The Genetics of Evil: Are People Born Bad? - Dr Kathryn Paige Harden
In a Nutshell
Dr. Kathryn Paige Harden explains that genetics powerfully influence risk-taking, antisocial behavior, and aggression—highly heritable (up to 80% in callous-unemotional cases), evolutionarily adaptive in moderation for innovation/entrepreneurship, but maladaptive at extremes—challenging blank slate views and free will illusions. Punishment should prioritize accountability, containment, and rehabilitation over retribution, as genetic predispositions (e.g., MAOA variants, X-chromosome effects) reduce culpability without excusing harm, urging compassion alongside responsibility. Embryo selection for behavioral traits raises ethical tensions between reducing suffering and preserving genetic diversity essential for societal progress, while modern systems unfairly demand greater self-control from less-domesticated men.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
After publication of her last book, Dr. Harden experienced controversy and pushback from academics, but positive feedback from general readers. Readers wrote about understanding differences from parents or siblings, and how genetics shaped decisions to have or not have kids. Academic responses surprised her, as some portrayed her as a villain to promote their own messages. She cares deeply about accuracy and public perception, making the experience disorienting.
Critics misrepresented her words, claiming she said the opposite of what was written. This created alienation, like talking but not being heard. Insults hurt most when others might believe them, especially a distorted 'doppelganger' version of herself. Compared to relationships where intentions are misunderstood, leading to estrangement. Words are central to her sense of making sense of and changing the world.
The only insults that hurt most are the ones in which I didn't recognize the person they were insulting.
Her dad, a former US Navy fighter pilot, advised that the most fire comes when directly over the target, indicating her genetics work touches deeply important issues in people's lives.
Dr. Harden co-authored a study with DNA from 4 million people, mostly from UK Biobank, 23andMe customers, and All of Us participants. Examined genes more common in people who:
- Had ADHD symptoms in childhood
- Had sex at a young age
- Had more sexual partners
- Ever smoked pot
- Engaged in problematic alcohol use (drinking causing life problems)
- Ever smoked a cigarette
- Described themselves as liking to take risks
These genes were associated across all seven behaviors, indicating general involvement in risk-taking or disinhibition. Behaviors violate rules (e.g., health norms for smoking/drinking, school rules for ADHD, conventional morality for sexual behavior), involving risk of consequences or social judgment, plus reward-seeking. Not magical choices; selected due to sufficient data. Follow-up to prior study with more power.
Number of sexual partners ranged from 0 (lifelong abstinent) to 99 (survey limit). Genes influence across lifespan: childhood ADHD, adolescent sexuality, adult substance use and risk-taking.
Dr. Harden's first science job as a college freshman (1999-2000) was in a mouse lab studying opiate addiction and withdrawal. Manipulated gene expression in mouse brains to make them more/less resilient to morphine addiction. Human genome draft not yet complete. Job involved 'brain surgery' on mice: drilling holes and inserting shunts for precise injections.
Raised in fundamentalist evangelical Christian household, viewed drug use morally (willpower, relationship with Jesus). Lab work shifted paradigm to biological/genetic basis. Switched from mice to humans but kept interest in risk-taking, substance use, antisocial behavior.
Humans self-domesticated compared to chimpanzees: less aggression, more cooperation across sexes/ages; physiological changes like reduced canines and jaw size. Selected for self-control and regulation in becoming cooperative species.
Counterforce: risk-taking rewarded, e.g., among white men from middle/upper-income families, teenage delinquency (arrest, graffiti, school/law trouble—not serious aggression) predicts successful entrepreneurship by age 35. Entrepreneurs defy conventions.
Society needs cooperation plus outliers/deviance to progress; tension between self-regulation and risk-taking. Humans evolved high future forecasting, anticipation of consequences for self/others, extraordinary empathy (emotional, early in life, across sexes/genders).
Genetic variation in risk-taking: maladaptive at extremes but not throughout distribution. Example: genes associated with schizophrenia (psychosis, hallucinations, delusions) in non-schizophrenics predict creative professions (artists, engineers, musicians), keeping genes in pool.
Hypothesis: disinhibition genes similarly maladaptive at extremes but advantageous moderately (e.g., Bloom founder who doesn't feel risk, bets repeatedly, gains resources/mating opportunities).
Creative people (e.g., pop stars, founders like Marilyn Manson, Machine Gun Kelly) may be '5% genes away' from schizophrenia; worse childhoods could tip them over. Conversely, schizophrenics might have been artists with better foundations.
Friend with schizophrenic relatives avoids psychedelics; risk of psychotic break highest 15-30, lower after 30-35. Evidence: family history of bipolar/schizophrenia increases negative effects from cannabis/hallucinogens/psychedelics, especially during prefrontal cortex development (matures 27-30).
Dr. Harden advises kids: wait until after 30 for psychedelics. Psychedelics disrupt brain communication patterns, allowing novel connections—powerful in middle age 'neurobiological ruts,' but 20s already chaotic with rapid neuroplasticity.
Wrongdoing not freely chosen; profoundly shaped by genes, parents, early choices before understanding ramifications—sets person on 'train tracks.' Free will less interesting (all humans have/don't have it equally; still must treat each other, live life).
More interesting: given science on genes/environments shaping us, what role in punishment
Discussion on the role genetics should play in punishment, reward, and treatment of others. Free will debate acknowledged but seen as a cognitive dead end with limited practical utility. More functional to assume free will exists and manipulate variables within that framework.
