If you're going to be racist at least make it believable. You're literally going with the Django Unchained "3 dots on their skull" answer here. If you talked about black culture promoting crime a lot of people here would be much more sympathetic.
Enzymes don't care if you believe in them or not. I don't care whether people are sympathetic to my comments or not. I care what is true and what is false, in the real world where it matters to real people. You can read the decades of high-quality and well-replicated research in this area or not. Either way you will live with the consequences.
And just so we understand, these are some institutions you imply have somehow misrepresented the science they funded, performed, peer-reviewed, and published on this topic: the National Institutes of Health, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Australian National University, University of Southern California-Los Angeles, Sam Houston State University, University of Cincinnati, University of Texas at Dallas, Iowa State University, and St. Louis University.
Family structure is part of it too, but I figured my comment was already too long. Yet if somehow you return black family structure to its pre-1960s state of harmony, you will still face the problem of disproportionate violent crime rates. This article is from 1958, years before extra-marital birth rates took off in the US black community:
The only solution is to face facts, apply equal standards of justice without regard to race, and keep that single-digit percentage of violent black criminals away from regular black folks and everyone else so good people have a chance to succeed. Over time with consistent and fair law enforcement, improvements in medicine, and effective universal public education, I am confident people of all races can live together in harmony. That is the objective of the American idea, and its success or failure will make or break this country.
- Does our society have systemic biases in law enforcement and the judicial system?
- Is it really sad that we are unable to, as a society, entertain conversations about genetically modifying our own gene pool to prevent criminal offenses?
- Why are nearly half of your comments about racial politics in America? Perhaps you have a bias yourself to examine.
- Why are links to twitter considered valid sources. Common. How can you expect people to take you seriously
- Are you racist? I'm only asking because you seem racist
> Do you think the carriers of MAOA-2R want to experience uncontrolled violent aggression? Do you think we should at least offer them a choice? Do you think parents who can afford it will waver when given the choice to offer impulsiveness- and intelligence-enhancing gene therapies to their children? Do you think it fair for those options to be available only to the wealthy?
Do you think people with a high propensity for violence (men) should be given gene therapies by their parents to reduce the production of the aggression-causing hormone testosterone?
As you surely know given your profile, testosterone is a hormone with many critical functions unrelated to aggression. Lack of sufficient testosterone causes osteoperosis, cognitive problems, fatigue, anemia, memory problems, hot flashes, and many other symptoms in men. It's essential for men's overall health and cannot be clearly disentangled from this role.
We do regulate the use of injected testosterone due to risks such as "roid rage" and enlarged heart among others. In the US testosterone is considered a Schedule III federally-controlled substance, i.e. a drug with medical uses that also has potential for abuse:
If a genetic mutation were known to code for impulsive violence, reduced IQ and little else, the story would be different. We wouldn't keep it around. MAOA-2R is such a gene. I know of no benefits to carrying this mutation versus its 3R or 4R variants. It causes a milder form of a disease called Brunner Syndrome, which confers a reduced IQ as well as increased violent aggression and reduced impulse control:
MAOA-2R lies in the same category as cancer-causing variants of BRCA1 or the allele for sickle-cell anemia in Western populations. We should treat it as such. There may also be non-genetic treatments for MAOA deficiency in the future. These should be explored and offered to those who might benefit. In the meantime we must accept reality. This gene, its effects, and its relative prevalence among racial groups (or "ancestral genetic populations" if you prefer) must factor into relevant public policy.
Given your comments thus far, I suspect that instead of engaging on the topic at hand you'll try to draw me further into some debate on whether men, seeing as they're so violent, should even be allowed to exist. Suffice it for me to say that the Greater Male Variability Hypothesis makes sense for humanity, and before "gender theory" reared its head we did a fine job keeping men in social spaces and structures where their more-aggressive tendencies were managed and expected.
> MAOA-2R lies in the same category as cancer-causing variants of BRCA1 or the allele for sickle-cell anemia in Western populations. We should treat it as such.
Oh do you mean the gene that is as prevalent amongst the famously uncriminal Japanese as it is amongst African Americans?
> Lack of sufficient testosterone causes osteoperosis, cognitive problems, fatigue, anemia, memory problems, hot flashes, and many other symptoms in men. It's essential for men's overall health and cannot be clearly disentangled from this role.
I don't know, maybe those criminal men would be better with osteoperosis, cognitive problems, fatigue, anemia, memory problems and hot flashes than without, don't you think?
I engaged primarily in arguments of fact. I did my best to cite sources and outline rational arguments. I was immediately condescended to, insulted, and slandered as racist and a liar. I admit I got testy in response, but you can see that I didn't fire first and was repeatedly provoked. None of the others users involved appear to have been silenced or banned.
This isn't just some academic comments section argument, it affects real policy and real people and real lives. Where on the whole Internet is open and honest discussion of this subject, who commits crime in America and why, permitted? Not Facebook, Reddit, very soon likely not Twitter. I had hoped HN of all places would be one such forum. I see now I was wrong. Your biased moderation is noted and a great disappointed.
I responded to the other user I saw who was breaking the site guidelines in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35957674. If there were others, I didn't see them—I didn't read the entire thread. It's impossible to read everything.
I didn't ban the other account because when I looked at their comment history I saw a track record of mostly using HN as intended.
Could you please stop feeding flamewars and/or using HN for ideological battle? Regardless of what you're battling for or against, it's not what this site is for and destroys what it is for.
