not mean it is destroyed.

If a particular trait is determined by having at least three mutations on six involved genes and this trait provides a strong survival advantage over those that don‘t have it - how long will it take ROUGHLY till the trait has for example doubled in a given population? I mean: Are we talking more of several generations or several hundred or even thousands of generations? Is there any kind of online calculator to solve that kind of problem?