NancyLebovitz comments on Review: Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids - Less Wrong

17 Post author: jsalvatier 29 May 2012 06:00PM

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Comment author: RichardKennaway 31 May 2012 05:12:04PM *  1 point [-]

As for heritability studies, you are certainly right that there is a lot of shoddy work, and by necessity they make a whole lot of wildly simplifying assumptions. If there existed only a handful of such studies, one would be well advised not to take them very seriously. However, the amount of data that has been gathered in recent decades is just too overwhelming to dismiss,

Piling up shoddy evidence does not make good evidence. (And it still doesn't if you -- that's the impersonal "you", not you in particular -- call it "Bayesian evidence".)

especially taking into account that often there have been considerable ideological incentives to support the opposite conclusions.

There are considerable ideological incentives on both sides.

The Sesardic book you recommended is in my university library, but when I went to look at it, I found at least a shelf-foot of books on the subject, some (I could tell just from the authors' names) on one side, some on the other. So I didn't bother looking any further and left all the books there. I could read Sesardic saying what you say he says, but then I could read Kamin arguing the opposite, and in that situation, to form a view of my own with any real basis I'd have to research the subject enough to write a book of my own. I have other things to do. Such is the nature of controversies: they cannot be settled by saying "read this book".

One observation though, that I haven't seen made on either side. Failing to find strong genetic causes for something does not imply that it's the environment; failing to find strong environmental causes does not imply that it's the genes; failing to find either does not imply that it's the interaction of genes and environment. I believe I've seen (but no cites) all three wrong arguments being made from time to time. All that failing to find the causes implies is that we have failed to find the causes.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 01 June 2012 09:21:41AM 1 point [-]

The Sesardic book you recommended is in my university library, but when I went to look at it, I found at least a shelf-foot of books on the subject, some (I could tell just from the authors' names) on one side, some on the other.

I can imagine the titles giving clues to the slant of a book, but how do you make such deductions from the authors' names?

Comment author: RichardKennaway 01 June 2012 04:30:11PM *  3 points [-]

By already knowing who they are and their general views on the subject. Kamin will say environment, Pinker will say genes, Gould will say environment, and Sesardic, I have learned, will say genes. And if in doubt, the publisher's blurb will tell me all I need to know if I'm not going to do my own extensive research.

In fact, the situation is even worse: to have a real view of my own, not only would I have to acquire expertise sufficient to write my own book, I would have to achieve substantially greater expertise than all of the people whose conclusions I ended up disagreeing with, in order to have reasonable grounds to think that I was right and they were wrong.

Who has the time?