5 ms·

Has anyone ever applied this process to humans? If you breed two entrepreneurs, are you more likely to get another entrepreneur?

tempodox 3y ago
Entrepreneurs are boring. Try programmers.
Reviving1514 3y ago
I think Hitler gave it a shot.
7e 3y ago
The caste/nobility system, harems, prima nocta, and a high immigration bar are all variations of this theme. These days elite universities, Tinder, Twitter, and the general Internet are pushing out the tails of humanity further. Expect more outliers as time marches on. If universal basic income is adopted, expect more negative outliers, as the barriers to entry to human reproduction plummets, and the lure to collect the child’s paycheck proves hard to resist.
brandall10 3y ago
I'd love to see if there's been a study on this, but anecdotally it seems a high number of PhDs are married to other PhDs, doctors to other doctors, attorneys to other attorneys. My take is for the most part of the grind of these types of professions is more relatable and schedules are easier to align, but it probably also aligns on social cache/prestige to some degree.
- chrisco255 3y ago
  Yeah but part of that is just sharing the same social space. It's pretty common for people to meet at work or at school and then start dating and eventually marry. For large portions of your life, especially in law and medicine, school dominates your life and virtually all your friends and potential mates come from that pool. Same for work or professional life. Have you ever hooked up with a coworker or classmate? Many people have. Doesn't matter the profession. It's less common for professions that are not as gender balanced, of course, but it still happens.
chrisco255 3y ago
The problem with attempting to apply this to humans is that humans take an extraordinary amount of time to develop into their prime (~30 years each gen). You might at most get 2 generations of data if you began to run this experiment in your early 20s.
- kaashif 3y ago
  We need to get an AI to run this experiment at a large scale for a long time. Although at that point, do we even need the people?
  - canadianfella 3y ago
    [dead]
oh_sigh 3y ago
Yes, and we got Yao Ming for it.
thrance 3y ago
The only case I am aware of is that of the "Potsdam Giants" [1]. Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia was so obsessed with tall men he created a regiment of them, and pushed these soldiers to marry tall women. It apparently worked in producing even taller offspring. As for entrepreneurship, I don't think there's a gene that encodes that :). Although heredity isn't only genetic. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_Giants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_Giants
- swalling 3y ago
  The population-level version of this is the Dutch, who only relatively recently became the tallest people on Earth through natural selection. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2015.0211 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2015.021...
DontchaKnowit 3y ago
Yes, the Nazis.

tempodox 3y ago

Entrepreneurs are boring. Try programmers.

Reviving1514 3y ago

I think Hitler gave it a shot.

7e 3y ago

The caste/nobility system, harems, prima nocta, and a high immigration bar are all variations of this theme. These days elite universities, Tinder, Twitter, and the general Internet are pushing out the tails of humanity further. Expect more outliers as time marches on. If universal basic income is adopted, expect more negative outliers, as the barriers to entry to human reproduction plummets, and the lure to collect the child’s paycheck proves hard to resist.

brandall10 3y ago

I'd love to see if there's been a study on this, but anecdotally it seems a high number of PhDs are married to other PhDs, doctors to other doctors, attorneys to other attorneys. My take is for the most part of the grind of these types of professions is more relatable and schedules are easier to align, but it probably also aligns on social cache/prestige to some degree.

chrisco255 3y ago
Yeah but part of that is just sharing the same social space. It's pretty common for people to meet at work or at school and then start dating and eventually marry. For large portions of your life, especially in law and medicine, school dominates your life and virtually all your friends and potential mates come from that pool. Same for work or professional life. Have you ever hooked up with a coworker or classmate? Many people have. Doesn't matter the profession. It's less common for professions that are not as gender balanced, of course, but it still happens.

chrisco255 3y ago

The problem with attempting to apply this to humans is that humans take an extraordinary amount of time to develop into their prime (~30 years each gen). You might at most get 2 generations of data if you began to run this experiment in your early 20s.

kaashif 3y ago
We need to get an AI to run this experiment at a large scale for a long time. Although at that point, do we even need the people?
- canadianfella 3y ago
  [dead]

oh_sigh 3y ago

Yes, and we got Yao Ming for it.

thrance 3y ago

The only case I am aware of is that of the "Potsdam Giants" [1]. Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia was so obsessed with tall men he created a regiment of them, and pushed these soldiers to marry tall women. It apparently worked in producing even taller offspring. As for entrepreneurship, I don't think there's a gene that encodes that :). Although heredity isn't only genetic. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_Giants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_Giants

swalling 3y ago
The population-level version of this is the Dutch, who only relatively recently became the tallest people on Earth through natural selection. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2015.0211 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2015.021...

DontchaKnowit 3y ago

Yes, the Nazis.