Blog – Luke Lindsley

My 23andMe Results

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Last Christmas my parents bought me a 23andme DNA test. As I unwrapped the gift my step father, in classic dad joke fashion, looked me square in the eye and said “Luke, I’m not your father.” He then proceeded to laugh hysterically. I never particularly minded the bombardment of star wars jokes growing up, but if there ever was an appropriated time he definitely nailed it.

Anyways, I just received my results and thought it would be fun to share them here. 23andMe breaks their reports down into 3 major categories: Ancestry, Traits and Wellness. I won’t go through every detail they provided, but I’ll highlight the parts I found most interesting.

Ancestry

Perhaps the most interesting discovery was the amount of Neanderthal DNA variants I had. Most people with European ancestry have between 1 – 4% in their DNA and I seemed to fall on the higher end of that scale. In addition, I inherited the specific Neanderthal trait of having less back hair (can’t complain about this hehe). For those interested in how they determined the Neanderthal trait: marker rs4849721 near the EIN gene showed a change from a G to a T. It was a lot of fun looking at the raw data despite having an elementary understanding of genetics.

The ancestry reports also provided information about Haplogroups. In simplest terms, Haplogroups are maternal or paternal lineages that descend from a single common ancestor. Haplogroups help shed light on the origins of some of our ancient ancestors and on their migrations over tens of thousands of years.

My maternal line belongs to the Haplogroup K2a3.

My paternal line belongs to the Haplogroup R-M412

Wellness

The wellness reports show how your DNA may influence how you respond to certain lifestyle and environmental factors. I laughed out loud when I read I was likely to consume more caffeine and less likely a deep sleeper. Curse you DNA!

Traits

The Traits Reports explains how your DNA may influence your physical appearance, preferences, and physical responses. The predictions are based on current knowledge of how genetic factors influence our traits and the list above is just a portion of some of the traits they covered.

No big surprises here, but there’s certainly a lot of interesting statistics. My paternal lineage (father, fathers father, grandfathers father) all share blue eyes and my mom has hazel eyes, so it was interesting to see these percentages. I have blue eyes (or maybe greenish blue) and my sister has hazel eyes. As far as I can tell I inherited the majority percentage of traits.

Well that about wraps it up! Each report goes into a lot more detail and there’s still several reports I’m eager in dissecting further. Overall it was fun to learn a bit more about my ancestry and genetics. For all that are curious, I definitely recommend it!

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A Word of Advice For The New Year

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Happy New Year to my fellow bloggers and readers! I hope 2015 treated you well 😛 This year I spent new years eve in downtown Seattle drinking beer and eating cinnamon rolls with some of my closest friends. We huddled next to a fireplace on a rooftop and got to witness some surreal fireworks dancing above the space needle. It was definitely one of my favorite new years experiences so far!

Like every new year, 2016 represents a time of reflection for our future aspirations. It’s also a time we should remind ourselves of our values because they are so often forgotten in the routine of our everyday lives. Here are 10 humanist ideas to follow for the upcoming year- thanks to one of my intellectual heroes, Bertrand Russell, for inspiring many of these.

1- Read incessantly. Read fiction to enrich your imagination and nonfiction to expand your knowledge of the world.
2- Always doubt and never stop questioning. Never feel absolutely certain of anything.
3- Tell the people you love that you love them. Hatred is foolish, let it go.
4- Be truthful even if it’s inconvenient. Lying is the royal road to chaos.
5- Be open to eccentric opinions. Something that is considered absurd today may become common sense tomorrow.
6- Take chances. Don’t regret avoiding the new and unfamiliar.
7- Don’t be afraid to suffer through discipline. Sacrificing short term pleasures is often a road to happiness.
8- Enjoy the ordinary days. You can only have one worst day of your life.
9- Listen carefully. Overcome disagreement by thinking slowly and controlling your emotions.
10- Never stop creating. Give yourself the experience of discovery and imagination. And then when you’re ready, share it with the world.

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Morality and Head Transplants

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Valery Spiridonov, a computer scientist from Russia, will become the world’s first head transplant patient in December of 2017. Spiridonov was diagnosed with Werdnig-Hoffmann disease at an early age which has left him immobile his entire life. Now at age 30, Spiridonov wants a chance at a new body before he dies.

