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From: guy@rlgvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Winslow re: Sex and Determinism
Message-ID: <1957@rlgvax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 29-May-84 00:55:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: rlgvax.1957
Posted: Tue May 29 00:55:56 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 1-Jun-84 21:53:42 EDT
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> Actually, statistical studies have been made which controlled for economic
> background (almost 2 generations ago).

Oh?  Which studies are these?  How was the economic background controlled
for?  (I presume those studies showed that race X was more intelligent than
race Y; what, by the way, were races X and Y?)

> Current advances in biochemistry are making heredity seem a lot more
> malleable, controllable, and correctable than environment.

"Malleable" and "controllable" only if you understand what you're controlling.
We may know quite a bit about the biochemistry of genes, but the biochemistry
of *intelligence* is what we're concerned with here (an analogy - would
a cryptographer or a programmer be better able to develop an algorithm for
breaking a particular code?).  Which genes would *you* tweak in order to
increase mathematical ability?  We may know how to tweak those genes, but
we're a long way from knowing which ones to tweak.  (Which brings us
by a commodius vicus of recirculation partway back to the original discussion;
we don't know where various intellectual abilities come from - please, not
where "intelligence" comes from, as it's not clear "intelligence" exists;
*pace* William Shockley, who is a very talented physicist but who has "failed
abysmally" as a proponent of a "naturist" (and racist) view of intelligence.
In some things he's very talented, in others he's just purblind.)

	Guy Harris
	{seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guy