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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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But so what if it is due to people treating you phenotypically? This is still genetic causation. It might indeed be interesting to some to figure out exactly through what mechanisms differences in genes result differences in income, but how exactly is this relevant for our ability to predict real world outcome of our policies? Can you show one example where “naive” (according to you) HBD would get some real world application seriously wrong, compared to approach informed by your phenotypic casual pathway correction?

I'm not talking about how things morally ought to be, I'm trying to figure out how the world is actually like. For the purpose of e.g. doing evolutionary psychology, such as with the linked study, it is relevant to know that heritability is of no evidentiary value.

it is relevant to know that heritability is of no evidentiary value.

You have not shown this. You've merely shown that heritability is not 100% ironclad.

I await your answer as to which concrete predictions HBDers will get wrong due to neglect of this.

Dude, read a few twin studies, they find that pretty much everything is heritable, of course heritability is of no evidentiary value.

Dude, read a few twin studies, they find that pretty much everything is heritable, of course heritability is of no evidentiary value.

Really? Twin studies suggest that a Korean baby raised by Americans will speak Korean? An Indian baby raised by Mormon parents will grow up Hindu?

There's plenty of non-heritable traits. Hence, heritability has evidentiary value.

Language and kind of also religion would be an exception, yes.

But beyond those exceptions, and a few others, it seems to me that there are an enormous number of traits where heritability shows up. Already at vocabulary and religiosity do you see a ton of heritability. Pretty much all personality traits and all interests are heritable. Of course the classic HBD point is that abilities tend to be heritable and highly genetically correlated. Relationship to parents, peers and teachers is heritable, I believe. Having a dog in your mid-life is heritable. Etc.

The point is that pretty much everything is heritable, so the prior for heritability is extremely high, not that absolutely everything is heritable.

I'm glad you've agreed that twin studies have at least some evidentiary value. Thanks to twin studies we know that intelligence and many personality traits might be genetic but native language definitely isn't.

Now the question is simply how much non-zero evidentiary value twin studies have. Perhaps you have something to contribute on that topic, but I suspect not.

This is probably the lousiest attempt at making an argument that I have seen here. The only way you could have made it worse is if you waved a credential.

I don't need to attempt hard to make an argument if the issue is very straightforward. If P(B) is high then P(A|B) ~ P(A).

I am not asking you how things morally ought to be. What I am asking you is to provide an example of a peril that awaits HBDers if they ignore your pet concern. Is there any?

You need to understand that for me and many people, the entire point of research in this (and many other) area is to guide our real world behavior, policy making, and to answer questions like “if we want to achieve X, will doing Y work? If not, what will?”. Can you provide any non artificial example of a scenario where naively taking heritability as representing “direct biological” (whatever one understands by that) casual mechanism, will lead us to substantially different policy than when one observes that genes only actually act through phenotype, and it’s the phenotype that interacts with the real world?

I'm much more interested in the science side of things than the policy side of things, so I don't really have any strong examples at hand. It's just that I think that obviously people who refuse to understand the phenotypic null hypothesis should be purged from discussions of behavior genetics, so if HBDers don't like getting purged from discussions they should make sure to understand it.

What about purging people like Turkheimer, who explicitly put their ideology above science? Are you giving them a pass, and instead prefer to focus on those who inappropriately address your methodological pet concern?

Look, to me, you seem to be more interested in purging people and silencing the discussion, instead of in using science to learn about reality and have these learning inform our behavior and policy. You can’t even provide any example why your pet concern is relevant for me at all! I think you are wasting everyone’s time, and I think this behavior should be purged from the discussions. If you don’t like your pet concern being ignored, you should make sure to understand it.

What about purging people like Turkheimer, who explicitly put their ideology above science? Are you giving them a pass, and instead prefer to focus on those who inappropriately address your methodological pet concern?

Look, to me, you seem to be more interested in purging people and silencing the discussion, instead of in using science to learn about reality and have these learning inform our behavior and policy.

I am interested in promoting people who can help me learn things and purging people who introduce noise and waste time.

It just so happens that there are a number of very general principles that must be taken into account, as they affect the results everywhere you go. HBD is one of them! For instance, racial differences in intelligence cause a whole bunch of racial inequality in outcomes, and if you don't realize that, there's going to be a comprehensive mysterious pattern, which might make you falsely infer something like "everything is racist". However, the phenotypic null hypothesis is another one! Phenotypic causality causes a whole bunch of heritability and genetic correlations, and if you don't realize that, there's going to be a comprehensive mysterious pattern, which might make you falsely infer some sort of genetic solipsism (especially in combination with measurement error, which suppresses environmental correlations).

If someone keeps spamming racial inequality studies and talking about structural racism, while being difficult to convince to even think of alternate hypotheses, then a healthy behavior genetics group should consider purging them and finding someone more productive to talk to. But if someone keeps spamming twin studies and talking about genetics, while being difficult to convince to even think of alternate hypotheses, then a healthy behavior genetics group should again purge them.

Why? Partly to avoid noise and waste, but also partly to align incentives to actually learning things, and so on.

You can’t even provide any example why your pet concern is relevant for me at all!

You're not interested in behavior genetics, you admit so yourself! Of course a key principle of behavior genetics is not going to be interesting to you.

Key principle of behavior genetics

>Not a single mention in literature until 2002

LOL

In practice, the one side's bad things is slopppy statements (esp. in Twitter where format encourages them) and the other's side bad things are both sloppy statements and coordinated attacks on non-sloppy researchers from other side. There is no symmetry in what you're suggesting.

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