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0 pointsanchpop4y ago0 comments

that would be ridiculous and it’s a fair interpretation of the grandparent comment, but there’s actually a coherent theory of “mutational load”, which basically says that

1. almost all mutations are bad

2. mutations come together (like if you’re born near chernobyl you’ll have a ton of mutations all over the place, also maybe if your parents are older or if they’re smokers and things like that)

Mutations that make you less attractive could be completely different from mutations that make you less intelligent, but if mutations tend to come in packs then having a lot of mutations in sections of the genome related to attractiveness probably means you have lots of mutations in the sections related to intelligence.

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waterhouse4y ago

Also, I think there are plenty of mutations that do negatively affect all four areas. For example: Down syndrome, Williams syndrome, Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome. (The "beauty" is subjective, of course, but I expect people's sense of "beauty" to be optimized towards "avoiding potential mates with genetic defects".) I knew about the first two; I learned about the third by clicking on a few entries in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Syndromes_with_cranio... .

I expect there are plenty more mutations that have a mild negative effect in all areas, but are sufficiently mild that they haven't been identified as "disorders".

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