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This heritability redefinition thing is just a bad-faith move by people on the left to avoid the debate in my opinion. The standard historical understanding of
by sfblah 4y ago
This heritability redefinition thing is just a bad-faith move by people on the left to avoid the debate in my opinion. The standard historical understanding of the word "heritability" is exactly what you said. It's like redefining gender or sex or the like.
- tptacek 4y agoYou're just waiting for someone to attempt this argument, and now you have, and so I get to make the simple observation: the research results establishing heritability use the actual scientific definition of heritability, not whatever definition is most intuitive to you. When you reference those results while redefining terms they're using, you invent new, bogus results out of whole cloth. That this happened here is evident from the fact that you've been reduced to arguments like "IQ is genetically determined because my cat can't play chess".
- sfblah 4y agoNo. This definition of heritability is an obvious wokeism. https://www.etymonline.com/word/heritable#:~:text=%22capable%20of%20being%20inherited%2C%20inheritable,Related%3A%20Heritability https://www.etymonline.com/word/heritable#:~:text=%22capable.... https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/heritability https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/heritabi... The Cambridge definition linked just above is particularly on point: "The ability of a disease or characteristic to be passed from a parent or grandparent to a child through the genes" -- Yes, I know it's convenient to redefine terms like gender and heritability to fit what's politically popular. I get it. But, don't gaslight me by telling me I'm redefining the words. As you can see, I could have used this word in 1300s France and been understood as speaking about traits derived from one's parents through being their offspring. -- As for my argument about a cat playing chess, I'm just trying to give you the simplest possible example so you can see that your doctrinaire position on this subject is insane.
- tptacek 4y agoThe definition I've offered you is the same one Richard Lynn uses.
- sfblah 4y agoBefore this thread I didn't even know who Richard Lynn was. Now I do, but I don't care. Look, I gave you the etymology of the word and the current definition. Both disagree with your wokeism. This is getting tiresome.
- tptacek 4y agoIn case the subtext wasn't clear, the definition I'm providing for "heritability" is the scientific definition, and has been for decades. My understanding is that it comes from woke biostatisticians like Karl Pearson, who applied it to the woke problem of working out how to select and propagate characteristics in agricultural products, back in the woke 1930s. Somebody can correct me on this if I have the chronology wrong. I'm happy to keep going on like this, because you're surfacing a lot of pernicious "race science" myths in their absolute most easily rebutted form, which is (and here truly there is no snark intended) a sort of service to the thread.
- sfblah 4y agohttps://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/genetics-dictionary/def/heritability https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/genetics-di... I quote, from the National Cancer Institute (a scientific institution you may have heard of): "The proportion of variation in a population trait that can be attributed to inherited genetic factors." You're just lying or misinformed. Either way, it's starting to get hard to be civil with you.
- tptacek 4y agoI don't think you understand the words you just quoted, since they (obviously) support my argument, not yours.