From: rkunenbo@cs.ruu.nl (Ronald Kunenborg)
Subject: Re: Are the Moties us?
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 13:42:12 GMT
Organization: Utrecht University, Dept. of Computer Science

In <1992Sep9.124622.17022@techbook.com> szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo) writes:

>In article <1992Sep7.120355.29113@cs.ruu.nl> rkunenbo@cs.ruu.nl (Ronald Kunenborg) writes:
>
>>So why aren't we mortally afraid of other lethal animals ? Fear of spiders and
>>snakes is no more rational than fear of lions, killer bees and wasps.
>>Or tigers, wolves, bears and other large predators. Or scorpions, or rats.
>
>Many people are afraid of scorpions, rats, wasps, bees, and even the
>larger predators; if they are less productive of phobias they may not 
>match the recognition neurons in the same way as well as spiders and snakes. 
>Also, the larger animals may evoke a different response mechanism not
>conducive to phobias.  Nobody said evolution or its consequences was
>perfect or easy to understand; that doesn't mean we should throw out all
>hypotheses of evolutionary causation as worthless, as you are wont to
>do.

Not all hypotheses are equally worthless. Some are so motivated by ideological
considerations and backed up by such bad science (dumping results that contradict
hypotheses, falsifying data, misquotes, or worse) that I don't think dumping these
hypotheses is a great loss to science.

Granted, some hypotheses should be examined more. But the way things are going at
the moment I'm just bending the stick slightly to culture - to balance things
out a bit :).

>>As for enclosed places, many people have a phobia for open spaces. And fear of
>>heights?
>
>Fear of heights and open spaces served our more-distant ancestors quite
>well, and perhaps some genetic combination and environmental stimulus
>brings these up once in a while.  (Fear of heights being much more
>common than fear of open spaces, it should be noted).  Much more study
>of evolutionary hypotheses needs to be done; but you would shout us
>down as Nazis before we even get the chance to do them.

When did I do that? The onliest one I `shouted down' as nazi was Eysenck,
a well-known lecturer in the nazi-scene, author of many articles detailing
the inheritability of IQ and it's consequences for `other races'.
And this could be looked over if his scientific methods were impeccable (at least
we could then discuss it on a rational basis), but they're not. As I said, anyone
with a penchant for falsifying or leaving out unpleasant results, is not a scientist
but someone who tries to pass off his ideology as science.

>>It seems to be more prevalent amongst certain cultures and less
>>amongst others - and this goes for many more phobias
>
>No doubt; I didn't say culture had zero impact.  I did say phobias are
>clearly biased along epigenetic forms.

I might give a careful `maybe' here :).

>>>If phobias were culturally
>>>based, they would be directed against things we _really_ need
>>>to be afraid of, such as guns, cars, etc., but these do not typically produce 
>>>such strong reactions. 
>>
>>A phobia for flying is well documented and not very rare. 
>
>An instantiation of the fear of heights.

If anyone has some research-data on the correlation between fear of flying and fear
of heights, I'd appreciate it if I could see it. I doubt there is such a correlation
though - several members in my family are terrified of anything higher than ground level,
while they enjoy flying. As you can't generalize from a few examples this doesn't mean much,
but I'd still like to see exact data before agreeing with you.

>>And aggravated, or even created (taboos are a prime example - and people have
>>died of "voudou".).
>
>I don't know about voudou, but incest taboos are strongly epigenetic,
>being modified only in trivial ways across cultures (eg is a cousin,
>adopted daughter, etc. considered taboo.)

The taboo on incest could also be cultural - as in almost every culture people noticed
things tended to go `wrong' if you slept with close relatives, in almost every culture
there were taboos. But these were and are violated just as often as not, considering
the statistics on incest.

>>get it's figures from Cyril Burt, or Burt-groupies. Or articles that quoted
>>articles that quoted results from articles that quoted Cyril Burt.
>>
>>Or maybe the studies were conducted by that Nazi-professor Eysenck? 
>>(And I'm not using "Nazi" just to insult - he is one).
>
>Yes, you like Gould are using Nazis [...]

Two separate cases - Eysenck *is* a nazi. Calling him that isn't much
of an insult to him.

>[...] and Burt to insult, since there are many 
>substantive studies done since Burt, and psychologists disagree with Burt's
>methodology but most agree that there is a genetic component of intelligence.  

But those substantive studies suffered just as much faults as Burt's research.
Unrepresentative samples, discarding unwanted data, and other practices have
invalidated many `substantive' studies. And I'm not even talking about those
`studies' that just used data (even unwittingly) from Burt's original research
himself (don't forget - his data comes up in the strangest places, often without
any indication that the data was not collected by the author).
(I can quote a number of examples if you'd like to hear them).

>There have been plenty of frauds in the radical-environmentalist debate, 
>including the grandest idiots of them all, the Lysenko school, but do

(Lysenko was just as big a fraud as Burt, for the same reasons: ideological
considerations superseded scientific methods. 
For those who don't know
Lysenko, he was a geneticist which claimed that you could "treat" seeds
of grain so they'd come up not just in spring but any time you liked.
Needless to say this was welcomed in a time when food was scarce. Under 
Stalinism he consolidated his hold on the field of genetics in the USSR
by having all Mendelian scientists executed or banished)

>I bring them up when arguing with you people?  
>No, I talk evidence and
>falsifiable theories because this is science, not politics or theology.

