Yeah I've never understood how people take such one-sided positions on this issue. And it becomes such an emotionally-charged subject for both sides.
Yeah but it's not like one side is claiming it's 100% nature and the other is claiming it's 100% nurture. One side is claiming it's 100% nurture and the other side is claiming it's some mix. The side claiming it's 100% nurture is 100% wrong. But somehow it is verboten to state this publicly or you are shamed.
However, this doesn't say anything about individuals. A group of people might be more likely to have trait X, but it doesn't say that any member of that group has that trait.
The problem is that people are not very good at thinking probabilistically, so emphasizing differences between groups will lead people to make unwarranted assumptions about members of those groups.
That is an often-repeated line but as an absolute statement it is not true. Statistical differences do have predictive power. It's just that they are weak predictors and trumped by concrete information. But you don't always have that information at hand and in that case those heuristics may be better than nothing. The problems arise when people stick to their heuristics (stereotypes) even when better information is available.
> so emphasizing differences between groups will lead people to make unwarranted assumptions about members of those groups.
Yes, that may be a problem. But denying the existence of heuristics and demanding that every single person you ever interact with should be treated as a carefully analyzed individual seems unrealistic.
That's highly unlikely aside from a few genes having to do with appearance. Race is determined by society, and is not a grouping of similar genetic populations. A Kenyan can have far more in common genetically with an Irish person than that Kenyan does with a Pygmy. But according to society, the Kenyan and the Pymgy both belong to the same race and the Irish person is a different race.
If you want to say there are innate differences between different genetic populations, then sure. But genetic populations must be far smaller than anything we would call race to start to see interesting differences. For example, many of the world's best runners come from one Kenyan tribe.[1]
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2013/11/01/241895965/...
Sure, and "species" is defined by taxonomists, but it is not based on any formal, rigourous analytical division of intrinsic properties. In both cases, such arbitrary divisions can still serve as useful analytical tools.
Actually it often is. For example one way to determine species is as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring. That's a far more rigorous and biologically based definition than race is. And taxonimists are looking at actual genes now. That is a formal, rigorous, analytical division based on intrinsic properties. So already there it is a poor comparison. Species is far more useful as an analytical tool because it is based in biology.
Scientists (in biology related fields) don't use race anymore as a category because it is an outdated and failed model of ancestry differences in the human population. In fact, race often gets the biology completely wrong. Because society, not science, determines someone's race.
Race is mostly useful to society and so will reflect the various motivations and ideologies of a society. People who choose to continue to use a failed scientific model as a useful analytical tool most often are pushing an ideology, and very often a racist one. The choice to use a failed model over more accurate categorization should always be suspect.
So the comparison to species is a very poor one. Taxonomists are broadly not ideologically motivated in their decisions like society is. And taxonomists continually refine their categorizations based on new scientific information, including genetic information. So species categorizations continue to get more and more accurate and increasingly based in science. That's why species continues to be a useful analytical tool. It is largely based in science and society has no say. Race is the opposite.
No, this is not a rigourous, formal distinction because procreation is not transitive, ie. A and C could procreate, and A and B could procreate, and D could procreate successfully with C but fail to procreate successfully with B. What are the species involved in this case?
"Species" is just as much a social construct as race; all distinctions made in each case are fairly arbitrary. One might have more utility, or be more precise in some equally arbitrary sense, but neither is somehow more intrinsically justified than the other.
> Scientists (in biology related fields) don't use race anymore as a category because it is an outdated and failed model of ancestry differences in the human population
Let's not pretend that scientists are immune from the prevailing political winds of the day. We can't possibly know whether race is a signficant factor in any given scenario until it's studied. Often it produces no meaningful results, but sometimes it does, and we won't be able to figure out why unless these studies are permitted.
That's still rigorous and biologically based. What you've pointed out is a rare exception, where that one methodology breaks. In which case you'd have to analyze the situation in more depth. Which scientists actually do (it's not society doing it), and based on the data (not social pressures), they decide what the species are. The example I gave is one of many factors used to determine species. It's not the only factor and used in isolation, is it? So in the above case, the next step would perhaps be to look at the actual genes involved.
> "Species" is just as much a social construct as race.
Then please provide examples of two organisms that have very little in common genetically but are considered the same species. And where society decided what the species is. Race is exactly that: groups of individuals that have almost nothing in common except for a few genes but society has decided to group them together anyway.
> Let's not pretend that scientists are immune from the prevailing political winds of the day.
Please give examples of species that were categorized due to politics or ideology and where it gets the underlying biology wrong.
> We can't possibly know whether race is a signficant factor until its studied.
