I posted the one word answer because I thought it was true and funny, and I wanted to see whether I could get some karma points that way.
However, I do have some reasons for thinking so. As some folks have said upthread, what genes mean is highly subject to interpretation, and motivated interpretation is part of what makes politics such a pleasure.
It occurs to me that if the DNA of politicians were studied, there might be gene complexes to be found which relate to some combination of good sense and political effectiveness. In the optimistic assumption that people could agree on what the former means, DNA could actually be politically useful. Maybe. Unless there’s a confounding factor like one gene combination being better in good times and another being better for dealing with hard, fast-moving problems, at which point the estimates get very challenging again.
Pretend that someone develops a genetic test for sociopaths. To test the test researchers look at 100 sibling pairs, and for each pair one but not both siblings have been diagnosed as sociopaths. The genetic test, let’s assume, does extremely well in identifying the sociopaths. Would you claim that this result is, as you say, “highly subject to interpretation”?
No.
I posted the one word answer because I thought it was true and funny, and I wanted to see whether I could get some karma points that way.
However, I do have some reasons for thinking so. As some folks have said upthread, what genes mean is highly subject to interpretation, and motivated interpretation is part of what makes politics such a pleasure.
It occurs to me that if the DNA of politicians were studied, there might be gene complexes to be found which relate to some combination of good sense and political effectiveness. In the optimistic assumption that people could agree on what the former means, DNA could actually be politically useful. Maybe. Unless there’s a confounding factor like one gene combination being better in good times and another being better for dealing with hard, fast-moving problems, at which point the estimates get very challenging again.
Pretend that someone develops a genetic test for sociopaths. To test the test researchers look at 100 sibling pairs, and for each pair one but not both siblings have been diagnosed as sociopaths. The genetic test, let’s assume, does extremely well in identifying the sociopaths. Would you claim that this result is, as you say, “highly subject to interpretation”?
People would assuredly argue about whether whatever definition of sociopath being used was describing something real.