I don't privilege the blank slate hypothesis personally. My prior is somewhere in the spectrum between the suggested heredity from twin studies, and the suggested heredity from GWAS and GCTA for IQ and criminality.
I just think the HBD people here have a weirdly rigid view of biology. Like, sure, we would expect that as white and black environments become more similar, genetics becomes more important not less. I think there's a fair argument that black and white environment have become more similar in a lot ways, and so we should expect that we are starting to see more of the underlying genetic differences between the two groups, just as if we fed everyone the same 2000 calorie nutricube every day, we would expect the differences in height that result to be primarily due to genetics.
But I think a lot of "weird" stuff can hide in the remaining environmental differences between black and white people. Just as it would be slightly premature to say we have a handle on the genetic differences between rose cultivar A and rose cultivar B when we give them soil, sun and water conditions that are 80% similar, if the 20% of difference is a haphazard combination of pollutants, or uniformly more extreme weather conditions for one of the two cultivars.
Personally, I'm hoping it is genetic, because that would make the problem much more tractable. But I want to see the genes, and a proposed mechanism for how the genes work before I fully accept it. Of course, I will make Bayesian updates as we gather more data, but I think a lot of people update in inappropriately intense ways compared to the rigor of the evidence they are packing.
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I don't privilege the blank slate hypothesis personally. My prior is somewhere in the spectrum between the suggested heredity from twin studies, and the suggested heredity from GWAS and GCTA for IQ and criminality.
I just think the HBD people here have a weirdly rigid view of biology. Like, sure, we would expect that as white and black environments become more similar, genetics becomes more important not less. I think there's a fair argument that black and white environment have become more similar in a lot ways, and so we should expect that we are starting to see more of the underlying genetic differences between the two groups, just as if we fed everyone the same 2000 calorie nutricube every day, we would expect the differences in height that result to be primarily due to genetics.
But I think a lot of "weird" stuff can hide in the remaining environmental differences between black and white people. Just as it would be slightly premature to say we have a handle on the genetic differences between rose cultivar A and rose cultivar B when we give them soil, sun and water conditions that are 80% similar, if the 20% of difference is a haphazard combination of pollutants, or uniformly more extreme weather conditions for one of the two cultivars.
Personally, I'm hoping it is genetic, because that would make the problem much more tractable. But I want to see the genes, and a proposed mechanism for how the genes work before I fully accept it. Of course, I will make Bayesian updates as we gather more data, but I think a lot of people update in inappropriately intense ways compared to the rigor of the evidence they are packing.
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