"Immune/hematopoietic tissues are also significantly enriched. While a role for the immune system in modulating risk tolerance is plausible given prior evidence of its involvement in several neuropsychiatric disorders, future work is needed to confirm this result and to uncover specific pathways that might be involved." - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6713272/
Related to Toxoplasmosis and things like that maybe?
Anyone looked into promiscuity/libido enrichment specifically?
> In my opinion, gay germ theory makes a clear prediction for enrichment analysis. ‘Gay genes’ should be expressed in areas of the body associated with the immune system, as that determines whether you catch the disease.
This is a good point, but I don't think it's dispositive. One way to be genetically predisposed toward catching a disease is to have an immune system that is configured to let it through, sure. Here you have a normal amount of exposure to the disease and inflated vulnerability to it.
Another way to be genetically predisposed toward catching a disease is to have a suite of behaviors that make you more likely to be exposed to the disease. Here you'd have an inflated amount of exposure to the disease and a normal amount of vulnerability.
"More generally, if homosexuality was caused by a germ we would expect homosexuals to come from poor and low-IQ family environments [...] We’d also expect homosexuality to be very common in the poorest, dirtiest, densest countries in the world [...]"
Maybe not if it were a virus that infects virtually everyone on Earth like EBV.
"One of their most reported findings was that there was a big genetic correlation between having same-sex relationships and having more opposite-sex partners."
The same study also found that having any number of same-sex partbers was genetically uncorrelated with having exclusively same-sex partners, i.e. bisexuality has completely different causes from exclusive homosexuality.
As gwern pointed out, this seems surprising because that's not what you usually get in genetics, e.g. different levels of educational attainment are incredibly strongly correlated. But I think it makes sense because if you e.g. ask men in progressive areas to continuously rate their sexual attraction to men and women, you get a bimodal distribution, where some men are very straight, some men are very gay, and some fairly bi men exist in a cloud around the straight men. So I tend to think that the underlying variables for sexual orientation is a binary gay/straight variable + a continuum of sexual flexibility (+ a libido variable that explains asexual identity? Idk, it also seems that libido and sexual flexibility are correlated).
Ctrl + F, no "birth order effect". Didn't read.
About general risk-taking genes:
"Immune/hematopoietic tissues are also significantly enriched. While a role for the immune system in modulating risk tolerance is plausible given prior evidence of its involvement in several neuropsychiatric disorders, future work is needed to confirm this result and to uncover specific pathways that might be involved." - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6713272/
Related to Toxoplasmosis and things like that maybe?
Anyone looked into promiscuity/libido enrichment specifically?
> In my opinion, gay germ theory makes a clear prediction for enrichment analysis. ‘Gay genes’ should be expressed in areas of the body associated with the immune system, as that determines whether you catch the disease.
This is a good point, but I don't think it's dispositive. One way to be genetically predisposed toward catching a disease is to have an immune system that is configured to let it through, sure. Here you have a normal amount of exposure to the disease and inflated vulnerability to it.
Another way to be genetically predisposed toward catching a disease is to have a suite of behaviors that make you more likely to be exposed to the disease. Here you'd have an inflated amount of exposure to the disease and a normal amount of vulnerability.
Damn you Sir.
With the link to "Can microbes manipulate our minds?" You have given me a whole new Rabbit Hole to waste time down.
Have you no decency? What kind of microbe are you?
"More generally, if homosexuality was caused by a germ we would expect homosexuals to come from poor and low-IQ family environments [...] We’d also expect homosexuality to be very common in the poorest, dirtiest, densest countries in the world [...]"
Maybe not if it were a virus that infects virtually everyone on Earth like EBV.
"One of their most reported findings was that there was a big genetic correlation between having same-sex relationships and having more opposite-sex partners."
The same study also found that having any number of same-sex partbers was genetically uncorrelated with having exclusively same-sex partners, i.e. bisexuality has completely different causes from exclusive homosexuality.
As gwern pointed out, this seems surprising because that's not what you usually get in genetics, e.g. different levels of educational attainment are incredibly strongly correlated. But I think it makes sense because if you e.g. ask men in progressive areas to continuously rate their sexual attraction to men and women, you get a bimodal distribution, where some men are very straight, some men are very gay, and some fairly bi men exist in a cloud around the straight men. So I tend to think that the underlying variables for sexual orientation is a binary gay/straight variable + a continuum of sexual flexibility (+ a libido variable that explains asexual identity? Idk, it also seems that libido and sexual flexibility are correlated).