4 ms·

Will a kid born to Scottish parents who was separated at birth and raised by Chinese parents in China also speak in a Scottish accent? Or are you just giving in

Will a kid born to Scottish parents who was separated at birth and raised by Chinese parents in China also speak in a Scottish accent? Or are you just giving insanely strawmannish arguments no one actually presents?

whimsicalism 2y ago
they’re making a (correct) point about causality and geographic gene variance
- elevatedastalt 2y ago
  No, they are giving an absurd example in order to create the implication that heritability is a meaningless concept.
  - mjburgess 2y ago
    Heritability is a population statistic, individuals dont have "heritability". So it doesnt apply to any "kid" anywhere. It's a practically useless concept outside of extremely narrow fields of biology, where you can control causes or otherwise eliminate genetic variation. In the vast majority of cases where people use 'heritability', it is useless. Knowing how much a trait varies, or fails to vary, with genes tells you nothing about whether its inherited. Under stable genetic equilibrium near universally inherited traits will have a heritability of zero; and under cultural, social, geographical etc. selection of mates, 0% inherited traits will be arbitrarily close to 100% heritability. It's a statistics designed for cases where the experimenter is actually controlling the genetic variance (ie., breeding plants) across populations; it's otherwise meaningless. Consider a security guard who forces all past shoplifters to wear a tag. Under such an induced causal relationship, wearing a red tag becomes predictive of future criminal behaviour. Otherwise, it's useless. Likewise, when an experimenter is inducing genetic varience, then it becomes explanatory and predictive; otherwise, it's useless.
    - elevatedastalt 2y ago
      Yes, heritability is a population statistic for specific traits. I don't think anyone is arguing that individuals have heritability, just like individuals can't be "diverse". > Knowing how much a trait varies, or fails to vary, with genes tells you nothing about whether its inherited. I am not sure what this is trying to convey. Because I think there's clear cases where stuff is inheritable, and clear cases where stuff isn't, and that's a very meaningful distinction to make from a sociological perspective. For eg. consider skin color and accent. The former is fully inheritable, the latter is completely uninhabitable. A Scottish kid raised by Africa foster parents in Nigeria will still look like his biological parents and have their skin complexion, while he will sound entirely like how people sound in Nigeria. One would be an idiot for trying to force him to have darker skin, or to have a Scottish accent, because we understand that one is genetically controlled, and the other is socially / culturally controlled. Now in these cases it was as absolute as you can get with these things. But can we not imagine that there's an aspect of genetic influence on many other aspects that can also be somewhat affected culturally? I don't care what we call it, but can we at least agree that this distinction can exist and might be sociologically salient?
      - em-bee 2y ago
        I don't think anyone is arguing that individuals have heritability isn't saying that someone's character is inherited from their parents such a claim?
        elevatedastalt 2y ago
        No it isn't. Here's it's not an individual that is being claimed to have heritability. It's their 'character', which is a trait, that is being claimed to be heritable. For eg. if you have dark skinned parents, you are likely to be dark skinned yourself. So 'skin color' is a trait that is being claimed to have heritability.
        mjburgess 2y ago
        The point is that heritability is not inheritability. The former only tracks the latter in highly specific experimental circumstances that generally do not obtain. Of course a scottish accent isnt inheritable. The point is that the heritability statistic is near 100%. There is no statistics for inheritability. We have no idea, in general, what is inheritable and what isnt. It requires the kinds of experiments which are practically impossible or unethical.

whimsicalism 2y ago

they’re making a (correct) point about causality and geographic gene variance

elevatedastalt 2y ago
No, they are giving an absurd example in order to create the implication that heritability is a meaningless concept.
- mjburgess 2y ago
  Heritability is a population statistic, individuals dont have "heritability". So it doesnt apply to any "kid" anywhere. It's a practically useless concept outside of extremely narrow fields of biology, where you can control causes or otherwise eliminate genetic variation. In the vast majority of cases where people use 'heritability', it is useless. Knowing how much a trait varies, or fails to vary, with genes tells you nothing about whether its inherited. Under stable genetic equilibrium near universally inherited traits will have a heritability of zero; and under cultural, social, geographical etc. selection of mates, 0% inherited traits will be arbitrarily close to 100% heritability. It's a statistics designed for cases where the experimenter is actually controlling the genetic variance (ie., breeding plants) across populations; it's otherwise meaningless. Consider a security guard who forces all past shoplifters to wear a tag. Under such an induced causal relationship, wearing a red tag becomes predictive of future criminal behaviour. Otherwise, it's useless. Likewise, when an experimenter is inducing genetic varience, then it becomes explanatory and predictive; otherwise, it's useless.
  - elevatedastalt 2y ago
    Yes, heritability is a population statistic for specific traits. I don't think anyone is arguing that individuals have heritability, just like individuals can't be "diverse". > Knowing how much a trait varies, or fails to vary, with genes tells you nothing about whether its inherited. I am not sure what this is trying to convey. Because I think there's clear cases where stuff is inheritable, and clear cases where stuff isn't, and that's a very meaningful distinction to make from a sociological perspective. For eg. consider skin color and accent. The former is fully inheritable, the latter is completely uninhabitable. A Scottish kid raised by Africa foster parents in Nigeria will still look like his biological parents and have their skin complexion, while he will sound entirely like how people sound in Nigeria. One would be an idiot for trying to force him to have darker skin, or to have a Scottish accent, because we understand that one is genetically controlled, and the other is socially / culturally controlled. Now in these cases it was as absolute as you can get with these things. But can we not imagine that there's an aspect of genetic influence on many other aspects that can also be somewhat affected culturally? I don't care what we call it, but can we at least agree that this distinction can exist and might be sociologically salient?
    - em-bee 2y ago
      I don't think anyone is arguing that individuals have heritability isn't saying that someone's character is inherited from their parents such a claim?
      - elevatedastalt 2y ago
        No it isn't. Here's it's not an individual that is being claimed to have heritability. It's their 'character', which is a trait, that is being claimed to be heritable. For eg. if you have dark skinned parents, you are likely to be dark skinned yourself. So 'skin color' is a trait that is being claimed to have heritability.
        mjburgess 2y ago
        The point is that heritability is not inheritability. The former only tracks the latter in highly specific experimental circumstances that generally do not obtain. Of course a scottish accent isnt inheritable. The point is that the heritability statistic is near 100%. There is no statistics for inheritability. We have no idea, in general, what is inheritable and what isnt. It requires the kinds of experiments which are practically impossible or unethical.