Kawoomba comments on Don't Get Offended - Less Wrong

32 Post author: katydee 07 March 2013 02:11AM

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Comment author: Kawoomba 28 March 2013 01:13:19PM *  5 points [-]

Gee, well it's not like you're contributing to that problem.

You might as well bow out before busting out the ad homs.

so it's just got to be genes, right

Eugine_Nier never said it was "just" the genes, on the contrary. If you were making the claim that genes are not involved, the onus is on you to show so. Asking for evidence isn't an argument from ignorance. It would be astounding if there were genetic variations leading to endless variations in everything except cognition. The default assumption (even with no cognition-specific data) is "everything is affected by genetics". The degree may well be lower than individual variations, it would still shift the mean and lead to an overall difference between groups.

Comment author: TimS 28 March 2013 01:40:48PM -2 points [-]

so it's just got to be genes, right

Eugine_Nier never said it was "just" the genes,

I have heard the term "heritable" used to mean something like: "Parental life outcomes are strong predictors of child life outcomes, and both outcomes will likely be similar." At that level of abstraction, heritability is a true phenomena. But that says nothing about mechanism. The two obvious candidates are:

  • genetics
  • environment

Eugine seems to be rejecting environment, so I'm not sure what he thinks is the causal mechanism for heritability, if not genetics or similar unalterable in-born traits.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 30 March 2013 06:08:56AM 5 points [-]

I'm not rejecting environmental causes, I'm objecting to whowhowho's claim that genetic causes aren't even worth discussing.