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Huntsman on evolution, warming: 'Call me crazy'

nijato said:
Those are solid correlations indeed, and certainly point to a strong genetic influence over g. I'm not so clear about exactly what g is, but I assume it's some standard measure of intelligence - point granted.

Clearly, intelligence has a high heritability. But... to tie that to race in the traditional sense is still meaningless because of the disparate genetic populations that would be categorized together as single "races."
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Let me ask you to reappraise the situation we're at now. I get called on points and I back them up. How likely is it that I just lucked out on all of the points that I've been called on in this thread and in the "Are you smarter than The Obama" thread but am confused on the finer points of population genetics? A little bit of Bayesian reasoning might be called for, no?

The correlational structure of the genome allows us to classify into broad racial categories without using obvious genes for skin color. As we increase the number of alleles sampled we can parse down to finer and finer classifications of race. See here:


For each person in the study, the researchers examined 326 DNA regions that tend to vary between people. These regions are not necessarily within genes, but are simply genetic signposts on chromosomes that come in a variety of different forms at the same location.

Without knowing how the participants had identified themselves, Risch and his team ran the results through a computer program that grouped individuals according to patterns of the 326 signposts. This analysis could have resulted in any number of different clusters, but only four clear groups turned up. And in each case the individuals within those clusters all fell within the same self-identified racial group.

"This shows that people's self-identified race/ethnicity is a nearly perfect indicator of their genetic background," Risch said.​


Those patterns (bolded) are simply another way of referencing the correlational structure of the genome and this is where we find racial variance and those racial clusters coincide almost perfectly with the social definition of race.

Your question addressed the issue of tying race to intelligence but you're not making clear to me why you think that the connection is meaningless. Think about how racial groups formed. We already know that intelligence is highly heritable and races are partially inbred, large extended families. For instance, an Asian person, say a Japanese, can, if they go back enough generations, find a common ancestor to another Asian person, say a Han Chinese. They'll have to go back a lot further to find a common ancestor with a Celt or with a Nigerian. The further back you go in your search for a common ancestor the more genetic distinction that has arisen over the years of separation you have to throw overboard. So what we're talking about here are degrees of relatedness as another way of referencing race. Intelligence is highly heritable and the genetic structure of intelligence, like other genetic attributes, also varies by race. See here:


Genetics of human prefrontal function.

"These observations suggest that some genetic variants that influence g will vary between populations rather than within populations. For instance, certain Asian populations have a frequency of 0.60 in COMT Met158 allele, which predicts lower COMT-enzyme activity and thereby better cognitive performance, while Caucasians have a frequency of 0.42 for the same allele.​
 
RiverDad said:
Run a model. Make a prediction with a long enough time factor. Lock it away. Come back 30 years later and see how well the model worked.

Every time a scientist declares GCM to be effective and we find that a new process is either discovered or specified in greater detail, then logically we can conclude that previous GCM that were said to be bulletproof, were in fact, not bulletproof.
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Your usual strawman argument -- really getting tiresome. No one, and I mean NO ONE has ever claimed that a GCM is bulletproof. Climatologists readily acknowledge that they cannot model the full complexity of the atmosphere and the oceans. That's why climate predictions carry with them fairly large margins of error.

You should probably spend a few days (at least) reading up on the subject before you comment further.
 
RiverDad said:
As with religious creationists, you liberal creationists trot out objections that take the same form - definitional hoop-jumping. Go look in the locked thread on "Are you smarter than the Obama" and your questions will be answered.
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I'll take that as an admission that you can't defend your argument.
 
