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The Vosgian Beast posted:I feel I covered this pretty well in the OP of the now-locked old mock thread http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3627012 I miss your JFK Jesus movie av.
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Aug 21, 2015 20:56
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Merdifex posted:And what am I trying to prove? Sociobiological theories have never been proven, that's self-evident when you pore over the mainstream literature. A fixed human nature as postulated by the sociobiologists, and evo-psych has never been proven to exist. If anything, human nature is adaptable, and adaptability is adaptive. Article: Maybe the truth about the Yanomami is somewhere in the middle. You: Everyone who emphasizes the role of genes in human behavior is completely dumb and wrong! Look at this article that agrees with me! I haven't read the specific people you single out for criticism, and in fact am pretty skeptical of them based on what I know of them, but you can't just cite a source that doesn't really agree with you as though it does like that. Silver2195 has a new favorite as of 21:22 on Aug 21, 2015 |
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Aug 21, 2015 21:14
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Oh god, for a second I thought I was in D&D.
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Aug 21, 2015 21:30
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Jack Gladney posted:I fully expect "human biodiversity" to replace evopsych as the umbrella term for this nonsense in like 5-10 years. "Human biodiversity" doesn't even have the veneer of scientific respectability that sociobiology and evo-psych once had. Anyone who is not on the HBD train already is unlikely to be convinced by it.
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Aug 21, 2015 21:41
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Woolie Wool posted:"Human biodiversity" doesn't even have the veneer of scientific respectability that sociobiology and evo-psych once had. Anyone who is not on the HBD train already is unlikely to be convinced by it. I saw this at the bookstore today. It claims that evolutionary pressures in historical times made Jews good at capitalism and that blackness may be carried by the same genes that make people impulsive and short-tempered. http://www.amazon.com/Troublesome-Inheritance-Genes-Human-History/dp/1594204462
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Aug 21, 2015 21:58
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Silver2195 posted:Article: Maybe the truth about the Yanomami is somewhere in the middle. You haven't read the articles closely, have you? What Dr. Weiss argues is that scientists are commonly victims of their own biases. Napoleon Chagnon is a good example of that, and indeed, many ardent sociobiologists are too. That's essentially the biggest reason why sociobiology has been largely bullshit, a broken field, and researchers who don't know what they're doing, but very dearly want their pet theories (which may come from their own biases and prejudices, you see this in other fields that have connections to scientific racism as well) to be proven right. What you get from this is academics reaching conclusions which the data do not support, if indeed there's any strong evidence to begin with. The current reality is that thus far not one gene has been found to have additive, independent effects on any human behavioral trait in the normal range (i.e. it doesn't cause severe mental retardation or something such) and has been replicated. But you still have hereditist morons running about with their twin studies while ignoring exactly what heritability estimates mean and can be informative of. The base reason why sociobiology and evolutionary psychology were and are bad fields wasn't only terrible research, and the source of said terrible research were terrible researchers who cared more about pursuing their agenda (J. P. Rushton is a preeminent example of such a researcher, though not an evolutionary psychologist) to the length that they'd give in to bad scientific methods.
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Aug 21, 2015 22:08
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Jack Gladney posted:I saw this at the bookstore today. It claims that evolutionary pressures in historical times made Jews good at capitalism and that blackness may be carried by the same genes that make people impulsive and short-tempered. http://cehg.stanford.edu/letter-from-population-geneticists/ Don't bother reading that.
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Aug 21, 2015 22:11
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Jack Gladney posted:I saw this at the bookstore today. It claims that evolutionary pressures in historical times made Jews good at capitalism and that blackness may be carried by the same genes that make people impulsive and short-tempered. Aw man, I remember when that book came out. Every science writer was so happy they found something so unabashedly poo poo that they could go on for days about how garbage it was without having to give it any credit.
