What do you think about "Project Einstein"?

Main post link -> http://www.nature.com/news/root-of-maths-genius-sought-1.14050

Entrepreneur Jonathan Rothberg seeks to sequence the genomes of 400 math and physics wizards to see if he can find genetic markers for their talents.

What do you all think? Will he find what he's looking for? If he finds something, to what uses should it be put? Are you worried about possible eugenics/genetic engineering uses? (Or, perhaps, are you excited about them?)

I'm on the fence. I definitely support the research, and am eager to see what he finds. However, I'm also very prepared to be disappointed that it's just traits like "proclivity for order and rules" and "uncanny grit." In other words, very vague traits that could be turned to any number of different pursuits, with environment determining what those traits get turned toward on an individual by individual basis.

(Also, I'm not at all worried about eugenics/genetic engineering. For instance, we already have a very good idea of how to genetically engineer very strong/muscular humans, traits that are arguably worth more within the scope of a lifetime than high mathematics ability [compare what the average pro sports player makes to what the average mathematician makes], but I'm unaware of anyone actually doing it.)

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Remember to wrap math in `$` ... `$` or `\[` ... `\]` to ensure proper formatting.
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`\frac{2}{3}`	$\frac{2}{3}$
`\sqrt{2}`	$\sqrt{2}$
`\sum_{i=1}^3`	$\sum_{i=1}^3$
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Comments

We (at Brilliant) were looking forward to seeing the discussion on this, and were disappointed when it didn't materialize. I think that interface may be part of reason - discussions where the titles are links off of the site are confusing, and probably need to undergo some redesigning to become less confusing. Thanks for making this post, and adding diversity to the Brilliant discussions!

Suyeon Khim Staff - 7 years, 7 months ago

I don't know much about genetics but this article reminds me of Gattaca

Pi Han Goh - 7 years, 7 months ago

Math	Appears as
Remember to wrap math in `\(` ... `\)` or `\[` ... `\]` to ensure proper formatting.
`2 \times 3`	$2 \times 3$
`2^{34}`	$2^{34}$
`a_{i-1}`	$a_{i-1}$
`\frac{2}{3}`	$\frac{2}{3}$
`\sqrt{2}`	$\sqrt{2}$
`\sum_{i=1}^3`	$\sum_{i=1}^3$
`\sin \theta`	$\sin \theta$
`\boxed{123}`	$\boxed{123}$