Derek Sivers' idea: functionally true but literally false. Belief in free will is functionally true even if determinism holds, as acting as if you have agency prevents outsourcing it. Examples:
- Porcupines can throw their quills (they can't, but giving wide berth keeps you safe).
- Pigs are uniquely morally dirty (not true, but higher pathogen load justifies avoidance).
- Treat the gun as if it's always loaded.
Free will intellectually interesting but not helpful for real scenarios like culpability. Example chain: Person runs someone over due to epilepsy seizure but knew and didn't take medication; or panic attack from childhood maltreatment; or cold-blooded act with parents in prison for violent crimes, possibly inherited tendency. Intuitions vary on blameworthiness; determinism equates all, but people reason differently. Free will doesn't resolve judgments by judges, jurors, or relationship partners on forgiveness.
Antisocial behavior: Persistent violation of social/moral norms/rights of others. Childhood forms: skipping school, lying, robbery, stealing, hurting others, cruelty to animals.
Heritability: Proportion of behavioral variance due to genetic differences (people more genetically similar are more behaviorally similar). Benchmark: 80% heritability for schizophrenia (identical twin has it → 50% chance you do vs. 1% base rate).
Childhood antisocial behavior nearly as heritable as schizophrenia, especially with callous unemotional traits (psychopathy in children: hurt others/break rules without guilt/remorse/empathy). Heritability up to 80% in early-onset cases with these traits.
Lower heritability in kids responding to environment (trauma, maltreatment). Highest heritability in kids from average parents/environments who act antisocially without remorse—fewest effective treatments exist (vs. depression, anxiety, mania).
Common responses: avoidance or harshness. Eerie feeling from lack of empathic distress; evolutionary mechanism detects threat. Leads to control due to lack of trust (quote from Connor Beaton: "we try to control that which we feel we cannot trust").
In relationships/parenting: harsh control (withdraw toys/affection, berate, spank). Lab studies: strangers respond to conduct-disordered kids with no warmth, coercion, impatience.
Antisocial kids most vulnerable to harsh punishment; best predictor of escalation is harsh adult punishment. Reasons:
- Punishment insensitivity: Some highly reward-sensitive, learn poorly from punishment (animal example: most rats stop lever-pressing after shock replaces alcohol; minority press more, hoping for reward).
- Like a learning disability from negative consequences.
Parents escalate (no phone, no friends/sports, berate/spank), destroying relational connection—the key growth lever. Vicious loop: antisocial kids elicit opposite of needed treatment.
Troubling: Adult violent men were once children; evokes empathy if rooted in childhood neurobiology. Crucible: adolescent school shooters (15-year-olds tried as adults, parents charged for gun—sign of moral confusion).
Culpability sliding scale (like animal consciousness); varies by person. Criminal systems draw hard lines (e.g., tried as adult at 16). Global: child soldiers in African genocides (recruited at 13, hooked on drugs; culpable at 18?).
Successful re-entry programs: community rituals acknowledging harm done while admitting responsibility. U.S. system lacks this; hard to hold "I did terrible thing, not innocent victim, shaped by forces."
Addiction similar: recovery (AA steps) holds powerlessness (biology/brain) + responsibility (atone, vow change daily). Radical compassion + present agency. Academic free will doesn't enable this.
Violence harder (hurts others, desire for retribution/revenge). Need both/and like addiction.
Genetics affect agency/willpower: everything embodied/genetic (smoking/quitting, addiction/recovery, free will belief heritable). No soul exempt—"turtles all the way down, genotype all the way down."
Twin study (Lyndon Eaves, behavior geneticist/Anglican priest): twins reared apart both religious, believed in free will as God's grace—irony, even belief genetically influenced. Resists either/or: genes affect God belief + man of cloth.
Behavioral genetics messy like evolutionary psychology (Corey Clark study: most reprehensible topics). Cleaner to claim blank slate, but not true; genetics open crack disproves exclusivity.
Sex differences: Heritability of antisocial behavior generally similar, but one exception.
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Genes associated with antisocial behavior in boys also affect girls. In fraternal twins where a female has a male sibling, his antisocial behavior predicts her likelihood of manifesting it. The same genetic liabilities increase likelihood of physical aggression, relational aggression, substance use, and risk-taking. Men's average is shifted higher, magnifying the impact in real life, similar to how women attempt suicide more but men complete it more due to greater ability to enact violence.
Social opportunity influences expression: women were discouraged from drinking and smoking, creating sex differences that narrowed as it became more acceptable, with the same genes involved in both sexes.
Most studies focus on the 22 pairs of autosomes, identical across sexes, due to technical reasons. Research is now examining the X chromosome, as men have one X (XY) and women have two (XX), making men more vulnerable to X-linked variants without a compensating copy. Example: color blindness is more prevalent in men because it's X-linked.
Lab studies focus on common genetic variation (present in ≥5% or ≥1% of population). Common variants have small effects individually, as large effects would be weeded out by evolution; many tiny effects accumulate to meaningful impact.
Rare variants are also studied. Famous 1990s study of rare variant on X chromosome gene MAOA (monoamine oxidase): enzyme breaks down neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine. Non-functional MAOA causes buildup of signals.