AdamT said:
Well, that's all very pithy and as usual, not quite right. On the one hand it's certainly true that scientific discoveries are made by individuals, but on the other hand, it is ultimately a consensus of the scientific community that determines whether a purported discovery is valid or a crock of sh*t. Copernicus discovered that the the earth wasn't the center of the universe, but we might not know it if Galileo hadn't championed his discovery and convinced the scientific community that Copernicus was right.
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Wrong. Totally wrong. What you're painting is a social process that rides alongside the scientific method. The social process plays no part in determining the validity of science. It was the data and the scientific model that Copernicus released that allowed us to better understand the cosmos, not the popularity of Copernicus or his theory amongst fellow scientists. If they had rejected his model and stuck with the geocentric model, the fact that a poll of all scientists showed that the geocentric model was widely accepted (and it was the dominant model for a long time) would not tell us anything about the validity of the geocentric model. The fact that scientists came to support the heliocentric model also tells us absolutely nothing about the validity of the model. The science rises and falls on the merits of parsimony, model validity and reliability. Popular opinion plays no part in the process. Popular opinion amongst scientists is a sociological issue on how science is conducted. Look at the current happenings in anthropology where they've decided to jettison the scientific method so that they can better play advocates for the groups that they study. What's going on in that field has nothing to do with science, facts, theories, and everything to do with politics and human drama.

IF you are actually a scientist with the advanced training required to rationally challenge the accepted wisdom. But it is the height of folly for someone who is not so trained (you or I, for instance) to imagine that we can know better than the vast majority of experts who have dedicated their lives to this pursuit.
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I haven't shared any details of my private life with you so it really isn't safe for you to be making unwarranted assumptions about me.
 
Jon Hunstman is in fact crazy.

Why?

Well its because he's trying to get the republican nomination whilst accepting science.

These two things cannot co-exist :2razz:
 
Wrong. Totally wrong. What you're painting is a social process that rides alongside the scientific method. The social process plays no part in determining the validity of science. It was the data and the scientific model that Copernicus released that allowed us to better understand the cosmos, not the popularity of Copernicus or his theory amongst fellow scientists. If they had rejected his model and stuck with the geocentric model, the fact that a poll of all scientists showed that the geocentric model was widely accepted (and it was the dominant model for a long time) would not tell us anything about the validity of the geocentric model. The fact that scientists came to support the heliocentric model also tells us absolutely nothing about the validity of the model. The science rises and falls on the merits of parsimony, model validity and reliability. Popular opinion plays no part in the process. Popular opinion amongst scientists is a sociological issue on how science is conducted. Look at the current happenings in anthropology where they've decided to jettison the scientific method so that they can better play advocates for the groups that they study. What's going on in that field has nothing to do with science, facts, theories, and everything to do with politics and human drama.
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Actually I am exactly right. How do you know the heliocentric model is right and not the earthcentric model? Have you performed the calculations yourself? I don't think so. You think you know it's right because you read it in a gradeschool textbook. And why did it get into your gradeschool textbook? It got there because a very large consensus of the scientific community, over many years, decided that Copernicus was right. In fact, unless you are a scientist, and it's pretty obvious you're not, that's how you've acquired virtually ALL of the scientific knowledge that you have. That's generally how knowledge works. We wouldn't have much time if we had to independently verify each and every scientific discovery ever made.

I haven't shared any details of my private life with you so it really isn't safe for you to be making unwarranted assumptions about me.
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In this case I'm quite comfortable inferring that you don't have much scientific training.
 
AdamT said:
Actually I am exactly right. How do you know the heliocentric model is right and not the earthcentric model? Have you performed the calculations yourself? I don't think so. You think you know it's right because you read it in a gradeschool textbook. And why did it get into your gradeschool textbook? It got there because a very large consensus of the scientific community, over many years, decided that Copernicus was right.
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Let's do a falsification test on your hypothesis. Have there been any instances where scientists held a consensus opinion and the consensus opinion was wrong on facts. Why yes, the consensus opinion held that the Ptolemaic system was the accurate model of the heavens. DID THAT CONSENSUS MAKE IT TRUE? No, the consensus has no bearing no the validity of the question.

You're comment focuses on how knowledge is disseminated, not on the validity of the knowledge. These are two very separate issues.

I'm surprised that you've heard of Galilieo so I'll pass along this recommendation for you - read his book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. He directly challenges your view on how science is conducted. His dialog pits two models of how science is conducted against each other - the scientific method versus the appeal to authority. It's quite an interested read, especially so because of how old the work is and how insightful it is today as so many people still remain clueless about the methods of science.
 
