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Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

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Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#171

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

Tade0 wrote: post #157
NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #152

In these comments: people doing apologetics for a vision of the world where everyone is born with equal potential. I am a scientist, I work on these things, and I am here to tell you that: --Intelligence is largely (~70-80% of variance) inherited --Your personality is largely determined by genetics and is pretty much settled in to what it will always be by ~30 --If you don't learn to count right by ~4 you never will…

> --Intelligence is largely (~70-80% of variance) inherited Citation needed, especially given that there are enormous differences in intelligence between people who acquired speech and those who didn't.

Yeah, as the other child comment says I'm not sure what you're getting at with speech acquisition. Here's a study I plucked: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270739/

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#172

Post by tnzm »

colordrops wrote: post #163
tnzm wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Nature vs nurture" in the hairless ape presupposes free will, which is a linguistic universal but a metaphysical unprovable. Look closely enough and there is no essential difference between genetics and other causative factors. Other than maybe some people jumping to the conclusion that one has an axe to grind with minorities when one attempts to explain certain things with genetics. Which is just as much an arbitra…

> Look closely enough and there is no essential difference between genetics and other causative factors. How is this any different from saying "all is one, separateness is an illusion"?

Arbitrarily.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#173

Post by EllieEffingMae »

NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #166
ludston wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does your science control for differences between parenting, access to education and nutrition though? I would expect doing so to be unethical and therefore not allowed.

Twin studies is the oldest, best answer. People have fancy statistical trickery these days too.

Would you mind elaborating on exactly how many studies you think are engaging in "statistical trickery"?

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#174

Post by [deleted] »

NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #152

In these comments: people doing apologetics for a vision of the world where everyone is born with equal potential. I am a scientist, I work on these things, and I am here to tell you that: --Intelligence is largely (~70-80% of variance) inherited --Your personality is largely determined by genetics and is pretty much settled in to what it will always be by ~30 --If you don't learn to count right by ~4 you never will…

[deleted]

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#175

Post by mingusrude »

Hermitian909 wrote: post #154
DanHulton wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making a lot of leaps of logic here, which might be why your colleagues are disagreeing with you. You go from "not everyone can learn algebra or calculus" and "mental disabilities exist" to "therefore intelligence is a scale and controlled by genetics and unalterable," which doesn't really track. Your previous education, your upbringing, your cultural values, these things all also have huge effects on your apt…

I think the more people can learn algebra than OP implies, but as a former math educator my experience also indicates some people are genetically limited in mathematics. For reference, my specialty was working with very remedial students and only ever had a few students not make progress (~2%) but I do think that small percent was genuinely hopeless and I don't say that lightly. I have a pet theory as to why those st…

My dad was a math and physics teacher and he had a very similar theory around the working memory. However he also thought that the problem for those students that had difficulties with math was that the working memory was often filled up with other stuff than the math that they were working on. It could be anything from difficulties to concentrate to problems with holding the pen correctly and therefore the working memory was overflowed.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#176

Post by exmadscientist »

smhost wrote: post #164
Hermitian909 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the more people can learn algebra than OP implies, but as a former math educator my experience also indicates some people are genetically limited in mathematics. For reference, my specialty was working with very remedial students and only ever had a few students not make progress (~2%) but I do think that small percent was genuinely hopeless and I don't say that lightly. I have a pet theory as to why those st…

HN crowd doesn't think twice about people who try to run DOOM on a stack of pennies, but are ready to give up before trying to get algebra to run on someone with less working memory. It's weird how different the attitude is.

Have you ever been a teacher? Even a teaching assistant?

I have. Some people are dumb.

You try teaching these people (anecdotally they're less than 1% of the population, with no obvious markers, so you have to actually find one first) and then come back and tell me how it's like "getting algebra to run on someone with less working memory". If I wanted to continue that analogy, I might say that the task is like getting algebra to run on someone whose brain has a power supply that randomly shorts out and spends half its time browned out.

Because some people out there are just not easy to teach.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#177

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

EllieEffingMae wrote: post #168
NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #152

In these comments: people doing apologetics for a vision of the world where everyone is born with equal potential. I am a scientist, I work on these things, and I am here to tell you that: --Intelligence is largely (~70-80% of variance) inherited --Your personality is largely determined by genetics and is pretty much settled in to what it will always be by ~30 --If you don't learn to count right by ~4 you never will…

Regardless of your credentials, as far as I am aware the scientific consensus on this topic is that genetics is nearly impossible to separate from other causal factors. Mainly other causal factors that we have clearer and more direct evidence of having an influence on cognitive ability. So, quite frankly, I don't care if you spend a lot of time thinking about it, it's irrelevant. The consensus is clear.

Yes, exactly like that!

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#178

Post by mewpmewp2 »

tgv wrote: post #162
NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #152

In these comments: people doing apologetics for a vision of the world where everyone is born with equal potential. I am a scientist, I work on these things, and I am here to tell you that: --Intelligence is largely (~70-80% of variance) inherited --Your personality is largely determined by genetics and is pretty much settled in to what it will always be by ~30 --If you don't learn to count right by ~4 you never will…

I've never heard a number as high as 70%. Where does that come from? Otherwise: any idea how intelligence was operationalized? I also think we can only accept that we're born different, but human. If we should aspire to anything, it should be to make life good for every individual, taking their capacities into account, not to give everyone an academic degree.

The percentage without context does not give any actual information. E.g. one could argue that environment affects 99 percent of intelligence as for example if someone dies due to environment there's no intelligence at all.

So there must be some poor environment A and good environment B, and some poor genes A and good genes B that a comparison must be made between to understand exactly what this percentage means and of course there must be a definition of intelligence and a way to measure it.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#179

Post by colordrops »

lamontcg wrote: post #115

I don't particularly have a problem accepting that intelligence could be genetic. But then people use that to argue that the people at the top deserve everything they have. The exact same argument was made back when we had slavery. Now its just used to justify wage slavery and gross wealth inequality and policies which punish the poor. (It also is grossly oversimplified and discounts reversion to the mean and that tw…

The main problem with tying specific skills to genetics is that it's not yet possible. We can't even figure out how to get a car to drive itself reliably, and we build the car from scratch. We are not even slightly close to figuring out how genes correlate to advanced complex behaviors that involve learned elements. There are endless factors and interplay between them that determine an already vague concept such as "intelligence". How could you possibly say "these three genes mean you are capable of calculus"? Perhaps you might find some correlations through statistical analysis but that entire in-between is still a blackbox and you can't draw conclusions at all about what is or isn't possible. It wouldn't serve any valuable purpose.

The cognitive dissonance is real - it's an echo chamber in here about how self-driving is a pipe dream, and yet a much more difficult problem of determining ability driven by genes is easily swallowed.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#180

Post by Tade0 »

tgv wrote: post #165
Tade0 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> --Intelligence is largely (~70-80% of variance) inherited Citation needed, especially given that there are enormous differences in intelligence between people who acquired speech and those who didn't.

I think the number of people that haven't acquired overt communication is so low, it can hardly affect the average.

My point is that if you can produce twins, one of which will be taught how to speak, read and write and the other not and the difference in intelligence between them will be so significant, then the genetic component can't possibly amount for most of intelligence.

Yes, it's the nature vs nurture argument all over again, but I think that regarding intelligence it's far from settled.

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