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Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

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Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#531

Post by hnbad »

concordDance wrote: post #500
hnbad wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think dismissing that as "progressives being progressives" is dishonest. Most scientific research into eugenics, "racial differences" and such is motivated by reactionary value systems. Most of it can also easily be classified as pseudoscience and is published in fringe journals (e.g. see Emil Kirkegaard's "research" and his "journals"). Since this topic is so overrun with reactionaries trying to scientifically jus…

If you think the research done by the racists if unscientific wait til you see what's done by the antiracists:D

Can you hear that noise? I think all the dogs outside just started barking for some reason. Weird.

Sorry, go on?

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#532

Post by imbnwa »

dmingod666 wrote: post #359
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you look at the top 10 distance runners, they're all from Ethiopia and Kenya. But as you look further down the list into the top 100, you start to see Americans and others. Furthermore, the Americans' times are really close to the Ethiopians and Kenyans The Americans still almost certainly have very favourable genetics for distance running, they're just less favourable than the genetics of the Kenyan runners. If…

America in this case is a very bad country to measure with considering the amount of people that may actually be of very similar decent as your first examples..

East Africa and West Africa aren't the same places

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#533

Post by nomoreplease »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #145
DangitBobby wrote: post #76

People strongly want to believe that intelligence doesn't have a strong genetic component, I think mainly for moral reasons. If not everyone can be expected to learn and be proficient in everything due to genetics, then suddenly merit itself is also based strongly on luck, and now the belief that people with greater merit should have better lives no longer seems fair. Intelligence is now just another gift to the fort…

I don't believe this idea because few or nobody sees a moral problem in acknowledging there is a strong genetic component to physical attractiveness, or physical features (like height) that give an advantage in "merit" in some paths of life. Nor do people have a problem acknowledging your parents, the country in which you were born, their wealth and fitness as "good parents" for the early years of your life plays a m…

Then why are the Leftist professors in the article so opposed? Why are they comparing her work to climate change denial and Holocaust denial? Why are they so opposed to the obvious logical conclusion

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#534

Post by tomhoward »

concordDance wrote: post #502
Cocojumbo wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My own experience suggests that whilst yes, genetics is an important factor in life outcomes, other things that are hugely important also aren't adequately researched, because genetic determinism is so widely accepted. This. IQ !== Success. I used to go to college with two very bright people. I couldn't catch up with them. Because one of them was ridiculousely intelligent and the other was up there close. 20 years…

> For me it's persistence/perseverence Which is also horribly unfair, as that's done almost entirely to upbringing, genes, sleep and food. Only the last two can be changed by the individual.

You're partially right, but the point of my comment is that it's not established fact that genes (in the sense of hard-coded, deterministic genetics) is the major factor.

Sure these patterns may be somewhat inherited, but quite possibly inherited in such a way that it can be altered with effective techniques, like those that I've been using.

I'm not claiming any proof, just arguing that proper research needs to be done into this.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#535

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

sfblah wrote: post #327
pcrh wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These studies are highly powered statistically. One conclusion you can definitely draw is that common variation in intelligence is not primarily caused by common genetic variation. Evidently, our genes determine our brain, and are what makes us more intelligent than other animals. But between individual humans, genetic variation contributes to only a few percent of variation.

Or variation in intelligence is genetically controlled in ways we don’t understand yet because our understanding of genetics is nascent.

Yeah, sfblah is right. We will be able to predict based on our knowledge of the little molecules inside you at some point, we just can't do it now.

The 70-80% is heritable and not via parenting. It is contingent on an environment that provides things like food and air, and the basic idea is that we control for the environment in some simplistic way via twin studies.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#536

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

xyzzyz wrote: post #281
qqqwerty wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Robert Plomin is not without controversy: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/there-i...

Well, yes, because he studies intelligence and doesn’t mindlessly repeat socially acceptable nonsense. This necessarily means controversy. You’ll find that most researchers in that field are “controversial” in some way, but it really tells you more about how society views the results, not the people obtaining them.

I just want to say thank you to xyzzyz for the detail I was too tired to provide :-D

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#537

Post by imbnwa »

hellbannedguy wrote: post #316
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 bet if you spent three weeks going over basic math, basically decimals, and fractions; you might see a 90% honest pass rate. I have found with math, the way it's presented matters more than most subjects.

This is so true. I'm Black and attended one of the worst performing elementary schools in my city for the first four years of school, which gave me an awful base for my math learning when I was finally transferred to a much higher performing school in a Jewish neighborhood on the other side of the city, not to mention high school and college. Only when I started working in programming did a lot of algebra and trig click (probably helps my first junior role threw me in the deep end working with linear algebra and trigonometry in animation and was lucky to have a senior around who chose to take on a mentor role). Math in public schools is basically magical spell incantation and it appears to most kids that you either have "it" or you don't. Math is a subject I believe requires long-term work that doesn't easily fit into the grade pass/fail structure of school, but then again a lot of aspects of mass education are fundamentally broken.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#538

Post by Hermitian909 »

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.

I'm not sure I understand your comment, this is exactly what I spent hundreds of hours of my life trying to do. Was I unclear that my entire educational career was being the person who got through to students that traditional education was giving up on?

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#539

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

bjourne wrote: post #304
luckylion wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I don't think denigrating others contributes to a healthy debate.

I didn't read it as denigration, it was a legit point. We make inferences based on the type of discussion.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#540

Post by slfnflctd »

concordDance wrote: post #320
woko wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People strongly want to believe that intelligence doesn't have a strong genetic component, I think mainly for moral reasons. More so because there is no proof for that. Individuals exhibit different levels of intelligence. Sure, life is unfair. However, individuals do not necessarily inherit intelligence from their parents' genes. Seriously, who could think that you could build a lineage of "gifted persons" solely…

> However, individuals do not necessarily inherit intelligence from their parents' genes. Do you have an alternative explanation for the results of twin studies on IQ then? It's also not just IQ, so many things very strongly correlate between identical twins. > Seriously, who could think that you could build a lineage of "gifted persons" solely by genetically selecting the parents among the population of "gifted pers…

One could argue that we've decoupled ourselves from natural selection in significant ways by moving toward more egalitarian societies where huge numbers of people who would've been shut out in our more brutal past aren't shut out any longer. Non-humans don't have anything comparable in terms of scale.

Alternatively, it could be viewed as more of a reshuffling, where selection will still take place in the long run but with very different pressures.

The way I see it, none of us asked to be born, so if we really are trying to be 'fair', everyone should be granted a base level of material support regardless of their ability to contribute. I also think all of us would be much better off we collectively valued happiness more than material wealth. There is definitely a place for incentives, but when those come with the baggage of class warfare, past a certain point they become more destructive than constructive on aggregate.

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