On Sat, 9 Jul 2005 12:16:40 -0700, "Jack May"
>The evolution of humans started about 60,000 years ago with major changes in
>the characteristics of people. Those changes proceeded over all these
>years with difference in the genes and the resulting changes in the
>characteristics of different groups of people.
>
>Your 300 year figure is a weak argument because major changes were made in
>people long before 300 years ago. There are social changes that can be
>explained by the more recent past, but that is not the whole story.
your 60000 years is a weak argument because it focuses only on
genetics in determining how north american has turned out. human
behaviour and especially societal make-up (which was the original
argument) is mostly environmentally determined. North American
socioeconomic structure is a result of about 300 years of social
oddities and has nothing (or an infinitesimally small percentage) to
do with genetics.
>The research to determine how much is genetic vs. environment vs. free will
>has been going on for decade using identical twins (identical genetics)
>raised apart from birth to fraternal twins (different genes) raised
>together, to siblings.
>
>This research has been reported so much in even the popular media, it is
>hard to believe that someone could not know about it.
so let's see some conclusions then. obviously i know it's being
studied, but i've never seen a definitive nature/nurture answer and
neither have you.
>Somebody really needs to talk to you about . and reproduction. You seem
>to not to understand the birth process. Are you in elementary school?
finished that a couple years ago. i can't believe you think this is
necessary...
>In . and reproduction, the genes of the parents are combined to produce
>kids that are similar to their parents. Otherwise parent could give birth
>to cats and dogs as well a kids. All parents talk about how a kid has the
>nose of the father for example or the eyes of the mother.
>Those similarities are determined by the genes of the parents.
physical appearance? no kidding. how they walk? abilities to hit a
baseball? ability to pick up a second or third language? math skills?
sure. but all of those are less likely or more likely to pan out based
on actual exposure as a child.
>I didn't say "a" gene. Obviously since the body is built with the
>messenger RNA by reading the instructions in DNA, the brain is also built by
>the DNA instructions. There can be DNA instructions in combination that
>produce a less active frontal lobe and a more active, more primitive part of
>the brain at the back.
blah blah. ok so we should then take people with lobe inferiority and
put them in the best environments possible to ensure they don't kill
anyone then. you've just made a good argument for aa...
>That's like saying there is a
>> frisbee gene... there is probably a dexterity one that might make
>> frisbee easier, but not for specific behaviours like murder or
>> fishing. Gee i feel like kicking a soccer ball. good thing someone
>> invented a game that relates directly to my soccer gene. There might
>> be genetics in people that relate to things like motivation or comfort
>> or stubborness, but it does not transfer that these would only relate
>> to math for chinese kids and english skills for white kids and
>> basketball for black kids (i'll use some friendly neighbourhood
>> stereotyping just for you!!).
>
>All you are doing is showing your total lack of understanding of genetics
>and how it works.
no all i was doing was having a bit of fun at your ridiculous
expense... i fully understand that genes are passed on to do with
physical make-up, non-specific motivation, . drive, reactions,
left-handedness, general inate stuff, but they do not predetermine
specific behaviours. specific behaviours are learned. and again to get
back to what i was originally talking about: genetics do not determine
place in society; society determines place in society.
>This is the typical social science, humanities view of society. That view
>is thourghly disproved and looked on as the inability of social sciences and
>the humanities to deal with knowledge outside of their fields.
there is huge correlation in every category and vice versa. to say
that it is thoroughly disproved is completely false. These are some
very well respected ideas and are actually really bloody obvious. you
are saying that motivation comes solely from genetics? or 30%? or only
in negative areas? or what? If you cannot see the correlationships
between environment and success, then you are as much a slave to
science as you think i am to social science. You personally may very
well have become a very successful engineer "against the odds" but
those odds that people talk about are social, not genetic.
>Bill Gates parents were far from the richest people in the world, but Bill
>is the richest person in the world.
yes, bill gates is a perfect example, mr science! you and all your
expert knowledge must surely realize that mr gates would be called an
"outlier."
>The trend that has been discovered is that wealth is created by the first
>generation of the wealthy. Someone had to start the wealth. The second
>generation that splits the money is often far less successful. The third
>generation of splitting the wealth tends to lose much of the money and even
>go bankrupt.
wealth grows, it doesn't split and sit there. i think you've been
reading people magazine about the children of the rich and famous.
some of your stuff is ok argument, but it's this type of oddness that
makes you look insane. and actually you are sort of siding with the
learned behaviour argument here: perhaps those who are wealthy do not
genetically deserve it because they obviously don't pass on the genes
to stay successful....
>All you are doing is trying justify you hatred of people that succeed. This
>is called tribalism where you hate other groups that you are not in.
