[ExI] Genes aren't what we thought they were.......

[Stuart LaForge]

BillK wrote:

> His agenda seems to be anti IQ tests and anti genetic determinism.
> Genetic determinism is still a popular idea among the general public
> and arguably still needs opposing. I doubt that Richardson is trying to
> teach geneticists their business.  :)

Maybe not but it seems to me that he is cherry-picking data and even
entire empirical methodologies (like IQ tests or genetic testing) to
extend the egalitarian idealogy that "all people are morally equivalent"
to somehow mean that people are supposed to be equal in other domains as
well. I don't think that is necessarily right or enlightened. Especially
when it intentionally obscures the truth.

On average West Africans are taller than South East Asians and on average
South East Asians are better at math than West Africans. There are
likewise numerous other measurable differences between them. Some of these
differences might be due to genetics and some culture, but to discredit
the experiments and data that suggest these differences exist in the cause
of "racial equality" is misguided.

As long as one concedes that any two individuals or tribes of people are
of equal moral worth, it is not at all "problematic" or racist to
acknowledge differences between them especially if those differences are
systematically and reproducibly measurable.

> He seems to be trying to educate the public against ideas like
> eugenics and 'the poor deserve to be poor'.

Trying to discredit genetics is a piss-poor way of opposing eugenics.
Eugenics was faulty because it was a top down attempt at managing the gene
pool based on a political agenda. As such, it is brittle, corruption-prone
and failure-prone.

On the other hand, something like my concept of agoragenics (market-place
genetics) which Richardson calls "consumer genetics" might work a lot
better because it is bottom up and should be able to self-organize once
the technology matures.

Wealth is not a measure of moral worth but an abstraction of the amount of
resources an individual controls for any and all reasons. There is cause
and effect in play within a game that gives rise to winners and losers.
There is no shame in losing, the laws of nature guarantee someone must.

Blessed are the losers for they are martyrs of evolution.

There is neither moral (nor divine) judgement going on. Therefore to speak
of "the poor deserving to be poor" is non-sensical. It is the nature of
the great game of life that there are winners and losers. One can do
everything right and still lose.

I don't often quote the bible, but this is a gem: "The race is not to the
swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or
wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance
happen to them all."

Stuart LaForge