8 ms·

It is incredibly obvious that we are not born with equal potential. Genetics do play a large part. To think otherwise is absurd. However, this century, many so

It is incredibly obvious that we are not born with equal potential. Genetics do play a large part. To think otherwise is absurd. However, this century, many social scientists disliked these facts, and have done everything they could to disprove them. If you're interested, I highly recommend The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker Note: I'm not speaking of genetic differences across populations, just between all people.

pron 11y ago
> However, this century, many social scientists disliked these facts, and have done everything they could to disprove them. No, you are misunderstanding what they say to strengthen your negative opinion about them. They are talking about populations, not individuals. Everybody acknowledges that some individuals are born smarter than others. However, even on the personal level, there are many things that influence future accumulation of power (and hence can be called potential) much more than genetics. A genius born in Uganda has much lower potential than an idiot born on the Upper East Side. And even intelligence is greatly affected by social forces. At the end of the day, you'll find that genetics has relatively little influence on "success" (accumulation of power). Always look at the effect size. There are many effects at play, and each -- while significant -- does not have the same effect size as the others.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  Suppose genetics and/or intelligence did have a large influence on success. In what observable ways would the world be different?
  - pron 11y ago
    Why, power would then be concentrated in the hands of those who display pertinent genetic "superiority"! Since we find little pertinent genetic differences between populations and huge variations in concentrations of power, we learn that power is not (mostly) a consequence of genetics. That is the only scientific way to interpret the facts[1]. Some people, however, do the unscientific thing of deducing backwards: they pre-suppose "innate" superiority, and then project backwards from power to superiority. Not only does this contradict scientific findings, it is a very familiar psychological phenomenon, as people who do that invariably include themselves among those they consider innately superior. The effort to ascribe power to innate properties is another well known, well studied sociological/socio-psychological phenomenon[2], whereby seats of power do not want to yield any, and therefore claim an unchanging "nature" (against all observations). [1]: Even if the most, how shall we put this -- nature oriented -- of studies is to be believed, no finding of innate ability has ever found effect sizes within orders of magnitude close to power distribution observed in society. If you then try to claim that the function correlating power to innate ability is super-linear, every small variation would be so magnified, and taking into account that in-group variance is larger than inter-group variance, you'll see a people-to-power function that behaves almost like white noise -- also not what we see. The only way to explain the observed power distribution is with local effects whereby power breeds power in its immediate vicinity, and dampens it at greater distances. Social interaction is by far the most likely explanation of the observations. [2]: there are experiments that create artificial "racism", or ingroup/outgroup differences in children and observe this.
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      Wait, I'm confused. There are genetically different subpopulations (e.g., Asian Americans, African Americans) which have large disparities in "power" [1]. Remember, I asked you how the world would be different if theories you disagree with were true, not the same. If a theory correctly predicts the world, that's evidence in favor of it. [1] You've claimed in the past that various racial groups - i.e. genetically similar groups - have different levels of power. I'm just taking your claims as given without actually having a coherent definition of "power" - it's more or less moot to this question.
      - pron 11y ago
        That's exactly what I said. The world would be radically different. The average inter-race genetic difference in pertinent qualities (say intelligence, body strength etc) is positively tiny compared to intra-group variance[1]. Those "genetically different subpopulations" are not that genetically different in any significant way in any quality that we would presume to matter. Unless skin color directly causes the power disparity (which, of course, it does because of racism) there is nothing else to explain the difference. If genetics were a very central cause of power difference, you would not see such severe power differences among groups. There is absolutely nothing in the observations to even suggest genetics differences could be a meaningful contributor to power differences among groups, especially when you consider history. For example, the Arab culture was for centuries much superior to the European culture. Has there been some genetic catastrophe in the Arab world? European power superiority is a very recent change (roughly 600-500 years). That power was gained very quickly -- in the course of a few decades between 1450-1520[2] -- in what is known as the European miracle. Genetics don't behave like that. If we were having this discussion as recently as 700 years ago, I guess you would naturally assume that Europeans have some inborn defect that makes them so inferior. Also, we do not see any innate ability difference that in a measure that is even close to the levels of power disparity. No one is a hundred times smarter or stronger or faster than the average population. Yet you see both individuals and localized groups (at almost any size) that are easily a hundred (or a thousand) times more powerful than other individuals or localized groups. You cannot explain that without treating social forces as the leading cause. Also, there is no need to write power in quotes. When discussing physics you don't write energy or force or charge in quotes, right? No need to disrespect other serious disciplines. Power is a well-established, well-accepted concept -- even if for some reason you've convinced yourself it isn't -- so show just an inkling of respect for other researchers. [1]: Reading my previous comment again, I wrote exactly that. Are you intentionally trying not to understand again? Or are you just assuming there are large genetic differences because people look different? [2]: In those few decades, the Byzantine empire fell (after a long decline), Europe started enjoying a remarkable recovery after the Black Death epidemic that had peaked a hundred years prior, America was discovered, print invented, and Christianity fractured. While at the same time, the Ottomans rejected print (for religious reasons).