In one family, the variant caused MAOA to not work; all men had severe antisocial behavior (one raped sister, one committed arson, one stabbed boss with pitchfork), while sisters and mothers were typically functioning due to two Xs allowing compensation. Men have 50-50 chance of inheriting the mutated X from mother. Vast majority of deeply antisocial people do not have this.
Can't use the MAOA excuse.
Important because moral faculties (not stabbing boss when mad) are biologically vulnerable: one genomic letter change disrupts one gene, one enzyme, profoundly impairing capacity. Supports morality as biological faculty.
In Netherlands criminal system, these men were treated like others; no genetic consideration, indistinguishable behaviorally. Familial pattern revealed cause. Raises question: how many persistently violent families have undiscovered genetic/neurobiological explanations? In 1980s, single gene cause sounded like science fiction, but proven here. Lab now studying X chromosome in modern genomics.
If suffering and vice highly inherited, how justify punishment? Distinguish accountability (enforcing rules, preventing harm, protecting community) from punishment (deliberately making suffer as retribution).
US uses retributive punishment: incarcerates more people in worse conditions than any country ever, more than Soviets in gulags at peak. No one deserves to suffer; still hold accountable. Unsexy argument against either/or simplicity.
Philosopher Hanna Pickard's rescue-blame trap: seesaw between blaming horrible acts (e.g., stabbing boss, sexual crime) and rescuing via maltreatment/genes/neurobiology/extenuating circumstances. Hold both simultaneously: imagine practical/moral nuance.
Person with murder + genetic profile: current system locks up with no therapy/education/rehabilitation, ineffective at deterring violence.
Example: high genetic desire for sexual novelty, cheats, dad cheated, all environmental factors. 23andMe shows dopamine variants (e.g., double A COMT variant: higher dopamine baseline, different cortisol processing). Should partner take back more easily? No, not necessarily. Deterministic excuses unsatisfying because we matter morally; evolved to see each other as choosing minds. When choices hurt, excuses irrelevant.
Philosopher P.F. Strawson's reactive attitudes (resentment, blame, praise, admiration): persist even if determinism true, as we inescapably matter to each other.
No genetic determinism: not "amount culpable changes" or "free will of the gaps" (unexplained = free; heritable = not responsible). Human condition: none chose who we are, yet responsible for all ourselves. Be kinder, reluctant to make suffer for suffering's sake.
Genetic lottery: better impulse control leads to better school performance, higher education, qualifications; less likely suspended (e.g., for bringing gun to school).
Level genetic inequality for equal access to success? In court, give leg up to those with profiles less amenable to society's reward system when misbehaving?
Already do via sentencing mitigation phase (not insanity plea). Insanity: exempt entirely if psychotic, unknowing/unstoppable at crime time (rare, ~1% success; e.g., Andrea Yates drowned 5 children in 2000s Texas).
Guilt phase: did they do it? Sentencing phase (esp. capital crimes): how much punishment? Mitigation specialists humanize: preterm birth, drug-addicted birth, maltreatment, sexual abuse—"negatively affected by luck."
Everyone at trial got there somehow; options: life no rehab vs. 25 years. Other societies focus: harm done, what now?
Genetics not used because it has no effect or increases retribution vs. environment (mitigating).
Study: participants rate hypothetical sperm donors (speaks French, 6'4", college-educated, bipolar, committed violent crime); estimate child likelihood of inheriting traits.
Then: child from that sperm commits violent crime (robs/kills couple leaving movie with box cutter). Recommend sentence.
Baseline: 20-25 years (host says 20).
People believing violence inheritable (sperm donor violent → child violent, regardless upbringing) recommend higher sentences: need longer incarceration due to low control, risk of recidivism.
Genes/environment interact to shape behavior likelihood, but public reasons differently: environment mitigates ("beaten by parent"), genetics provokes retribution. Culturally confused on integrating genotype into blaming; no ready answers.
Women understand that their kids are made of the raw materials of the person they have them with. The big problem is denial of genetic influence on behavior, lack of understanding, or belief in a limit, stemming from a pervasive blank slate perspective. Anytime discussing polygenic scores, embryo selection, or similar topics, Hitler is invoked. We should come back to embryo selection.
With someone abused, you can imagine an alternate self where this didn't happen and empathize with that counterfactual—what would they have been like without abuse or a brain tumor? With genes, it's harder to imagine the alternate version without their genotype.
This leads to genetic essentialism. Genetic determinism is "my genes made me do it," implying less culpability (e.g., genetically predisposed to higher body weight means not at fault). But it switches to genetic essentialism: genes caused a bad act, so the person is inherently bad—genetic morality, "bad to the bone," "natural born killer," "bad seed."
English idioms reflect an essence to a person, a true self—previously thought of as soul or spirit. Genes have become an essence placeholder: Chris's genes are his true self, deepest self.
Switching from determinism (shaped by luck, no one creates themselves from scratch) to essentialism (genes are who you really are) stops genes from mitigating sympathy—instead, the person is essentially bad.
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Retribution is the desire to make another suffer, emerging early in childhood. Paul Bloom's work: 3-year-olds not very retributive, but 5-year-olds pay stickers (their money) to see a puppet who took a ball get clubbed.
Emotional drive: evolved cooperation enforcement mechanism. Dopamine release in ventral striatum when seeing wrongdoers suffer, same as eating, sex, drinking water—necessary for survival and fitness.
Experimentally tested in scanners: normally, seeing someone hurt triggers empathy, but if they violated a cooperative/moral norm first, brain shows reward pattern.
