Some People Just Never Learn

Iddo Genuth writes "German scientists recently showed what many of us suspected but could not prove — some people just don't learn. The German researchers have found a genetic factor that affects our ability to learn from our errors. The scientists demonstrated that men carrying the A1 mutation are less successful at learning to avoid mistakes than men who do not carry this genetic mutation. This finding has the potential to improve our understanding of the causes of addictive and compulsive behaviors."

Dupe?

[debianlinux]

Apparently the editors have this genetic deficiency as well: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/08/1414258 [slashdot.org]

Re:If A1 is still found today...

[Psychotria]

Not sure. If it doesn't disadvantage people (i.e. lead to higher chance of death) then it's quite possible that A1 would just stick around (genes don't just disappear for no reason).

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

So do your "co workers"

You do realize that a valid sentence must contain a verb, right? This must mean "do" is the verb. Ewww.

Re:What does this have to do with OCD?

[Sique]

If you not just read TFA, but actually followed the links you would have been at Science [sciencemag.org], where the abstract clearly states:

Dopamine D2 receptor reduction seems to decrease sensitivity to negative action consequences, which may explain an increased risk of developing addictive behaviors in A1-allele carriers.

Maybe this time the journalist was better at actually reading and understanding the article?

Re:Of all races..

[besya]

You are of course correct that most likely this is what the poster was trying to say. He could've just said that there are racist anywhere and be done with it. Instead, he postulated that through out the history Jews have been hated for good and bad reasons, correctly and incorrectly, by many different people. I am just wondering what these correct and good reasons are to hate every member of a nation, and how this argument proves that Germans are not racist. His arguments and statements just don't make logical sense. Of course Germans as a nation are not any more racist than any other nation. If anything nationalism and racism are not genetic, as far as we know, but cultural. Logically one can't prove that one is not racist if someone else is doing the same thing.

Re:If A1 is still found today...

[Some_Llama]

"..doesn't it mean it has some evolutionary advantages?"

Not necessarily, evolutionarily wise, a trait will not be propagated "just" because it is advantageous (although that does help), better to look at it as it will only be extinguished if it is disadvantageous (puts the member with those traits behind others in the group competitively).

But in our current society, where we prop up traits that would (in a more aggressive society (e.g. animal kingdom) be naturally extinguished (like autism, retardation, siamese twins, etc) it's hard to say what if any trait is beneficial or harmful. But this is what we choose to do (making no note here if it is morally right or wrong sto do so).

the appendix comes to mind of something which on the surface has no identifiable reason for being, but has not been "flushed" form the gene pool because it doesn't "harm" the gene pool (or more acurrately we "fix" the people it does harm).

()()()()()() sorry had to get those out of my system :)

Re:Of all races..

[besya]

>Well can you really say it was the Germans and not better put, one of the Nazi regime's (or certain members of the >regime) end goal's?

>many Germans might have bought into the ideal that Germans were of a "better" hereditary linage but can you >say "Germany" was trying to build a "master race", i would say not, Hitler sure....

Of course you can. Germans as a culture and regime at the time were trying to build a master race. Buying into ideas and following through with them makes one guilty of a behavior. Saying that Hitler and a few people were the only ones to blame is as wrong as blaming every single individual.

biological "explanations" explained

[doom]

The researchers studied a group of 26 men, 12 of whom had the A1 gene mutation for low numbers of D2 receptors.

Got that? Sample size: 26.

People just eat this shit up these days, they love biological "explanations" for human behavior. Hey, it's not my fault, I was born this way. Work harder in school? But if you don't have the natural talent, what's the point? Spend more money on public education? Oh, what the hell for? Those people will never learn.