Scrutable

Do I need to give any more information?


Keywords: Dawkins, controversy, twitter, eugenics, arguments, dickhead

But facts, EPD. Stop being so ideological.

Hasn't Brexit taught you anything?
Experts are no longer required; We have had enough of experts!

Don't see what the fuss is about - we know it works, as shown in the 1988 documentary, Twins.

There's a piece here on how we should 'decouple' and realise that saying something is possible is not the same as saying it should be done.

However, I'm not convinced. Of course you can say something is possible without endorsing it but Dawkins has a history of naivety (to put it kindly) when tweeting, failing to think of the wider context and leaving too much implicit.

His basic grasp of psychology is poor for a communicator, he has frequently shown himself to be ignorant of history, psychology, society and of how everything has a context. Words and facts are not neutral even if we like to pretend we're smart enough to claim they are.

And why even say 'yes it's possible to do this'? That's so banal to be not worth saying.

Adam Rutherford has done a good thread on Twitter unpicking the implications of Dawk's tweet that ends 'Finally: ‘Facts don’t care about feelings’ is a really *really*, profoundly idiotic thing to say.'

My main conclusion is a) Dawkins should just shut up b) don't jump on a Dawks' tweet because Adam Rutherford will deal with it more elegantly and intelligently than I can c) there will always be some white man willing to defend him d) Twitter is useful for alerting us to these things so we can go away and discuss them somewhere calmer.

Tessa K wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 18, 2020 1:46 pm

His basic grasp of psychology is poor for a communicator …

The second paragraph of his obit will start with that, corrected for past tense, but otherwise verbatim.

Dawkins should just shut up and discussion of eugenics should be anathema.

The low decouplers (you’ll have to read Tessa K’s link) remind of this point made by Abraham Lincoln who:

used to liken the case to that of the boy who, when asked how many legs his calf would have if he called its tail a leg, replied, ” Five,” to which the prompt response was made that calling the tail a leg would not make it a leg.

https://timpanogos.blog/2007/05/23/linc ... dogs-tail/

I wrote a blog here: https://thingssamthinks.wordpress.com/2 ... ecoupling/

Although in his tweet there was an unreferenced connection to matters in the news right now, Dawkins raised this out of nowhere, and he did it on Twitter. Before he raised the topic, I’m not aware of anyone claiming that eugenics wouldn’t work, though there is now actually some debate over that, once the word ‘work’ is suitably defined, which it tends not to be. (And I should point out, there are lots of things I am not aware of, so maybe that debate was indeed raging good and hard). But his tweet basically stamped a Big White Man Foot and flew a big flag from on high saying, “am I not a clever, clever man?” Simply by raising a question which no one was asking, he lends legitimacy to the worth of having the debate. Previously, most would have considered that legitimacy to be nil. The debate was done, finished, out of bounds except to a few far-right goons on tiny corners of the internet. Dawkins, a man with 2.8 million followers, just broke it out into the big leagues.

This makes an interesting point in a good thread. (Interesting to me, some of you will know this already. I'm learning a lot today).

Another reason is that humans are exposed to very different environments, so most of trait variation is not due to genetic factors but to differences in environment. One consequence is that it makes it hard to identify subjects who have desirable genetic characteristics.

He also talks about de novo mutations that can't be selectively bred out (or in).

Sabisky has claimed he was pilloried by 'selective quoting'. So what is the correct selection process for racism, eugenics and sexism?

Thanks to Tessa and EPD, for links and discussion.

Updated to offer thanks for the Curtis link!

I would add to his points about environmental factor, that a highly significant factor in human development is the uterine environment, which in turn may depend on the mother's environment (food intake, nutrients, etc.). This is why I think 'separated identical twin studies' do not tell us much about the heritability of intelligence, since those twins were raised in the same uterine environment. Quite apart from evil people like Cyril Burt.

Yes - "naive to put it kindly" is something I've said elsewhere.

And his communication is sometimes just *wrong* even when he's discussing evolution. For example, his insistence on natural selection being described as not random would imply that humanity was "the peak of evolution", when the KT impact was merely one of the most extravagant incidents that utterly changed the path of evolution.

Tessa K wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 18, 2020 5:08 pm

This makes an interesting point in a good thread. (Interesting to me, some of you will know this already. I'm learning a lot today).

Another reason is that humans are exposed to very different environments, so most of trait variation is not due to genetic factors but to differences in environment. One consequence is that it makes it hard to identify subjects who have desirable genetic characteristics.

He also talks about de novo mutations that can't be selectively bred out (or in).

Sabisky has claimed he was pilloried by 'selective quoting'. So what is the correct selection process for racism, eugenics and sexism?

I have seen some screenshots of his "thinking the unthinkable" and his figures look as though they came from Richard Lynn, who is almost an exemplar of bad science pushed with an agenda (in his case, seemingly less of white supremacy than black inferiority)

Here is his own pdf of his paper "Intelligence and the wealth and poverty of nations"

http://www.rlynn.co.uk/uploads/pdfs/Int ... ations.pdf

His results are often quoted by white supremacists, which isn't surprising given their aim and claims.

They are literally incredible, for example assigning "the average IQ" of Guinea-Bissau of 63 (yes, 63) based on a self-declared sample size of zero and asserting that it's the same as Guinea (The value for Equatorial Guinea was based on a single test of 48 ten-fourteen year olds).