AdamT said:
Actually I am exactly right. How do you know the heliocentric model is right and not the earthcentric model? Have you performed the calculations yourself? I don't think so. You think you know it's right because you read it in a gradeschool textbook. And why did it get into your gradeschool textbook? It got there because a very large consensus of the scientific community, over many years, decided that Copernicus was right. In fact, unless you are a scientist, and it's pretty obvious you're not, that's how you've acquired virtually ALL of the scientific knowledge that you have. That's generally how knowledge works. We wouldn't have much time if we had to independently verify each and every scientific discovery ever made.



In this case I'm quite comfortable inferring that you don't have much scientific training.
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I really like the first part.

I'm not so sure about that last bit. RD frustrates me regularly, but he's got a lot of knowledge at his fingertips, so he's at least self taught to an acknowledgeable degree. Arrogant, belligerent, possibly deliberately obtuse, but not ignorant.

That was weird.

A post I liked part of enough to like but took issue with another part in defense of someone I'm consistently arrayed against. (Gotta stop doin drive-bys)
 
nijato said:
Obviously, you have confused evolution theory with abiogenesis theory. Don't you feel silly?
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Why do whales still breath air instead of water? Surely the need to no longer surface for air would be a survival advantage? Certainly it would when humans started hunting whales. Their only vulnerability is when they have to surface to breath?
 
ric27 said:
Why do whales still breath air instead of water? Surely the need to no longer surface for air would be a survival advantage? Certainly it would when humans started hunting whales. Their only vulnerability is when they have to surface to breath?
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Surfacing didn't make them vulnerable until man learned to hunt whales. Kind of tough to expect them to evolve gills in five or ten thousand years.
 
RiverDad said:
Let's do a falsification test on your hypothesis. Have there been any instances where scientists held a consensus opinion and the consensus opinion was wrong on facts. Why yes, the consensus opinion held that the Ptolemaic system was the accurate model of the heavens. DID THAT CONSENSUS MAKE IT TRUE? No, the consensus has no bearing no the validity of the question.

You're comment focuses on how knowledge is disseminated, not on the validity of the knowledge. These are two very separate issues.

I'm surprised that you've heard of Galilieo so I'll pass along this recommendation for you - read his book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. He directly challenges your view on how science is conducted. His dialog pits two models of how science is conducted against each other - the scientific method versus the appeal to authority. It's quite an interested read, especially so because of how old the work is and how insightful it is today as so many people still remain clueless about the methods of science.
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Well, congratulations. It took some time but you did eventually get my point. As I said from the beginning, individuals make scientific discoveries; the scientific community determines which discoveries are valid -- unless or until it determines that another discovery is more plausible. And the point is still the same: unless you are yourself a scientist with the training and experience necessary to challenge the accepted wisdom, it is irrational to challenge the accepted wisdom.

And for the most part, people only do this with respect to global warming, and they do it not because we have millions of brilliant climatologists in this country, but because we have a lot of dimwits who listen to other dimwits who are paid to take a political stance on a scientific question. I mean really, why aren't all of these geniuses challenging the scientists on subatomic physics? Gluons? What a load of crap! Those physicists are just in it for the money!! Yeah, you REALLY expect me to believe that quantum mechanics HOAX?! :roll:

Get real.
 
AdamT said:
Well, congratulations. It took some time but you did eventually get my point. As I said from the beginning, individuals make scientific discoveries; the scientific community determines which discoveries are valid -- unless or until it determines that another discovery is more plausible. And the point is still the same: unless you are yourself a scientist with the training and experience necessary to challenge the accepted wisdom, it is irrational to challenge the accepted wisdom.
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Your point is still in error. We can verify through experiment that plate tectonics exists and operates. In 1912 Alfred Wegener proposed the initial hypothesis central to plate tectonics science. He was far, far outside the consensus of geophysicists. They rejected his hypothesis. It took nearly 50 years for the battle between the drifters and the fixists to peter out. For the longest period during that time, Wegener was deemed wrong. The reality is that the social consensus was wrong and Wegener's hypothesis was correct. Scientific reality exists apart from the social consensus held by scientists.

