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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32051 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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A few days ago, I made a comment defending Turkheimer and critizing HBDers, in response to a vaulted "best of" comment dismissing Turkheimer. One of the main things my comment centered on was the phenotypic null hypothesis, which can roughly speaking be summarized as "correlation does not imply confounding" + "causation does not imply unmediated and unmoderated causation". Or as I phrased it:

Put simply, the phenotypic null hypothesis is this: Heritability tells you that if you go up through the chain of causation, then you will often end up with genes. However, there may be many ways that variables can be connected to each other, and there’s no particular reason to expect that every step along the chain of causation from genes to outcomes is best thought of as biological.

The consensus claimed that this was well-understood by HBDers around here, and perhaps even by HBDers more generally. Now I don't know that I buy that because it really doesn't seem well-understood in many places other than with people around Turkheimer.

In the thread, one person ended up posting an example of a paper which supposedly understood the nuances I was talking about. However, I disagree with that, and think that it is instead an excellent example of the problems with HBD epistemics. For instance, the paper opens by saying that the goal is to test evolutionary psychology hypotheses by testing for heritability in some personality traits:

According to the recent evolutionary-inspired theories (i.e., differential susceptibility [1], biological sensitivity to context [2]), humans, like many other species [3], differ substantially in their sensitivity to contextual factors, with some more susceptible to environmental influences than others. Importantly, these theories suggest that heightened sensitivity predicts both the reactivity to adverse contexts as well as the propensity to benefit from supportive features of positive environments. In other words, sensitivity is proposed to influence the impact of environmental influences in a “for better and for worse” manner [4]. These prominent theories converge on the proposition that genetic factors play a significant role in individual differences in Environmental Sensitivity (ES) [1, 2, 5].

Now, if you don't appreciate the phenotypic null hypothesis, then this would probably seem like a reasonable or even excellent idea. Evolution is about how genes are selected based on the traits they produce; if something is genetically coded, then evolution must have produced it, and conversely if evolution has produced it then it must be genetic.

But if you appreciate the phenotypic null hypothesis, then this study is of minimal relevance, almost no evidentiary value, and perhaps even eye-rollingly stupid. Of course the scales you administer are going to be heritable, because pretty much everything is heritable. Heritability doesn't mean that you've got anything meaningfully biological.

Now the thing is, my impression is that behavior geneticists do this sort of nonsense all the time, and that HBDers take them seriously when they do it. If HBDers instead properly appreciated the phenotypic null hypothesis, they would look somewhere else for this sort of info, or maybe even fix behavior genetics by propagating the info backwards to HBD-sympathetic behavior geneticists that they should read more Turkheimer. Notably, since this study was suggested as exemplary by someone here on TheMotte, it seems to provide at least an existence proof of someone who does not have a proper understanding of the phenotypic null hypothesis.

A few days ago, I made a comment defending Turkheimer and critizing HBDers, in response to a vaulted "best of" comment dismissing Turkheimer. ... In the thread, one person ended up posting an example of a paper which supposedly understood the nuances I was talking about. However, I disagree with that, and think that it is instead an excellent example of the problems with HBD epistemics.

In response to your comment, @DaseindustriesLtd already shared proof that Turkheimer confessed to being epistemically irrational about HBD:

And because whatever the faults of HBDers, the other side remains epistemologically worse. Turkheimer may have some legitimate scientific argument against between-group genetic diffs on g; his bottom line was still arrived at through moralizing. «We can recognize a contention that Chinese people are genetically predisposed to be better table tennis players than Africans as silly, and the contention that they are smarter than Africans as ugly, because it is a matter of ethical principle that individual and cultural accomplishment is not tied to the genes in the same way as the appearance of our hair.»

You did not respond to that allegation. Why should we waste time sorting through the pilpul of a confessed propagandist if we are in any way interested in epistemics, as you purport to be?

Let me also cut through what feels like a lot of unnecessary argumentation and simply ask you this: how can you explain the correlation between cognitive skills and genetic closeness depicted in this figure without acknowledging substantial genetic heritability? How is any sort of null hypothesis even necessary with this kind of direct evidence in hand?

You did not respond to that allegation. Why should we waste time sorting through the pilpul of a confessed propagandist if we are in any way interested in epistemics, as you purport to be?

I am not aware of any epistemic rules which say that you can't use moral judgements to decide whether something is silly or ugly.

Let me also cut through what feels like a lot of unnecessary argumentation and simply ask you this: how can you explain the correlation between cognitive skills and genetic closeness depicted in this figure without acknowledging substantial genetic heritability? How is any sort of null hypothesis even necessary with this kind of direct evidence in hand?

I agree that they are heritable. Turkheimer also agrees that they are heritable.

