What do the experts actually believe? How have the experts' views changed? How do the views of elite experts differ from the views of less-elite experts?
Really? The presentation could be better: "Physical anthropology (or biological anthropology) in the most prescient subdiscipline, as it is the one concerned with Human diversity, evolution, and origin." Should have something like "is the most informative subdiscipline;" "in" is a typo and prescient means foresightful, not penetrative / appropriate / whatever werkat is trying to say.
yeah, i pulled an all-nighter to release this, so there are going to be some mistakes. I caught a few before anybody had seen them, but it looks like a few slipped through. For example, "marshalled" i think was "mashed" at some point.
The substack is literally titled "half-baked thoughts" after all, and the mission statement reflects this:
OK, yes, I could have just said "The substack is literally titled 'half-baked thoughts.'" And frankly you get bonus points for taking a fairly nitpicky comment seriously. But it's not merely the tone or the presentation, here. Look, immediately after that paragraph I mentioned, you say about the results of a survey,
"As we can see, for 3/4 comparisons, the better anthropologists held views of greater racial essentialism..."
So two of those comparisons had people using ancestry tests and endorsing more racially essentialist attitudes. But there's no discussion about how someone with more racially essentialist tendencies would naturally be the sort to include an ancestry test in their research anyway, let alone any discussion about how accurate the results of the survey are, or even why we should be so concerned about what anthropologists say to begin with. If we were really interested in expert opinion, wouldn't we just say, "Well, I guess they don't know yet? Because they all disagree?"
I read a lot of these kinds of unusual ideas over substack, and for some strange reason, I seem to enjoy it. My very favorite, the post that stands out for me the most, is one that argued passionately and extensively for the complete and total safety of marijuana, using so much handwaving and shaky reasoning that it prompted me to spend an hour or so digging around in the scientific sources to change my own mind and *disagree* with the original author on the safety of marijuana.
So I have learned something, Werkat. I have learned that *all* of substack is half-baked thoughts. I'm not saying it's bad, but it's very weird, and when someone talks about it being "technical," "sober," or "scientific," they are using those words in ways I sure as hell don't recognize.
>"But there's no discussion about how someone with more racially essentialist tendencies would naturally be the sort to include an ancestry test in their research anyway"
I mean, that's one interpretation of it, but you could just as easily handwave away the views of geneticists or biologists or evolutionary psychologists under this reasoning that they chose to become one of those things instead of a sociologist or a cultural anthropologist because their biases are such that the purported importance of biology speaks more to them than the purported importance of environment or culture. My view is that is that in order to dismiss the importance of biology, you should have to rely on research into the importance of biology, and in that specific survey, experience with genetic ancestry testing was the measure of experience that we had available to us.
>"why we should be so concerned about what anthropologists say to begin with"
I agree absolutely in that people should just argue the arguments. The reason for writing this piece at all is that imagined "expert consensus" is often taken as reason to just dismiss hereditarian views as "fringe" without referring to any of the actual survey data, when really, it's only fringe among the laity.
Any casual review of the writings of Drs. Gottfredson, Lykken and Bouchard will convince the most "woke" skeptic of the essential facts of the Wilson Effect and the hereditary influence ( 80%) on IQ.
That wasn't the only such thing of that tone which I put in the post. For example, I had an enormous grin in my face when writing the tiebreaker thing.
To be fair, US Blacks have higher PISA points than many non-black countries.(inluding some european countries). Perhaps we should say there are differences based on natural selection rather than racial.
Wow- this article is hardly "half-baked." It appears to be the most comprehensive, scholarly and well-documented piece I have seen in the last decade or so. Well-done, is a more accurate appellation.
I love how this extremely technical, sober and scientific article concludes with the most trollish and racist meme ever lmao
Really? The presentation could be better: "Physical anthropology (or biological anthropology) in the most prescient subdiscipline, as it is the one concerned with Human diversity, evolution, and origin." Should have something like "is the most informative subdiscipline;" "in" is a typo and prescient means foresightful, not penetrative / appropriate / whatever werkat is trying to say.
fixed. thx for pointing them out.
yeah, i pulled an all-nighter to release this, so there are going to be some mistakes. I caught a few before anybody had seen them, but it looks like a few slipped through. For example, "marshalled" i think was "mashed" at some point.
The substack is literally titled "half-baked thoughts" after all, and the mission statement reflects this:
https://werkat.substack.com/p/coming-soon
as for the "informative" thing, I'm not changing that for the same reason that I tend to write in passive voice.
OK, yes, I could have just said "The substack is literally titled 'half-baked thoughts.'" And frankly you get bonus points for taking a fairly nitpicky comment seriously. But it's not merely the tone or the presentation, here. Look, immediately after that paragraph I mentioned, you say about the results of a survey,
"As we can see, for 3/4 comparisons, the better anthropologists held views of greater racial essentialism..."
So two of those comparisons had people using ancestry tests and endorsing more racially essentialist attitudes. But there's no discussion about how someone with more racially essentialist tendencies would naturally be the sort to include an ancestry test in their research anyway, let alone any discussion about how accurate the results of the survey are, or even why we should be so concerned about what anthropologists say to begin with. If we were really interested in expert opinion, wouldn't we just say, "Well, I guess they don't know yet? Because they all disagree?"
I read a lot of these kinds of unusual ideas over substack, and for some strange reason, I seem to enjoy it. My very favorite, the post that stands out for me the most, is one that argued passionately and extensively for the complete and total safety of marijuana, using so much handwaving and shaky reasoning that it prompted me to spend an hour or so digging around in the scientific sources to change my own mind and *disagree* with the original author on the safety of marijuana.
So I have learned something, Werkat. I have learned that *all* of substack is half-baked thoughts. I'm not saying it's bad, but it's very weird, and when someone talks about it being "technical," "sober," or "scientific," they are using those words in ways I sure as hell don't recognize.
Carry on, sir!
>"But there's no discussion about how someone with more racially essentialist tendencies would naturally be the sort to include an ancestry test in their research anyway"
I mean, that's one interpretation of it, but you could just as easily handwave away the views of geneticists or biologists or evolutionary psychologists under this reasoning that they chose to become one of those things instead of a sociologist or a cultural anthropologist because their biases are such that the purported importance of biology speaks more to them than the purported importance of environment or culture. My view is that is that in order to dismiss the importance of biology, you should have to rely on research into the importance of biology, and in that specific survey, experience with genetic ancestry testing was the measure of experience that we had available to us.
>"why we should be so concerned about what anthropologists say to begin with"
I agree absolutely in that people should just argue the arguments. The reason for writing this piece at all is that imagined "expert consensus" is often taken as reason to just dismiss hereditarian views as "fringe" without referring to any of the actual survey data, when really, it's only fringe among the laity.
Any casual review of the writings of Drs. Gottfredson, Lykken and Bouchard will convince the most "woke" skeptic of the essential facts of the Wilson Effect and the hereditary influence ( 80%) on IQ.
That wasn't the only such thing of that tone which I put in the post. For example, I had an enormous grin in my face when writing the tiebreaker thing.
To be fair, US Blacks have higher PISA points than many non-black countries.(inluding some european countries). Perhaps we should say there are differences based on natural selection rather than racial.
https://www.unz.com/isteve/the-new-2018-pisa-school-test-scores-usa-usa/
I mean, on that one, A) the avg US black is ~20% white; B) malnutrition could be a thing that actually matters over there.
Wow- this article is hardly "half-baked." It appears to be the most comprehensive, scholarly and well-documented piece I have seen in the last decade or so. Well-done, is a more accurate appellation.