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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   32426 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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You are of course aware we are able to control for being raised middle class and having a two-parent household, correct?

I am aware, the question is are you?

Am I aware of what? That your proposed examples are baked in already? why would this support your position?

Essentially what @PutAHelmetOn said, by controlling for factors that are not genetics you are effectively baking the assumption that genetics is the primary causal factor into your study.

As for whether the cultural explanation is "monstrous" well that's one of the fundamental points of disagreement between the blue tribe and the red.

It is a lie.

If we study fighting abilities of men vs women, controlling for upper body muscle mass, does it bake in assumption that form of genitals is more important to fighting than muscle?

This seems like a confused idea around what controlling for factors means. If the difference persists after the controlling then those factors are not responsible for the difference. If the difference goes away then the controlled factors are shown to actually be causal. If you could control 100% of non genetic factors you'd have an exact measure of the genetic component's impact. If you could control 100% of genetic factors then you'd get an exact measure of environment.

This seems like a confused idea around what controlling for factors means. If the difference persists after the controlling then those factors are not responsible for the difference. If the difference goes away then the controlled factors are shown to actually be causal.

Yes, I get that and my point is that this cuts both ways. IE when you control for genetics the differences don't go away. A cynic such as myself might suspect that this is why HBDist seem to hate talking about effect sizes

IE when you control for genetics the differences don't go away.

source?

FWIW, there's large environmental differences between rich countries (like yours) and poor countries, but this usually isn't talked much about.

Yes there are, and we don't talk about them here because because their existence undermines both the CRT and HBD narratives preffered by progressive academics and supports the cultural narrative preferred by the trad-right.

If you control for genetics and the difference doesn't go away then you have found the environmental difference. If it's equal to the total difference then I'd be interested in what studies you're talking about.

What was it that you said? If the difference persists after the controlling then those factors are not responsible for the difference. The sword cuts both ways.

Yes, again I'm unsure why you think this is bad for hbd.

It's not bad per se, but it's not "good" either which is my actual point. IE it doesn't actually prove what the HBDists seem to think it prove. Motte meet Bailey.

More comments

Not the poster you replied to but I hope I don't do his argument a disservice.

Maybe being raised in a middle class house with two parents causes good outcomes, just like genes cause good outcomes. Then, controlling for one would show a correlation with the other (and outcomes).

How do studies usually show "greater effect" in situations like these? Do two studies with different controls and compare at the correlations? How is "greater effect" defined?

One typically compares outcomes of identical twins vs. fraternal twins (who are as related to each other as regular siblings). If the correlation between identical twins is the same as correlation between fraternal twins, it means that it’s probably not genes that are causing the outcomes. If, instead, outcomes of identical twins are more highly correlated than outcomes of fraternal twins, that suggests that the casuality is genetic. This is because both fraternal and identical twins are sharing the same home environment (of, say, middle class home with two parents), so if it was the shared environment that was causing all of the outcomes, you wouldn’t expect the correlation between outcomes of identical twins to be different than that of fraternal twins.

The traditional method is to look at twins raised separately. The genes are held constant because twins but with different environments. To cut it all short most measures correlate much more strongly with birth parent than adoptive parent.

Not really, twins raised apart are rather too rare to be practically useful. Instead, one typically compares identical twins vs fraternal twins or non-twin siblings, or biological siblings vs adopted siblings.

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