The Genetic Determinism Open Thread

quoth Big Don;

You can't debate with folks who won't even believe mountains of undisputed peer-reviewed research and related supporting statistics from a multitude of respected sources that all point to the same conclusions.

responded Submariner;

What exactly are those conclusions? Do they confirm preexisting bias on the part of the investigator or advance the agenda of the study's underwriter? Are the categories value laden or truly random assignments, like one's Zodiac sign, which don't confer or denote advantage?

Now somewhere in there, I got in it for half a hot second. Okay, twice actually and once with an uncivil dose of mean-spirited ridicule, not exactly a gracious host. My bad. Everytime I try to get out, they pull me back in!!!



quoth rembom, "Ah'm yo huckleberry";

BD, 17,000 goes to basic principles, combinatoric explosions, and such. Pretty obvious...to anyone who has done even a modicum of homework on the fundamentals of the theories at issue with this genetic determinacy of yours.

What is to be said of people who are provably mistaken, and yet actively resist knowledge or understanding of the proof? I call that willfully ignorant. If you want to call it ad hominem, I suggest you look the word up.

So here's where we're at. If you search eugenics or IQ on this blog, you'll pull up pretty much the lion's share of my thoughts on the subject. I'm not really feeling the urge to debate what for all intents and purposes, (my intents and purposes at least), is a settled matter. However, since the spirit seems to be moving folks, I thought I'd go ahead and dedicate a post and associated open comment thread to scrip-a-scrapping about the heritability of IQ.

I'm going to stay out of it. My point of departure on this theme was nicely summed up by the autocratic Abiola Lapite. Four of whose treatments of the issue;

Genetic Determinism
Population Genetics
Quantitative Traits
IQ Genes

I linked in a post last year - at the peak of my own multi-front debates on the subject. If you feel so moved to enter the fray, and you're more than welcome to bring reinforcements, by all means do so here, on this thread, dedicated to that purpose.