A REPLY TO TRAVIS THOMPSON: ONE GOOD RANT DESERVES ANOTHER. Of course, as Travis says, eye color etc. are biologically determined. But 5 will get you 10 that whether I get turned on by chicks with brown, blue, green, hazel, amber, gray, or flash-bulb red eyes is culturally programmed. Though I must admit that it is biologically determined that those same chicks will swoon when they see my irresistible blue eyes, especially when enhanced by my freshly pressed, blue dress shirt along with my blue genes. (Please don’t bother to grammar/spell check that last one.) And whether we dig hard rock, smooth jazz, real jazz, classical, or polka is culturally determined, though there is some rigorous, peer-reviewed research suggesting that dumb asses who dig polkas may be the pathetic victims of an evil combination of cultural programming and biological influence. In other and slightly more serious words, I’m humbly suggesting that if a straight-forward environmental/learning explanation is available for a complex behavioral repertoire or set of preferences, then we should be very skeptical of a biological deterministic explanation, even when couched as genetic determinism. And as I tried to show in my PPt “rant,” the history of biased, really smart-guy scientists being culturally programed to prove that people are inherently inferior, if they’re not white, Northern-European males, should make us skeptical of current smart-guy scientists. Just because our current scientists could spot you and me 50 IQ points and still be ahead of us doesn’t mean that aren’t the victims of overwhelming intellectual biases. Travis has a strong biological bias, almost as strong as my environmental/learning bias. Therefore, you need to be wary of both of us….ah, but mainly of Travis.
Posted on: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 16:59:19 +0000
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