Outrage and willingness to endure cost to enforce norms. People pay (stickers for kids, money for adults) in economic games to punish freeloaders/defectors. Wouldn't pay to punish non-defectors or pay not to punish innocents (pro-social).
Dehumanization (e.g., Hitler calling Jews vermin/rats) legitimates punishment by framing as transgressors/traitors. Reputation matters because poor optics lead others to punish you pleasurably, even paying costs.
What's important is not who you are. What's important is what other people think you are.
Empathy is painful; for wrongdoers, alchemize into pleasure. Temptation to frame others as bad for moral high ground.
Epstein files: memes about Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos not appearing (yet), making them "super cads" for not partaking—morality as zero-sum. Others' morality decreases, so peers relatively improve (not just "not as bad," but actively better). Standards shift; fixed supply of morality.
Victims of violence: others seize on past wrongs to justify suffering. Digging through a victim's life (honor student who shoplifted) toggles empathy to pleasure by convincing self they deserved it—freest pleasure, costless.
Bless her heart effect: female intrasexual competition via veiled concern ("worried about Jenny sleeping around") spreads rumor, elevates self ("I would never").
Pointing out defectors raises own righteousness, pings dopamine. Justifies self-deception or honest correction: outcast to protect group. Deciding who gets group protection vs. cast as outsider/moral pariah, even pushed out of life, with pleasure.
Evolved pleasure at sugar necessary, but now ultra-processed empty calories. Similarly, scapegoating on steroids—evolved retribution desire won't philosophize away, but don't let lead.
Need better "food culture for retribution"—American culture feeds retributive empty calories: feel good watching others suffer while feeling good yourself.
Norway: low crime/violence, fewer/shorter/harsher incarcerations. Rare mass shootings, but Anders Breivik shot ~60 children at summer camp—island worst mass murder in history.
Terrible genetic/environmental luck: unstable mother, antisocial from age 3-4 (tortured pets at 5, other kids not allowed to play). Despite welfare state, grew violent.
Trial: sentenced to max 21 years (~4 months/child) in max security (looks like London hotel room per Instagram meme, only security camera distinguishes).
Society reckons: horrible act triggers max retribution, but he's still one of us (Norwegian). How does indulging impulses corrupt culture? Keep safe while recognizing humanity.
From American view: wild—feel retribution without leading entirely with it, honoring perpetrator's humanity.
Do you think somebody that shot 60 kids has that much humanity?
I think we all have that humanity... even when they do horrible things, it's still human. And treating them like they don't does something to my humanity.
Thresholds vary; some always empathize. For extreme crime, permanent quarantine pro-social: signals limit ("Norway loving but has limits"), deters, accounts for persistent risk (even if murder desire drops 1/year over decades, still dangerous).
21 years weak/insufficient: vs. 20 years for one stabbing; 120 parents need vindication.
Purposes of criminal system: 1) containment (protect others—Norway can extend if still risk); 2) retribution (lost privilege, deserve suffering regardless of future); 3) rehabilitation (intervene to prevent recurrence, repair person/community ties).
"Weak" reflects what? Insufficient compared to crime scale, parents' needs.
Punishment signals victim value (no punishment for enslaved = low status). "Who do you think you are?" asserts worth.
No response to extreme harm fully satisfying—kill/string up leaves remainder: what does it do to society's honoring of human value? Response to antisocial people brings out our callous instincts (wouldn't say "let them die" otherwise).
No perfect solution to the problem of harm exists, but looking to other societies reveals overemphasis on retribution: people deserve to suffer, and the task is figuring out how much. Retribution for addiction or psychopathy feels different from antisocial disorder only because the first two are more pathologized with names.
Taking the behavioral genetics red pill leads to viewing addicts as potentially lacking genetic predisposition to addiction and having strong genetic influences toward willpower, thus choosing their actions. Psychopaths acting callously are seen as choosing behavior, not driven by predisposition. Antisocial disorder involves fighting against genetic predisposition, epigenetic impact, and upbringing. Without a global perspective, contributions to behavior remain invisible.
Science deals with averages, trends, and statistical patterns; biography concerns the individual person and exact combinations. First full chapter of new book begins with letter from prisoner in Texas, incarcerated since age 16 for sexually violent crime (kidnapping woman at knifepoint at age 15) in notorious adult prison.
Prisoner read Texas Monthly article about lab, believes in behavioral genetics ("apple doesn't fall far from the tree"), asked: "What do you think makes a child go bad, nature or nurture?" Letter included cut-out cartoons, one of white tiger on psychoanalyst couch: "they train me to perform but when I do what I'm really good at they go ballistic." Funny, dark, from someone jailed for sexually violent crime.
Prisoner asks same question as interviewer: why did I do this? Scientific answer: on average, exposure to lead, child abuse, labor/delivery complications, certain genetic variants increase likelihood of violent crime. But he seeks: was it my fault? Do I have hope for change? Am I okay? Universal human questions post-action: why did I do that? Am I a stranger to myself? All my fault? Could I have done differently? Will I do differently?
People rarely self-reflect sanguinely on positive exceedances (e.g., scoring goal, romantic gesture, deep love). With writing, experience of "where did that sentence come from?" better than upper bound. Genius as inspiration moving through you, less likely to claim as own.
