2 ms·

If it’s such a taboo, why not just go to the essential point and state clearly what you’re talking about since this is an Internet forum. The coy “I’m not allo

by pavlov 2y ago

If it’s such a taboo, why not just go to the essential point and state clearly what you’re talking about since this is an Internet forum. The coy “I’m not allowed to talk about this, ooh” act is tiresome.

whimsicalism 2y ago
I feel like I have… multiple times now across many different comments. Stuff like hm, maybe the children of child abusers are likely to abuse children not only because they were raised that way but because of genetic behavioral factors. Or maybe the correlation between test scores and affluence doesn’t mean that test scores are bunk or only measure affluence, but are partially due to heritable confounders and the “affluence bias” isn’t as strong as we think. The essential point is that there is strong evidence for genetic heritability of behavior. But regardless, the point of my original comment was to discuss the interesting difference between academic/societal taboos and commonly held intuitions - not to enumerate all the possible taboo things related to this line of research.
- dleink 2y ago
  If "children of child abusers are more likely to abuse children" were to be found undeniably true, how should we use this knowledge? Are you proposing some kind of public policy?
  - whimsicalism 2y ago
    > how should we use this knowledge? One example: in future studies of interventions at reducing child abuse, if we can use genetic factors to explain away some of the variance, then we can better identify interventions that are effective at reducing child abuse that we wouldn't be able to identify otherwise. > Are you proposing some kind of public policy? Not in that case that immediately comes to mind, but if we discover some interventions as mentioned above ^ it could be useful. In the case of the test scores affluence one, it might take some (although not all) strength away from some of the arguments for dropping standardized testing.

by pavlov 2y ago

whimsicalism 2y ago

I feel like I have… multiple times now across many different comments. Stuff like hm, maybe the children of child abusers are likely to abuse children not only because they were raised that way but because of genetic behavioral factors. Or maybe the correlation between test scores and affluence doesn’t mean that test scores are bunk or only measure affluence, but are partially due to heritable confounders and the “affluence bias” isn’t as strong as we think. The essential point is that there is strong evidence for genetic heritability of behavior. But regardless, the point of my original comment was to discuss the interesting difference between academic/societal taboos and commonly held intuitions - not to enumerate all the possible taboo things related to this line of research.

dleink 2y ago
If "children of child abusers are more likely to abuse children" were to be found undeniably true, how should we use this knowledge? Are you proposing some kind of public policy?
- whimsicalism 2y ago
  > how should we use this knowledge? One example: in future studies of interventions at reducing child abuse, if we can use genetic factors to explain away some of the variance, then we can better identify interventions that are effective at reducing child abuse that we wouldn't be able to identify otherwise. > Are you proposing some kind of public policy? Not in that case that immediately comes to mind, but if we discover some interventions as mentioned above ^ it could be useful. In the case of the test scores affluence one, it might take some (although not all) strength away from some of the arguments for dropping standardized testing.