Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!purdue!umd5!cvl!harwood
From: harwood@cvl.umd.edu (David Harwood)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: AIList V6 #86 - Philosophy
Message-ID: <2865@cvl.umd.edu>
Date: 18 May 88 14:47:01 GMT
References: <1579@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <3200016@uiucdcsm> <523@wsccs.UUCP> <981@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>
Reply-To: harwood@cvl.UUCP (David Harwood)
Organization: Center for Automation Research, Univ. of Md.
Lines: 45

In article <981@cresswell.quintus.UUCP> ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
>In article <523@wsccs.UUCP>, dharvey@wsccs.UUCP (David Harvey) writes:
>> lives.  Even a casual perusal of the studies of identical twins
>> separated at birth will produce an uncanny amount of similarities, and
>> this also includes IQ levels, even when the social environments are
>> radically different.
>
>ONLY a casual perusal of the studies of separated twins will have this
>effect.  There is a selection effect:  only those twins are studied who
>are sufficiently far from separation to be located!  A lot of these
>so-called "separated" twins have lived in the same towns, gone to the
>same schools, ...

	Please, Mr. O'Keefe - please stick to programming languages
where we very much appreciate your competence. But you really don't
know what you are talking about concerning methodologies or results of
twin studies. 
	This is not to say that there aren't methodological
problems in any science - but simply that you are pretty obviously
ignorant in this matter, but have a penchant for wise-guy replies.
If you have published criticisms, or even read the ongoing major
U. Minnesota studies, then I will gladly publish an apology. (I surely
have not.) 
	Can you substantially prove that there is not sound research
which shows comparatively significant psychological similarity of
identical twins, even when growing up apart? As for your remark about
circumstantial selectional effects - give us computer researchers
as break - we don't think that all psychologists are more methodologically
incompetent then AI- or Prolog specialists. That is absurd. Moreover,
it is a naive fallacy for you to assume that genetic expression is not
dependent on enviroment. That is, the fact that separated identical
twins might be selected because they are found in the same physical or
cultural "niches" has to be allowed for theoretically alright, but 
the issue is whether twins are comparatively more similar in various 
more or less different enviroments. And apparently they are, the
extent depending on the enviroment.
	By the way, I'm impressed with your Quintus Prolog products,
but do they actually pay you to post incessantly, as some kind of
advertisement or, more likely, public service? Impressive as you
are technically, I am rather sick of this self-aggrandizement. (Of
course, others have vociferously expressed their displeasure with my 
occasional public annoyance.)
	Now I will go to read the rest of the news fit to post ;-)

David Harwood