genetic determinism

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why exactly i'm creating this thread, whether i think it's a 'good' thing to do for the 'ilx community' in the wake of this week's beatdowns etc, what i want to be said here, i don't know. what i know: i've recently come across what seems to be some terribly hateful *published* writings of university professor that i kinda "know" (he's a friend's father). the more 'sensational' conclusions i won't bother to reproduce here. the first article is an analysis of business and labour practices under 1. apartheid south africa, 2. present day united states and 3. a nascently nazi-run germany. the paper comes to the conclusions that blacks are genetically incapable of running successful, sustainable businesses and that hitler, if not willing to accept that jews were ultimately beneficial to the german economy, had only one other economic alternative in mass genocide.

the other article is the hardcopy of a talk he delivered to mensa (!): it's an extended piece about genetic determinism, subscribing to bell curve thinking, claiming that steven jay gould's "mismeasure of man" arguments are scientifically flawed, citing study after study claiming that the influence of external environment on our behaviour is negligable, finding evidence everywhere that there are fixed hierarchies of intelligence that our weak impulses of 'common sense' won't let us see.

after exhaustingly arguing the case for genetically determined intelligence, he ends with this coded sentence, maybe a kind of reflective shield for the enraged mensa-ites: "every instance of insitutionalized racial and ethnic disciminiation in the world today is based on a demonstrably incorrect premise, that groups of people do not differ genetically in socially useful abilities; and, consequently, the greater success of some groups than others is attained through socially pernicious means and is a problem that must be solved."

what i want to know: is this guy's construction of a "informed scientific community" vs the "liberal media" closer to "scary faction of republican-funded studies designed to get white money away from struggling minorities" vs. "a respected scientific community and most reasonable people", or is this kind of neocon thinking found more often and more openly than i thought? would an affirmative action-unfriendly US supreme court support these "findings"? IE. how alone is he?

― mitch lastnamewithheld (mitchlnw), Friday, 13 June 2003 17:47 (twenty-one years ago)

(sorry for grammer problems and the poorly expressed bits, i'm.. stunned. and seething. i mentioned this to some ppl on AIM last night but today i got copies of the printed articles from a friend of a friend etc.)

― mitch lastnamewithheld (mitchlnw), Friday, 13 June 2003 17:50 (twenty-one years ago)

I fear not alone enough, but I'd need to look into it more to say...and I admit if I did I'd probably get so annoyed and mad I couldn't do much more than seethe.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 13 June 2003 18:31 (twenty-one years ago)

Mitch I hope it isn't genetically determined that yr friend becomes an asshole

― DG (D_To_The_G), Saturday, 14 June 2003 14:32 (twenty-one years ago)

Mitch, do a search on 'The Bell Curve' and 'The Mismeasure Of Man'

― N. (nickdastoor), Saturday, 14 June 2003 15:53 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.fair.org/extra/9501/bell.html

― N. (nickdastoor), Saturday, 14 June 2003 15:54 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm with Ned here, sadly I think more people ascribe to these beliefs than people realize. I’ve been shocked on too many occasions not to think that.

Part of that is attributable to the success of books like 'the bell curve' that draw their material from explicitly ideological sources (shit, racist publications) but gloss over that and attempt to present their work as balanced and 'scientific.' One of the problems is that most people don't question these kinds of books/papers hard enough and the 'findings' become repeated enough that it soon becomes accepted wisdom.

I just dug up an ancient New York Review of Books that demolishes ‘the Bell Curve’, unfortunately its only available on their site as a pay article. If you can find it elsewhere, it was called “The Tainted Sources of ‘The Bell Curve’” by Charles Lane, December 1, 1994. (I can’t believe I was actually able to find it, there must actually be order to the chaos of my home)

(btw Mitch, your friend’s father isn’t Robert G*ayre by any chance?)

― H (Heruy), Saturday, 14 June 2003 16:09 (twenty-one years ago)

thanks Nick. i'd done a few searches with those terms, but hadn't uncovered that article, it addresses a number of my questions.

H: nope, that's not him. i don't know if 'outing' him here would do any good.

