From: i2ly@vax5.cit.cornell.edu
Newsgroups: soc.women,soc.men
Subject: Re: The Politics Of Appeasement
Date: 15 Oct 92 17:40:04 EDT
Distribution: soc
Organization: Cornell University

In article <1992Oct13.205330.19234@javelin.sim.es.com>,
biesel@javelin.sim.es.com (Heiner Biesel) writes: 
> mrf12@cus.cam.ac.uk (Marcus Frean) writes:
> 
>>In article <1992Oct12.181923.5528@javelin.sim.es.com> 
>>biesel@javelin.sim.es.com (Heiner Biesel) writes:
>>>........Breeding and genetics have absolutely nothing to do with
>>>determining individual abilities and preferences. They only affect
>>>characteristics that are absolutely value neutral, like skin color,
>>>Tay-Sachs disease, Rh factor, etc. To suggest that there may be any
>>>genetic factor in ability, orientation, or aptitude is offensive.
>>>There are simply no significant population differences between
>>>different racial or ethnic groups, and anyone who doubts this is
>>>a prejudiced bigot.
>> 
>>...it's not true that breeding and genetics have *nothing* to do with
>>individual abilities and preferences. In fact I thought this was the
>>whole idea of natural selection! - if you've got some individual

>>Not surprisingly then, skin colour, etc etc... are *not* value neutral
>>at all - dark pigments are great in the sun (eg. you dont get
>>melanoma) and a hassle out of it (eg. you dont get vitamin D so
>>easily). In principle why shouldn't (say) the tradeoffs between brains
>>vs brawn shouldn't vary across populations?  Whether it actually does
>>or not is another matter. Obviously racists latch onto this sort of
>>thing with glee hoping it'll make them feel better about being full of
>>hate, which unfortunately takes all the fun out of arguing about it...
> 
> 
> For the record: obviously genetics affects every one of our cherished
> characteristics, from skin color to the ability to get a joke. Anyone
> who believes that genes control "...only value-neutral characteristics..." 
> is playing with a short deck, since there is no such thing as a value-neutral 
> characteristic. Yet there is no shortage of taffyheads who will espouse the 
> notion that genetic endowment can and should be ignored  when discussing 
> questions of public policy. A pox upon them.
> 
> Regards,
>        H. Biesel

For the record Mr. Biesel; obviously you know *nothing* about genetics,
never mind quantitative genetics.  There is a measure called 'heritability',
which is the genetic variance (variability) divided by the total
variance.  In domestic animals,  for example, this ranges from .5 (theoretical
max is 1) to 0. with most traits being between .05 (fertility) and .4
(growth traits).  It is *not true* that genetics affects 'every one of
our cherished characteristics', it may or may not, but there seems
little reason to suppose that genes have any effect on many 'traits'.
It is very difficult to get accurate estimates of heritability in human
populations since it impossible to account for the effects of many
confounding environmental effects.  There is *no* good evidence that
I know of to suggest that there is any difference between human racial
populations in any quantitative trait (as opposed to categorical trait
such as diseases) except for physical characteristics such as skin, hair
or eye pigmentation, or facial characteristics.  There have been some
studies of, for example, the heritability of intelligence, from twin
studies.  If my memory serves me correctly the heritability estimates
are around .3.  This is almost certainly an overestimate, since the
environmental variance in adoptive families is much smaller than
the environmental variance in the population as a whole.  
	I suggest you learn something about quantitative genetics
before making potentially offensive incorrect statements.
		FH
 

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