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Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

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Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#341

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…

Genes describe lot of things from obese tendency to height to IQ to your looks. If someone has an IQ of 70, there are very likely to live a difficult life. Yes IQ is not intelligence you will say but still there is a limit to everyday functioning if someone's IQ is low. Ask a conventional ugly person(specially female) about their life.

> from obese tendency

Which should make you rather skeptical of inferring just how innate IQ really is (assuming it's a valid concept).

The heritability correlations for obesity are only slightly weaker than IQ. Yet we know for a fact the logical complexity of losing weight is simple (doesn't mean it's easy). Anyone can and people do lose weight, even if statistically it may be rather unlikely.

It's completely plausible to me that intelligence can be simple but hard to increase too.

If it's not a statistical anomaly and the genes truly do contribute to obesity, the causation must be very indirect and situational.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#342

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…

> ...but as a former math educator my experience also indicates some people are genetically limited in mathematics.

You sequenced the genomes of your students and correlated their performance against their genes?

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#343
This article gives me big "progressives don't know that a penis is not a vagina" energy.

Except for a very small lunatic fringe minority, progressives generally aren't saying genetics "don't matter", they're saying that they shouldn't. Someone might have a neurological learning disability for example but that doesn't mean you should disregard them but accommodate them to the fullest extent possible.

Sorry for the following tangent but I promise it's relevant:

There is a lot of "progressivism" in the media where "not saying color" is portrayed as a solution to racism but this has become so ubiquitous that even conservatives have started copying this line. That's because it doesn't actually address the underlying impact of racism, it just hides it and makes acknowledging its connection to "color" a social faux pas.

At this point progressives are the ones saying "race absolutely exists and is tied to someone's physical reality", where they disagree with race realists is the degree to which race is a useful concept outside addressing racism (where it is necessary because you can't talk about racial discrimination without acknowledging that people are being grouped into racial categories). Same with sexism, sex and gender differences. That something is a "social construct" doesn't mean it can't interact with physical realities -- "species" is a social construct but it's obvious almost any way you look at it that there is some kind of utility in grouping creatures into "hamster" or "human".

She mentions autism and deafness as examples for genetic differences but it's progressives who are the ones pushing the concept of "neurodiversity", i.e. accepting that there ARE differences between the way human minds work and that we should be more accepting of people whose minds work differently (e.g. some autistics being bad at reading social cues but intuitively engaging in systems thinking). Traditional mainstream liberalism again pushed the opposite approach, of treating disabled people not as disabled but "differently abled" (again, a viewpoint now often propagated by conservatives when celebrating individuals who "overcome" their disability, setting an expectation for others to do the same rather than ask for affordances), thus encouraging a view that ignores their need for accommodations and not engaging with the idea of what affordances are or aren't socially normalized and what is seen as a "burden" (because it only benefits a marginalized group) vs a "necessity" (because it benefits the dominant group).

A lot of this discourse was recently fueled by companies making accommodations because of COVID that they had previously dismissed as impossible and unreasonable when disabled or neurodivergent people asked for them.

So yes, it can absolutely be true simultaneously that genetics can have a massive impact on an individual while the effects are overshadowed by in-group variation. No two people are created equal, yet we should not use that as an excuse to disempower or elevate arbitrary groups but ensure they are given equally the affordances they need to participate in society and contribute what they can. And sadly where we've done so in the past we need to compensate for the generational harm they have been burdened with.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#344
post #146

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…

"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…

> Thought experiment: English Prime but also excluding any constructs expressing intentionality.

I like this idea of a "deterministic" language. In fact it reminds me of Nonviolent Communication, and is probably a good tactic for discussions that might otherwise devolve into personal attacks.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#345
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The elephant in the room is that math has a giant UX problem. The notation is inconsistent and not nearly as logical as it could be.

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…

My favourite example of confusing notation that nobody seems to have fixed is conventional current flow being the wrong way around.

Admittedly, that's from physics, so we can't really blame mathematicians for it.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thanks for asking, I should've explained. The percentage here is percent of variance ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variance ). What it means, basically, is the extent to which you can predict a child's intelligence just knowing the parents' intelligence--not assuming the child was raised by those parents. In your second paragraph, you've actually hit on one of the apologetic clichés that's popular now. People will…

There's some intelligence difference between population groups, let's say Group A and Group B. Lets say that Group B is measured to be on average 5p more intelligent based on whatever arbitrary measure we took.

The debate here is about whether we should try to change the environment in such way that Group A and Group B would be more similar. We know that Group A in general has poorer environment however there's an argument that improving those conditions won't bring Group A to Group B level anyway since it's mostly genetical. Progressives want to change the environment, conservatives think it's a futile effort.

How would you determine in the following scenario whether levelling the playing field would cause the averages to be the same? Would 70-80% imply that, yes, it's likely and under what circumstances?

If the variance for a single person's measurement could be around 40p, then if genetics is causing 75% of it, then it would be responsible for 30p of that and environment 10p, then can we deduce that Group A given similar environment would actually be 5p higher in intelligence?

In this case while genetics describe 75% of the variance, environment is still enough to make naturally more gifted group less successful. So without knowing the other variables the 70-80% is still not meaningful.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#347

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…

I couldn't agree more on an individual level.

These difference in distribution though start to appear when you do statistics. And often an extreme percentile is used as a measure of whether there is discrimination (top engineer at google, board member at an international company, olympians). And it only takes minor differences in distributions (mean, standard deviation) to have big differences on such extreme percentiles.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#348

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…

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Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kenyans, Ethiopians and (white) Americans are not genetically homogenous. Even two siblings can be quite different genetically. The great American distance runners have genetic talent - they didn’t just train harder than their middle school mates who were out of breath while the champions ran faster and longer than anyone else weeks after beginning training.

> have genetic talent - they didn’t just train harder than their middle school mates who were out of breath Who knows if it was only due to genes? And more importantly, there isn't a gene that's about running faster. (sure, some genes are helpful and might get you in front - not discounting the work the athlete goes through) Getting to the podium is a mix of several characteristics: Some people might be more prone to…

Sure, there isn't a gene that makes you run faster, but no matter how hard you train, you'll have a hard time beating Michal Phelps unless you're also naturally built like Michael Phelps: https://www.biography.com/news/michael-phelp-perfect-body-sw...

The point isn't that there is a "best" set of genes. The point is that there can be genetic advantages or disadvantages. Physical reality has an impact on experiential reality.

Where it gets dangerous is when people start using this as an argument for eugenics or an "ought" rather than "is" (i.e. constructing hierarchies out of physical attributes).

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a strange line to draw, surely plenty of disabilities are genetic, implying bad genetics no?

Sure, but it's unlikely that you would have an IQ that low, and not have a specific medical disorder that is causing some of your impairment. E.g, Down Syndrome is a chromosomal change, something that can be measured outside of a 'bad genetics'.

What? You somehow think that if there is a named thing then it's not genetics. It's genetics both if it's a named thing, and if it's yet unnamed thing too.
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