― mitch lastnamewithheld (mitchlnw), Saturday, 14 June 2003 16:24 (twenty-one years ago)

not my intention, i apologise anyway

― H (Heruy), Saturday, 14 June 2003 16:26 (twenty-one years ago)

(no worries H, i didn't think it was)

― mitch lastnamewithheld (mitchlnw), Saturday, 14 June 2003 16:34 (twenty-one years ago)

if you want to read about genetic determinism for real, not just bullshit artists that employ pseudoscience to prop up their bigotry, have a look at "the blank slate" by steven pinker and delve into the bibliography.

there is credible research done on the subject, and the naturalness or inevitability of genetically-based discrimination does not follow logically from acceptance of its validity. quite the opposite, in fact.

― fortunate hazel (f. hazel), Saturday, 14 June 2003 16:43 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, I was thinking it was a bit of an unfortunate thread title.

― N. (nickdastoor), Saturday, 14 June 2003 16:55 (twenty-one years ago)

yes, a big 'oops' on my part there. maybe you all can mentally retitle it to read "my friend's dad likes hitler". or can we still have a smart discussion about the (nonpseudo) science behind this stuff?

― mitch lastnamewithheld (mitchlnw), Saturday, 14 June 2003 17:16 (twenty-one years ago)

(for starters, here is the steven pinker home page containing links to all things pinker)

― mitch lastnamewithheld (mitchlnw), Saturday, 14 June 2003 17:20 (twenty-one years ago)

determinism = worst word ever. Worse than "influence"

― Alan (Alan), Monday, 16 June 2003 08:17 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't know how anybody can pretend that this 'research' has any credibility whatsoever given that recent actual research involving scientific methods (eg LOOKING AT THE GENOME) proves that any two people on earth regardless of ethnicity or apparent geographical origin are just as likely to be genetically similar as any two unrelated people of the same complexion etc etc. Since Iceland has one of the smallest gene pools of any place on earth (and excellent recordkeeping), why doesn't one of these clever shitplates go there and make some sweeping conclusions concerning that population? Why aren't more icelandic people in charge of multinational corporations? It must be because they are stupider than, uh, stupider than other northern european caucasians. Yeah.

This shit rears its ugly head every once in a while - there's always some fuckjob willing to put it forward (not surprisingly, said fuckjobs are unfailingly white, male and possessed of massive insecurities) and some other fuckjob willing to publish it. I don't think this kind of thinking influences many people, though. Like The Bible Code and other mass-produced malarkey, the people who buy this crap already believe it anyway, and the rest of us know better and don't waste our time. It's no better than creationism and should be treated as such.

― Millar (Millar), Monday, 16 June 2003 19:35 (twenty-one years ago)

one month passes...

recent actual research involving scientific methods (eg LOOKING AT THE GENOME) proves that any two people on earth regardless of ethnicity or apparent geographical origin are just as likely to be genetically similar as any two unrelated people of the same complexion etc etc

*delayed response, but...*

tom, do you have research to back this up? everything i've ever read suggests that the exact opposite is true (hence behavioural + intelligence similaries across sets of twins, fractured or otherwise)

― mark p (Mark P), Wednesday, 13 August 2003 10:27 (twenty-one years ago)

Mark - I think he's just saying that ethnic markers come from a tiny number of one's genes, so that if you examined a random white European's DNA, it is* as likely as not to have more in common with a randomly selected black African's than with another randomly selected (unrelated) white European's.

*(virtually, anyway)

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 13 August 2003 11:30 (twenty-one years ago)

Yes but the 'virtually' is the whole point of the argument, surely?

You might as well argue that it's impossible to tell people who come from Africa from people who come from Iceland. It just ain't the case.

The amount of difference isn't really the point, considering we share something like 50% of our genes with, uh, bananas.

― lee ward (lee ward), Thursday, 14 August 2003 01:24 (twenty-one years ago)

and anyway some clever shitplates HAVE gone to iceland for that very purpose

― mark p (Mark P), Thursday, 14 August 2003 07:01 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah but Lee Ward, surely the implication of what Nick is saying is that all humans have 99.9 percent (for example) of their genes in common, just as they share 50 percent (for example) of their DNA with bananas (or whatever), AND of the genetic markers that ARE variable in human DNA, those that code for ethnicity are insignificant compared to those that code for other traits. This is implied by the phrase 'a random white European's DNA ... is as likely as not to have more in common with a randomly selected black African's than with another randomly selected (unrelated) white European's'.

― m.s (m .s), Thursday, 14 August 2003 07:12 (twenty-one years ago)

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