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James Watson has died

nytimes.com

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Re: James Watson has died

#271

Post by EnPissant »

tptacek wrote: post #265
EnPissant wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9674992 Here you said: > If it helps, you can think of my opposition to the notion that blacks are somehow intellectually inferior to whites as religious, and you might just as productively spend your time trying to convert me to Zoroastrianism. Someone even mentioned that this was falsifiable: > His admission really is incredibly revealing, and refreshingly, eve…

You just went back 10 years in my comment history to find a comment that has nothing to do with the thread we're on, on a thread that has nothing to do with the thread we're on, on the basis that me not believing that Black people are racially inferior to white people dictates what I think about behavioral genetics. In addition to being rude, it isn't even logically coherent. What I do or do not thing about racial su…

You are arguing to discredit a study that contradicts your previously stated religious belief. I would be very surprised if anyone found me bringing it up off-topic. I think anyone debating you is entitled to know you think it is impossible that a study could find genetic intelligence differences between races and you wont even consider any evidence. If you have changed that belief, it’s easy to state that now.

Btw, I just remembered that comment from reading that thread recently. I obviously didnt pour through 10 years of one HN’s most prolific posters.

Re: James Watson has died

#272

Post by tptacek »

EnPissant wrote: post #271
tptacek wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just went back 10 years in my comment history to find a comment that has nothing to do with the thread we're on, on a thread that has nothing to do with the thread we're on, on the basis that me not believing that Black people are racially inferior to white people dictates what I think about behavioral genetics. In addition to being rude, it isn't even logically coherent. What I do or do not thing about racial su…

You are arguing to discredit a study that contradicts your previously stated religious belief. I would be very surprised if anyone found me bringing it up off-topic. I think anyone debating you is entitled to know you think it is impossible that a study could find genetic intelligence differences between races and you wont even consider any evidence. If you have changed that belief, it’s easy to state that now. Btw,…

First, the logic you're trying to apply about my "religion" doesn't cohere for the reason I stated. It doesn't follow logically from my belief that certain races aren't superior to others that I believe any X or Y claim about behavioral genetics. Second, and again, as already stated, the arguments I'm making are positive and falsifiable. You can't just bank-shot them through what you believe my psychology to be.

Either work on behavioral genetics (including behavioral genetics through the lens of racial groups) is being produced by serious scientific groups or it isn't. It is, as you can trivially verify. Ergo, the claim I made in the post I responded to is falsified. What you think about me doesn't enter into it.

So too it goes with the things I said about the MTAS: it does in fact have a small sample, it does in fact have issues with controls (look where they got the adoptees from), it does predate a large amount of scientific work on inherited environment, gene/environment interaction, and epigenetics.

Even a hereditarian wouldn't make the claim the parent commenter made, that MTAS is the last word on this question.

In fact, given the falsity of claim the parent commenter made on this kind of work being suppressed, it would be weird if it was the last word on the question: scientists have spent 20 years drilling into this, and the result has, among other things, been the "Missing Heritability Problem". You don't even have to know anything specific about MTAS to get the problem with the claim on this thread.

Re: James Watson has died

#273

Post by EnPissant »

tptacek wrote: post #272
EnPissant wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are arguing to discredit a study that contradicts your previously stated religious belief. I would be very surprised if anyone found me bringing it up off-topic. I think anyone debating you is entitled to know you think it is impossible that a study could find genetic intelligence differences between races and you wont even consider any evidence. If you have changed that belief, it’s easy to state that now. Btw,…

First, the logic you're trying to apply about my "religion" doesn't cohere for the reason I stated. It doesn't follow logically from my belief that certain races aren't superior to others that I believe any X or Y claim about behavioral genetics. Second, and again, as already stated, the arguments I'm making are positive and falsifiable . You can't just bank-shot them through what you believe my psychology to be. Eit…

You’ve refuted nothing I’ve said. You continue to attempt to discredit a study related to race and intelligence. This is a topic you have claimed a religious position on and said no one should even attempt to convince you in the opposite direction.

Re: James Watson has died

#274

Post by tptacek »

EnPissant wrote: post #273
tptacek wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, the logic you're trying to apply about my "religion" doesn't cohere for the reason I stated. It doesn't follow logically from my belief that certain races aren't superior to others that I believe any X or Y claim about behavioral genetics. Second, and again, as already stated, the arguments I'm making are positive and falsifiable . You can't just bank-shot them through what you believe my psychology to be. Eit…

You’ve refuted nothing I’ve said. You continue to attempt to discredit a study related to race and intelligence. This is a topic you have claimed a religious position on and said no one should even attempt to convince you in the opposite direction.

I'm happy with what the thread says about our respective arguments at this point.

