“Luck” vs. genes: is there a moral difference?

I reviewed a new book on genome-wide association studies for the Washington Post a long time ago. To read my take, click on the screenshot.

Harden thought that the new technique of GWAS could be used to implement her social purpose. The method I explain in my review aims to identify many regions of the human genome responsible for genetic variation in a chosen human trait in one population. She concentrates on educational attainment, which is highly correlated with wealth and income. Harden points out that over 1200 regions of the DNA can affect the value of this trait.

It is possible to predict how well a child will succeed even in a newborn child. The predictability is not close to 100%, but you can still rank children by their GWAS scores in their likelihood of success.

Aldous Huxley'sBrave New World: alphas at the top and useless epsilons at the bottom sounds like a nightmare. Harden is a hereditarian and her aims are equity. She believes that once we know the genes responsible for academic achievement, we can use that information to improve academic achievement.

She couldn't propose a good way to use this information to achieve equity in her book. I can't see myself using this kind of genetic information to promote academic success. If you genotyping an infant, you will know that the kid has a 80% chance of graduating from high school. What do you do with that information? Start tutoring as soon as possible? This hasn't worked so why give more money to schools? Harden doesn't want differential treatment for it creates classes of people. It's easier to manipulate the school environment than it is to get a bunch of kids. All genetically-based interventions must be tested.

I'm not writing this to reiterate my review, but to bring up some things that I had to leave out. I should have written what I said here. It's mine.

I omitted these quotes from my rough draft of Harden's argument that we need to pay special attention to inequalities based on genetics.

Harden’s motivation for using genetic differences to engineer equality comes from the fact that those differences are a matter of luck: the vagaries of how genes sort themselves out during egg and sperm formation. It’s unfair, she says, to base social justice on randomly distributed genes: “People are in fact more likely to support [wealth] redistribution when they see inequalities as stemming from lucky factors over which people have no control than when they see inequalities as stemming from choice.” [p. 206]

But is there really “choice”? Like many scientists and philosophers, I’m a determinist who rejects the idea of free will—at least the kind that maintains that there is something more to behavior than the inescapable consequences of your genetic and environmental history as well the possible indeterminate (quantum) laws of nature. In this pervasive view, at any one moment you could have chosen to do something other than what you did.

But there’s no evidence for this kind of free will, which would defy the laws of physics by enabling us to mystically control the workings of our neurons.  No inequalities stem from “free choice” and so everyone’s life results from factors over which they have no control, be they genetic or environmental.

Harden actually admits this dilemma: “If you think the universe is deterministic, and the existence of free will is incompatible with a deterministic outcome, and free will is an illusion, then genetics doesn’t have anything to add to the conversation. Genetics is just a tiny corner of the universe where we have worked out a little bit of the larger deterministic chain.”  [p. 200] And with that statement she pushes her whole program into that tiny corner.

Harden added something like "I'm not going to get into the issue of free will." Our genes and environments are uncontrollable, so why should we see them as a matter of luck? The family we are born into, the people we meet, and all the influences of our lives are a matter of luck. Our lives are determined by the outcome. If you have perfect knowledge, the laws of physics can still be used to determine some circumstances, even if they are not absolutely determined by the laws of physics. The common notion of free will cannot be supported by quantum mechanics.

I want to make a point about determinism, but I don't want to argue about free will. I guess Harden means byluck and those factors over which we have no conscious control.

If that is the case, people feel that fixing genetic inequalities is more important than fixing environmental inequalities.

The point is not how we define free will, but how we accept that our wills can't change the laws of physics. Even if you are one of the rare libertarian free willers who are mostly religious, I can't see why you would care more about genetically based inequalities than the environment. The distinction isn't completely clear-cut because environmental inequalities can also have a genetic basis. We have evidence that certain people are more likely to be friends with you, and that your friends are more important in determining how you turn out.

Harden's motivation, who wouldn't want to improve everyone's chance of educational achievement? It seems to me that Harden undermines the social value of her genetic program by punting on the issue of determinism. She's forced to avoid that issue because she's a true progressive. It's fourth down and 25 yards to a first, what else can you do?