  • -10

I didn't interpret Turkheimer as judging it ugly rather than true on moral grounds, I interpreted him as judging it ugly rather than silly or unobjectionable on moral grounds.

I think you'd get more useful engagement and replies if, instead of saying 'phenotypic null hypothesis' a lot and explaining the theory of what it means, you tried to explain in a 'teaching' type way how and why it matters - like, laid out a few toy examples of populations that seem to be HBD-ish if you don't account for PNH but PNH means that heritability is explained by underlying mechanisms that are less HBD-ish.

It's not perfect that interlocutors aren't doing that work themselves, but - I spent an hour yesterday diving deep into something I disagreed with, made a long post here, came out understanding it a bit better but nothing really conclusive, and got zero replies. I could do that again, sure, but I have other stuff to do, so maybe later! People do that a lot here, but it takes enough time they won't do it every time.

"because it is a matter of ethical principle that individual and cultural accomplishment is not tied to the genes in the same way as the appearance of our hair"

What do you make of that then? Suppose the Catholic Church said "it is a matter of ethnical principle that the sun revolves around the Earth." No further arguments they made for geocentrism would be epistemically interesting. We shouldn't trust anything they say on the topic. Once someone confesses to being uninterested in the pursuit of truth, indeed to being the enemy of the truth conditional on its content, it's folly to engage with them for the purpose of pursuing the truth.

In sum: Turkheimer is a propagandist on this topic, he admitted as much, and it's a waste of time to engage with his arguments on the topic if you have any interest in finding the truth.

I have already read his point about the phenotypic null hypothesis, so your argument can't exactly persuade me to un-read it, whatever that would mean. And having read it, I've come to the conclusion that it's a critically important point for understanding heritability. Reading his paper and understanding his argument screens off whichever virtue or vice he might have.

Reading and understanding these arguments takes significant investment. So we need to use some manner of rational principle to decide which arguments are worth the investment to understand and engage with. That the argument is endorsed by Eric Turkheimer (a confessed propagandist) and @tailcalled (from my perspective, a random and unknown internet person who describes him or herself on Twitter as an autistic hobbyist gender researcher) does not come close to surmounting the threshold of reputability that it would take to persuade me to engage with it.

Just as physicists are loathe to engage with (and likely debunk) random cranks who come bearing plans for perpetual motion machines, and number theorists are loathe to engage with (and likely debunk) random cranks who come bearing new schemes for cryptography, no one should feel compelled to spend the investment that it takes to engage with (and likely debunk) whatever latest wad of argumentative complexity Turkheimer has concocted to further his political end. The fact that you personally vouch for it means nothing to me.

One productive step you could take if you want people to engage with the argument is to do the work of simplifying the argument to the point where it doesn't take significant investment to understand it. Boil it down to a couple of sentences with a simple toy model, and explain how it analogizes back to the original claim. But your whole method of repeatedly posting to the front page "here's a link to a paper from a confessed liar, go do a ton of homework to understand it if you want to consider yourself rational" is just one iteration of a gish gallop.

One productive step you could take if you want people to engage with the argument is to do the work of simplifying the argument to the point where it doesn't take significant investment to understand it. Boil it down to a couple of sentences with a simple toy model, and explain how it analogizes back to the original claim. But your whole method of repeatedly posting to the front page "here's a link to a paper from a confessed liar, go do a ton of homework to understand it if you want to consider yourself rational" is just one iteration of a gish gallop.

What's wrong with the toy model I gave in my article, of education? That genes affect intelligence which affect exam completion which affect education?

More comments

This is exactly the conclusion I came to as well. tailcalled seems more interested in obfuscating and claiming we can't know anything than clarifying and getting closer to the truth (despite occasional protestations of the opposite).

because it is a matter of ethical principle that individual and cultural accomplishment is not tied to the genes in the same way as the appearance of our hair.

I'm not going to defend Turkheimer, because I don't know the guy, and a lot of academic scholars strike me as absolutely sleazy, but I think I can defend the argument.

Aquota says below:

As is constantly stated, HBD is most commonly used as an alternative to a racism of the gaps.

Sure, maybe people here and now use it this way, but it's not like we haven't seen slippery slopes happen in real time. An ironic example is "racism of the gaps" itself, didn't we get here from a completely reasonable "maybe everyone should have equal rights"? This leads me to being quite sympathetic to the idea of just tabooing anything that might lead to pushing collective responsibility. Of course the rules of such a taboo would have to be a lot different than what we have now, banning HBD while pushing CRT is unjust, and not even a stable equilibrium (and I suppose this is why we are where we are).

You're just defending being a propagandist, treating the truth and knowledge as a pawn to be sacrificed instrumentally to advance your political goals.

