For example, if stereotypical male/female attitudes and behaviors were found to have a substantial genetic component to them, I think a lot of socially progressive people would hate that. There's a lot of emotional investment for many in the idea that stereotypically gendered behaviors are entirely or almost entirely caused by culture/social pressure.
I...disagree. I think you would find that most of the left takes as an article of faith (or, at least, a very strongly held belief) that gender identity and presentation (which necessarily includes stereotype-conforming as well as nonconforming identities and presentations) are very strongly genetically determined and that extreme distress results when people attempt (or are compelled) to mask what is genetically-determined in this area, and that that is fundamental to the belief that nonconforming identities and presentations should be accepted.
> There's a lot of emotional investment for many in the idea that stereotypically gendered behaviors are entirely or almost entirely caused by culture/social pressure.
There's a lot of emotional investment in the idea that the concept that there is a single acceptable relationship between external genitalia, gender identity, and gender presentation is a social construct, as well as in the necessary corollary that the particular relationship chosen in any particular culture that imposes such a single acceptable relationship is also a social construct. But that's intimately tied to the idea that each of those three things, while they may have some non-genetic contribution, is fairly strongly genetically directed, and while there may be some correlation between the genetic determinants of each, there is considerable individual variation, as well.
Agree that genetics v activism is going to get very ugly here.
We're already seeing it in health insurance: that's the essence of the pre-existing condition debate.
Should people bear the cost or accrue the benefit of their uniqueness, or should we share them as a community?
I don't think very many policies actually are.
> Gender or racial imbalances between professions for instance are attributed to cultural bias and discrimination.
That's not based on tabula rasa theory, that's based on actual experience of (often, until quite recently, overt and direct) gender and racial discrimination. It certainly tends to involve a belief that certain traits (whether or not genetically determined) are not intrinsically associated with gender or race (or, sometimes, when there is evidence that such an association does exist, that the association is not strong enough to explain the outcome difference.) But that's very different from, and entirely neutral toward, the question of tabula rasa vs. genetic determinism.
> partisans of the tabula rasa are pretty powerful, particularly in academics.
The closest thing I can see to "partisans of the tabula rasa" in the real world, with any kind of power, are religious conservatives, who have a very strong incentive to believe that things for which there is already very strong evidence are genetically determined are choices, so as to ascribe moral virtue to certain traits and moral vice to others. But plenty of them have over time adopted a model of accepting genetic predisposition in (at least some of) those areas while still finding a moral command to act in a certain way regardless of predisposition, so even with them I don't see things quite so irreconcilable as the upthread characterization.
Climate-change denialism is a more bipartisan problem than this. :)
Also suppose trait X is highly visible so that I can easily identify who has it (just for concreteness, let's say it's black eyebrows, and 20 IQ points). This would drive the internet batty.
The same is true if any such correlations are found for a number of other traits.
I hate it when your ilk make race vs IQ seem like an edgy new opinion that is being suppressed. It used to be mainstream globally, but we moved past that through dialectics. When the "bell curve" book was published, we resurrected the debate, then we moved passed it.
It seems to me that you have to go out of your way to bring up race and IQ. That's why, whenever the debate is brought up, one of the parties is accused of having an agenda.
No, parent is rightfully pointing out that it's IQ in general, not any specific trait X. X could stand for race/skin color, but it could also stand for ancestry (e.g. Askenazi Jew, which IMO have same skin color as the rest of Europeans), or sex, or maybe other things as well.
For example, any of these studies would drive the internet angry (if they found a strong result):
- Midgets vs IQ
- Attractiveness vs IQ
- Attractiveness vs Likelihood of birth defect
- Wealth vs Emotional Stability
- HN vs Autism Spectrum
- Eye Color vs Empathy
The formula is (visible trait) x (valued trait) x (has this trait already been historically used to justify atrocities).
And, actually, I would argue that in the real world, the correlation isn't even the thing that's problematic, its when the correlation is used as a basis for accepting discrimination on the basis of X. No one is upset about the widely known height/IQ correlation, but that's because no one is using it to justify discriminating based on height, because it is an easily-visible proxy for IQ.
I agree, but that's enough. In any one area, scientific fact will run into serious opposition. In a different area, the opposition may come from other people, but be just as strong.
If anything, this will make it harder to defeat, than it would be if "partisans of the tabula rasa" were a neatly circumscribed group.
What “partisans of the tabula rasa”? Activists of both the left and right seem more likely to be partisans of genetic determinism, though of which aspects of intellect, identity, and behavior varies between them.