What you tried to pull in your comment was akin to this maneuver:

Person A: I'm right.
Person B: You're wrong.
Person A: I'm right.
Person B: You're wrong.
Person A: I'm right.
Person B: You're wrong.
Person A: I'm wrong.
Person B: You're right.
Person A: Thanks for admitting that I was right.
Person B: Huh?

You can't just declare that I finally see your point when a.) I never conceded your point and b.) when you start referencing post-facto conditionals, such as " unless or until it determines that another discovery is more plausible" (which is a red herring that didn't help your argument at all.) You do have balls of steel for trying that gambit though. Quite bold and funny.

And for the most part, people only do this with respect to global warming
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Yeah, there are no groups opposed to genetically modified food organisms, there are no groups opposed to food irradiation, there are no groups opposed to fluoridation of water, there are no groups opposed to civilian nuclear power generation, there are no groups opposed to drilling in ANWR, there are no groups who oppose the study of intelligence as it intersects race, there are no groups opposed to vaccines, there are no groups opposed to western medicine, there are no groups opposed to finding the cause of homosexuality, there are no groups opposed to cloning:


. . . Unlike the U.S., which is afflicted by divisiveness and the religious right, Canada is a model country. That was his story, at any rate.

A few hours later I picked up a newspaper and got a different view. On the op-ed page a scientist was pleading for Canada to repeal its law against cloning human embryos for research. In tolerant, open-minded, diverse and creative Canada therapeutic cloning--defined as creating an in vitro embryo with the same chromosomes as any other individual--is a crime punishable by ten years in prison.

In the divisive, religiously addled U.S. a similar measure has failed repeatedly to become federal law. (Some states ban therapeutic cloning.)

U.S. scientists and their supporters tend to assume biomedical research is threatened by know-nothings on religious crusades. But as the Canadian law illustrates, the long-term threat to genetic research comes less from the religious right than from the secular left. Canada's law forbids all sorts of genetic manipulations, many of them currently theoretical. It's a crime, for instance, to alter inheritable genes.

And the law has provisions the fabled religious right never even talks about. It's a crime to pay a surrogate mother or to make or accept payment for arranging a surrogate. It's a crime to pay egg or sperm donors anything more than "receipted expenses," like taxi fares. Since eggs are used not just in fertility treatments but in research, this prohibition stifles both.
​
 
What you tried to pull in your comment was akin to this maneuver:
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Sorry, but I wasn't trying to pull any maneuver. You just seem to insist on tilting at strawmen. I said in my very first post that individuals make discoveries. And yet you keep insisting I said something else entirely. I never claimed that a consensus makes something RIGHT. And yet that seems to be what you want me to have said.

So again, a scientific consensus simply indicates agreement among the scientific community. The point is that it's irrational to conclude that you know better than the vast majority of scientists unless you are yourself a highly accomplished scientist with particular emphasis in the area in question. But in point of fact, there are millions of Americans who have little or no scientific training and who have a very poor understanding of climate science, but who are nevertheless absolutely convinced that that AGW is a hoax. This is irrational, and it's based on politics -- not science.


Yeah, there are no groups opposed to genetically modified food organisms, there are no groups opposed to food irradiation, there are no groups opposed to fluoridation of water, there are no groups opposed to civilian nuclear power generation, there are no groups opposed to drilling in ANWR, there are no groups who oppose the study of intelligence as it intersects race, there are no groups opposed to vaccines, there are no groups opposed to western medicine, there are no groups opposed to finding the cause of homosexuality, there are no groups opposed to
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Not the same thing. Most of these are objections to the application of science -- not objections to the fundamental science itself. Most of these don't question the benefit from the application -- they worry about possible side effects. Cloning is an ethical issue -- not a scientific issue. No one seriously argues that cloaning can't be done. No one says that cloaning is a hoax. And of course most of these are fringe groups, anwyay. For example, people who oppose fluoridation are generally considered to be pretty kooky; not unlike the kooky notion that AGW is a liberal plot.

So all-in-all, a bunch of bad analogies. A better analogy would be people who accept that AGW is real, but propose that it's just too expensive to address, or that global warming is actually a *good* thing.
 
AdamT said:
I never claimed that a consensus makes something RIGHT. And yet that seems to be what you want me to have said.
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Post #51.