Re: James Watson has died

#275

Post by Dig1t »

tgv wrote: post #204
Dig1t wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to point out anything on the page that’s factually incorrect? It sounds like you consider it to be cancer because someone with whom you don’t agree is involved with it, but that doesn’t really provide a good reason why the article should be dismissed without even reading it.

I can't read the link, as the post has been deleted, but even when everything in a text is factually correct, it still can be misleading. Fact-checking by an LLM is however not acceptable to many. They have no responsibility, and Grok is known to have explicit biases.

>Grok is known to have explicit biases

Wikipedia is known to have explicit biases, which is the entire point of the Grokipedia project.

>Fact-checking by an LLM is however not acceptable to many.

Sort of a Luddite mentality to dismiss information without even reading it just because a technology you don't like was involved in its production.

Re: James Watson has died

#276

Post by xtiansimon »

xtiansimon wrote: post #228
jaaustin wrote: post #102

I want to use this opportunity to shill possibly the best history of science ever written: The Eighth Day of Creation [1], which describes the history of structural biology, including Watson’s various contributions. He comes across as a precocious asshole, not without talent but with a stronger eye towards self-advancement. [1] https://www.cshlpress.com/default.tpl?cart=17625586661954464...

> “…this opportunity to shill…” Oh? Care to reveal your stake in the success of the book?

Whatever, you said “shill”, which means you’re usually an inside man.

Re: James Watson has died

#277

Post by pazimzadeh »

inglor_cz wrote: post #270
pazimzadeh wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reason western civilization is afraid of the idea of inherent genetic limitations to intelligence is because the logical next step would not be focusing on education, but probably restarting some form of eugenics or genetic engineering of our progeny, and the last time that happened it didn't go very well. Also, much of 'western civilization' is founded on treating people as if they are equal, so the idea…

In my previous comment, I was talking quite explicitly about political taboos, not societal taboos. When I was a kid, the general population of Czechoslovakia would not be shocked by a joke about stupid drunken Soviet Communists, but if someone snitched on you, that joke would still land you in prison. As with Iran (and I noticed your Persian handle), I absolutely understand that there is a lot of agnostic and skepti…

I don't see what your definition of 'political taboo', which seems to be related to top-down restrictions on speech or behavior, has to do James Watson's remarks.

There are few explicit or implicit rules about making racist claims that don't incite violence/hatred in most western countries (unlike the example you gave in Iran), or if they are, Watson didn't seem to suffer much for 'breaching the taboo'. Watson was shunned by the public and lost some scientific prestige/status because he didn't provide any evidence for his huge claims.

    An editorial in Nature said that his remarks were "beyond the pale" but expressed a wish that the tour had not been canceled so that Watson would have had to face his critics in person, encouraging scientific discussion on the matter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watson#Public_remarks_on...

I think there's a big taboo against making huge claims that aren't supported by anything other than your own authority (such as Linus Pauling claiming that Vitamin C can cure cancer), and an even bigger taboo when those claims are explicitly ranking groups of humans on the basis of their genetics or even vaguely defined features like intelligence.

I find it interesting that you're spending so much time talking about the presence of this taboo but no time at all analyzing or evaluating the actual claims. Because if the claims are false, who cares if they're taboo? Are all taboos bad? Is it a good outcome if we get to a point where all countries have the same taboos?

> If we are slowly conquering cancer, which once seemed intractable, we could slowly conquer stupidity as well, but that requires knowing something about the subject first, instead of blindly trusting some faith.

First we need to have good definitions for intelligence or stupidity. I don't particularly like IQ as a proxy for overall intelligence but if you are defining it using IQ, scores are slowly improving at the population level with hispanics and blacks gaining on whites.

Future Cognitive Ability: US IQ Prediction until 2060 Based on NAEP https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4603674

Re: James Watson has died

#278

Post by woleium »

aoasadflkjafl wrote: post #142
jaaustin wrote: post #102

I want to use this opportunity to shill possibly the best history of science ever written: The Eighth Day of Creation [1], which describes the history of structural biology, including Watson’s various contributions. He comes across as a precocious asshole, not without talent but with a stronger eye towards self-advancement. [1] https://www.cshlpress.com/default.tpl?cart=17625586661954464...

I am adjacent to the field, have read old perspectives, and have worked closely with some of that milieu's students, so that I have gotten my share of gossip from octogenerians who still pick sides in all of this. To spread some of that gossip, one opinion worth mentioning is that the only "real genius" among that group (including Franklin and Wilkins) was actually Crick, and that Watson was precocious but that his r…

it is also of note that Watson repeatedly made public statements, starting in 2007, asserting that he believed Black people are inherently less intelligent than white people, attributing this to genetics, a claim broadly denounced by scientists and the public as racist and scientifically invalid.
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