  - Uhhrrr 11y ago
    Interesting question. Would this mean that more genetically homogeneous countries like Japan and Iceland would have lower GINI coefficients?
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      All else held equal, probably yes. Unfortunately all else is NOT held equal - genetic homogeneity is inversely correlated with population, and more people usually means more inequality.
      - Uhhrrr 11y ago
        Yeah, and now that I think about it, culture/techlevel is going to cause huge variance in GINI anyway.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  >Everybody acknowledges that some individuals are born smarter than others. Nina Jablonski explicitly said the opposite, which is the genesis of this thread.
  - pron 11y ago
    She most certainly did not. When she says "we are all born etc.", she means all groups, not all individuals. I think it is painfully obvious from the context ("cultural framework", "cultural differences"). Why would you assume that a scientist would say something false rather than assume she would say something true, especially if in order to assume as you do you have to pull her words out of context?
    - oldmanjay 11y ago
      I assume that her words meant what they said. I'm assuming you're using "group" as a euphemism for race, and in that same article Nina explicitly says race is not a genetic construct either. Does she change her stance depending on context?
      - pron 11y ago
        She did mean what she said, and when she says "we are all" in the very same paragraph she discusses cultural differences, she means every culture, not every individual. That's basic reading comprehension. She also doesn't need to change her stance. The genetic variation between racial groups are positively tiny compared to intra-group variation. It makes a lot of sense to say "we", as in all groups, are all the same, where as "we", as individuals, are not. The reason it makes sense to say that is that that's the truth, and I see no reason to assume a scientist wouldn't say the truth especially if you need to read her words with an autistic (and ill-intending) interpretation to understand them to say falsehood. Another reason she doesn't need to change her stance is that while innate differences in intelligence between individuals are large compared to those between groups, there are also bigger, non-innate differences that have been shown to have a very significant effect on intelligence.
- markdog12 11y ago
  > They are talking about populations, not individuals. I don't have the book handy, but I think the topic was about genetic differences across individuals, at least I think that's what Pinker was arguing. For the rest of what you said, of course environment plays a large part as well.
pekk 11y ago
Just a correction, this can't be "incredibly obvious" merely from people having different abilities when grown, since that really doesn't cast much light on how they got that way.
brighteyes 11y ago
Something being "incredibly obvious" is not scientific evidence. First thing, there are huge genetic differences in non-mental traits, like height for example. No one doubts that. And many people use those to infer the same is true of mental qualities, but that would need to be proven separately. Heritability studies show that IQ is in fact significantly heritable. But these do not prove what non-scientists often assume. Heritability is the percentage of variability due to genetic differences, but it is always relative to an environment. Genes are meaningless without environments. For example, if we as a cultural thing feed shorthair cats different diets than longhair cats, and the diets affect their weight, then genetics would explain much of that variability. Cat weight would be heritable, strictly speaking, but in a different environment - all cats get the same food - it would not be. Various sources of evidence show that IQ is heritable in humans, but depends heavily on the environment. For example, adopted black children have higher IQs when raised by white parents, most of the difference between black and white kids goes away in that case. Is that the final answer? We honestly don't know. To really study it, we'd need to do unethical things - raise people in controlled experiments - which we simply won't do. But we do know that cultural effects are very large, and they might mask genetic effects. In practice, though, heritability still holds. People are born with genetics and those genetics are correlated to certain environments, and reactions from those environments. So even if in some theoretical way we are "born with equal mental potential", given the world as it is, that simply isn't true. But it could change.
- blfr 11y ago
  For example, adopted black children have higher IQs when raised by white parents, most of the difference between black and white kids goes away in that case. I've only heard of the famous one[1] and the difference didn't go away. Upbringing had no significant influence. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption_Study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption...
  - brighteyes 11y ago
    A few more are listed at [1]. Of course, the data leaves plenty of room for interpretation, as none of these are truly controlled studies. But there is support for environment mattering quite a bit, even if it isn't conclusive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#Adoption_studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#Adoption...

