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Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

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Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#271

Post by Tenoke »

armchairhacker wrote: post #219

Genetics has a huge influence on what someone is predisposed to and what they can achieve. Certain ethnic groups and families, on average, are more likely to have certain traits and less likely to have others. But genetics doesn't matter , in that just because you have "bad" genetics doesn't mean you'll suck, whether it comes to weightlifting, intelligence, temperment, etc. Maybe you won't be in the top 0.0001%, but…

Sure, that's a good point generally but doesn't seem at all the problem the article is addressing. Skimming it, it's about progressives denying group differences at all and calling those who research them 'equivalent to Holocaust Deniers'.

From following genetics research and researchers, I've seen plenty of that, and I don't see the relevance of your point here.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#272

Post by ausbah »

the question I have is why shouldn't we believe that works in these areas might not be used as justification for deterninal policies a la eugenics?

what is different this time around to prevent someone with power from using some research results to advance discriminatory policies (even if the results are overblown, purposefully misinterpreted, etc.)?

ignoring the science isn't great, but using the science as a basis for creating policy is still a very scary idea

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#273

Post by sfblah »

pcrh wrote: post #232
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 Also a scientist here.... Intelligence, however measured, is largely inherited. However, that inheritance is not genetic, but social. It's now been rigorously demonstrated that common variation in genetics has very little to do with intelligence as generally conceived. Just for some examples of well-powered studies: >A genome-wide polygenic score constructed fr…

Our inability to identify the genes responsible for intelligence doesn’t equate to them not existing. Our understanding of genetics is still extremely nascent.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#274

Post by esyir »

torstenvl wrote: post #218
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…

Forgive me, but my understanding is that the heritability of IQ at ~70% is limited to those of higher socioeconomic status, and that it's closer to ~10% for those of lower socioeconomic status. http://ibg.colorado.edu/cdrom2016/franic/Moderation/Lit/Turk... https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/97802038... https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/095679761348839... (I should note that beyond an unde…

Not OP, but have genetics background in other fields (not intelligence). The following is a bit of a mix

A way you could look at this would be to think as heritability here as the cap of your intelligence. No matter how hard you try, barring some sort of magical medical intervention, your maximal intelligence is limited by your genetics. However, that's the maximum. There are many ways to reduce IQ (lead a famous example here, nutrition another).

I think it's not an unreasonable hypothesis that those in lower socioeconomic brackets might increasingly encounter the damaging effects which might have an outsized effect on IQ. More factors than just heritability might create that effect you've mentioned.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#275

Post by xyzzyz »

drath wrote: post #258
xyzzyz wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Math notation is very consistent and it’s optimized for convenience. It’s been constantly refined over last centuries. People who complain about notation usually actually have problem with the substance, and the complaints about notation is just a coping mechanism, to deny hurtful reality that one can’t understand something hard, blaming external factors instead. Ask yourself: if notation was genuinely confusing, why…

> if notation was genuinely confusing, why would mathematicians make themselves suffer needlessly? Because they are unable to change it. Just like with any thing evolved over a long time, like music notation, languages, even, to some extent, programming languages. Every change brings a lot of pushback, it's a monumental task to create a new one and even more so is getting any traction with it.

> Because they are unable to change it.

That doesn’t square well with the fact that notation keeps getting refined and improved. There is no pushback for genuine improvements. Biggest problem here is that there rarely are changes that clearly and meaningfully improve situation over status quo. I gave one example above, but overall, I am not going to take complaints about notation being obstacle to understanding seriously without concrete ways how to meaningfully improve it. You can of course keep complaining that it’s confusing, but without proposals for improvements, you’re actually complaining about the difficulty of substance, not the notation, and it says more about you than about notation.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#277

Post by luckylion »

bjourne wrote: post #220
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…

People like me would be more convinced by your rant/flamebait if you provided sources for your claims. You claimed that the "broad strokes here are not up for debate" so it should be trivial for you to provide sources. Since you don't, it's hard to take your arguments seriously. Everyone can make unsubstantiated claims, providing evidence is the difficult part. I'm sure you understand that the "trust me, I'm a scient…

> People like me would be more convinced by your flamebait if you provided sources for your claims.

To be honest, from what I've read in these comments: I doubt it. There's a lot of goal-post moving and deflection ("but what even is intelligence", "but what if we never taught people to speak", "but why should it even matter") that I believe Betteridge's law of headlines still holds.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#278

Post by taneq »

TameAntelope wrote: post #29
syops wrote: post #2

From the article: Over the next year, a biosciences working group revised the program’s funding guidelines, stipulating in the final draft that it would not support any research into the first-order effects of genes on behavior or social outcomes. The fact that this area is controversial suggests to me that it is worth exploration. I’ve taught mathematics at community colleges for over 20 years and I’m absolutely con…

I hope you don't think this article in any way supports your belief that some people can't learn algebra/calculus due to any kind of genetic traits, because I don't think the complexity of either rises to the level of "difficulty" that only gifted minds can comprehend. Very, very little in this world does. Your belief should probably be considered heretical, even among your conservative colleagues, because your colle…

> I don't think the complexity of either rises to the level of "difficulty" that only gifted minds can comprehend

This is a strawman. They never said 'gifted', they just said that some people have it and some don't.

> deficiencies in one area can be made up for in other areas

Not what we're talking about. GP is probably great at things that aren't chess. That doesn't mean they're good at chess.

> Where genetic gifts are lacking, determination and perseverance can almost always make up the difference

Determination and perseverance aren't (at least partially) genetic gifts?

Honestly I think 'genetics' are a bit of a red herring here anyway because the real underlying assertion being challenged is that all humans have equal potential in all things (which anyone who has ever taught any mildly difficult topic will know is trivially disprovable). The precise mechanism whereby innate human potential differs isn't important if you can't even agree that it differs.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#279

Post by deltasixeight »

air7 wrote: post #236

I find myself reading and thinking and quietly ranting about this (and similar) topics often. The reason being that fundamentally I feel we are witnessing an erosion of the acceptance of the scientific method itself. The scientific method simply put is "Truth has more validity then beliefs". Of course we don't have access to Truth so we use evidence as a proxy to Truth via interpretation. Obviously interpretations ma…

No. You don't understand science.

Science is about making a hypothesis and then verifying that hypothesis against observations. That's it.

One thing to note is that within science and therefore the universe as we know it, no hypothesis can be verified to be 100% true. In other words no statement about the universe can ever be proven true.

This occurs due to a number of things. First, all observations have statistical inaccuracies attached to them. Nothing is ever 100% accurate. Thus because observations aren't 100% accurate, observations can never be used to prove a statement with 100% accuracy as a consequence.

Second, the universe is unknown and thus at any point in time we can suddenly uncover and observe a completely new piece of evidence that totally invalidates all previous hypothesis.

I know what you're talking about in your post. But when you truly understand science you will see that the line between truth and belief is actually really blurry. Science has given us zero verified truths. It has only given us probabilities and likelihoods that we just assume (aka believe) to be true.

In fact the foundations of science function off axiomatic assumptions that logic is real and probability is real. These two aspects of reality can NEVER be verified as they are the tools we use to verify other things.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#280

Post by [deleted] »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #26

> Given the difficulties of distinguishing between genetic and environmental effects on social outcomes, he wrote, such investigations were at best futile: “There will be no reason to pursue these types of research programs at all, and they can be rendered to the same location as Holocaust denial research.” > Over the next year, a biosciences working group revised the program’s funding guidelines, stipulating in the…

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