You can't separate politics from science in a debate about things as IQ,
overpopulation, inherited traits, culture vs. nature and more, which have
an impact on society beyond this debate. 
Whole branches of science are nothing *but* politics - sociobiology, 
sociology, politicology and even economics. Other branches have influence on 
and are influenced by politics, such as mathematics (chaos theory), 
chemistry (acid rain, oil, CFK's) and physics (nuclear industry). 
Not to mention computer science, with it's implications for labor.

>As for your use of Nazis, which has its own acronym "FIA" now because so
>many idiots use it in this kind of cliched flame, the Nazi pogrom had nothing 
>to do with intelligence

I never claimed this. Nice strawman though.

>-- the Jews on average were slightly more 
>intelligent, as well as producing a disproportionate number of the

More educated yes, more intelligent remains to be seen.

>intellectuals and scientists of the day, and the German scientists knew it.

Which was equally because of their education and traditions, and because
of their special position in society.

>You're just repeating the same idiotic PC garbage that I've heard from the 
>Gould-groupies dozens of times before.

Now who's talking politics?

>The Nazi pogrom was based on ignorance 
>and prejudice for their own ideology, 

Partly. And partly because the mass base of the nazi's (the small shopkeepers,
the unemployed, in short the desperate) feared economic and labor competition.
The discussion on the how's and why's of nazism is quite separate from this 
discussion though, IMO.

>just as your argument is based on 
>prejudice for your own radical-environmentalist ideology: you assume
>that since genetic origins are politically incorrect, 

Bullshit. I don't assume this (and I *certainly* never claimed this!).
What I *do* say is that `genetics' and `genetic origins' are all too often
abused for political goals. That goes for the whole IQ debate, it goes for
sociobiology and it goes for `over'population. The debates around these themes
aren't new - in fact the debates around IQ, overpopulation and inheritability
of certain traits are more than a century old. 

The political conclusions drawn from this varied between denying access to Jews
to the USA in the 30's, to forced sterilization of `social deviants' (i.e. the poor).
Even now, in Great-Brittain, Burts research is being used as an excuse to exclude
11-year olds from any further education. Even now, politics and science are 
intermingled and even now, "genetic origins" is a flag under which a whole host
of bad science is parading.


>that therefore they
>are scientifically incorrect.

Quite the reverse, actually - these sciences are politically motivated, PLUS
it's bad science PLUS I don't like the conclusions drawn from them. And I 
(attempt to) invalidate the conclusions by arguing that it's bad science,
NOT vice versa.

>It's like flaming against quantum
>mechanics because somebody made a nuclear bomb out of it -- it's plain
>idiotic, a Luddite fear of knowledge.

That'd be idiotic - but unlike genetics and the inheritability of IQ or
other things, quantum mechanics is scientifically O.K. I've no quarrel with
that, or any other science where results can be proven and verified. 

*And where ideology doesn't influence the outcome of the experiments!*

>>...tantamount to showing your abuse of science and your
>>political agenda. 
>I'm just dying for you to let me know about my political agenda.  :-)

*grin* OK I retract that statement. Let's put it this way: let noone say
this debate isn't about politics - it is and has been so from the start.

>>(And about PC - I'm more than willing to debate on some other group why
>>the attack on "PC" is nothing but a disguised attack on civil rights gained 
>>during the 60's).
>
>Please, do take your anti-science garbage to a politics group. I am
                      
So why is a defense of "PC" suddenly "anti-science" ? These things have 
nothing to do with eachother.

>attacking PC because your political prejudices --  very naive political
>prejudices at that, since sociobiology is not incompatable with and in
>fact may be helpful to civil rights

I fail to see how any science that can claim people are ruled by genetic
traits can be helpful, especially considering the claims of sociobiologists:
"patriotism and private ownership are inborn traits" (Ardrey, The territorial
imperative)(Lorenz, On aggression).
- Wilson (writer of "Sociobiology: the new synthesis") claimed to give
an explanation of religion, ethics, war, genocide, cooperation, competition
and free enterprise (incomplete list). He did this by drawing inferences 
between animals like ants and humans. The inferences were explicitly 
right wing, and explicitly fitting in our culture: racism was natural,
free enterprise the "natural" mode of economy. And I could go on.

His followers (Desmond Morris "The Naked Ape", Tiger and Fox "The Imperial
Animal" for instance) have nothing better to offer.

>-- your political whinings do not constitute scientific evidence.

Neither do yours. Nor those of others. And I never claimed my politics 
constituted scientific evidence. I would however like to point out 
that from the bad science the rotten politics follow *and* that 
politics play a part in many sciences. With sociobiology as a 
more prominent example.

Do you deny that politics influence science or vice versa?

>--
>szabo@techbook.COM  Public Access User --- Not affiliated with TECHbooks
>Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 644-8135 (1200/2400, N81) 

regards,

-- 
Ronald Kunenborg, Ina Boudier-Bakkerlaan 89-3, 3582 XD Utrecht, The Netherlands

        "I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom
	      and democracy, but that could change." - Dan Quayle
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