It was the result of a survey sent out to more than 3000 earth scientists: 97% of active climatologists agree that human activity is causing global warming : Deltoid.​


Appeal to Validity of Consensus. Appeal to Authority.


Post #98:


. . . it is ultimately a consensus of the scientific community that determines whether a purported discovery is valid or a crock of sh*t.​


You claim "I never claimed that a consensus makes something RIGHT" and here you wrote the exactly what you claim you had not written.


Post #107:


How do you know the heliocentric model is right and not the earthcentric model? Have you performed the calculations yourself? I don't think so. You think you know it's right because you read it in a gradeschool textbook. And why did it get into your gradeschool textbook? It got there because a very large consensus of the scientific community, over many years, decided that Copernicus was right.​


Did you take poker lessons from The Obama? You sure don't know when to fold a bad hand.

So again, a scientific consensus simply indicates agreement among the scientific community.
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Yes, and the Sun is star in our solar system. An automobile is a car. A television is a boob-tube. Thanks, I think.
 
rathi said:
Intelligence and race are both vague social concepts without specific scientific definitions.
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There are lots of specific scientific definitions for intelligence, and are not vague, but varied - just as with evolution. All three - intelligence, race, and evolutionary theory - are hypothetical constructs.
 
RiverDad said:
I just want most liberals to refrain from claiming to believe in evolution. I don't like seeing it used as a proxy weapon in the liberal-religious war. Stop misusing a "belief in evolution" and I'll quit rubbing your creationism in your face.
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This might send you into a mental break down.. But.... Did you know the Catholic church accepts evolution??

As for liberals?? It is pretty certian, that if someone is liberal, they accept evolution.. Even the ones that go to church..
 
Redress said:
If you mean unproven in the same way that the theory of gravity is unproven, and the general and specific theories of relativity are unproven, then yes. However, all 3 are accurate models for the universe.
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1) They are only as accurate as they need to be
2) Accurate models are a dime a dozen. Highlighting that aspect of a scientific theory does little to distinguish from non scientific theories. My theory that invisible Luke Skywalkers exist on every inch of the planet, and are constantly using the power of the force to draw apples toward themselves is also an accurate model for why apples appear to fall to earth.
 
Redress said:
A scientific theory is one that accurately predicts experimental results. If the model accurately predicts what happens, and what has happened, then it is a good theory.
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No, that's what is called poor science or confirmation bias.
 
Taylor said:
No, that's what is called poor science or confirmation bias.
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Because you say it is. Your history of being wrong makes me pretty indifferent to that. Since you have not offered anything more than "you are wrong", it's not even a good attempt at debate.
 
RiverDad said:
. . . it is ultimately a consensus of the scientific community that determines whether a purported discovery is valid or a crock of sh*t.​


You claim "I never claimed that a consensus makes something RIGHT" and here you wrote the exactly what you claim you had not written.
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You may not realize this, but "valid" and "right" don't have the same meaning.
 
rathi said:
Psychometrics are at the squishy end of the soft sciences. In real biology land, there is no overall standard for measuring intelligence in humans.
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Quite the contrary. Intelligence is one of the most reliable predictors in psychology.
 
AdamT said:
Mmm, I think the only thing IQ tests are good at predicting is how well you will do on another IQ test. They are not good at predicting academic success, nor are they good at predicting success in life.

High IQ and Success
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Intelligence tests are excellent predictors of success in school (what they were originally designed for), and overall sucess. Your link wants to suggest that because they aren't perfect predictors, they aren't good predictors at all... which is a load of crap.
 
Simon W. Moon said:
Yeah, like Germ Theory and the Theory of Gravity.
How come none of the candidates are coming out against these other nut-ball theories?
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That's an easy one, not everyone believes evolution to be as robust a theory. Surely you didn't mean to imply that because all are scientific theories, all should be treated with the same reverence.
 
nijato said:
Race is a social construct. You see, there are certainly distinct ethnographic groups within the human population, but there are so many of them as to be useless.
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So, there are many. Why do you jump to the conclusion that grossly "oversimplified" racial distintions are useless?
 
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