No, from a public policy perspective, the important question is what environment can we create that benefit as many people as possible. The current environment, from prenatal care to availability, cost and quality of higher education is something that is created by public policy. It is certainly not anything given.
> what environment can we create that benefit as many people as possible That can't be researched (effectively). Policies affect the current situation, not the desired one.
You create the desired situation by affecting the current situation.
Chomsky wrote the definitive progressive answer to all this 50 years ago: https://libcom.org/files/chomsky%20-%20iq%20building%20block... Still timely and fresh, especially considering that he was critiquing Herrnstein 20 years before The Bell Curve. Because he's smart and unafraid, either of science or the truth, Chomsky never denies the possibility of a genetic component to IQ, even IQ/race. What he denies are the…
> Chomsky never denies the possibility of a genetic component to IQ, even IQ/race. What he denies are the ideological assumptions people make about the social consequences that must follow if those findings are true
The identification of differences between groups seem to be commonly conflated with the act of unfairly discriminating against a group with prejudice based on differences (perceived or real), which is kind of absurd when you think of some of the more superficial and obvious yet real differences. You clarify this very succinctly, but it is still abstract, and I find many people tend not to understand until given a more concrete example... this I find challenging to do without being prejudged as some kind of racist or sexist, so unfortunately I just don't bother any more, the world has become overly sensitive to certain subjects.
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.
That's a bad example: first, it's a question of definition, not of notation. Second, it's defined pretty consistently within physics, and pretty consistently within electrical engineering (none of which is mathematics).
No, what I meant was: if you accept that genetics play a large role, you automatically have to decrease the importance of other factors. I believe it's much more dangerous to be willfully ignorant of science than what political movements might form because of science.
I don’t think they ever said genetics play a large role or as large as a role as those other factors. Maybe you made that association by them grouping them together with things that matter but I think clean drinking water has a far greater impact than genetics ever will. Does it mean genetics are worthless to discuss? No. But in the scheme of the worlds issues and achievements of people - we’re at clean drinking wate…
> But in the scheme of the worlds issues and achievements of people - we’re at clean drinking water level.
On the world level, yes. On a Western country level? No. Well, maybe in the US, in some parts, flammable drinking water probably doesn't help.
But if you look at Sweden or Germany, "it's the drinking water" doesn't work. To discount genetics is to close your eyes to reality -- not incredibly helpful when you're trying to understand something. And understanding helps if you want to change something, which progressives do.
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.
To fine tune what you said, the article (to leave the actual scientific work in question aside for now) focuses on progressives denying genetic differences between groups, but modern behavioral genetics focusing on differences within groups, between individuals.
(Between groups being entirely too muddled by confounding factors)
And the stridently progressive crowd (read: Twitter) rage-cruising right past the distinction, and using arguments against the former to dismiss the latter as anathema.
And then, as these things typically go, coming to their senses and being somewhat embarrassed by where they end up, but unwilling to concede their obviously righteous point and so making increasingly intellectually ridiculous justifications.
Chomsky wrote the definitive progressive answer to all this 50 years ago: https://libcom.org/files/chomsky%20-%20iq%20building%20block... Still timely and fresh, especially considering that he was critiquing Herrnstein 20 years before The Bell Curve. Because he's smart and unafraid, either of science or the truth, Chomsky never denies the possibility of a genetic component to IQ, even IQ/race. What he denies are the…
Except that the argument Chomsky makes about the fact that this research would have no purpose in a society that treats people as individuals, ie not a racist society, is certainly valid, but the current progressivism is to do the opposite, ie to define people by their race/sex, and to count the number of people of each race or sex in organisations, and to call racism/sexism if it is not exactly the population distri…
> i.e. that differences in distributions is a toxic topic that he has been trying to stay clear of since the Bell Curve, given all the griefs he got for it.
This sentence makes it sound as if Murray was acting in good faith when writing the Bell Curve and received undue flack from susceptible people. This wasn't what happened: Murray and Herrnstein used a big corpus of explicitly racist studies (pro-apartheid South African ones for instance).
This (pretty long) videos[1] offers a quite thorough review of the sources used in the book, and clearly this book isn't an honest look on a controversial topic (writing an opinionated book isn't a problem in itself, but Murray himself claimed his book to be as neutral and factual as possible, which is clearly not the case).
Genetics are discussed as social issue instead of as a missing practical technology, only because the tech isnt there yet. But it will be and soon, and once it is the left will embrace it like they did with prenatal vitamins. Embryo genediting and embryo selection works just fine, and the databases required to find polygene traits are beeing created, the techniques required beeing researched. Even today there are dozens of genetic traits that are screened for, and the parents given the choice to abort, or in the case of IVF, to pick another embryo for implantation. And people do abort, if given the screening and the choice. Trisomys like downs are going away in civilized countries, with more than 99% abortion rates. Religion can slow progress down, but nothing, absolutely nothing, will stop parents from wanting the best for their kid, or more specifically the kid they will have. Genetics and the impact on society is a fascinating topic, as is the identification of genetic traits and the experiment methodology. But the popular discussion is profoundly stupid. People seem to forget that we arent discussing how to order the society of the last century, this is all about preparing for the next one. Parents will fight over what skin color their kid will have, and the kid may disagree and change it, but only cultists will fight over if the kid should be in the optimal health, or have a low IQ.
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’ve taught mathematics at community colleges for over 20 years and I’m absolutely convinced that not all people can learn algebra or calculus.
That a well-informed position believes that not (almost) everyone who is attending a college can learn single-variable algebra is fairly depressing.
Great comment. As you say, denying the research outright is playing a similar tune to those who would abuse the research to support pre-existing notions about everyone's rightful places in society. We should be extremely skeptical of any argument that serves solely to justify the positions those in power, which is a typical endpoint for too many discussions of genetics. Using science to validate the status quo and de…
> We should be extremely skeptical of any argument that serves solely to justify the positions those in power Are you saying we should be extremely skeptical specifically of arguments that justify the positions of those in power, but not other arguments? Or are you saying that we should be extremely skeptical of all arguments equally?
Given we have a fixed amount of effort to apply to scrutinizing superficially reasonable but deeply poor arguments, we should focus on those that -- if false -- have the most deleterious effect on utility, broadly defined. If social equity is a component of the utility function, and I think for many it is, then power-preserving arguments would be such a target.
This could really be articulated in any way you choose, but no it doesn't follow that "we should be more skeptical of arguments that facially seem to support the powerful at the expense of the weak" is an irrational or wrong position.