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Aug 21, 2015 22:30
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Every science writer was so happy they found something so unabashedly poo poo that they could go on for days about how garbage it was without having to give it any credit. Small-time science bloggers got such a boost due to critiques of this scientific racist piece of poo poo. It had basically all the current theories scientific racists love to spout (HBD) and it was a godsend since it got all the relevant scientists out to actually engage with the public and educated them on how scientific racism is bullshit, it was an issue that'd been out of the spotlight for a while.
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Aug 21, 2015 22:36
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From what I saw from those many, many takedowns, Wade works under the unspoken assumption that anything that isn't hardcoded into someone's genes obviously can't last more than a few generations, because culture is a magical land of pure mysterious freedom. Thus the East Asians have obedience genes or whatever.
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Aug 21, 2015 22:56
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The Vosgian Beast posted:From what I saw from those many, many takedowns, Wade works under the unspoken assumption that anything that isn't hardcoded into someone's genes obviously can't last more than a few generations, because culture is a magical land of pure mysterious freedom.
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Aug 22, 2015 00:50
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Nessus posted:Maybe he can tie it to diet next, with the rice and vegetable fodder of Johnny Asian rendering him submissive, meek, and prone to call center work, while the all-bacon diet of the rugged WASP has prepared him to conquer a planet. No, people have the ability to change that, so it's harder to be judgmental and racist.
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Aug 22, 2015 00:54
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The Vosgian Beast posted:No, people have the ability to change that, so it's harder to be judgmental and racist. Exactly. Scientific racism has always been essentially hereditist.
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Aug 22, 2015 01:25
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The Vosgian Beast posted:No, people have the ability to change that, so it's harder to be judgmental and racist. Oh but it's not racist because we acknowledge Asians and Jews have slightly higher average IQs than the Aryan man, even if they lack all the other manful virtues.
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Aug 22, 2015 01:28
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Merdifex posted:Small-time science bloggers got such a boost due to critiques of this scientific racist piece of poo poo. It had basically all the current theories scientific racists love to spout (HBD) and it was a godsend since it got all the relevant scientists out to actually engage with the public and educated them on how scientific racism is bullshit, it was an issue that'd been out of the spotlight for a while. Yeah. Jerry Coyne was particularly pissed off since scientific racists keep citing him as if he agrees with them. (He thinks something like race might be said to exist, i.e. there are discernible populations. That's not news, though.) He touted the open letter telling Wade to stop abusing their work quite heavily.
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Aug 22, 2015 01:44
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divabot posted:Yeah. Jerry Coyne was particularly pissed off since scientific racists keep citing him as if he agrees with them. (He thinks something like race might be said to exist, i.e. there are discernible populations. That's not news, though.) He touted the open letter telling Wade to stop abusing their work quite heavily. Many (if not most) geneticists disagree with Coyne, and the race realist position is hardly mainstream. Many geneticists have written about this, a good recent book by geneticist Daniel J. Fairbanks discusses the topic and all the evidence available, and disagrees with the idea that race is an informative or useful category. If anyone is interested, here's a talk by Dr. Kittles on the topic of "biological race" and how genetics does not support it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAWrwexw-To Merdifex has a new favorite as of 02:02 on Aug 22, 2015 |
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Aug 22, 2015 01:59
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Interesting related reading: http://www.racismreview.com/blog/2013/05/05/the-race-of-birth-systemic-racism-again/
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Aug 22, 2015 02:26
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Nessus posted:Ahhh but you could credit it to ancestral diet now, maybe in ten generations your epigenetics will change but for now get in your caste systems! White people are like the humans on Star Trek: some aliens have one quality each that exceeds Captain Kirk's abilities in that specific realm (one race is stronger, and another is smarter, one lives longer, etc), but Captain Kirk is has lesser amounts of all those qualities in the right proportion to always win and be the best captain and anyway Spock can't be the captain because look he's still a loving Jew at the end of the day and he just doesn't value things the same way.
