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How is it disturbing? Almost every aspect of human individuals is a random variable. What's wrong with intelligence being a random variable too, which could dep

How is it disturbing? Almost every aspect of human individuals is a random variable. What's wrong with intelligence being a random variable too, which could depend on some other aspect of the individual? I think making this a scary fact is what promotes the problems in discourse we see on this topic.

rlanday 9y ago
Intelligence is essentially what separates humans from other animals, and why we believe human lives to be more morally significant than the lives of other animals. To acknowledge that some people are smarter than others is essentially to acknowledge that their lives are worth more under humanity's current moral system.
- cmiles74 9y ago
  And if you read the above statement and think "I certainly do not think that way, that's nuts", keep in mind how many others may read it and think "Well, that's science for you; heartless but honest." That is my primary issue with this line of research. Clearly it can't be banned or made illegal, but I think it's worth acknowledging that racism and sexism are significant problems and to spend a little time considering how this line of research will make these problems even more intractable.
- Magnusmaster 9y ago
  Not only that, it also means people will likely try to "solve" poverty in Africa and elsewhere by getting rid of the natives and populate it with higher IQ people, as eugenecists were proposing right after Darwin came up with his theory of evolution.
metaphorm 9y ago
> Almost every aspect of human individuals is a random variable. that's not even close to true. on the most basic level, you agree that certain traits are heritable in totally predictable ways, yes? eye color is an example of this.
- jusssi 9y ago
  And people who have mismatched eye color? Totally predictable? There's more to the output than the blueprint.
- wutbrodo 9y ago
  > that's not even close to true. on the most basic level, you agree that certain traits are heritable in totally predictable ways, yes? eye color is an example of this. Eye color inheritance isn't "totally predictable"; this is so obviously wrong to anyone who's ever met more than a couple humans that perhaps I'm misunderstanding the assertion you're making here. Come to think of it, I think you might be saying that _conditioned on the alleles you receive_, there are traits that are fully predictable. In that case, I think you're just misunderstanding the comment you're responding to, since conditioning on the alleles received is begging the question. Alternatively, you may not know what a random variable is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_variable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_variable. It doesn't mean that the trait is "random" in the colloquial sense of uniform distribution across all possible values.
  - metaphorm 9y ago
    Eye color in humans pretty closely follows the Dominant/recessive allele characteristics from classic Mendelian genetics. If you show me a person's family tree and I notice that all 4 of their grandparents have brown eyes I can predict with almost total certainty (barring new mutations or epigenetic effects) that they will have brown eyes. other combinations of eye color at the grandparents lead to predictable distributions of the expression of that trait in the grandchild generation. this may be what was meant by "random variable", but it's really a population effect so modeling it as a random variable is peculiar. it's not random at the level of the individual, or at least it isn't after the recombination phase of fertilization in the embryo. given a genetic sample of an individual it is totally predictable what their eye color will be based on examining their genes. I don't see how this is begging the question.
    - wutbrodo 9y ago
      > given a genetic sample of an individual it is totally predictable what their eye color will be based on examining their genes. I don't see how this is begging the question. Right, this is what I suspected you may have been saying. I think we were talking past each other a bit. I still don't think it makes much sense to challenge someone who says "X is a random variable" by saying "that's not remotely true, X is not a random variable if you condition on the probabilistic component of X". Well, duh.
flukus 9y ago
Sexual selection contains much of that randomness.

rlanday 9y ago

Intelligence is essentially what separates humans from other animals, and why we believe human lives to be more morally significant than the lives of other animals. To acknowledge that some people are smarter than others is essentially to acknowledge that their lives are worth more under humanity's current moral system.

cmiles74 9y ago
And if you read the above statement and think "I certainly do not think that way, that's nuts", keep in mind how many others may read it and think "Well, that's science for you; heartless but honest." That is my primary issue with this line of research. Clearly it can't be banned or made illegal, but I think it's worth acknowledging that racism and sexism are significant problems and to spend a little time considering how this line of research will make these problems even more intractable.
Magnusmaster 9y ago
Not only that, it also means people will likely try to "solve" poverty in Africa and elsewhere by getting rid of the natives and populate it with higher IQ people, as eugenecists were proposing right after Darwin came up with his theory of evolution.

metaphorm 9y ago

> Almost every aspect of human individuals is a random variable. that's not even close to true. on the most basic level, you agree that certain traits are heritable in totally predictable ways, yes? eye color is an example of this.

jusssi 9y ago
And people who have mismatched eye color? Totally predictable? There's more to the output than the blueprint.
wutbrodo 9y ago
> that's not even close to true. on the most basic level, you agree that certain traits are heritable in totally predictable ways, yes? eye color is an example of this. Eye color inheritance isn't "totally predictable"; this is so obviously wrong to anyone who's ever met more than a couple humans that perhaps I'm misunderstanding the assertion you're making here. Come to think of it, I think you might be saying that _conditioned on the alleles you receive_, there are traits that are fully predictable. In that case, I think you're just misunderstanding the comment you're responding to, since conditioning on the alleles received is begging the question. Alternatively, you may not know what a random variable is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_variable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_variable. It doesn't mean that the trait is "random" in the colloquial sense of uniform distribution across all possible values.
- metaphorm 9y ago
  Eye color in humans pretty closely follows the Dominant/recessive allele characteristics from classic Mendelian genetics. If you show me a person's family tree and I notice that all 4 of their grandparents have brown eyes I can predict with almost total certainty (barring new mutations or epigenetic effects) that they will have brown eyes. other combinations of eye color at the grandparents lead to predictable distributions of the expression of that trait in the grandchild generation. this may be what was meant by "random variable", but it's really a population effect so modeling it as a random variable is peculiar. it's not random at the level of the individual, or at least it isn't after the recombination phase of fertilization in the embryo. given a genetic sample of an individual it is totally predictable what their eye color will be based on examining their genes. I don't see how this is begging the question.
  - wutbrodo 9y ago
    > given a genetic sample of an individual it is totally predictable what their eye color will be based on examining their genes. I don't see how this is begging the question. Right, this is what I suspected you may have been saying. I think we were talking past each other a bit. I still don't think it makes much sense to challenge someone who says "X is a random variable" by saying "that's not remotely true, X is not a random variable if you condition on the probabilistic component of X". Well, duh.

flukus 9y ago

Sexual selection contains much of that randomness.