Ethnic Traits

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In times past among Ashkenazic Jews, marrying a highly competent scholar in Jewish Law was a "good catch" for a marriageable women. As a result there were marriages arranged between Rabbis held in high esteem for their intellectual and moral brilliance and the daughters of well to do fathers who wanted a "trophy husband" for his daughter. Van Den Haag pointed out that his custom of marrying off the daughters of successful business men to brilliant practicioners of Halacha (Jewish Law) had an unintended consequence. It tended to produce very intelligent children. Contrast this with the custom of among Catholics for the smartest sons of a family to go into the priesthood and remove themselves from the gene pool.

Darwin pointed out that one of the selection mechanisms is the choice of mates that females make. In the case of peacocks, beautiful feathers result. In the case of Ashkenazic Jews, smart children result. Female choice definitely has an effect on the gene frequency found in the reproductive pool. In early human societies, the tendency for the females to mate with the best hunters who could be relied on to bring home the meat, tended to increase the frequency of those heritable characteristics that made a male a good hunters. Among which are strength, quickness of limb and wit, good eyesight and good teamwork with other hunters. This probably was one of the drivers in human evolution.

ruveyn

Well it seems we are actually in agreement. Its just to darn hard to measure.

Done. Heart disease and type A personality. Positive correlation. And heart disease is heritable.

Its just to darn hard to measure.

The sequencing of the human genome showed that there are not enough genes to account for much of a persons personality. So that leaves prenatal enzymes, environment and culture to shape these. And of course its tied to general intelligence.

Do any ethnic groups feature a higher than normal incidence of type A personality?

No, that is not "done" because such information still does not enable us to point to genetic material and identify how this effects behavior/temperament and intelligence.
In fact from this we could conclude that type personality and heart disease might be caused by the same genetic material or closely associated material, or that being of type A personality perhaps causes heart disease, or having close familial relatives with heart disease perhaps causes type A personality.

No idea. It would certainly be interesting to compare type A personality between people in modern Western societies and people in less industrialized societies who share common recent lineage.

Oh I see what you mean. You are wanting to find specific dna sequences linking the two.
Rather than apparent causality between heart conditions and Type A.

I was reading (offline material) about the sequencing of the genome and the interviewed scientist said that there wasnt enough variation in human DNA to possibly explain the wide variation in personality.

To much is identical from one human to the next. However, I believe there are genetic markers for heart disease. I'll ask my mom who works in insurance.

Agreed! But I dont think type A directly correlates with success. They tend to be abrasive, stubborn and unsocial people. Kind of like a half mirror image of aspies.

The latest information on the way genes function is that their presence does not indicate definitely that they will function in the same way in every animal. It is critical to if and when genes are made operative. Certain controls indicate when a gene becomes operative or dormant and the factors indicated can be environmental. That is the discovery that explains why clones with identical gene sets mature into individuals that are markedly different. Therefore there is no guarantee that characteristics that are supposedly inherent in a gene set are not necessarily expressed in different individuals with the same set.

Environmental feedback is very important in establishing variation. I think that a "key" marker of the human neuro-suite is that is entails a very flexible "start" state that has particular propensities that can manifest flexibly in response to environmental stimulus, and a wide scope for environmentally influenced variance. This enables rapid and radical adaption and is so advantageous, that competing alternatives cannot (easily) compete.

Have you ever read that pdf?

I'd love one for a pet..