Comment by tarsinge | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tarsinge | Hacker News Reader

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I can of understand her reaction (I would have had the same) and for me it’s in fact not very dangerous:

- to my knowledge it’s impossible to separate biology and culture with the data we have

- some discriminations were and are made by wrongfully attributing it to biological traits

- since it’s hard or impossible to separate things a lot of people (myself included) adopt « it’s not biology it’s culture » by default because we think if we are wrong it causes less harm and is less dangerous than falsely attributing something to biology, and if it’s right then it helps the society progress.

I understand closing the debate is frustrating for the scientifically minded and rationale people, but my opinion is that it’s not a bad heuristic for society as a whole at least until we make progress. But obviously the debate can happen in the right context, but I find it dangerous to introduce it in the actual climate of crtitical thinking we are in

This leaves me wondering:

What do you consider to be the right context for public debates about these thorny issues?

What besides communicating with each other about those issues will move us forward?

I don't think they will go away by themselves and I agree that some cannot be resolved, but then we should politely agree to disagree, after having explained our reasoning for each other's viewpoints, no?

Disclaimer: I work in this space and we get this reaction quite often, so I am happy to read your thoughts on this.

It depends of the issues we are talking of.

What I'm saying is that introducing biology at this point in the debate, by looking if the inequality is "natural" because phenotype A or chromosome B gives you some edge or not in science or other discipline, is kind of irrelevant given the weight of culture in our societies.

I find it even dangerous because I don't think a lot of people are ready to understand the subtleties of a shift in a normal distribution (if one is present), and it'll just give them a wrong/misused "scientific" evidence for reinforcing their prejudices. Because I can't teach critical thinking in minutes I now resort to "it's always cultural" and try to move the debate forward to the (IMHO) main causes.

(not a native english speaker so sorry if I missed your point)

You're saying you want to keep science out of the 'debate.' That's not a debate. That's religion. You refuse to allow scientific evidence into the discussion because you don't trust people with that knowledge. We can't discuss science is what you're saying. We're supposed to keep our heads in the sand and pretend that genetics don't exist to support your agenda. No thank you.

I’m not saying I want to keep science out of the debate, I’m saying with our current state of knowledge there is no evidence to help conclude anything and tell things apart between biology and culture in complex high level chain of decisions like choosing a career path.

We can’t say “biology=true science!” and try to shoehorn it in the debate no matter what, this, is unscientific.

Yes, given that we don’t know, assuming it’s always culture to help society progress (and implicitly saying society needs a change) is a political and philosophical opinion, and on this we can disagree, but don’t invoke religion vs science to create a false dichotomy and paint me on the irrational side.

I disagree, we should always, when available, use our best source of knowledge to argue about issues. Always. I see no reason to say, "hmm let's go and use lesser quality evidence."

I would even say that, if you don't know the science about an issue, it might be the wisest to refrain from having a strong position on a matter, at all.

Sure, many people do not understand statistics, I would dare postulate many many scientists don't properly understand stats ;)

But, if we do away with the science domain, people will resort to another domain, which is normally trumped in debates by scientific arguments. And that is, anecdotal evidence. And people will use it just as much and as falsely to defend their believes.

(no worries, not a native speaker either :) )

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> Romance refers to the biologically rooted game

It's like you didn't read the comment you're replying to. You do not have good evidence that romance is shaped by evolutionary, rather than cultural, forces. Of course there's a biological motivation for procreation but unless you're going to play semantic games and define "romance" as any activity involved in pursuit of procreation, that motivation doesn't explain specific behaviors.

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> If it exists

"It" being a biological basis for romantic behavior? We've survived this long without know how, or if, biology determines our current romantic behavior, I think we'll be okay. We're not going to go extinct because everyone is fucking robots.

> We've survived this long without know how, or if, biology determines our current romantic behavior

Do we? Because I see no evidence of the opposite. Also, culture (and sociology for the matter) is biologically determined.

Humans have existed a lot longer than science or the contemplation of nature vs. nurture.

> no evidence of the opposite

There's plenty of evidence that romantic behavior is culturally determined. Just look at how much it has changed over the centuries even though, biologically, humans have hardly changed at all. There's also the wide variance between cultures geographically in which we're all biologically the same.

Culture is biologic, that is my point.

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