I feel like we must have done enough twin studies over the years at this point to conclusively say that genetic heritage is the most significant factor for a whole host of ourcomes. Environmental factors are alluring, because they offer the potential that something can be done, through toil and good works, to achieve improvements, rather than the more Calvinist tyranny of genetics.
They are also alluring because of the fear that policies could be put in place which excludes people based on the factors that are pre-determined; this idea is offensive to both those in favor of "meritocracy" and those who believe in the equality of opportunities. It also challenges the idea of human worth, since many people (mistakenly, in my opinion) believe human worth is (or should be) tied to mental and physical abilities.
For one thing worth is not measurable and depends on circumstance. Brawn would get you further than your game-playing abilities in many historical and pre-historical settings. Also, yes most people object to the central idea of racism, that people of certain ancestry are not worth being kept alive.
Sorry, but I didn't actually say anything about drawing final conclusions about individuals' predeterminations based on their ancestry.
What I will gladly say, however, is that individuals who don't contribute to the good of society (and this is easily measurable economically), are not worth being kept alive at others' expense.
(... except insofar as individuals voluntarily commit acts of charity.)
I use "trollish" to mean having trollish effects. Intent isn't a helpful category for moderation since it's impossible to observe. But alas we can and do observe the flamewars that comments like that one lead to.
You're the best kind of correct: technically correct. Different ethnicity+gender combinations do in fact produce differing relative-frequencies of IQs (and EQs, and VO2Max'es, etc.). However. These are only averages. Statistics. Scalar summaries of large groups. Human genetic diversity being what it is, you cannot confidently tell what someone's intelligence or strength is, based on solely their ethnicity. Attempting to do so, is what racism is. Furthermore, I am reasonably confident that there is no ethnicity in the entire human species which is incapable of producing, under the correct environment, an Einstein, a Gandhi and a Ryan Kipchoge.
However, if you were to examine an individual's specific genetics, and if we knew enough about the details of how every specific gene interacts to produce the phenomemon of the human body ... then you could indeed determine the maximum, predestined mental and physical potential of that individual. Not their children, not their parents, not their brothers, not their close cousins. Meiosis and mutation are (one of the few aspects of biology that I actually think to be) beautiful.
>Is there some implicit negative value attached to the hypothesis that human worth could be predetermined?
I think so, yes. It runs counter to the idea of a free and equal society, and necessitates setting up standards (subjective ones imposed by an authority) as to which qualities are good and which are bad; this very easily leads to narrow-minded elitism, for instance, preferring mental abilities over physical ones, or general intelligence over emotional intelligence etc.
The notion of social equality is important, in my opinion.
Why, necessarily, must human value be remitted by a central authority and its inherent fickleness? Or, more importantly, why does belief in predetermined value, cause a belief that the State should suddenly take charge of measuring value and doling out its consequences?
Mental and physical abilities seem useful insofar as they produce things of economic value. Different people, today, already, have different and diverse abilities to produce economic value; and as a result they come to possess diverse quantities of wealth. How does believing that people's potential wealth is predetermined, change things?
>Why, necessarily, must human value be remitted by a central authority and its inherent fickleness?
If human worth (I use "worth" because I detest the economism of "value") depends on abilities, there must be some way to collapse the qualitative differences in abilities down to quantitative values, to say that one person is worth more than another means that there is something within them that we can compare, separate from their concrete abilities but abstracted away. In the same way that 20 yards of linen exchange for one coat, although they are qualitatively different, there is a mechanism which allows them to be exchanged.
The translation function must be defined somewhere, but I will admit that it need not be defined by the State, assuming we're not also discussing the notion of rights and justice in relation to abilities. Perhaps I should have said "(subjective ones imposed by an authority, either the authority of the State or the authority of the market)". In my view, the authority of capital is just as pernicious (if not moreso in some circumstances) as the authority of the state.
>why does belief in predetermined value, cause a belief that the State should suddenly take charge of measuring value and doling out its consequences?
I said it "very easily leads to", I didn't mean to say it's a necessity. However law is based on principles, and if the times replace the principle of equality with the principle of pre-determined worth then the laws will surely reflect that.
>How does believing that people's potential wealth is predetermined, change things?
We weren't talking about wealth, we were talking about the worth of a person. I do not mean that in economic terms. Mental and physical abilities are useful for much more than producing things of economic value, and for the great majority of human history they haven't been directed to producing things of economic value.
> different and diverse abilities to produce economic value; and as a result they come to possess diverse quantities of wealth
The qualitative diversity of abilities is not logically linked to the quantitative amount of wealth.
> In the same way that 20 yards of linen exchange for one coat, although they are qualitatively different, there is a mechanism which allows them to be exchanged.
Indeed. But because they are qualitatively different, the opportunity costs of producing one versus the other are probably different; and if they are, then even if Alice can produce both more efficiently than Bob, Bob has a comparative advantage in one.
Similarly, one can say - and likely be correct - that an agricultural veterinarian is worth more than a stevedore. But if We, The Central Authority conclude that therefore We Shall Have ag-vets and not stevedores, then suddenly stevedores' value will increase, due to the decrease in supply as that policy is implemented.
> >How does believing that people's potential wealth is predetermined, change things?
> We weren't talking about wealth, we were talking about the worth of a person. I do not mean that in economic terms. Mental and physical abilities are useful for much more than producing things of economic value, and for the great majority of human history they haven't been directed to producing things of economic value.
For the great majority of human history, humans have been without the invention called economics-as-we-know-it-today. And economics - even in the absence of a market - can, at least, analyze almost all of human action and reaction. (With a free market, it can also drive it, with all the resulting decentralized emergently efficient behavior.)
Also, future genetic engineering can be used to both fix those unfair advantages, or even make the inequalities worse.
I feel, at this point, more energy is being spent in preaching things that are ultimately unscientific , rather than working towards fixing the inequalities.
Everyone argues whether we're more likely to end up 1984 or Brave New World. In my opinion, we're gonna end up with the worst of both worlds, and are already well on our way.
> I feel like we must have done enough twin studies over the years at this point to conclusively say that genetic heritage is the most significant factor for a whole host of ourcomes.
I feel like there wouldn't be so much discussion still if we had. I'm no expert, but as far as I'm aware the debate is still ongoing for a lot of areas. Epigenetics are also a big factor for consideration.
> Environmental factors are alluring, because they offer the potential that something can be done, through toil and good works, to achieve improvements, rather than the more Calvinist tyranny of genetics.
I think it's also we've just learned from history. People believing they're intrinsically better than others has led to genocide, the mass destruction of cultures, regression and problems that are still felt all over the world today.
through toil and good works ... rather than ... tyranny of genetics.
That is, until we discover that being a hard worker is also genetically heritable. Then people are twice doomed with less intelligence and less ability to work hard.
