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Well, I'm sorry to say this, but part of what makes authority Authority is that your respect is not always required. Frankly, in this case Authority is going to start deleting your comments if you keep on telling newcomers who post in the Welcome thread not to read the QM sequence, which you've done quite a few times at this point unless my memory is failing me. You disagree with MWI. Okay. I get it. We all get it. I still want the next Mihaly to read the QM Sequence and I don't want to have this conversation every time, nor is it an appropriate greeting for every newcomer.
Would it not be far more constructive to rewrite (or invite an rewrite of) the QM sequences to be more balanced?
He is trying to make a point about genes being involved, more than the environment, in some specific phenomenon,
I'm trying to make the point that we don't know which is more involved.
If you are trying to do that, you are not communicating effectively;
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.
You might as well bow out before busting out the ad homs.
That was not an ad hom.
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.
He is trying to make a point about genes being involved, more than the environment, in some specific phenomenon, that is worth of interest and discussion. The onus is therefore on him to support the specific claim he is making. I don't have to demonstrate that genes never had anything to do with anything, any more than he has to demonstrate that the environment never had anything to do with anything.
How about putting forward some real evidence of racial (qua DNA, not qua cultural-goroup-as-defined-in-the-US) causes before complaining about a conspiracy to suppress it.
Do you have evidence that it's not genetic? Most of the evidence I've seen for this claim has been laughably bad.
Two typical examples are: attempting to argue that since race as received doesn't correspond 100% precisely with any genetic definition, race is a pure social construct. The other is siting environmental differences that could just as easily be caused by the differences they purport to explain.
The strongest evidence is that a priori there is not reason to expect populations that have historically been geographically separate to have the same distribution of IQ.
As far as specific evidence: Other groups in the US, e.g., Jews, Irish, Asians, have also been discriminated against but where able to overcome it. The blacks in Africa aren't doing so well either.
Yes, these aren't particularly strong evidence, but neither is the evidence against the gentic hypothesis.
Do you have evidence that it's not genetic?
Is that an argument from ignorance?
The strongest evidence is that a priori there is not reason to expect populations that have historically been geographically separate to have the same distribution of IQ.
And there is no reason to expect that to explain the "behavioural differences" you are concerned with, or to overwhelm individual variations (Lewontin)
As far as specific evidence: Other groups in the US, e.g., Jews, Irish, Asians, have also been discriminated against but where able to overcome it.
Gee, well it's not like you're contributing to that problem.
The blacks in Africa aren't doing so well either.
Yeah. And their environmental and political history is identical to Europe's, so it's just got to be genes, right.
In my limited experience, the "hard problems" in philosophy are the problems which are either poorly defined and so people keep arguing about definitions without admitting it, or poorly analyzed, so people keep mixing decision theory with cognitive science, for example.
See also how many of the comments in this thread amounted to “if by sound you mean ‘acoustic wave’ it does, if you mean ‘auditory sensation’ it doesn't”.
I'm not sure what the connotation of that is supposed to be. Phils. aren't dumb people who fail to understand that words can mean different things in different contexts; they are in fact more likely than anyone to assume that a dispute is a dispute about definitions.
In my limited experience, the "hard problems" in philosophy are the problems which are either poorly defined and so people keep arguing about definitions without admitting it, or poorly analyzed, so people keep mixing decision theory with cognitive science, for example. While the traditional philosophy is good at asking (meta-)questions and noticing broad similarities, it is nearly useless at solving them. When a philosopher tries to honestly analyze a deep question, it usually stops being philosophy and becomes logic, linguistics, decision theory, computer science, physics or something else that qualifies as science. Hence Pearl and Kahneman and Russell, some Wittgenstein, Popper...
I raised the epistemology example for a reason. Can you give an example of someone solving that problem, or a similar one? Can you argue that it is possible to solve all such foundational problems?
When have you shown any interest in controlling for the effects of environment?
I never said I knew what caused the racial differences in question. There are certainly policy issues where the cause is relevant (incidentally addressing it requires admitting that the differences exist), there are issues where it's less relevant.
Incidentally, in the example I sited in the great-grandparent it was the anthropologists who had declared that official policy was to deny all environmental explanations.
I never said I knew what caused the racial differences in question.
Re-read that sentence. Merely calling something "racial" has a strong connotation that the cause is genetic.
Incidentally, in the example I sited in the great-grandparent it was the anthropologists who had declared that official policy was to deny all environmental explanations.
How about putting forward some real evidence of racial (qua DNA, not qua cultural-goroup-as-defined-in-the-US) causes before complaining about a conspiracy to suppress it.
And anyway, Somalia is hardly representative of Africa in general.
Also DR Congo, Zimbabwe, to name two of the more well-known examples.
Again; you are observing correlations between socio-economic status and behaviour, and socio economic status happens to coincide with race in the US.
Except that poor white neighborhoods are much safer then poor black neighborhoods.
African nations are not inhabited by legions of muggers all mugging each other
Um, now that you mention it, this is not a bad description of the politics of a number of African nations.
Except that poor white neighborhoods are much safer then poor black neighborhoods
...in the US.
Um, now that you mention it, this is not a bad description of the politics of a number of African nations.
It's not at all good. A few rich people exploiting a lot of poor ones is not the same as a few poor people robbing a few wealthier ones. And,it is not as if the politics of most African countries now is so very different from the politics of most European ones up until a few centuries ago; There's no gene for fair government either.
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“Collect evidence about your environment from various sources; update your model of reality based on evidence collected; act in accordance with what your model of reality indicates is best for achieving your goals; repeat continually forever” would be a great candidate for The One Sentence.
Well, it neatly leaves out all the fiddle-faddle about having the right goals.