“I need help every day, every minute. I am now 30 years old, although people rarely live to more than 20 with this disease,” Spiridonov said in an interview.

The procedure will involve over 100 surgeons and is expected to last up to 36 hours. The procedure will be led by surgeon Dr. Canavero who will attach Spiridonov’s head to a donors body through spinal cord fusion. Many skeptics have branded Dr Canavero as “nuts” arguing that reconnecting a severed spinal cord and stopping the immune system from rejecting the head is impossible.

There is evidence to the contrary however. Organ rejection is the main problem with any transplant, but modern drugs have the ability to strongly suppress and weaken the immune system to allow the new organ to thrive. This is how we are currently able to transplant foreign organs such as hearts, lungs, kidneys and pancreases into recipients. Furthermore, there has already been success with animals. I personally remain extremely skeptical, but I’m optimistic of its potential over the next several decades.

What I find most fascinating about this, however, are the ethical implications of the procedure if it works. Are we creating a real life Frankenstein? Should people be able to “buy” new bodies? Should head transplant procedures be performed at all?

Imagine that we wake up tomorrow and discover that head transplants have a 99% rate of success. Finally people with muscle atrophy, cancers and various other issues have a solution to their problem- they can throw away their disease ridden body and get a new one! Well there would be a few problems:

The procedure would be insanely expensive. Not only would the 100+ surgeons and 36 hours needed to perform the procedure send your bill skyrocketing, but you would be paying for the cost of an entire human body. To put this in perspective, in the United States it costs 200k – 1.2 million for a single organ to be transplanted. Organs are already extremely scarce, but a healthy, fit and functional body would be on an entire different level. Canavero has estimated the total cost at $13 million dollars. Only the extremely rich would be able to afford the procedure.
The Rich could buy bodies for aesthetic reasons. If it comes down to who has the most money (which so many times it does) rather than who has the greatest need for a new body, rich folk could literally buy a new body simply because they don’t like the one they’ve got. I can see the TV commercials already, “Don’t like to work out and stay in shape? Don’t like that weird birth mark on your back? Have a lot of money? Ask your doctor if a head transplant is right for you!” Gag.
The poor could easily be exploited. This is already a problematic issue around the world. If a poor person is in need of money, they might sell their kidney to try and feed their family or pay back a debt. The same applies with a full body: If a close relative dies during difficult times, a poor person may be pressured to sell their body.

Despite the issues that may arise, I believe head transplants can be ethical in many cases. If we can decrease the suffering of someone like Valery Spiridonov, I believe we have the obligation to do so. In fact, one could even argue it would be immoral to prevent the option of this treatment to people that just want to live a normal human life.

As medicine and technology continues to evolve, so will morality and the ethics of human well being. Head transplants may still seem like part of a fantasy horror novel concoction to many, but I think we may be looking at the tip of the iceberg of human evolution.

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The Art of Mediocrity

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“You will achieve your dreams. You are unique and special. You can change the world.” As much as celebrities and our parents love to tell us these things, reality tends to be a bit more honest: We’re all pretty average at most things.

This is rather self-evident when you think about it. If you gathered everyone in the world to play a game of golf, you’d have Tiger Woods at the top 1% of the spectrum and a guy who couldn’t hit the ball off the tee somewhere near the bottom. Most of us would fall somewhere in the middle.

This is true for everything in life. Some of us are born with a high capacity to learn. Others are born with great physical skills. And some of us even have superhuman genes. Unfortunately, the reverse is also true. Some of us are born with mental and physical disabilities that limit the facets of daily living. Others are just naturally unskilled at certain things. We all have our strengths and weaknesses.

For me, my strengths include having the artistic ability to write interesting songs and a deep understanding of philosophical issues. I excel at these things because I’ve dedicated a lot of time and energy into them. Through countless repetitions and exercises I’ve been able to learn and expand my knowledge in these areas.

