One thing about G is that it’s extremely difficult to disentangle parenting factors
Right. Thus the obsession with twin studies.
As for your complaint about lack of (philosophical) rigor on the part of psychologists and other scientists, I’m often shocked at the conclusions drawn (by motivated paper authors and hurried readers) from the data. In theory I can just update slightly on the actual evidence while not grasping the associated unproven stories, but in practice I’m not sure I’ve built a faithful voting body of facts in my brain.
But they do not solve the problem. The only seem to at low precision, without much rigor. They are simplistic.
For example, they basically just gloss over and ignore the entire issue of gene-meme interactions, even though, in a technical and very literal sense, most stuff falls under that heading.
What basically happens—my view—is genes code for simple traits and parents in our culture react to those different traits. The children react to those reactions. The parents react to that new behavior. The children react to that. The parents react to that. And so on. Genetic traits—and also trivial and, for all intents and purposes, random details—set these things off. And culture does the rest. And twin studies do not rule this out, yet reach other conclusions. They don’t rule out my view with evidence, nor argument, yet somehow conclude something else. It’s silly.
Sometimes one gets the impression they’ve decided that if proper science is too hard, they are justified in doing improper science. They have a right to do research in the field! Or something.
Disagree? Try explaining how they work, and how you think they rule out the various possibilities other than genetic control over traits straight through to adulthood and independent of culture.
Right. Thus the obsession with twin studies.
As for your complaint about lack of (philosophical) rigor on the part of psychologists and other scientists, I’m often shocked at the conclusions drawn (by motivated paper authors and hurried readers) from the data. In theory I can just update slightly on the actual evidence while not grasping the associated unproven stories, but in practice I’m not sure I’ve built a faithful voting body of facts in my brain.
Thanks for the Popper+Deutsch recommendations.
But they do not solve the problem. The only seem to at low precision, without much rigor. They are simplistic.
For example, they basically just gloss over and ignore the entire issue of gene-meme interactions, even though, in a technical and very literal sense, most stuff falls under that heading.
What basically happens—my view—is genes code for simple traits and parents in our culture react to those different traits. The children react to those reactions. The parents react to that new behavior. The children react to that. The parents react to that. And so on. Genetic traits—and also trivial and, for all intents and purposes, random details—set these things off. And culture does the rest. And twin studies do not rule this out, yet reach other conclusions. They don’t rule out my view with evidence, nor argument, yet somehow conclude something else. It’s silly.
Sometimes one gets the impression they’ve decided that if proper science is too hard, they are justified in doing improper science. They have a right to do research in the field! Or something.
Disagree? Try explaining how they work, and how you think they rule out the various possibilities other than genetic control over traits straight through to adulthood and independent of culture.
There’s other severe methodological errors too. You can read some here: http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/520.html