Genome: DNA sequence, same in every cell, every day. Epigenome: everything on top affecting genome reading, why neurons differ from liver cells, why body changes (e.g., from age 9 to now). Epigenetic inheritance: epigenetic marks transmitted parent to offspring, difficult/controversial. Egg/sperm strip most marks. Animal models (mice) show transmission, e.g., children of exercised mice. Human research hard: needs multiple generations, terrible confounding. Studies DNA methylation within child's lifespan: methyl group tags on DNA changing expression, interested in children to see poverty/stress/trauma/health insults affecting aging 60 years later getting under skin early.
Children in poverty die sooner, but 4-year-olds look healthy. Distinguish phenotype (growth, overweight, short, infections) from cellular machinery level. Epigenetic marks propagate across cell division: epigenome at age 5 influences now via replication.
Epigenome harder to change in adulthood than childhood; measures at 60 correlate with 70, at 40 with 50. Health interventions matter in middle/older age, but peak flux in epigenome, behavior, body weight in first 10 years: childhood as peak plasticity, including epigenetic plasticity.
Canonical studies: serious insults/deprivations in pregnancy, e.g., Nazi blockade of Holland (Dutch Hunger Winter famine), affected regions/pregnancy trimesters differently (natural split test). Starved moms' children/grandchildren: worse health, higher body weight, higher antisocial behavior rates. Second trimester sensitive for brain/behavioral development.
Mothers entering poverty: cash transfer study (unconditional to low-income moms: $30 vs $300/month), kids now 6. Examines if cash changed children's epigenetics via reduced stress (less cortisol), better nutrition, longer breastfeeding, delayed childcare. Moms with more money report lower stress, better breastfeeding, delayed childcare, improved child nutrition.
Every behavioral change somewhat epigenetic: same genotype lifelong, changes leave record. Best epigenetics expert: Steve Horvath (epigenetic age clocks). Kardashians episode: Kim/Khloe measure epigenetic age (blood/saliva), DNA methylation clocks trained on chronological age or lifespan remaining. E.g., 37 chronologically but 32 epigenetically predicts longer life. Differs from telomeres (DNA ends). Funny: Kim names "Horvath test," Khloe mispronounces as "Horbath," "Whoresbath."
Becoming parent: riskiest, most optimistic gamble. New book: Original Sin. Quotes Andrew Solomon (Far from the Tree on divergent parents/children: deaf kids/hearing parents, schizoaffective/music prodigy kids): "no reproduction is a myth. No children are reproduced. Children are produced."
Behavioral geneticist view: parents' genes recombine unpredictably (~70 trillion combinations). Children shape parents' lives as much as vice versa, opening to fortune. Parents note: easy first baby, then second differs (sleep, eat, temperament, parenting response). Children thrown into consciousness with genetic package/family beyond control, differ from each other/selves. Role as mom: get to know who I got while they grip planetary existence. Picture: "It's a miracle we ever met."
Complicated feelings. Supports reproductive autonomy, building families on own terms; babies good. Clear upsides: family disorder, mitigate risk even few percentage points for safety to have child.
Worries: polygenic scores/genetic risk hard to understand/communicate, even for experts. Company claims vs evidence/uncertainty communication. Genomic Prediction (Herasite?) transparent on models (others not), at frontier.
Larger: choice changes others' experiences. Down syndrome screening near-universal in Iceland/Denmark, most terminated/not implanted, shifts perception from social solidarity to "you chose it." America: fractured solidarity, public medicine absent. Technology turns chance into choice, pressuring: "you chose sick/conditioned kid, could have prevented." Unknown impact on reproduction relationships.
Hey, we're going to use IVF. Maybe one of us is a little bit older. Maybe it's going to be a geriatric pregnancy. We've had some fertility complications. We've been struggling to just get it to take. So, we're going to get a big harvest, do the embryo thing, and then implant. The doctor is already looking through the microscope, and they're already selecting usually for aneuploidies for chromosomes or things like that. They're like, is this one blob symmetrical or is this the most circular one? I think number three is the most circular one. As soon as you accept that that is the way the IVF is done at the moment, having a dashboard that explains it to me makes very little difference.
The bigger jump is medically unnecessary IVF. If someone does IVF and they already are having to decide and then you're like I'm getting more information like I can't implant all of them. I got to pick one. It feels like less of a frontier. This feels more different but I don't know if that's right. From an ethical perspective, do you think for you? It feels like a bigger technological leap and a bigger social leap and our understanding of what reproduction is. What you end up with there is if somebody has got some fertility complications, some conception issues, they are ethically more justified in having kids that they can select against negative traits and poor for positive traits than somebody.
One of my friends was telling me that if he uses full self-driving on his Tesla and he texts the self-driving thing turns off because it can see where your eyes are. It's got driver-facing cameras that look at them. So, interestingly, the safest way for him to text while he's in his Tesla is to drive it himself while he's texting. It's like a weird incentive structure. It seems like a weird incentive structure here. I would not feel comfortable saying that someone who had done elective IVF and used embryo selection was behaving unethically because I'm very wary of imposing my own.