Nevertheless, it’s important to remember we are all limited in the time and energy we have in this world. If you’re like most people, you spend your attention on a few important things: Your social life, school, work, a significant other and maybe a couple of hobbies. However, this comes at a price. The truth is that the more things you value in life, the less time you will have to improve the quality of what’s most significant. Quality and quantity are always a trade off. Attention is zero sum.

So what about those exceptional people? The people that are the very best at what they do? The Michael Jordans, Tom Bradys, and Paul McCartneys of the world? These people are 1) incredibly lucky and 2) focus almost purely on quality. #1 is obvious. For #2, all of their energy must be focused on their specific discipline so that they can maintain being the very best at what they do.

This means they must neglect the quantity of many other areas in their life. This is true for all successful elites regardless of the distorted perceptions you may have about them. If you want to be the best in any specific discipline, you must sacrifice the opportunity cost of nearly everything else to achieve it. And even then, it’ll require the luck of environmental circumstance.

So to the average person out there(which is most of you), here’s a few words of advice:

Accept that you must make sacrifices in order to excel in the things you care about the most. Accept that other people must do the same. Accept that even then, this doesn’t guarantee success. Accept the luck of being born with your specific genes, environment and opportunities which have led to this very moment. Accept the art of mediocrity- a part of being human.

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Ethics and Economic Justice

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“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

I have been reading David Parfit’s book Reasons and Persons the past couple of months and I must say, it’s been a wild ride. I recommend it to anyone that subscribes to utilitarian ethics and having their world views pushed to the limit. It may seem farfetched to some, but I suspect Parfit will go down as one of the greats in the history of philosophy.

The book covers a variety of loosely related topics, but I want to focus on the type of utilitarianism he concludes from his arguments: Prioritarianism. Prioritarianism holds that the goodness of an outcome is a function of overall well being (Utilitarianism) with extra weight given to worse off individuals. Let’s look at an example to sharpen the distinction between the two.

Imagine a two-person society: its only members are Jim and Pam. Jim has an extremely high level of well-being, is rich, and lives a blissful life. Pam, by contrast, has an extremely low level of well-being, is in extreme poverty, and lives a hellish life.

Now imagine that we have some free resources ($10,000 for example) that we may distribute to the members of this society as we see fit. Under normal utilitarian circumstances, the $10,000 will generate more well-being for Pam than it will for Jim. Thus giving the money to Pam would be the morally correct choice. However, let’s imagine slightly different circumstances.

Jim, for whatever reason, even though he is already filthy rich and very well-off, would gain just as much well-being by receiving the $10,000 as Pam would. Suddenly utilitarians don’t have a preference on who gets the money because both Jim and Pam’s well-being would increase the same. Prioritarianism on the other hand would give the money to Pam, because she is worse off than Jim.

Furthermore, prioritarianism doesn’t act just as a tie breaker for well-being, sometimes it favors priority over a small amount of well-being in order to emphasize compassion. So if Jim were to somehow gain more well-being from the money than Pam, Prioritarianism still wouldn’t necessarily favor him. It is important to note that the amount of well-being traded for priority is arbitrary, but in most cases we can rely on common sense. But why is that?

Well there is a good reason: There are diminishing returns on the value of goods and money. Would Jim be able to tell the difference between having 1 billion dollars and 1.00001 billion dollars? No, he wouldn’t have a clue. In fact there have even been studies, including a prominent one by Princeton University Researchers, that money doesn’t buy happiness after one earns $75000 a year.

It is estimated that it is around this point where money is no longer a primary concern in ones life. People can focus on health, relationships and leisure’s without the stress of paying the bills at the end of the month, which is a real fear for millions of Americans.

If you subscribe to prioritarianism ethics, a certain amount of wealth redistribution becomes fundamental to a healthy and moral society. In a society where Walmart’s Walton family (one of many examples) owns more wealth than the bottom 42 percent of Americans combined, millions of which are living in poverty and struggling to survive, can a rational person really argue that this disparity in wealth is ethical?

Welfare state capitalism may currently be the best economic model, but its inability to redistribute wealth fairly will continue to raise questions on how it can be improved. Economic justice isn’t about equality. It’s about removing the gross excess at the top to help prevent suffering for those at the bottom.

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