The rise of the 'Alt-Right' culture - thoughts?

  On 11/9/2015 at 10:05 PM, eugene said:

 

  On 11/9/2015 at 9:23 PM, caze said:

 

  On 11/9/2015 at 8:55 PM, eugene said:

there's no clear evidence for any biological drives of human behavior.

 

what about hunger? libido? sexual orientation? (or do you believe that sexual orientation is a choice?)

 

there is very clear evidence of the behavioural effects of many genes, here's a good example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOSB

 

genes don't explain anywhere near the whole picture though, also really important is pre-natal neural development and how it relates to the endocrine system (this has a big impact on all kinds of things like sexuality, personality and intelligence). neural plasticity is fascinating, it's most active from the womb to pre-teen years, then starts slowing down over the next decade and becomes relatively fixed after that (ignoring things like brain trauma, strokes, sensory debilitation which can trigger further spikes in plasticity) - this is why it's far easier for a child to learn a new language for example, and a far more likely explanation (or at least a factor with far more weight) as to why there are sex differences in engineering type fields than the hypothesis that it's entirely down to socialisation (the research doesn't rule out socialisation as an important factor though).

 

  Quote

 

consciousness gets constructed via interaction of people with the world and other people.

 

constructed out of what though? the answer should be obvious, innate bio-physical capabilities (unless you have a mystical view of the source of human consciousness). our brains don't possess infinite capabilities either obviously, so it must follow that the limitations of those capabilities act as constraints on possible behaviour, and any differences in those innate capabilities between different individuals will lead to different social behaviours among different groups (feedback between those behaviours and the biological elements may well then exaggerate those differences).

 

  Quote

 

 

some similarity in gender roles doesn't prove your point at all, there are very similar physical and biological conditions (it's women who give birth and breastfeed children after all) that act as a starting point to human society development.

 

you've just described biological constraints on human social development, so you do actually agree with me after all?

 

so what about hunger? when you feel hungry do you immediately grab the first food around or do you engage in some mental process about how, when and whether to eat a particular food? and some people don't eat for days in a conscious manner.

sexual orientation is not a choice of course, there's really no such thing as choice in those matters, but it's definitely socially constructed.

 

the problem with studies that allege to show some biologically determined whatever is that they're always easy to criticize - none of them control for all the possibly relevant social factors that might determine the behaviors that they allege to explain biologically. a proper experiment would require completely identical social environment for two or more subjects, which is obviously nearly impossible to achieve. but somehow those pseudo-scientific notions of evolutionary psychs and sociobiologists still survive in their communes and seep into the press and pop science, but they are far from actual science.

 

conscioness is not constructed OUT OF capabilities, that phrase doesn't make logical sense. the capabilities that are similar for all humans, having a hand doesn't cause me to behave with that hand in a certain way. the extent of variance or even effects of those biological brain properties/capabilities is not known so your idea about them affecting human behavior is unsupported. constraint does not mean a determined behaviors, there's an infinity of possibilities for behaviors within those constraints. i don't agree with you on anything.

 

The process of deciding and thinking is biological because you have unconsciousness that you cannot control in any way. Automated processes and unconsciousness forms you and your conciousness. Conciousness is like a lesser partner of unconsciousness because the very first thing a living being will do is not a choice of his free will (conciousness). The very first thing a living being does (biological processes) starts a chain reaction of other things which forms the living being. Not under your control at all and definitely biological (if you consider behaviour of your cells constructing your body while being influenced by their environment to be a biological process). Conciousness is a product of biology because your brain is a product of biology. Society is a product of biology too because without biology there would be no society. Everything living beings do now was started by the very first living thing on the planet (whatever it was) and its behaviour. And everything the very first living thing on the planet did was dictated by the universe and environmental conditions around it. 100% biology.

EDIT: Mind you, there is a big chance that there is no free will at all.

@caze

  Quote

no it's doesn't, the more controlled the better of course, and no it's not.

jesus fuck, of course it is, that's exactly how science works, by not controlling for relevant factors you make your research conclusions shaky and up for criticism. and no it does, otherwise you would have already showed me such research. practically it involves two genetically different babies grown in identical social conditions, i'd really like to see how you imagine it done.

  Quote

...and their hunger. again, I'll have to repeat this 'til I'm blue in the face apparently, I have never claimed anything is fully determined by biological factors.

but i'm not fucking claiming that you do, if biological factors can't be shown to conclusively explain ANY behavior, then they can't explain it partially either.