It's not studied because it is a disproven and outdated model that is useless to biologists compared to the far better tools we have today. We can look directly at people's genes. Why would you group people using far less accuracy when you want to study heritibility of traits? That doesn't make any sense. Why wouldn't you look at what genes people have and group them according to their genes? That's what will give meaningful results and that is why scientists choose to group based on biology rather than grouping based on what society decides. Grouping based on what society decides what race you are is close to useless for biology.
And the next step after finding a correlation with race is also to figure out why it holds.
> Then please provide examples of two organisms that have very little in common genetically but are considered the same species.
That's irrelevant. The point is you are assigning meaning to genetic similarity, just like people concerned with studying race are assigning meaning to racial classifications (wherever they come from). You are prioritizing one set of properties over another and simply declaring that these are more important, or "real", or "natural" when this simply isn't the case.
If species were truly a natural kind there would be no exceptions like the one I pointed out. If we're not studying a natural kind, then any distinctions we wish to make are arbitrary. Like I said, they may be more useful, or precise, but they're still arbitrary.
> Please give examples of species that were categorized due to politics or ideology and where it gets the underlying biology wrong.
So you're claiming, "an example of this specific political influence doesn't exist in the sciences, therefore political influence doesn't exist in the sciences". Is that your argument?
> Why would you group people using far less accuracy when you want to study heritibility of traits? That doesn't make any sense.
And yet, plenty of correlations have been found. Making sense of these is exactly why racial studies should be allowed. Finding surprising associations and figuring out why they exist is exactly what science is supposed to do.
No one is studying genetics and heritibility of traits using race. It's an outdated model that is broken. We look directly at genes now.
> That's irrelevant.
It's not. You claimed species is a social construct. And then can't provide any categories constructed by society.
> you are assigning meaning to genetic similarity
The only meaning I'm assigning is that we have proven cause and effect with genes and traits. It's simply how things really work. We know that genes result in traits. We can point out the exact genes that make someone tall in a specific genetic population. <-- That's important.
Now let's reverse that to contrast it with a social construct. A social construct would be calling all tall people a grouping. The tall race. And that's scientifically wrong. Because we already know that the genes for being tall in one genetic population can be different from the genes for being tall in another genetic population. The tall people grouping was a good first attempt. But it's a broken model once you have better tools and can look at reality and true cause and effect. Now we can correctly group people: tall people with the X set of genes - common in Norway. And tall people with the Y set of genes - common in central China. Why would you go back to the broken model of saying all tall people should be grouped together as one race when you can see that the cause for tallness is unrelated between the groups? That wouldn't make any sense to insist on a grouping that does not reflect reality.
> If species were truly a natural kind there would be no exceptions.
There are exceptions to which methodologies can help us identify species. The methodology is still based in biology, even if there are exceptions. The methodology does not involve society deciding what is and is not a species. Just because a scientific methodology has exceptions to when it is useful does not prove that it is not rigorous or not based in biology.
> So you're claiming, "an example of this specific political influence doesn't exist in the sciences, therefore political influence doesn't exist in the sciences". Is that your argument?
No that's not my argument. My argument is that you can't show where politics and ideology have resulted in miscategorization of species. Because species, unlike race, is not a social construct and society has no or little influence over how scientists categorize species.
With race it's the opposite. You could come up with a massive list of where someone's race has been decided due to politics, ideology, and power dynamics, and where the underlying biology was never considered for even a second.
You cannot show the same for species. People who categorize species are very interested in the biology and will fix a wrong categorization given better information.
> And yet, plenty of correlations have been found.
So what? Correlation is not causation. That's a fundamental basis of science. We know what causes certain traits in humans. We can look directly at the genes. It's not that "racial studies should be allowed". What you seem to be missing is that we are actually studying genetic populations, genes, and what causes certain traits. We are just using a far better and more accurate model than race. The better model can prove causation. Race can't. Why would you use the broken model for science when you have a better one? Scientists don't use race not because they aren't allowed. They don't use race because it's a wildly inaccurate grouping that was decided by society. Society continues to use it because it is useful to society. Often in bad ways, but still useful.
Who's disputing this? Certainly that doesn't contradict any claim I've made.
> And then can't provide any categories constructed by society.
All of them are constructed by the society of scientists, who are also members of a larger society. That was the whole purpose of pointing out that classification of "species" is arbitrary.
Yes, biologists are interested in biological justifications for classifying species, but again no such classification process is complete because species does not form a natural kind. Frankly, all of your arguments on this amount to a red herring because I've never disputed any of what you're saying, besides the fact that classification of anything beyond the fundamental ontology defined by physics is arbitrary. The point of contrasting these two was never to say that race was equally arbitrary in biology, but that all such classifications beyond the fundamentals are arbitrary, period, and so the common argument of dismissing "race" as socially constructed and arbitrary is not an argument against its use. It would only be an argument against its use in some domains in which there are better metrics, all else being equal.