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Aug 22, 2015 02:40
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Jack Gladney posted:White people are like the humans on Star Trek: some aliens have one quality each that exceeds Captain Kirk's abilities in that specific realm (one race is stronger, and another is smarter, one lives longer, etc), but Captain Kirk is has lesser amounts of all those qualities in the right proportion to always win and be the best captain and anyway Spock can't be the captain because look he's still a loving Jew at the end of the day and he just doesn't value things the same way. John P. Rushton, avowed scientific racist, had a similar theory: you either have more brain, and thus more intelligence, or you have more penis, and thus you focus on breeding. He also did some amazing research to prove his theory which consisted of him surveying his students and random passers-by at a mall about their penis sizes and how far they could ejaculate.
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Aug 22, 2015 02:53
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Merdifex posted:John P. Rushton, avowed scientific racist, had a similar theory: you either have more brain, and thus more intelligence, or you have more penis, and thus you focus on breeding. He also did some amazing research to prove his theory which consisted of him surveying his students and random passers-by at a mall about their penis sizes and how far they could ejaculate. Isn't he then the arch-cuck? Or how else would you call a white guy who vigurously promotes sex with black men?
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Aug 22, 2015 03:30
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What makes that line of thinking even more amusing is that there's no statistical difference between penis sizes among the "races". http://www.dailydot.com/lifestyle/penis-size-infographic-debunked/ has links to several useful sources, and even mentions Rushton as being one of the major contributors to the popular belief.
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Aug 22, 2015 03:40
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Phillip Kitcher's Vaulting Ambition does a good job sorting reasonable evopsych claims from ones that overreach: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/vaulting-ambition
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Aug 22, 2015 05:11
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Merdifex posted:John P. Rushton, avowed scientific racist, had a similar theory: you either have more brain, and thus more intelligence, or you have more penis, and thus you focus on breeding. He also did some amazing research to prove his theory which consisted of him surveying his students and random passers-by at a mall about their penis sizes and how far they could ejaculate. That is the most amazingly stupid explanation of why nerds can't get laid that I have ever heard.
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Aug 22, 2015 05:40
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Merdifex posted:He also did some amazing research to prove his theory which consisted of him surveying his students and random passers-by at a mall about their penis sizes and how far they could ejaculate. How does he survey how far people can ejaculate? Does he have a specialised experimental rig set up in his booth at the mall into which he entices unsuspecting men to get surprise handjobs from a machine or an unfortunate intern who then measures the fall of his seed? Or is it far more prosaic (and far less unethical) and he relies entirety on self reporting? (In which case his results are pretty much garbage.) Doc Quantum has a new favorite as of 07:59 on Aug 22, 2015 |
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Aug 22, 2015 06:46
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quantumavenger posted:How does he survey how far people can ejaculate? Does he have a specialised experimental rig set up in his booth at the mall into which he entices unsuspecting men to get surprise handjobs from a machine or an unfortunate intern who then measures the fall of his seed? What do you think? Also I don't get how penis size is supposed to correlate with more success with the ladies. It's not like they have magic penis vision to see your tiny weiner and turn you down early. If it's at the point where they're seeing your junk you've basically succeeded.
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Aug 22, 2015 08:42
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ArchangeI posted:That is the most amazingly stupid explanation of why nerds can't get laid that I have ever heard. It was more about proving how blacks are dumb and apparently breed like rabbits, and how Asians and whites are smart. You know, what with Rushton being a big racist and all. quantumavenger posted:How does he survey how far people can ejaculate? Does he have a specialised experimental rig set up in his booth at the mall into which he entices unsuspecting men to get surprise handjobs from a machine or an unfortunate intern who then measures the fall of his seed? He stood around with a clipboard in the mall and surveyed people. Yes, it's all self-report, but we've already established that Rushton was a lovely academic (died in 2012, good riddance.)