  Quote

no logic issues at all, we're not as different as you think. I asked before if you had mystical explanations for what you believe are the differences, one of the many things I've asked which you've ignored.

yes like it really needs to be explained that animals don't have anything remotely close to what we consider consciousness.

  Quote

that criticism is not great, mostly because it focuses on a simplistic gene based explanation in the original research it's criticising. you can establish heritability without having to show specifically where it comes from. like I said before, we don't fully understand heritability, single protein coding genes are only part of the story (that paper is aware of this, but misses the point). this is obvious when you look at height, which is well known to be about 80% heritable overall, but when they went to find which genes were responsible for this they were mostly stumped (initial research could only account for around 10%). this seemed pretty strange, but after more research they highlighted the fact that individual impacts of genes were too small to detect above the noise (because of smaller sample sizes in the previous research), but when you look at the activity of all the genes that were found together, they add up to the majority of the expected heritability rate. failing to detect some of the genes - it's easy to miss a SNP, non-linear effects with multiple genes, epigenetics, and other gene regulatory processes are probably responsible for the rest. though even if the heritability rate was overstated (due to methodological issues in those studies), it's still clearly non-zero. if it's hard to find the link to heritability in more well accepted non-behavioural examples, it's no surprise it can be difficult in the more complex examples of disease and behaviour. this is a good article explaining some of this: http://www.nature.co...ll/456018a.html

that paper also seems to disagree with your position on there being no evidence for biological factors in human behaviour btw (it's mostly criticising claims of behaviour heritability rather than dismissing all gene-environment interactions). this is something that's pretty widely accepted in most of the empirical sociology stuff I've looked at, even if they're sceptical about the heritability rates.

the criticism of the article i linked criticizes the methodology and the conclusions based on it so i don't what the hell you were reading in there to arrive to the conclusion you did. you can't establish any habitability of behavior, because for the 20th time, you need to control for spurious associations and such, something that no study that claims to find some genetic effect ever did. i know that it is a within the evo-psyc and sociobiological cults, but it really doesn't make it suitable for explaining what you think it explains, so you simply evoke some faux authority it achieved without addressing the issue.

that paper can't disagree with anything because it doesn't provide any research.

let's change the tactic a bit, because i'm tired of reading your conjectures and logical failures. show me one research (and explain its methodology) that you think shows ANY genetic effect on behavior and i'll explain why it can't be concluded that genes have ANY effect, mediated or combined or whatever with social ones or however you want. (though i'd like to spoil it even at this point, the critique of the article i linked will most probably apply as well)

  On 11/10/2015 at 5:41 AM, Zeffolia said:

The idea that biology does not in any way affect behavior is absolutely ridiculous. Babies in the womb exhibit certain behaviors, for instance masturbation. This is a result of a desire for positive physical stimuli. And this is all before socialization of any kind. And this desire to elicit pleasure as a result of positive physical or mental stimuli is universal across all cultures, and even across all sufficiently complex species.

 

Socialization clearly affects it, but only within the grey areas which surround behaviors which are mandated by our biology.

yes, as if babies in the womb have anything remotely similar to consciousness and thought process that are a major part of the definition of human.

when you feel like having a wank as a grownup, you don't just pull off your pants and start wanking regardless of context like an animal. at the very most the desire can interfere with your being and thoughts, but the result of that desire after being processed by thought is an infinite variety of very different and possibly even contradictory behaviors. in other words it doesn't explain any behavior by itself in anyway, it's just a biological fact that maybe forces some interaction with the mind, but the results of that interaction is unpredictable.

Zeff with them biotruth bullets.

lol

Why can't these things be discussed, I don't know anything about biology or evolution and I want to know if we transcended or not yet

Skeletor obviously transcended something. That's a fact.

it's not a difficult question to answer, we had a head start.

  On 11/10/2015 at 11:16 AM, eugene said:

jesus fuck, of course it is, that's exactly how science works, by not controlling for relevant factors you make your research conclusions shaky and up for criticism. and no it does, otherwise you would have already showed me such research. practically it involves two genetically different babies grown in identical social conditions, i'd really like to see how you imagine it done.

you don't appear to have the first clue about how science works, no experiment can be perfectly controlled, and just because you have some factor that is not fully controlled does completely invalidate the conclusions reached, it just adds a certain level of uncertainty (and that level can be accounted for in many cases, and included within the broader margins of error of the experiment). I have already linked to other research, you've ignored it, and when I mentioned it again you ignored it again. you've also repeatedly ignored other points, and made accusations of logical failures without any attempt to back that up (and no, invalid analogies aren't a valid argument).