pron 11y ago

> However, this century, many social scientists disliked these facts, and have done everything they could to disprove them. No, you are misunderstanding what they say to strengthen your negative opinion about them. They are talking about populations, not individuals. Everybody acknowledges that some individuals are born smarter than others. However, even on the personal level, there are many things that influence future accumulation of power (and hence can be called potential) much more than genetics. A genius born in Uganda has much lower potential than an idiot born on the Upper East Side. And even intelligence is greatly affected by social forces. At the end of the day, you'll find that genetics has relatively little influence on "success" (accumulation of power). Always look at the effect size. There are many effects at play, and each -- while significant -- does not have the same effect size as the others.

yummyfajitas 11y ago
Suppose genetics and/or intelligence did have a large influence on success. In what observable ways would the world be different?
- pron 11y ago
  Why, power would then be concentrated in the hands of those who display pertinent genetic "superiority"! Since we find little pertinent genetic differences between populations and huge variations in concentrations of power, we learn that power is not (mostly) a consequence of genetics. That is the only scientific way to interpret the facts[1]. Some people, however, do the unscientific thing of deducing backwards: they pre-suppose "innate" superiority, and then project backwards from power to superiority. Not only does this contradict scientific findings, it is a very familiar psychological phenomenon, as people who do that invariably include themselves among those they consider innately superior. The effort to ascribe power to innate properties is another well known, well studied sociological/socio-psychological phenomenon[2], whereby seats of power do not want to yield any, and therefore claim an unchanging "nature" (against all observations). [1]: Even if the most, how shall we put this -- nature oriented -- of studies is to be believed, no finding of innate ability has ever found effect sizes within orders of magnitude close to power distribution observed in society. If you then try to claim that the function correlating power to innate ability is super-linear, every small variation would be so magnified, and taking into account that in-group variance is larger than inter-group variance, you'll see a people-to-power function that behaves almost like white noise -- also not what we see. The only way to explain the observed power distribution is with local effects whereby power breeds power in its immediate vicinity, and dampens it at greater distances. Social interaction is by far the most likely explanation of the observations. [2]: there are experiments that create artificial "racism", or ingroup/outgroup differences in children and observe this.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    Wait, I'm confused. There are genetically different subpopulations (e.g., Asian Americans, African Americans) which have large disparities in "power" [1]. Remember, I asked you how the world would be different if theories you disagree with were true, not the same. If a theory correctly predicts the world, that's evidence in favor of it. [1] You've claimed in the past that various racial groups - i.e. genetically similar groups - have different levels of power. I'm just taking your claims as given without actually having a coherent definition of "power" - it's more or less moot to this question.
    - pron 11y ago
      That's exactly what I said. The world would be radically different. The average inter-race genetic difference in pertinent qualities (say intelligence, body strength etc) is positively tiny compared to intra-group variance[1]. Those "genetically different subpopulations" are not that genetically different in any significant way in any quality that we would presume to matter. Unless skin color directly causes the power disparity (which, of course, it does because of racism) there is nothing else to explain the difference. If genetics were a very central cause of power difference, you would not see such severe power differences among groups. There is absolutely nothing in the observations to even suggest genetics differences could be a meaningful contributor to power differences among groups, especially when you consider history. For example, the Arab culture was for centuries much superior to the European culture. Has there been some genetic catastrophe in the Arab world? European power superiority is a very recent change (roughly 600-500 years). That power was gained very quickly -- in the course of a few decades between 1450-1520[2] -- in what is known as the European miracle. Genetics don't behave like that. If we were having this discussion as recently as 700 years ago, I guess you would naturally assume that Europeans have some inborn defect that makes them so inferior. Also, we do not see any innate ability difference that in a measure that is even close to the levels of power disparity. No one is a hundred times smarter or stronger or faster than the average population. Yet you see both individuals and localized groups (at almost any size) that are easily a hundred (or a thousand) times more powerful than other individuals or localized groups. You cannot explain that without treating social forces as the leading cause. Also, there is no need to write power in quotes. When discussing physics you don't write energy or force or charge in quotes, right? No need to disrespect other serious disciplines. Power is a well-established, well-accepted concept -- even if for some reason you've convinced yourself it isn't -- so show just an inkling of respect for other researchers. [1]: Reading my previous comment again, I wrote exactly that. Are you intentionally trying not to understand again? Or are you just assuming there are large genetic differences because people look different? [2]: In those few decades, the Byzantine empire fell (after a long decline), Europe started enjoying a remarkable recovery after the Black Death epidemic that had peaked a hundred years prior, America was discovered, print invented, and Christianity fractured. While at the same time, the Ottomans rejected print (for religious reasons).
- Uhhrrr 11y ago
  Interesting question. Would this mean that more genetically homogeneous countries like Japan and Iceland would have lower GINI coefficients?
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    All else held equal, probably yes. Unfortunately all else is NOT held equal - genetic homogeneity is inversely correlated with population, and more people usually means more inequality.
    - Uhhrrr 11y ago
      Yeah, and now that I think about it, culture/techlevel is going to cause huge variance in GINI anyway.
oldmanjay 11y ago
>Everybody acknowledges that some individuals are born smarter than others. Nina Jablonski explicitly said the opposite, which is the genesis of this thread.
- pron 11y ago
  She most certainly did not. When she says "we are all born etc.", she means all groups, not all individuals. I think it is painfully obvious from the context ("cultural framework", "cultural differences"). Why would you assume that a scientist would say something false rather than assume she would say something true, especially if in order to assume as you do you have to pull her words out of context?
  - oldmanjay 11y ago
    I assume that her words meant what they said. I'm assuming you're using "group" as a euphemism for race, and in that same article Nina explicitly says race is not a genetic construct either. Does she change her stance depending on context?
    - pron 11y ago
      She did mean what she said, and when she says "we are all" in the very same paragraph she discusses cultural differences, she means every culture, not every individual. That's basic reading comprehension. She also doesn't need to change her stance. The genetic variation between racial groups are positively tiny compared to intra-group variation. It makes a lot of sense to say "we", as in all groups, are all the same, where as "we", as individuals, are not. The reason it makes sense to say that is that that's the truth, and I see no reason to assume a scientist wouldn't say the truth especially if you need to read her words with an autistic (and ill-intending) interpretation to understand them to say falsehood. Another reason she doesn't need to change her stance is that while innate differences in intelligence between individuals are large compared to those between groups, there are also bigger, non-innate differences that have been shown to have a very significant effect on intelligence.
markdog12 11y ago
> They are talking about populations, not individuals. I don't have the book handy, but I think the topic was about genetic differences across individuals, at least I think that's what Pinker was arguing. For the rest of what you said, of course environment plays a large part as well.