He then plots GDP against these values for IQ, I think including those he's estimated, and comes up with something - which I haven't bothered to look at.

Might be fun to gnaw at

And again, like Cummings, he seems to have binge-read the sort of business-as-war-books you find in airport departure lounges. With a side order of having read too much Asimov's Foundation series or Dune at an impressionable age.

"Superforecasters" - that sounds like a way to try separating someone from money, but hey, the word Mentat has already been coined.

Scandinavia was surprisingly keen on enforced sterilization. In Switzerland they were still doing it in 1970, Peru in the 90s and in some countries it's still going on.

The flip side of this is Hungary where they want the native population to outbreed immigrants and women with four or more children don't have to pay tax.

Tessa K wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 19, 2020 8:07 am

The flip side of this is Hungary where they want the native population to outbreed immigrants and women with four or more children don't have to pay tax.

I'm not sure if it was an urban myth, but didn't France try to combat low pregnancy rates by allowing (encouraging?) TV companies to show late-night p.rn?

Martin_B wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 19, 2020 8:21 am

Tessa K wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 19, 2020 8:07 am

The flip side of this is Hungary where they want the native population to outbreed immigrants and women with four or more children don't have to pay tax.

I'm not sure if it was an urban myth, but didn't France try to combat low pregnancy rates by allowing (encouraging?) TV companies to show late-night p.rn?

I would think that might prove to be counter productive.

Martin_B wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 19, 2020 8:21 am

Tessa K wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 19, 2020 8:07 am

The flip side of this is Hungary where they want the native population to outbreed immigrants and women with four or more children don't have to pay tax.

I'm not sure if it was an urban myth, but didn't France try to combat low pregnancy rates by allowing (encouraging?) TV companies to show late-night p.rn?

That just caused a large increase in the number of curtains needing dry cleaning

Tessa K wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 18, 2020 1:46 pm

There's a piece here on how we should 'decouple' and realise that saying something is possible is not the same as saying it should be done.

However, I'm not convinced. Of course you can say something is possible without endorsing it but Dawkins has a history of naivety (to put it kindly) when tweeting, failing to think of the wider context and leaving too much implicit.

His basic grasp of psychology is poor for a communicator, he has frequently shown himself to be ignorant of history, psychology, society and of how everything has a context. Words and facts are not neutral even if we like to pretend we're smart enough to claim they are.

And why even say 'yes it's possible to do this'? That's so banal to be not worth saying.

Adam Rutherford has done a good thread on Twitter unpicking the implications of Dawk's tweet that ends 'Finally: ‘Facts don’t care about feelings’ is a really *really*, profoundly idiotic thing to say.'

My main conclusion is a) Dawkins should just shut up b) don't jump on a Dawks' tweet because Adam Rutherford will deal with it more elegantly and intelligently than I can c) there will always be some white man willing to defend him d) Twitter is useful for alerting us to these things so we can go away and discuss them somewhere calmer.

I am not convinced about "Decoupling". I had a long argument with a Christian fundamentalist homophobe. Any reply or post he made about atheists would inevitably include a reference to the Nazis. At no point did he ever say Atheists are Nazis or like Nazis but instead might include say "of course Hitler was an atheist." or "without an absolute moral authority you end up with Nazism." He was a very annoying troll.

He denied he ever said that atheists were Nazi. But actually by repeatedly mentioning the two in the same context of course he f.cking was.

Selective breeding =/= Eugenics. Don't mention eugenics at all if you don't support it.

Dawkins seems to love arguing but never is much good at understanding why people disagree with what he's saying.

jimbob wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 18, 2020 9:30 pm

And his communication is sometimes just *wrong* even when he's discussing evolution. For example, his insistence on natural selection being described as not random would imply that humanity was "the peak of evolution", when the KT impact was merely one of the most extravagant incidents that utterly changed the path of evolution.

Sorry jimbob, I'm not following you.

How does natural selection being non-random imply that humans are the pinnacle of anything? Humans are no more the product of natural selection than anything else (possibly slightly less due to the relaxation of certain selection pressures).

Also, the existence of random events in *evolution* doesn't mean that *natural selection* is random - selection is just one of many evolutionary forces. It seems a bit of a stretch to define the KT impact as a selection event.

What I would say is that Dawkins tends to overemphasise the importance of selection versus random processes in evolution. He gives the impression that evolution is a highly optimised process, when in reality selection only occurs within tightly constrained parameters. Which, again, really comes down to ignoring context.

I thought decoupling was what Hollywood stars call divorce.

That's uncoupling, but I made sufficient use of it as a pun in my blog post title.

El Pollo Diablo wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 19, 2020 12:40 pm

That's uncoupling, but I made sufficient use of it as a pun in my blog post title.

Oh right. And uncoupling for trains too.

I just learnt this about decoupling:

In economic and environmental fields, decoupling refers to an economy that would be able to grow without corresponding increases in environmental pressure.

and this

muffle the sound or shock of (a nuclear explosion) by causing it to take place in an underground cavity.

It's a shame Dawks doesn't explode in underground cavities instead of on Twitter.

I thought this was going to be a discussion about the Queen's grand-children

Though he quit on Monday night parts of the media aren't giving up on this and Labour/SNP ministers are demanding to know how he was hired and was he vetted.

Gov staying tight lipped because they'll look like cretins either way. Though you'd think they'd rather say he wasn't vetted than he was and deemed acceptable.

Daily Mash highlight that a superpredictor was surprised that he got sacked