  On 11/10/2015 at 11:16 AM, eugene said:

but i'm not fucking claiming that you do, if biological factors can't be shown to conclusively explain ANY behavior, then they can't explain it partially either.

yes you have, repeatedly.

  Quote

yes like it really needs to be explained that animals don't have anything remotely close to what we consider consciousness.

uh, yes it does. you know this how exactly? again you've failed to answer my questions here, which makes me suspicious about what kind of irrational beliefs you may have in this area.

  Quote

the criticism of the article i linked criticizes the methodology and the conclusions based on it so i don't what the hell you were reading in there to arrive to the conclusion you did.

that thing made two main criticisms, the first was what I was mostly referring to - that the models used to explain the heritability factors was too simplistic, the second was more about the methodology, and I addressed that as well. it doesn't invalidate the evidence, just introduces uncertainty, and in the absence of any better research promoting an alternative explanation with better controls on all the factors it's still pretty strong evidence for what being claimed. science isn't some puzzle game where you unlock the ultimate truth when you achieve some perfect result. it's about coming up with a theory and establishing large bodies of evidence that tell a story better than other other theories and their bodies of evidence.

  On 11/10/2015 at 3:15 PM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

and it's perfect, we got it right guys! congratulations. no problems anymore whatsoever, we dealt with every single one. wow!

great. what's next on the agenda?

neat thread guys, now can we start one about how black people are just imagining things when they get shot by the police?

while you were wasting your time in this thread, i finished an album and got signed to warp.

caze, the uncertanty that is introduced makes the whole notion of genetic effect very shaky, it absolutely does put the findings in question. it pretty much provides what's called an alternative explanation, this is essential on all proper research.

i dont have the energy to wade through your tldr where you allegedly provided some super ultra amazing study that rises above the criticism of adoption/twin studies, if you really feel like continuing this then post it again and I'll address it.

.

  On 11/10/2015 at 7:37 AM, ghOsty said:

Well, I see this thread has gone full retard today...

 

It was inevitable I'm afraid...

Literal lol @ whoever said statistics don't mean anything in discussions like this. If you don't trust stats, and you don't trust what is openly around you, what's left? The media? LOL

  On 11/10/2015 at 4:55 PM, eugene said:

caze, the uncertanty that is introduced makes the whole notion of genetic effect very shaky, it absolutely does put the findings in question. it pretty much provides what's called an alternative explanation, this is essential on all proper research.

It does nothing even remotely similar to providing an alternative explanation. It highlights certain things which may be used to provide an alternative explanation, but fails to package it up into a coherent model, let alone provide any actual evidence that it (whatever *it* is) is true. I'm not saying such criticism isn't beneficial, pointing out methodological issues is a vital part of doing good science, but you're acting like this stuff isn't well known by the scientists doing the research, it is, and has been addressed in various other research (some of which I've linked to and you've unsurprisingly ignored; this includes twin studies, which your article only tangentially talked about), and will continue to be addressed. Meanwhile, most political and sociological research about which this thread's supposed antagonists are a reaction to fail to measure up to even the most basic empirical standards, basing their ideologies on notions pulled whole-cloth from their asses.

  Quote

 

 

i dont have the energy to wade through your tldr where you allegedly provided some super ultra amazing study that rises above the criticism of adoption/twin studies, if you really feel like continuing this then post it again and I'll address it.

If you're too lazy to go back a couple of pages I'm not going to help you out. No doubt you'll just continue ignoring all the salient points I'm making anyway.

There is still sexism of course, but does feminism seek to address that through political methods? Are there legal measures that would help solve this? (genuine question, I don't have the answer myself)

I'm honestly ignorant of what it is (if anything) feminists want done politically (in the UK/US) - is there is a popular consensus among feminists regarding their political aims, if they have specific political aims? (which would be intended to solve the problem of sexist attitudes or practices)

i like my feminism like i like my coffee: third wave

lol

  On 11/10/2015 at 5:44 PM, sheatheman said:

i like my feminism like i like my coffee: third wave

This thread, basically: