Is Genetics “Dark”?
wyclif.substack.com
wyclif.substack.com
"Is that dark?"
Yes, it is dark as hell. Without feeding the bloodthirsty maw of evolution, deleterious alleles accumulate. That makes many things that are clearly evil, like death, necessary. Darwin's description of the world is ultimately a successful theodicy, a story that vindicates Satan. "Here's why we need evil in the world." "Here's why the optimal number of dead babies is greater than zero." What could be darker? I wish that made it wrong.
Perhaps a key question will be how genes and the environment interact to produce the phenotypes we care about.
Eugenics is one of the most popular reasons to get an abortion. Fetuses that test positive for Downs and other genetically screenable disabilities are highly likely to be terminated[1]. If that’s not eugenics what is?
[1] https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/pd.29...
I suppose the difference is that in the 1930s there were state-driven campaigns to “improve“ the population, and these led to terrible consequences. What’s happening today is decentralised, and the result of consumer choice – which doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t dangerous.
In the most strictly literal sense, aborting fetuses with Down Snydrome is not eugenics, because it's not altering the allele frequency in the gene pool.
That said, I can see why people are uncomfortable with it.
What the fuck? I admit it doesn't come up very often, but every left-winger I personally know agrees that, even if you could pin a higher likelihood of bad behavior (say, violence) to a race via genetics, that still doesn't make discrimination ok, because the downsides, both practical and moral, of discrimination are just too big.
It's more like "the fact that left-wingers often oppose genetic research, taken at face value, implies that they fear that the results would make racism more acceptable" (since that's the only logical explanation if you assume that left-wingers otherwise fervently support science). Of course if you ask a "left-winger" directly if they think that, they would say "no, of course not". But then you could counter with "well then why are you so concerned about this type of research?".
I guess the only reasonable response that they could offer is "well, I don't want to give racists more fuel to push their agendas".
That's fine, I guess I understand where they are coming from. But should we really limit science to avoid giving fuel to racists? Doesn't it mean that the racists won, in some sense, if they successfully set back scientific research? Can't we get rid of racism without resorting to constraining scientific research? I sure hope we can.
IMO racists are generally not very intelligent, so I think we can best them even if they have a bit of extra fuel.
In my life as a center-lefty who frequently associates with people much further to the left, I’ve never encountered any who insist this.
Leftists tend to be very skeptical of unsupported claims that particular outcome differences are due to such differences, especially when there is evidence of systematic inequality in treatment.
Please dont' try to deny the consequences at play here.
We live in an extremely heavily-policed overton window on these issues and there are serious consequences in play.
If you go and start asking, talking, and posting about e.g. IQ differences between races, it will seriously impact any career in tech, media, academia, law, education, and basically any other high-status field. It'll also seriously impact your social life in any city in America.
If you matter at all you'll also attract a cloud of motivated online harassers who will contact your employer, friends, spouse all trying to damage you as much as possible.
This is true even if you never make "unsupported claims that particular outcome differences are due to such differences". It's very easy to support such claims, since there's extremely strong evidence of a causal link from IQ to outcome differences, and there is similarly strong evidence that IQ is linked to group genetics.
And it's impossible to talk about IQ of population groups without people assuming you're making such claims about outcome differences, or putting those words in your mouth so they can come after you.
Hey, @dang, author here. I don’t think this deserves flagging! The topic is serious and worth thinking about.
Update: I don’t think you’re correct, however, that there is “strong evidence that IQ is linked to group genetics“. This is, for both scientific and political reasons, a very difficult area to work in, and I don’t believe the evidence is in to either support or rebut that claim.
The default position should be a heavy bias towards believing the genetic explanation is at least somewhat correct. Within group heritability may not directly imply between group heritability, but it makes it very likely. The left is too intellectually dishonest to admit that.
jlawson is correct, it's been basically game over for the strong environmentalist position since Lasker et al 2019.
Furthermore, it’s easy to see for yourself by going to a predominately Democrat city and then a Republican one — Generally, the Democrat city will be highly segregated by area and the Republican one will be highly integrated.
Racism is a significant political force in the US and in many nations and racist are eager to use genetic arguments for their purposes. Generally, they're completely wrong and deluded but they make an effort. A friend I cut off a while back sent me a bizarre article claiming Jews exceed Christians in intelligence because Rabbis didn't have to be celibate.
If you want to convince someone that your studies have no problems, showing a lack of awareness of problem people aiming to use your results isn't a good start.