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snarles comments on Reason as memetic immune disorder - Less Wrong
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You're right.
Some of the people making the claim probably have a more nuanced interpretation in mind. Many people repeating the claim have the simple interpretation in mind; or may have the nuanced interpretation, but are stating it in a way that they hope will be misinterpreted, yet give them plausible deniability.
I don't remember now what the original "respectable geneticists" said. I have seen a summary of their work in Science magazine that used the simple interpretation. Does anyone have a link to some of the original publications?
I'm not sure if Phil got the details right - but there are definitely a whole bunch of otherwise well-educated people who happily spout politically-correct nonsense on the issues of race and equality as though it was actually scientific truth. They typically cite Lewontin - but they ignore Lewontin's fallacy.
Thank you for the mention of Lewontin's Fallacy. I have been stuck trying to remember the name of that fallacy for half a year (although, to be fair, I had not looked very hard to find out its name), due to a discussion on the Forums at the Richard Dawkins' website.
I am amazed at the level of discourse that many discussions on that site fall to. There are a number of very bright people there, yet it seems that many commit all manner of fallacies in the name of either political correctness, or because they fear giving ground to irrational theists/theism. A great example is about the term belief. Many on the RDF state that they "Have no Beliefs," yet fail to realize that this statement itself is a belief.
They have had many discussions in which the issue of race has come up, and I remembered reading about Lewontin, yet could not recall his name... Thanks, again.
Don't be too hard on them for that!
"Belief" is an overloaded word. Some use it to mean a p=1 concept, while others use it to mean a p > 0.95 concept. Of course, p=1 ideas are crazy faith issues, but some people seem to sustain them. The "I have no beliefs" crowd just mean to say that they "have no p=1 beliefs that they hold with absolute faith" - which is a fair enough thing to observe.
I wish that were the case, but it seems to me that the "I have no beliefs" crowd that I am familiar with means that they have no beliefs for which P<1.
In other words, they either know something with absolute certainty, or they give it no credence whatsoever.
I can't think of how many times I have told them that they need to both reclaim the word "Belief" and to understand that they have many things for which P≠1 (P<1, but greater than .5, or some other arbitrary number for which they will accept some information as being true).
Yet, sometimes the certainties of faith get assumed by those without faith (of the religious kind)
I removed the not-very-good example, but I don't want to remove the final section. It is lower quality. What bothers me more is that it doesn't have a proper conclusive feeling about it; it doesn't tie the post together and wrap it up in a satisfying way.
Phil,
If you are looking for others' thoughts that may be able to tie your post together, you might want to read the Douglas Adams Artificial god that I cite here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/18b/reason_as_memetic_immune_disorder/14az