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Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

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Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#551

Post by imbnwa »

bencollier49 wrote: post #369
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…

The thing which I think gets missed out of these discussions is the notion of community. We're such horrific individualists in the West that we seem to see nature and nurture as distinct, which of course they aren't. The nurture of a child is a product of the combined abilities (from nature and nurture) of the people in their family and community. There is no "I"; our DNA and mores are all part of a greater whole.

That's because we haven't yet cornered good ol' "free will" yet like we have this subject, or if we have, it certainly isn't trotted out as regularly and forcefully by the Right, likely because the virtue of the concept is to support punitive discursive apparatuses.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#552

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #335
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are misunderstanding. Calculus is just a placeholder for something that requires a particular level of intelligence. It's about whether it's possible or not, not whether you actually do learn the thing. Someone with an IQ of 120 may not ever learn calculus, but they probably have the ability to do so. You cannot say the same of someone with an IQ of 80.

Yeah, but the whole debate is about how much is genetics responsible for intelligence vs the environment. There was a claim that genetics is responsible for ~70-80% of variance. Pick any intellectual ability and lack of environment can cause for an individual to not be able to achieve that, so how can genetics be responsible for that much variance? The question is where and how does the 70-80% come? How is it meaning…

It's 70-80% conditional on (some sampling from) our current environment. Obviously if your environment is boiling sulfuric acid you aren't gonna be smart.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#553

Post by littlestymaar »

zosima wrote: post #465
littlestymaar wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 A…

Murray was as far as can be determined acting in good faith. The general argument of the Bell Curve, that people from different parts of the world have wildly different distributions on many different attributes, is (or ought to be) completely non-controversial, consistent with almost all scientific evidence and obvious.

> The general argument of the Bell Curve, that people from different parts of the world have wildly different distributions on many different attributes, is (or ought to be) completely non-controversial, consistent with almost all scientific evidence and obvious.

“That people from different parts of the world have wildly different distributions on many different attributes” is, as you say, obvious. But just because there's a lot of variation in many traits among humans mean there's variation in all of them, in fact we all have the same organs with the same functions, the same number of chromosomes, the same metabolic pathway to produce energy from food, etc. There are as many things that don't have variations in humans as thing that do. Don't get me wrong, I do think there is a genetic impact on cognitive ability, but this argument is really poor one.

> Murray was as far as can be determined acting in good faith.

When almost all your citations in your discussion about the link between “races” and intelligence, are taken from at best biased studies (from South Africa, Rhodesia or Southern US under segregation) when it's not openly racist (Richard Lynn, which has 20+ citations in the book!).

If you want quick look at the quality of the sources used in this book, I highly recommend you to watch just the five minutes starting at 1'52'28[1], about the “single best study of Negroid intelligence”.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo&t=5328s

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#554

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

AliceWong wrote: post #191
NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, some people are so stupid that they will never be able to do tasks much more complicated than e.g. sweeping the floor. You are trying to conjure a vision of the world that is comfortable to believe, but that vision does not reflect reality.

I'm not sure the assumption that the comment above you is somewhat delusional is not necessarily reasonable here. I do think its that people are interpreting "everyone" differently. To me, 'everyone' does not mean literally every person but rather the vast majority. Whether this number is 95% or 90% is going to be interpreted differently. I think nearly all of us can agree that as intelligence falls on a bell curve t…

Your understanding is the correct understanding Alice! But I think you're assuming most people understand it as you do, and that's not correct. Most people haven't learned to think with probabilities or distributions, and I would just downgrade that to "many" even here. I think many of the people commenting and reading here actually believe that one could e.g. teach calculus to everyone, it's just a failing in our efforts.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#555

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

esyir wrote: post #287
NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anthropology split into science-anthropology and deliberately-rejects-science anthropology a couple decades ago. As I recall, there was a specific meeting of a society that was the cleaving point. For instance, biological anthropologists tend to actually do science, while cultural anthropologists tend to do work that does not rise to that standard. It's too bad that it takes insider knowledge to tell them apart.

I'm reminded of a time back when I was in university where the cultural studies professor vehemently denied the existence of potential genetic differences between two ethnic groups. I don't remember the context any more, but it hella set the stage for my opinion on that field.

Yeah, sad.

I wonder what we can do about it. Maybe science-anthro needs a re-branding?

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#556

Post by bart_spoon »

cloudfifty wrote: post #522
xyzzyz wrote: post #516

The problem is that socialism inevitably leads to authoritarianism through its very nature. See, for example, Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom”, where he lays this case pretty extensively.

That's not some objective fact. Furthermore you realise that Hayek himself wasn't a democrat?

Its not an objective fact in the sense that there is nothing rigid in political and economic science like we have in mathematics or physics, but yes, every instance of attempts at building socialist governments have been tied at the waist to authoritarianism. In all cases, they have resulted in collapse (USSR), limped along under authoritarian rule (Cuba, Venezuela, Madagascar), or have thrived after jettisoning actual socialist economic policies while maintaining heavy handed authoritarian rule (China, Vietnam). In all cases authoritarianism is propped up as a means to an end of achieving an equitable, socialist utopian state. But in all cases, the socialism has shriveled or died, while the authoritarianism remains.

Perhaps one day there will actually be a socialist state that manages to successfully create the egalitarian society it promotes, without requiring heavy-handed authoritarianism to bring it about. But until then, the association between socialism and authoritarianism is about as well established over the last century as anything can be in the realms of political science and economics.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#557

Post by cloudfifty »

zepto wrote: post #549
cloudfifty wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not. "Leads to" signifies that something turns into it. The regimes that are commonly referred to never turned authoritarian, they started authoritarian - much to Chomsky's and other libertarian socialists dismay.

Ok, I’ll give you that distinction. Socialism inevitably is authoritarian.

That's luckily easy for anyone to discover is incorrect by a half-arsed google search and a somewhat honest attitude to learning.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#558

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

croon wrote: post #478
Levitz wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's extremely unlikely that genetics changed in 60 years, but environmentals did. Due to epigenetics, environmentals actually shape genetics to a degree.

Epigenetics does not change your DNA or what you pass down to your children, and is reversible, so I wouldn't call that "shaping genetics", at least not in the way I was referring to.

Heritable epigenetics is a (very cool) thing, though apparently somewhat overblown.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#559

Post by Noos »

hnbad wrote: post #349
raverbashing wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Yeah, considering the actual day to day life of all people, Michael Phelps's genetic advantages are pointless. They confer advantage only in a specifically designed field that society has created and that is really a tremendous waste of time all things considered; it's just a performance.

But the aim of all this genetic stuff is not saying "well, Kenyans can make better marathon runners if we stick them into a sports contest." It's usually a lot more pernicious than that, and involves intelligence. And ordering society in some manner around genetic expressions in a way a lot more dangerous than recognizing some people are better at public performance than others.

Re: Can progressives be convinced that genetics matters?

#560

Post by cloudfifty »

bart_spoon wrote: post #556
cloudfifty wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not some objective fact. Furthermore you realise that Hayek himself wasn't a democrat?

Its not an objective fact in the sense that there is nothing rigid in political and economic science like we have in mathematics or physics, but yes, every instance of attempts at building socialist governments have been tied at the waist to authoritarianism. In all cases, they have resulted in collapse (USSR), limped along under authoritarian rule (Cuba, Venezuela, Madagascar), or have thrived after jettisoning actu…

> every instance of attempts at building socialist governments have been tied at the waist to authoritarianism

Hence the fierce insistence from large parts of the socialist movement throughout history that it must be radically democratic - otherwise oppression, rather than liberation will be the result.

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