gwern comments on September 2015 Media Thread - Less Wrong

4 Post author: ArisKatsaris 01 September 2015 10:42PM

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Comment author: gwern 07 September 2015 04:12:54PM 2 points [-]

Gwern, why do you categorise genetics under everything is heritable while other topics are given traditional names?

That's not quite right. I categorise genetics research under biology/psychology. What goes under 'everything is heritable' is specifically, behavioral genetics and all research undermining the default blank-slate, standard-social-model, cultural-marxist views which are still so overwhelmingly dominant in sociology, anthropology, psychology, and politics. By pulling them out like that, I help highlight that there is a large, old, well-developed, repeatedly empirically confirmed, consistent body of theory & results which is continually growing and confirming the genetic underpinnings and which gives us strong predictions & priors about many phenomenon - rather than some ad hoc, unprincipled, idiosyncratic one-offs & anomalies which apply to only a handful of things, if even that.

Any particular news sites or hubs your frequent?

Reddit, Hacker News, my RSS feeds, following citations in papers, that sort of thing.