Why does it give you the heebie-jebies what does it do to you? I read an article from Ethan Strauss. He does House of Strauss, awesome substack. Sports reporter, but every time he writes something not about sport, it's one of the best things I've ever read. He wrote this one. It's called My Boy, and his son has got autism. He describes it as not the send rockets to space autism, but the flap your arms and make noise autism. He describes what happens when his son goes to a party and he sees other parents begin to react to his son's behavior and he almost wants to go over and give a disclaimer to everybody in the room. I want to explain to you what's happening. Have they noticed? When are they going to notice? Are they going to say something to me, to him? Is he ever going to be able to look after us in old age or are we always going to have to look after our own child? He loves his son, but pretty sure he says, I love my son, but it would be better if I could have him, not as this. I understand there's a personhood problem here, right? That like you don't get to have him without that. The only him is the him with that.
Anybody that is prochoice I think has to be pro IVF because the only downside that you have from the IVF is the castaway embryos that don't end up getting implanted which if you're not thinking of them as people. New technology makes us have to grapple with tensions between our values that maybe we wouldn't have had to grapple with without the technology kind of putting a fine point on it.
As a mother, like you ask me like why does it give me the heebie-jebies? Does it give me the heebie-jebies? It makes me uncomfortable for reasons I can't fully articulate. Part of it is on the one hand as a mom, I can think about ways in which my children suffer because of the genetic hand they were dealt and wouldn't I love to take away that suffering and make the world safer for them, make motherhood safer for me, reduce suffering, increase flourishing. The value of your kid not hurting or not hurting other people is so high. At the same time I think motherhood involves being in a relationship with a person and meeting with them who they are and them not being a project for me to perfect them not being a vehicle or a vessel for my hopes and my dreams and my aspirations. But I am confronted with another person and my job is to love them as they are.
Would it not be easier then to try and make that person as fit for the world as possible? And then that allows you to take your hands off the wheel even more. Fit for the world is tough in part because we don't really know, especially when we're moving away from monogenic diseases where it's like, okay we have this genotype and it causes this disease, it's going to happen 100% of the time. As soon as we move from that to these more polygenic, anything I study, polygenic behavioral autism, some of the genes associated with autism are also associated with going further in school, being more likely to graduate from college. IQ is negatively correlated with happiness. Some of the same genes that are associated with going further in school or being an artist are associated with schizophrenia as we've talked about before and we've talked about risk-taking.
One of the thought experiments I talk about in my book is thought experiment audience. I'm not suggesting this thought experiment is what if some embryo selection dictator came to power and said as of this year 2026 every couple that wants to reproduce has to use IVF has to do embryo screening and has to select the kids that have the lowest antisocial offending risk-taking genes. We are going to stop murders in this country because we're going to breed the sin genes out of people. You did that for several generations. At every generation you selected only the least risk-taking, most inhibited, least antisocial. Is that a world you want to live in? You've selected people who are most likely to go along and get along and do well in school and be great at having a boss and be really good at working a desk job and very self-controlled. Perhaps to the point of too self-control, but do you when you think about your family and your friends and the cities that you've chosen to live in, do you want to live in a place that's populated only by the most puritanical and inhibited among us? Like probably not. I wouldn't.
You get to sort of a god's eye coordination problem here though, right? Parents what we really need is to keep some of this high externalizing behavior in the gene pool. So we would like you to pay the price so that we can continue to have this grist for the mill that can spread randomly between. We put so much pressure on individual parents to be entirely responsible for the care of their children to mitigate any bad outcomes. We live in a society in which society is better off when we have variety when we have genetic diversity. There is no evolution without mutation. The sociologist Emile Durkheim had this passage that crime is necessary to every society because unless you have people who are willing to do things differently a society will never evolve. But you are asking parents to pay a high price if they are the ones that have to deal with child that pays. That's why I think there isn't this is why I feel like the dictating reproductive policy from the top down like if someone says no I'm Catholic. I believe that those IVF created embryos are people. I want to have children. I want to have six children and I want to use natural family planning. Like go for it. Diversity in a society is maintained by having diversity. This is a classical liberal idea like what is your conception of the good? Go pursue it, right? What is your risk tolerance for parenting?
I gave birth to all three of my kids in Austin. Forget polygenic screening of embryos. Even genetic testing for Down syndrome was introduced by my obstetrician as if she were slowly tiptoeing over a landmine. I'm not saying you have to do this and I'm not saying you should do this. You're talking to a geneticist. Don't worry. I'm not saying that you would have to, you know, I'm not suggesting you would want to terminate the pregnancy if it was, but we do have this option available to you. This conversation about embryo selection and its ethics is happening at the same time where we have a climate where if you wanted to get an abortion in this state, you would have to leave this state. There's very different things happening in terms of our reproductive autonomy.
What do you think about embryo selection as a counter to the crumbling genome tubes thing? Ancestrally there are selection pressures that mean people who have got genetic mutations that are sub-optimal would have been selected out. Myopia is a good one, right? Both you and me, you chose to go glasses. I chose to go LASIK. We have to assume that if you roll the dice sufficient times both of us would be more dead than somebody who had perfect eyesight. When we are able to alleviate those selection pressures by glasses and LASIK, it means that we are able to pass on our suboptimal. Because the selection pressures have been relieved largely through healthcare and support and modern medicine stuff like that, you do end up with a civilization that accumulates genetic mutations that are nonoptimal at a greater rate than would have done previously because this lid has been released. This is Tub's argument, you have a crumbling genome that it moves toward increasing accumulation of genetic mutations, ones that we would not want, but we're able to continue to support and buttress this with technological progress. The argument is that embryo selection is able to step in and reverse some of this entropy.