>Racism is a subset of tribalism. Tribalism is common tool by politicians
>that essentially say our tribe is good, their tribe is bad. Follow me.
i'll never follow you... you have no idea who or what i hate.
tribalism? you're the one who's trying to divide the world
genetically.
>I live and work in Silicon Valley, one of the largest wealth generators in
>world. There is almost no old family money in Silicon Valley. Virtually
>all of the wealth has been created by people from scratch, mainly by
>engineers.
tsk tsk. you didn't do your research. the wealth where you work very
well might be mostly new money, but it is not ingrained old-family
rich that is the BULK of wealth in the us... it is a fact that the
bulk of wealth in the us is old families that made money through
slavery, invention, and investment pre home computer. simple, easily
researchable.
>Typical tribalism hatred, If it were true, Silicon Valley would never have
>existed because the old money families seldom have their kids go to
>engineering school.
this hatred thing is weird. i don't hate successful people. what does
success mean anyway? i have some incredibly "successful" friends and i
love them. the silicon valley is an outlier too and may eventually
make a real jump on us wealth percentages, but it has not yet and the
bulk of people there making the cash are (a term i know you'll love)
"white privileged" anyway... or if they ain't white they weren't ever
poor for the most part...
>The twins raise apart, etc. research was specifically done to answer the
>question you raise. The result are that you are mainly incorrect.
let's see some data. let's see what kind of behaviours they look at.
let's see just how rich and poor they made the pairs... or how
supportive and unsupportive the environments are. the thing is that
this type of very specific research cannot be done accurately (and at
least one researcher i saw on tv acknowledged this) because the
environment portion is impossible to control fairly. Scientific
morality enters it because they cannot separate twins and throw one
into a poor family in a ghetto somewhere and give one to bill gates.
although now that i think about it, it might be a fantastic new
reality show!!
>Nothing in you statement separates genetics from environment. That
>separation is what the research was designed to do, and it accomplished that
>goal.
actually my statement does exactly that. you take all white
communities (this is the genetic distinction you or someone else like
you chose: white, black, eg. blacks are on the bottom of society
because of genetics) and look at test results on either side of the
tracks, so to speak. results on the poorer side will be lower for a
whole bunch of reasons, genetics possibly being one of them, but not
anywhere near the primary one...
>> or all black parts of the
>> world. look at incarceration rates in rich and poor communities where
>> everyone is white. look at test scores in rich and poor schools in
>> every country in the world. look at separated twins who are raised by
>> families of different socioeconomics. holy crap, you are incredible!!!
>
>Again you say nothing that can separate the influence of genetics vs.
>environment.
you don't say anything that can entirely separate them either.
genetics affects behaviour and i firmly believe that environment
affects it way more. you cannot prove otherwise, but there is so much
correlative data that shows environment negatively or positively
affecting outcomes that it's crazy that you would ignore it...
>> sure research, but i never mentioned environment at this point; i was
>> only talking about biology. there probably are differences of some
>> sort but we do not know what they are exactly or at least what they
>> mean or how they will manifest themselves. but dumb whites and smart
>> blacks everywhere thank you for your knowledge of early computers.
>
>You are constantly implying environment vs. genes vs. free will. I agree
>you don't think you are doing this, but it appears your education is not
>sufficient to understand the implications you are making.
you have no idea what my education is. what a weird thing to say...
what do you mean i am "constantly implying"? that doesn't even make
sense. i'm not denying that biology is a factor in human outcomes, but
you seem to be denying that environment is a factor and you won't
acknowledge that you really have no idea how much either one affects
anything.
and you totally jump away from the topic at hand which is that aa is
an effort to repair society and if it can be shown to be flawed to any
degree beyond what is good for society (which i never said it
couldn't, by the way) then you should come up with another idea
because american society is broken and needs fixing somehow and it
ain't getting better on its own. and anyway even if aa is the best
idea ever, us society needs more fixing than that...
>> but our dna code is WAY more similar than different... and it has NOT
>> been proven anywhere that biology is more important than environment
>> in determining human behaviour. and in fact i would go so far as to
>> say that anyone who thinks that your dna has more to say about your
>> behaviour than your upbringing or your peers or your social mores or
>> your environment is INSANE. i'm done....
>
>There is only a 3% difference in genes between a human and a monkey. I
>think it grows to about 5% difference between a mouse and a human. There
>is a funny story that when the effort to map the human genome started, they
>kept getting the same genetic map for humans and monkey. One of the
>researchers walked into the bosses office said essentially, I can't find any
>difference, I guess the only difference between a monkey and us is
>environment. It was a joke, not the truth as was later found.
so environment IS more important than genetics in determining
behaviour then? i win.
>Small genetic differences make a large difference in the animal and humans
>that are constructed.
yes, and? blacks are genetically predetermined to be on the bottom of
society? |