5 ms·

> I don't think you'll find anyone who earnestly believes that all people are equally intelligent, or equally strong, or equally funny, or whatever. What you'

> I don't think you'll find anyone who earnestly believes that all people are equally intelligent, or equally strong, or equally funny, or whatever. What you'll have are people who argue that if people who aren't as intelligent, or as strong, or as funny just had access to the same set of circumstances as Intelligent Person X, Strong Person Y, and Funny Person Z, the "underperforming" - for lack of a better adjective - people would be just as good. That's simply not true and we know enough about the brain, about DNA and heritability, and about environment to know it's not true. But there's a section of people who don't want to admit that, because it'll shatter their worldview completely and they'll have to re-evaluate a lot of things... but really what it'll do is force them to think for themselves instead of just being told how they need to feel, and that's from where the real discomfort comes, because when you're forced to think for yourself - truly think for yourself, not cite some study... not cite some expert, but actually think and reason with only your own capabilities, you may find that 1) it's hard and 2) you come to some thoughts that clash with your feelings.

api 5y ago
> What you'll have are people who argue that if people who aren't as intelligent, or as strong, or as funny just had access to the same set of circumstances as Intelligent Person X, Strong Person Y, and Funny Person Z, the "underperforming" - for lack of a better adjective - people would be just as good. No, that's not really what most of them are arguing. What most of them are arguing is that we should try to minimize the detrimental effect of the environment and maximize access to enrichment to maximize our "return" on whatever heritable potential we have. We know phenotype is always a mix of heritable traits and environment. Development is guided by genetics but it is an embodied process. If the environment is shitty, which it is for a great many people, then that's an obvious place to look if said group is under-performing. If a group of people are being constantly told they're inferior or treated worse than others, that's another obvious place to look... especially since we have research on "social self-limitation" that demonstrates that humans will to some extent perform to expectation whether the expectation is high or low. Improving the environment is the low-hanging fruit. Only then does it make sense to look at heritable traits. By then we might have a better understanding of our own genetics and more precise tools than CRISPR-CAS9.
- SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
  Well, any argument about "most" is ultimately going to come down to how you define the reference class. If you're saying that it's not a common, influential view, I definitely don't agree; for example, my state published a school curriculum revision just yesterday which states "we reject ideas of natural gifts and talents". A lot of people really do work under the assumption that there's no such thing as non-environmental variation.

api 5y ago

> What you'll have are people who argue that if people who aren't as intelligent, or as strong, or as funny just had access to the same set of circumstances as Intelligent Person X, Strong Person Y, and Funny Person Z, the "underperforming" - for lack of a better adjective - people would be just as good. No, that's not really what most of them are arguing. What most of them are arguing is that we should try to minimize the detrimental effect of the environment and maximize access to enrichment to maximize our "return" on whatever heritable potential we have. We know phenotype is always a mix of heritable traits and environment. Development is guided by genetics but it is an embodied process. If the environment is shitty, which it is for a great many people, then that's an obvious place to look if said group is under-performing. If a group of people are being constantly told they're inferior or treated worse than others, that's another obvious place to look... especially since we have research on "social self-limitation" that demonstrates that humans will to some extent perform to expectation whether the expectation is high or low. Improving the environment is the low-hanging fruit. Only then does it make sense to look at heritable traits. By then we might have a better understanding of our own genetics and more precise tools than CRISPR-CAS9.

SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
Well, any argument about "most" is ultimately going to come down to how you define the reference class. If you're saying that it's not a common, influential view, I definitely don't agree; for example, my state published a school curriculum revision just yesterday which states "we reject ideas of natural gifts and talents". A lot of people really do work under the assumption that there's no such thing as non-environmental variation.