edited to add tl;dr: Siskind seems ticked off because recent papers on the genetics of schizophrenia are increasingly pointing out that at current miniscule levels of prevalence, even with the commonly accepted 80% heritability, actually developing the disorder is all but impossible unless at least some of the environmental factors are also in play. This is understandably very worrisome, since it indicates that even high heritability issues might be solvable without immediately employing eugenics.
Also notable because I don’t think it’s very often that eugenics grievances breach the surface in such an obvious way in a public siskind post, including the claim that the whole thing is just HBD denialists spreading FUD:
People really hate the finding that most diseases are substantially (often primarily) genetic. There’s a whole toolbox that people in denial about this use to sow doubt. Usually it involves misunderstanding polygenicity/omnigenicity, or confusing GWAS’ current inability to detect a gene with the gene not existing. I hope most people are already wise to these tactics.
The concentrated smarm in this bullshit JAQ off piece gave me psychic damage.
Fun to see him using the “IQ is mostly genetic [because heredity]” line, which is exactly what the schizophrenia literature he takes issue with claims is a woefully inadequate descriptor if we’re going to usefully evaluate what is actually happening.
The way they always try to motte and bailey eugenics gives me the shits. No, eugenics isn’t screening embryos for terrible incurable conditions, it’s the whole deal of gatekeeping society according to arbitrary geneological norms, and the fact that they keep trying to rehabilitate the term instead of rebranding to something less awful, is certainly food for thought.