> The methodology does not involve society deciding what is and is not a species. Just because a scientific methodology has exceptions to when it is useful does not prove that it is not rigorous or not based in biology.
"Based in biology" is itself an arbitrary metric to which you're ascribing meaning. It's useful and more precise for biological purposes, but that's entirely besides the point, because 'biological purposes' is itself arbitrary. What distinguishes it from chemistry or physics? Don't you see that these are all merely useful but fairly arbitrary classifications of varying coarseness, each of which carries their own utility in a strictly limited domain?
Studying causal influence of genes is conceptually no different than asking people to classify their own race and measuring their responses to various life experiences of racism, or even correlating race and IQ. These are all metrics of varying precision, predictive power and cost. I'm concerned with the scientific process as a whole, not biology specifically, so I believe you misinterpreted the point I was making.
> So what? Correlation is not causation.
Sure, and I never claimed otherwise. Race is a far less precise and less useful classification than genetic populations for biological purposes. These aren't our only purposes in the pursuit of truth.
My purpose in pointing out the arbitrariness of species as a class is that we should not be trying to stymie scientific exploration for political motives. Contra your claim, some scientists do have an interest in studying race (though certainly biologists have less interest), and the reasons could very well be have scientific merit, but that's irrelevant in today's political climate. Research whose data counters the prevailing narratives of the day are harshly criticized, and its scientists sometimes even punished.
Does anyone really think that when people say things like men are stronger than women, they believe that literally every single man is stronger than every single woman?
I think it's much more common that someone will say "of course there are some women who are stronger than most men" then go back to tending to, for example, hire men over women for a job requiring the ability to lift 60 lbs, without bothering to strength-test female applicants.
If we are going with anecdotal data, then here's mine: I've almost never heard anyone say it's 100% nurture.
I have heard people claim something close to 100% nature though. Just as one example, the pretty common "boys will be boys" excuse. As in they just can't help themselves because it's in their nature, right?
See (in French, sorry): http://www.slate.fr/story/155300/patriarcat-steak-existe-pas
This ideology is absolutely dominant nowadays in social "science" around the world.
> countless newspapers
You can count newspapers. How many was it? How many of them are from "one side"? How wide is their readership? That's data. You are still in the world of anecdote.
That's why you need data and numbers to prove your point instead of one anecdotal data point. One example is close to useless, and a widespread news story is not evidence of what people believe.
That would be a claim of gene-culture coevolution. Not really "100% nurture" in the generally-understood sense.
For example, upon observing that more women than men tend to take up nursing. Do we conclude that there is a gender bias in healthcare recruitment and a distorted soceital expetation of gender roles, or can it be explained as a consequence of the aggregate personality bias between the sexes resulting in more women choosing that career. The personality science comes in to play when trying to answer that question.
Why do you think nature is completely irrelevant?
What does this have to do with hiring? When did anyone claim choosing one sex over another based on natural sex-based group differences? Of course hiring should be fair and equal opportunity, there's no disagreement there. However if you accept that then you must also agree that both sexes are interchangeable for most jobs and so there's no such thing as a sex imbalance either since anyone can do the job.
"Both sexes are interchangeable for most jobs" doesn't imply "there's no such thing as a sex imbalance" if people have historically believed both sexes aren't interchangeable for most jobs and workforce gender distribution reflects that history.
It's quite disturbing to me.
There's a lot of things that you can't do anything about. I didn't grow up to a rich family and that prevented me from doing a lot of things rich people got to do, for example.
I agree that it can be disturbing that traits that you have no control over make you different from others, but its normal and just part of life. Certainly nothing to lose sleep over.
There are people with unusual levels of willpower. I am one of them and I know others. It is what it is.
You can learn new information, and you can adjust your behavior or habits based on that.
The new things you learn wouldn't have been inside your DNA/genes.
Regarding learning new information, surely the type of info you’re susceptible to, and how to act upon these, isn’t all of your choosing.
I also remember as a child noticing how adults behaved, and particularly how they treated children, or even other adults, and made a conscious effort to develop the positive behaviours I admired and avoid ones I saw as negative. This has been particularly important in bringing up my own children.
Of course the capacity to change may well be something that varies from person to person, I’m sure it does, but I also believe we all have every human capacity to some extent.
The difficulty lies in not succumbing to fatalistic complacency.
Accepting that one simply is of a heavy physique and not needlessly starving oneself sounds healthy to me. There are plenty of activities for which a heavy frame is desirable. On the other hand, giving up in the face of ones perceived insurmountable genetic makeup serves nothing.