I think this idea that what humans are doing with postindustrial healthcare in terms of buffering the negative effects of genes is somehow novel to humanity or novel to evolution. I don't really buy that. If you look at other species, you see multiple examples in which their ability to build niches for themselves reduces selection pressure on some genes and increases selection pressure on other genes which are involved in niche making. There would be no increased selection pressure. It would just be we will continue to compensate over and over again. There's always a selection, there's fewer selection pressures around the things that were historically associated with mortality and now we have new ones. It's a very common idea that you see recur, especially since Galton. This idea that something about modernity is making us soft and that's going to corrode or degrade our genome. This was Pearson's argument against universal public education for kids. We can't be educating all of the children because then they'll be able to support themselves and reproduce and then we won't be winnowing out the feeble-mindedness genes. That sounds kind of awful and shocking to us in retrospect, but it made perfect sense to them with their logic at the time. There's a different kind of lock in from educating or not educating someone versus allowing a much harder inheritance of genetic mutation to keep on moving down.
That 2B thing that's about as spicy of a theory basically that we should either use embryo selection to step in or we should limit healthcare in an attempt and this isn't his proposal at all. That's really on the cusp. That's why I wait 2 and a half hours to bring up crumbling genome. What are we accumulating and are there some things that we could what is it the increase in peanut allergies that we've had and that's behavioral? The increase in asthma because households that use dishwashers have a 75% increase likelihood of asthma because not being exposed to. It's kind of like snowplow parenting but for civilization. Snowplow civilization. It's snowplowing out of the way.
I'm just not that concerned about the crumbliness of our genome. When you say that I imagine this like kind of overcooked chocolate chip cookie like our genome is falling apart. I think about a wall. Evolution takes place in vast time. Evolution is a slow process that has proceeded over eons. Any attempt to take what's happening in the last 25 years and extrapolate too far in either direction, I'm just not all that convinced by it. This idea that there's like a good direction for evolution or a bad direction like I don't think evolution has. Surely you would say a less robust or a more robust immune system that seems pretty universally good right if you had somebody that was more able to withstand pathogens and microbes and insults to their health somebody who has better respiratory rate, better eyesight, better hearing. These things seem realistic, but with glasses and hearing aids and antibiotics, we were able to come in and buttress.
Being able to hear is a good thing. I also know that there's plenty of people in the deaf capital D deaf community who would willingly select a non-hearing child if they could to carry on the community. Seen the personhood of the deaf community, the denial of the personhood of the deaf community. As a psychologist and a geneticist, I think of what's good or bad in an evolutionary sense. It's always relative to an environment. Like white fur is good when it's snowy a lot and it starts to be bad as soon as it's not snowy a lot if you're a rabbit. Not really good or bad in some sort of absolute sense. Given that humans will always have some new novel pathogens because bacteria and viruses evolve a lot faster than we do. Having an immune system that can keep up with that is going to be good for most of the environments that humans will likely face in our evolutionary future. But there's still a background of like what the environment is there and not kind of like a genetically good and like an absolute sense.
One of the things that you said before about more and less appropriate behaviors especially given the modern world and the domestication the puppification. Do you think it means or could there be an argument made that the current push by the mainstream to dissuade men from aggression and dominance and impulsivity is more unfair genetically? Men are on average less domesticated and appropriate for a gentle modern world and does our behavior need to be curtailed more than women's does. Is that unfair?
Is unfair the word that I would use to that? Absolutely. We're being asked to modify our behavior in a manner that women aren't simply because of what modern society. This has been Richard Reeves argument. He wrote a book. If we're not going to change schools, then we should redshirt all the boys and give them an extra year as the only because asking a five-year-old boy to do developmentally the exact same thing as a five-year-old girl isn't fair in his comparison.
You've spent a lot of time talking about dominance and aggression. I want to go up a level to think in terms of more general principles and then go back to your specific question. In questions like this when we think about fair or unfair just or unjust I'm still very heavily influenced by the political philosopher John Rawls and his thought experiment which is if you didn't know what hand you were going to be dealt in the natural lottery and in the social lottery what rules would you want for society. If I didn't know whether or not I was going to be a man or a woman, would I set school up the way that school is set up now? I actually wish that I could inhabit the mind of a man for a day just to see like is it really different? Is it very similar? I'd be fascinated with that. I can't do that. But I have a son. I have a child and so I can get to given what I know about sex differences in brain development in rates of ADHD and rates of conduct disorder, how would I design an educational system such that my sons and my daughters would have an equal opportunity to thrive in them? It sure as heck wouldn't be what we do now. My son's in middle school and I think it's culturally insane what we do. There is no culture on earth before industrial capitalism that was like, do you know what we should do with our 12 and 13-year-old pubertal boys? We should put them inside all day. Ask them to sit still with each other and no older boys and no younger kids and no responsibilities. And we should put a 25-year-old woman in charge of them. Then we should get them to learn stuff that they won't be able to remember a decade later. Whereas he does these once a month like go play in the woods for the whole day. There's Joe Screens and there's a bunch of young men and it's like we're going to build a fire and we're going to carve things out of wood and we're going to catch turtles and we're going to fish and we're going to hide in the brushes and while we're there we're going to talk about math and we're going to talk about the stars and you can read stuff to prepare for your Earth native day.
