> We know for a fact that sex or ethnicity impacts body yet we seem unable to cope with the idea that there are also differences in how brains work.

Here is your error. You’re assuming that a physical difference in morphology is linked to behavioral or neural correlates. That’s not the case, since observed statistical- or group-level differences need not be driven by biology. You’re assuming biological determinism, and the evidence for direct genetic effects on behavior isn’t there.

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Aurornis 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> and the evidence for direct genetic effects on behavior isn’t there.

Yes it is. There's an entire field for studying this called Behavioral Genetics.

The easiest evidence comes from comparing monozygotic and dizygotic twins (maternal vs fraternal twins). The variance in behavior is higher among the dizygotic twins who have different genomes.

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runarberg 2 days ago | parent [-]

Twin studies are inherently biased. We have also learned since the 1950s that your genes are not nearly as static as previously assumed. The field of behavior genetics is very fraught indeed, full of disproven assumptions, flawed statistics, and racist pseudo-science. For the longest time behavioral genetics served to justify discrimination through eugenics.

Your parent is correct, the evidence for genetic effects only exist in pseudo-scientific fields using long debunked and flawed methodology. In other words, the “evidence” for behavioral genetics has failed to replicate.

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Aurornis 2 days ago | parent [-]

> Twin studies are inherently biased.

How? And why do you think this completely invalidates their observations?

> We have also learned since the 1950s that your genes are not nearly as static as previously assumed

Aside from random mutations, your genes are essentially static for your lifetime. Genetic expression can change, but you don’t suddenly flip from being blue eyed to brown eyed because your genes change.

We already know that genetics predispose people to certain conditions like schizophrenia. We have ample evidence that behavioral traits are passed down via genes from centuries of animal breeding. How would anyone possibly conclude that genes have no impact on behavior?

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seec 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I don't know how people like him can come up with so much ideological bullshit that is very obviously proved wrong just by observing other species or consulting history.

If any of it was wrong not only, we would just not breed and select animals for specific traits but pretty much most of our civilisation wouldn't even exist as it does.

We got there precisely by selecting and using animals as tools and food security. Our farm animals are quite passive, precisely because we selected that trait.

There are some people who pay over 30K€ for the breeding of a specific horse in an attempt to create a race winner; and then we have guys like this, supposedly smart but who keep spiting nonsense and even pretend to have the authority of science behind him.

The evidence is right under everyone's nose. It is extremely hard to "prove" in a "scientific" (at some points statistics have too much interpretation behind them to be meaningful) way but anyone who is completely blinded by ideologies.

People who wouldn't be considered "smart" here have an old saying: "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree". They may not be smart but have infinitely more wisdom and what they say might be true more often than the "smart" peoples.

	▲	runarberg a day ago \| parent [-]
		I would argue that behavioral genetics is extremely ideologically driven. This whole sub-field was started by a white supremacist (Francis Galton) with the aim of “proving” the superiority of the white race. The early days were wrought with pseudoscientific bullshit and unlike me complaining about it on a tech forum, the ideology of behavioral geneticist resulted in an actual policy and the horrors of eugenics. If you want to find more about what makes Behavioral Genetics such a terrible “scientific” endeavor and how the whole field is driven by ideology instead of science, there is a whole book dedicated to the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misbehaving_Science

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runarberg a day ago | parent | prev [-]

It is not about whether or not genes can encode behavior, they obviously can. But explaining behavior with genetics has never actually been done, and most attempts of doing so have been pseudo-scientific race science with the goal of showing the superiority of the white race.

Yes we can select a behavioral trade and breed animals that are more likely to behave in a certain way in a given situation. Those animals are usually also trained from birth to behave in that matter, demonstrating how important environmental interaction is to explaining behavior. Selective breeding is a proof that some behavior is heritable. But heritability does not mean that you can explain behavior with genetics, it just means that some behavior is more likely within some population, regardless of whether or not genes are the reason for the variety. Twin studies, even if they were valid and unbiased, fail to account for that, and are therefor not evidence for the wild claims of behavior genetics.

But it gets worse. Like I said before, twin studies are inherently biased and they don‘t actually show an accurate estimate of heritability as behavior geneticist claim. Twins are not a random sample of the population, twins share the same environment at least until the first minutes after birth (and quite often months or even years after birth), they often interact with each other, and even if they are separated soon after birth, they are more often adopted into similar (often high income) families. In short twin studies suffer from bad statistics resulting from junk-in junk-out.

And it gets even worse, because even looking past the fact that heritability does not offer any evidence for behavior genetics, and the fact that twin studies are fraught with bad statistics, the fundamental assumptions of twin studies are wrong. The human genome is not static throughout the live of the individual, our own genes only account for less then half of our genetic mass (the rest are from microorganisms some are there from birth, others leave and enter our bodies frequently, some we might even trade genes with, and a lot of them affect our behavior).

If you are interested, here is a 2014 report debunking twin studies as proof for behavior genetics: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1745-9125.12036

EDIT: As for the claim that “[w]e already know that genetics predispose people to certain conditions like schizophrenia.”, that is not so clear either: https://slate.com/technology/2016/02/schizophrenia-genes-fou... and if you want an unopinionated review of the current status of the genetic theory of schizophrenia: this is a nice one: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7465115/ and concludes:

> From the impressing 80% heritability stated by Sullivan, very little has been pinpointed and confirmed in live models or come even close to the ultimate goal of targeted therapy. [...] Many confounding variables still plague all levels of testing starting from sample sizes, absence of negative studies of insufficient follow-up for high credibility.

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epolanski 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It's not an error unless you're able to demonstrate the opposite.

I have yet to see studies that demonstrate that different sexes, hormones or even ethnicities do not impact cognitive abilities or higher proficiency in different fields.

Whereas I've seen plenty that show that women, on average, demonstrate higher cognitive abilities linked to verbal proficiency, text comprehension or executive tasks. Women also tend to have better memory than men.

Facts are that there are genetic differences in how our brains work. And let's not ignore the huge importance of hormones, extremely potent regulators of how we function.

To ignore that we have differences that, at large, help explain statistics is asinine.

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us-merul 2 days ago | parent [-]

And how are you able to rule out that societal or environmental effects are the primary driver? How is your argument not circular, that observed differences are therefore the result of biology?

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epolanski 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I've never stated that biology is the primary driver.

I merely stated that biology, should not be ignored when judging very large samples.

There are cross sex cognitive tests at which women and men tend to perform differently, such as spatial awareness or speed perception and many others.

What's the environmental or cultural factor behind the fact that a female's brain, on average, is able to judge speed much more correctly than a male?

	▲	us-merul 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I see you edited your response after my reply. I’m not denying that you’ve read about those observed differences. I’m trying to say that those differences don’t need to be driven by biology, and evidence suggests otherwise. Behavior can’t be reduced to genetics, and the mechanistic link isn’t there. You are claiming that morphological differences explain the variation. Besides, by your reasoning, you could look at the NBA before Bill Russell and make very different claims.

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3cKU 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> And how are you able to rule out

It is not possible to rule out unfalsifiable hypotheses.

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2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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