Damn, biology is complex.

But I'm glad our system at least has enough integrity to admit failures of this magnitude.

>The Novartis study lasted seven years and involved 8,323 people who had high Lp(a) levels and pre-existing heart disease.

>The C.E.O. of Pfizer, Dr. Krumholz said, “thought the whole future of his company would be built on this drug.”

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49579390

Points: 4

# Comments: 3

This isn't news at all, but simply a process that has gone on for decades. But it is nice to see the NYT giving it coverage. It would be wonderful if a moderate consensus could form to support reform of the process. Not gonna hold my breath though.

Also nice to see someone from Works In Progress getting visibility. WIP is the best, and you should read / listen to it:

https://worksinprogress.co/

But this is just the influence of "common" 1000 markers they looked at. Overall Big Five personality is >40% genetically heritable:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8776880/

(Found this via NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/science/genes-personality... )

This news seems consistent with what I've heard in general about the genetic influence on behavior (and most other traits we care about, like height): They are often very genetically influenced (on the order of 50%), but this influence is usually spread over a huge number of genes and variants. Possibly over every gene. I remember a study about height where about half the genetic influence was only captured when they considered the literal whole genome (vs. SNPs), and even then a huge amount were unique variations.

So, yes "trait X" likely has a strong genetic component. But don't hold your breath that you'll be able to control it by CRISPERing it or something. And don't hold your breath that we'll even be able to model and predict the effects of any particular genomic sequence. This is part of why I'm less worried about fertility eugenics creating a dystopia. Several other dystopia's will beat it to the punch.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49553529

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

My guess (and experience), is the these cross-class friendships are most important for networking, and the biggest single benefit of that is that it enables people to interview for jobs that they would have otherwise been screened out of.

Since, IMHO, this is a mostly zero-sum effect (though of course there is some value in trusted references), I think it would be good to try to reduce the impact of this in our society.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49501004

Points: 2

# Comments: 2

Someone with more, info feel free to refute this.

I can't defeat the paywall, but these posts have some more detail:

https://news.wisc.edu/incarceration-rates-are-declining-a-ne...

https://scienmag.com/u-s-prison-population-declines-as-racia...

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49494602

Points: 9

# Comments: 13

>Accounting for income in holding companies erases half of the difference in the 1980-2020 rise of the top 1% fiscal income share between Nordic countries and the United States, where rules penalizing the use of holding companies have been in place since the 1930s.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49494506

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

But also pretty fascinating, beyond the lowbrow humor.

Found this linked in another HN story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49448665

Pretty impressive long-term charts, and dramatic surge in the last years. Of course there are lot of other relevant details (e.g. more people own capital, and this is pre-tax numbers). But overall this seems pretty consistent with the story Piketty tells in Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Ce...

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49481783

Points: 138

# Comments: 55

n=15, but this is still an impressive example of gene therapy, especially since it doesn't addresses a rare single-gene disease, but the usual case of a much more complex genetic and metabolic system.

>15 patients received a one-time infusion of lipid nanoparticles, essentially fat bubbles, carrying gene-editing machinery to their livers. That machinery was programmed to snip and disable a gene involved in cholesterol metabolism called ANGPTL3.

>The experiment was inspired, in part, by the discovery that there are people who have naturally occurring versions of the ANGPTL3 gene that aren’t functional. Those people have very low levels of cholesterol and triglycerides and a lower risk of cardiovascular disease.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49481480

Points: 12

# Comments: 3

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49413305

Points: 4

# Comments: 2

In a way this paper is silly. It's a more serious attempt of the shrimp argument: "Yes, you should save 10^100 shrimp instead of one human"https://morallawwithin.substack.com/p/yes-you-should-save-10...

But, since I think of myself as mostly utilitarian, I do need to take such arguments seriously. Either I need a good counterargument to this paper, or I should question my moral philosophy

In addition, I devour biology anecdotes, and everything I hear increases my belief that animals are more sentient & intelligent than our common sense suggests. E.g. consider how sophisticated hermit crabs are in trading off pain vs. a valuable home: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00033...

With over 40 pages, I only barely skimmed this paper so far. My reactions are:

Tactical:

1) Are they really measuring biodiversity (vs. biomass)? I'm skeptical that weighted biomass has decreased so much.

2) The effect is bigger the further you get from humans taxonomically. e.g. it's all about the shrimp ;-P3) The assumptions highlight how little we actually understand about welfare and sentience, in any animal, including us. Neuron counts and cognitive tests are poor measures.

Philosophical:

1) This highlights our uncertainty about sentience and welfare in nature. This uncertainty provides some justification for the status quo. But it also argues we should work to reduce it.

2) Arguments like this highlight that one should be skeptical of utilitarian arguments that are scaled so far.

3) But overall, the utilitarian approach is better than others, and thus this question is important to ask. The lack of a good answer doesn't invalidate the question. It should drive us to improve the answer.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49364494

Points: 1

# Comments: 1