Should the additional level of discipline that males specifically men are required? Should that we have lower standards for them? No. The opposite. The emotional containment that men are forced to do in order to adhere to a much more domesticated modern world takes more effort than it does for women. It just straight up takes more effort because we are being asked to be further away from our set point, right? Our predisposition pushes us in a direction that modern society has said that we're not allowed to go in. On average, more so for there will be more people who find it harder to do that in a way that is considered that are men. There has been what you could say a feminization of society at least in as much as traits that were more typically on the feminine side of the conscientiousness orderliness etc. lower risk-taking lower aggression lower dominance those things are being selected for that means that men need to pay an additional price it's more effortful for men to behave. Given that, is that something that should be recognized? Is that a kind of price? We often talk about the double shift that women do where women have worked during the day and then they come back home. But nobody ever talks about the additional emotional containment that men have to do, especially given their nature.
I've never thought about this before. So all of everything I'm about to say is I don't have high confidence that I'm right in anything I'm about to say. Part of what's difficult for me to think through that is that the distributions differ, but they're highly overlapping. Most men are in the range of normal women and most women are in the range of normal men when it comes to conscientiousness or agreeableness or risk-taking. The sex difference or the gender difference depending on how you conceptualize it in these traits is going to be the most evident at the extreme. When you run it across multiple different traits though when you're talking aggression and externalizing behavior and impulsivity and risk-taking and dominance. Like when you roll all of those together and this isn't just a it's someone isn't just aggressive. They're aggressive and risk-taking. All of these things together and when you start to la this there's almost no woman would be as risk-taking aggressive dominant outlying as the out. Even if you were to because on average you have like these massive overlapping distributions. But as soon as you go, it's this trait and this trait and this trait and this trait. But I don't think that's true because all those things are all correlated with each other. If you were envisioning let's say just three traits some sort of three-dimensional terrain surface. The things that you're talking about are correlated enough such that men and women are more similar than is commonly assumed. We definitely clearly see sex differences at the extremes at the outlying one but in terms of is your ordinary experience that different than a woman in the 60th percentile. We can only see the behavior of people who manifest it and to say well this is where the tails are how many men should be out on the tails but a wrang tingling. They're white knuckling their way through life. They're white knuckling their way through domestication and they're thinking, modern society says that I can't behave in that way. I'd really better not. That's a price that men have to pay that women don't. I think there's a price to the effort, a denial of their nature, a type of containment. In a modern world that basically seems to continue to say unless you're addicted to drugs in jail or homeless, you are still from a kind of privileged background. And there are ways that you as a man aren't even seeing some of the additional costs that women pay, the double shift, the domestic stuff.
Men often fail to see additional costs women pay, such as the double shift and domestic responsibilities. This represents an unseen cost of being a woman or mother. The discussion probes for equivalent grievances for men, who clearly feel society is unfair despite data. Dr. Harden interacts mainly with her husband and 18-year-old college students struggling to understand adulthood and life's fairness. Data cannot counteract feelings of cultural headwinds. Young men, especially, struggle to articulate their societal role and value, feeling their traditional lane has vanished. Distributions overlapping or not does not address personal experience or solutions. The gap between young men and women in perceptions of society, politics, hope, and trust is sad and alarming. Viewing society as a zero-sum game—women gaining means men losing, or vice versa—harms progress.
Starting from the perspective that everyone has value as a human and we are all in society together promotes productivity over adjudicating fairness claims. Acknowledge feelings as a starting point.
Dr. Harden knows little about looksmaxing, being buffered from online trends as a middle-aged professor. It seems ironic: interventions like taking testosterone to look attractive can cause infertility, undermining procreation. Paul Eastwick's research (discussed recently) convinced her that mate value exists among strangers but declines as people get to know each other. Evolution prioritized surviving and raising the next generation through pair bonds and attachment, not competing for genetic fitness signals.
Young men optimizing for stranger-attracting traits feels nihilistic, akin to young mammals avoiding dating, romance, reproduction, but pursuing extreme body modification for opposite-sex signals without pursuing the opposite sex. Looksmaxing is broad: some seek sexual access to women via gym, height, etc. It stems from behavioral genetics and female mate preferences, leading to extreme changes in a post-#MeToo culture where approaching women feels unwelcome. Women rising socioeconomically seek equally or more educated, wealthy, tall men, creating more high-performing women and fewer suitable men. This pushes men to compete with other men for dominance (mogging), prioritizing formidability (brow ridge, heavy cheeks, strong jawline, height)—a better predictor of male sexual success than looks alone.
Dr. Harden's experiences contradict descriptions of what educated/high-income women want. Married twice: first husband same education (met in grad school); second had less education and income initially, yet extremely competent. Competence predicts future socioeconomic success and signals contribution to family/society (not just money). Education/employment are rough proxies for competence. Assortative mating holds on average, but looksmaxing focuses on looks, not education, career, or confidence. Suggests competence maxing: chop down a tree, diaper a baby, hike a mountain, ride a horse.
Currency for men is online-portrayable traits (Chad looks, not dad skills). As a professor, Dr. Harden sees this in students: online class discussion on de-individuation led to revelations—students never been to parties despite expectations. Culture shift: less in-person hanging out, socialization via screens emphasizes presentation over sustaining attachments or raising babies. Modern culture is anti-natalist; American culture hates kids.
New book Original Sin: The Genetic Advantage: The Problem of Blame, and the Future of Forgiveness releases March 3rd in US, April in UK. Covers genetics, addiction, antisocial behavior, forgiveness, free will, with personal prologue on having a body.
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