From: Joel Pitt (joel.pitt@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Sep 11 2006 - 16:44:35 MDT
José,
Correlation doesn't mean causality, but it can guide you to good
places to start research. For instance, a paper that I wrote a DNA
parser for only correlates high frequencies of a certain DNA repeat
motif with recombination hotspots, we can't prove causality at this
stage. We have ideas about how they might influence one another, but
the observation of correllation gives us a starting point to start
carrying out wet lab experiments.
But the main reason for asking the question?
Olie thought it'd be an interesting question to see the answer to, so
I included it. The survey is purely for interest's sake. I don't
envision it shaping SL4 policies or how the SingInst goes about
recruiting people.
As I understood it, the main problem of eugenics is the time it would
take for traits to emerge and removing heterozygous individuals.
Arguments against eugenics doesn't mean that genetics won't play a
part in your mental physiology (and I'm also not arguing against
nuture playing a role in mental development).
-Joel
On 9/12/06, José Raeiro <zeraeiro@clix.pt> wrote:
> I asked the same question in private to Joel Pitt, not because I didn't
> knew who were or what had the Askhenazi done, but because of what the
> genes had to do with it. Maybe it's even dumber.
>
> Firstly, and in a list where statistics make a lot of buzz, I always had
> this idea that correlation doesn't necessarily mean causality. If you
> search randomly for patterns you will find them where there is no
> causality at all (e.g. there are more athletes with Mars on a certain
> part of the sky than you could expect only by pure chance. That doesn't
> prevent astrology for being total crap.).
>
> Secondly, I think that the question would be, at least, more relevant if
> it was asked in another way. For example: did you grow up inside the
> Askhenazi culture/enviroment? Maybe I'm commiting the capital crime of
> not reading the damn literature (or some less neutral part of it), but I
> have this idea that there is quite some criticism on eugenics.
>
> And in spite of all that, I still can't really see the point of the
> question.
>
> José Raeiro
>
>
>
> Michael Anissimov wrote:
> > On 9/11/06, Ricardo Barreira <rbarreira@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> And why the question on Askhenazi genes?
> >
> > People on this list too dumb to use Google should be banned from posting.
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jews#Achievement
> >
>
--
-Joel
"Wish not to seem, but to be, the best."
-- Aeschylus
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