And I'm fully supportive of people who feel that way to confess as much, so that those of us interested in the truth for its own sake know not to waste our time by treating their arguments as being made in good faith.

I see where you're coming from, but I do take issue with being portrayed as bad faith. If I was bad faith, I wouldn't come out and declare I want to taboo an entire field of knowledge, I'd do what everyone else does, and just scream "raaacist!".

I'm accusing Turkheimer of bad faith, not you. But in any event, there are plenty of instrumental reasons to adopt a false tone of scientific analysis when engaging in bad faith reasoning, not least because it's so much easier to dismiss people who start and finish with allegations of racism.

I agree that either both CRT and HBD should be permissible to discuss, or neither should be, with the current situation being unjust against HBD. I used to lean towards "both", wanting the free market of ideas to sort it out. However, the free market of ideas doesn't seem to work, as evidenced by lots of things including HBDers not understanding the phenotypic null hypothesis, so now I don't know what to think anymore.

The phenotypic null hypothesis is an invention of Eric Turkheimer, who confessed to being a propagandist -- the receipts are upthread. How on earth could it possibly be rational for an epistemic rationalist to even invest the time to understand his argument when he has already revealed that his arguments will have only a coincidental relationship with the truth? It's a waste of time and energy, and he intends it to be exactly that.

I don't buy that his arguments have only a coincidental corration to truth. He is biased, yes, but there is also an important signal.

Counterpoint: There is no useful correlation between what Turkheimer says on this topic and the truth, because he has already admitted that his conclusions are determined by his ethical positions rather than by the pursuit of truth.

Let me also cut through what feels like a lot of unnecessary argumentation and simply ask you this: how can you explain the correlation between cognitive skills and genetic closeness depicted in this figure without acknowledging substantial genetic heritability?

Yes, when you control for factors X, Y and Z, whatever remains is going to be what shows up on the graph. That is what "controlling for" means. Where HBD-tards drop the ball is the transition form "things like height, athletics ability, show high degrees of heritability" to "judging people by their individual qualities rather than their race is anti-science"

  • -25

"judging people by their individual qualities rather than their race is anti-science"

This is a gross mischaracterization of the HBD position and you know it. I, and every other HBD supporter I know of in the rationalist community supports judging individual people by their actual qualities. The only difference is that we don't expect such judgements to find exactly equal distributions of talent in each race.

I have literally never seen a rationalist HBD supporter who argues that a demonstrably talented individual should be denied opportunity because of their race

This is a gross mischaracterization

No, it is not a gross mischaracterization. It is the bailey in contrast to the motte. I have had arguments whicthn users in this very thread about how equality before the law is not the same thing as fungibility.

Where HBD-tards drop the ball is the transition form "things like height, athletics ability, show high degrees of heritability" to "judging people by their individual qualities rather than their race is anti-science"

Can you name any specific HBD-tards?

I am not aware of any HBD believer/tolerant people who say "a 7 foot tall white man who never misses free throws should be banned from the NBA" or "a black teenager with perfect SATs who won the math olympiad should be rejected from Caltech". Can you cite some of them?

Can you name any specific HBD-tards?

A handful in this forum but I'm already in the dog house with the mods.

  • -10

Lol I totally believe you that they exist, but you just can't link to them cause "the mods".

Speaking as a mod, there certainly are people with those beliefs on this forum, but no, it is not encouraged to call people out by name as examples of "People who believe shitty things."

If "HBD" now also has to include the extreme weakman positions of people who just want a scientific fig-leaf for racist blanket dismissal (of badly-performing groups), is there any group identification you are okay with the people like me who don't hold those positions? I genuinely believe that intelligence is heritable, there are significant differences in averages between groups and want to judge people by their individual qualities and find any policy that treats people differential based on race or ethnicity to be morally highly unpalatable. Do you not believe me that these are my positions, or do you just think that I am not allowed to hold these without taking responsibility for any cover this might give to people who believe in the first two but not the second two?

HBD-tards

Don't do this. Straight-up calling your opponents retards is not how arguments work here and you know it.

Where HBD-tards drop the ball is the transition form "things like height, athletics ability, show high degrees of heritability" to "judging people by their individual qualities rather than their race is anti-science"

That wasn't remotely the topic of conversation.

The answer is the same though.

  • -15

But "HBD-tards" do not advocate for this generally. As is constantly stated, HBD is most commonly used as an alternative to a racism of the gaps.

Not "generally", only when they are forced to retreat from the bailey to the motte. Hence the derision aimed towards "blank-slatists" and the like.

  • -10

If this is so I only care about the motte, if you find me outside of it feel free to let me know. But it really does not seem like people are willing to grant the motte.

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