<story><title>Friends Are Genetically Similar (2014)</title><url>https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/accumulating-glitches/friends_are_genetically_similar</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fatjokes</author><text>&amp;gt; I guess my next question would be are genetically people that have genetic similarities more likely to have similar interests.&lt;p&gt;If that is the case, it would lead to the politically uncomfortable question of different genders or ethnic groups being more likely to have particular interests.</text></item><item><author>abra_kadabra</author><text>This is interesting as I&amp;#x27;ve typically made friends along lines of interest.  I guess my next question would be are genetically similar people more likely to have similar interests.&lt;p&gt;edit: corrected grammer</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>flatline</author><text>I think it&amp;#x27;s trivially obvious that they do?&lt;p&gt;The uncomfortable questions are whether people are genetically predisposed to, or naturally have a greater aptitude for, some particular interest, particularly on racial or gender lines. For many physical activities this is a settled question for gender, but that&amp;#x27;s about all we know.&lt;p&gt;Even this alone is not necessarily controversial, the problem as we&amp;#x27;ve seen time and again is that the reaults of such a study are taken as a basis for discrimination. If we could rigorously quantify and prove a statement like &amp;quot;people of East Asian descent show a 2.3% greater aptitude for mathematics,&amp;quot; it doesn&amp;#x27;t mean that the Chinese guy sitting in front of you has any such aptitude. Historically the metrics by which we have attempted to measure such things have been deeply flawed and biased. I&amp;#x27;m not sure it will ever be possible to make such assertions in any rigorous manner, the factors behind cognitive tasks are just too complex.</text></comment>
<story><title>Friends Are Genetically Similar (2014)</title><url>https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/accumulating-glitches/friends_are_genetically_similar</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fatjokes</author><text>&amp;gt; I guess my next question would be are genetically people that have genetic similarities more likely to have similar interests.&lt;p&gt;If that is the case, it would lead to the politically uncomfortable question of different genders or ethnic groups being more likely to have particular interests.</text></item><item><author>abra_kadabra</author><text>This is interesting as I&amp;#x27;ve typically made friends along lines of interest.  I guess my next question would be are genetically similar people more likely to have similar interests.&lt;p&gt;edit: corrected grammer</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>danans</author><text>The shared interest groups most people are involved in in their regular lives are far too small to make any extrapolation to the larger population.&lt;p&gt;Also, for many human traits (i.e height), the intra-population variation is much greater than the inter-population variance, especially when controlling for the effect of environment.&lt;p&gt;We have a tendency to anchor our biases on the extreme examples of any population when we form our biases, often through mediums like elite&amp;#x2F;pro sports which select those at the extremes.</text></comment>