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Aug 22, 2015 08:55
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I swear to god dudes latch onto dick size just because it can be measured and quantified, and therefore is "real" in their weird narrow hard-science-cargo-cult worldview
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Aug 22, 2015 08:59
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Throughout the whole Roko's Basilisk thing, I've never heard anyone comment on the irony or poetic justice or whatever of the Less Wrong community having spontaneously developed a religion. They seem like the "I am far too intelligent to believe in some silly God" sorts, but then they renamed all the variables and never saw it coming right back at them. They were absolutely defenseless. And when Yudkowsky, who IIRC had been taking a rare vacation from modding his forum, returned like Moses from the Mount and saw them all freaking out over the Future Robot Devil someone had just thought of, his reaction was "YOU FOOLS! YOU HAVE NO IDEA THE DAMAGE YOU HAVE DONE!", scrubbing every mention of it, and banning the topic forever and ever, which means that Yudkowsky himself either believes he is protecting his flock from a literal Robot Devil that could be watching them and plotting their torture right this very moment, or he thinks that the Basilisk is just one of those "dangerous ideas" but only his followers comprehend it, so it is only dangerous to them. Those are the only explanations in which his followers are smarter than everyone else and he is even smarter than his followers, so he has to believe one or the other. That's like, Baysean. "Only We are enlightened enough to understand, that's why nobody believes us" isn't an excuse, it's a red flag up there with "then we will shed our earthly bodies" and "but they're not really death camps because".
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Aug 22, 2015 09:41
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Syd Midnight posted:Throughout the whole Roko's Basilisk thing, I've never heard anyone comment on the irony or poetic justice or whatever of the Less Wrong community having spontaneously developed a religion. That happened like every three pages in the Less Wrong mock thread. Probably why there isn't one any more.
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Aug 22, 2015 12:43
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DStecks posted:That happened like every three pages in the Less Wrong mock thread. Probably why there isn't one any more. Pretty much. Every few pages someone would demand to be walked through the logic process behind Roko's Basilisk AGAIN.
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Aug 22, 2015 14:19
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Merdifex posted:It was more about proving how blacks are dumb and apparently breed like rabbits, and how Asians and whites are smart. You know, what with Rushton being a big racist and all. So do people like this become terrible after they get tenure or are there really professorships for every PhD regardless of talent, rigor, and sanity?
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Aug 22, 2015 15:45
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Stultus Maximus posted:So do people like this become terrible after they get tenure or are there really professorships for every PhD regardless of talent, rigor, and sanity? Some are probably hired out of a misplaced obligation to "fairness" or "balance," and others probably hide it until they're invulnerable. A big part of why these shits are so intolerable is that they learn to hide their garbage ideas and also feel persecuted and self-righteous for having to do it. Being infamous can get you places, though. They're usually only places sane people wouldn't want to go.
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Aug 22, 2015 16:14
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Rushton's torch is being carried on by Donald I Templer, author of Is Size Important? This is Donald I Templer, incidentally. 
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Aug 22, 2015 16:32
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Yes, size matters. Neck size.
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Aug 22, 2015 17:17
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Syd Midnight posted:And when Yudkowsky, who IIRC had been taking a rare vacation from modding his forum, returned like Moses from the Mount and saw them all freaking out over the Future Robot Devil someone had just thought of, his reaction was "YOU FOOLS! YOU HAVE NO IDEA THE DAMAGE YOU HAVE DONE!", scrubbing every mention of it, and banning the topic forever and ever, which means that Yudkowsky himself either believes he is protecting his flock from a literal Robot Devil that could be watching them and plotting their torture right this very moment, or he thinks that the Basilisk is just one of those "dangerous ideas" but only his followers comprehend it, so it is only dangerous to them. Those are the only explanations in which his followers are smarter than everyone else and he is even smarter than his followers, so he has to believe one or the other. That's like, Baysean. 
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Aug 22, 2015 17:49
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Aug 22, 2015 18:23
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That is quite interesting to see. It's quite amazing what a visual demonstration can do to highlight absurd claims.
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Aug 22, 2015 18:31
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How is that man's head making noise without lungs and a diaphragm to push air through its vocal cords?
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Aug 22, 2015 21:03
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Wales Grey posted:How is that man's head making noise without lungs and a diaphragm to push air through its vocal cords?
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Aug 22, 2015 21:19
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Wales Grey posted:How is that man's head making noise without lungs and a diaphragm to push air through its vocal cords?
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