pekk 11y ago

Just a correction, this can't be "incredibly obvious" merely from people having different abilities when grown, since that really doesn't cast much light on how they got that way.

brighteyes 11y ago

Something being "incredibly obvious" is not scientific evidence. First thing, there are huge genetic differences in non-mental traits, like height for example. No one doubts that. And many people use those to infer the same is true of mental qualities, but that would need to be proven separately. Heritability studies show that IQ is in fact significantly heritable. But these do not prove what non-scientists often assume. Heritability is the percentage of variability due to genetic differences, but it is always relative to an environment. Genes are meaningless without environments. For example, if we as a cultural thing feed shorthair cats different diets than longhair cats, and the diets affect their weight, then genetics would explain much of that variability. Cat weight would be heritable, strictly speaking, but in a different environment - all cats get the same food - it would not be. Various sources of evidence show that IQ is heritable in humans, but depends heavily on the environment. For example, adopted black children have higher IQs when raised by white parents, most of the difference between black and white kids goes away in that case. Is that the final answer? We honestly don't know. To really study it, we'd need to do unethical things - raise people in controlled experiments - which we simply won't do. But we do know that cultural effects are very large, and they might mask genetic effects. In practice, though, heritability still holds. People are born with genetics and those genetics are correlated to certain environments, and reactions from those environments. So even if in some theoretical way we are "born with equal mental potential", given the world as it is, that simply isn't true. But it could change.

blfr 11y ago
For example, adopted black children have higher IQs when raised by white parents, most of the difference between black and white kids goes away in that case. I've only heard of the famous one[1] and the difference didn't go away. Upbringing had no significant influence. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption_Study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption...
- brighteyes 11y ago
  A few more are listed at [1]. Of course, the data leaves plenty of room for interpretation, as none of these are truly controlled studies. But there is support for environment mattering quite a bit, even if it isn't conclusive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#Adoption_studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#Adoption...