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My rival at HLAS, Paul Crowley, immediately attacked my call for an analysis of intelligence by returning the discussion to my belief that it is mainly genetically-determined–although the point of the discussion was eventually to be able to consider whether it was or not. Crowley, whom I quote because I consider him entertainingly idiotic: “IF ‘intelligence’ is in the genes, then it would be an almost trivial matter to identify the relevant ones, and to predict a person’s IQ from an inspection of his DNA.”
Me: “I said nothing in my post here about DNA. I’ve already answered your insanely ignorant challenge. Intelligence is complex. There are many genes involved. Picking them all out of the quite complex genome and determining what each causes the manufacture, and how those fit together to form various components, of intelligence is no simple matter. To merely begin it requires a definition of intelligence. Next, a list of the physical mechanisms responsible for it, many of which are not yet identified–and perhaps not yet available to the scanning devices now in use. Once we know what mechanisms are involved, the thyroid gland being one, we have “only” to figure out which genes are responsible for each one, and this is not necessarily straight-forward. One gene may produce X, which has nothing apparent to do with intelligence but which allows operation Q to happen which produces Y, which IS necessary for intelligence. Or Q might be allowed in one person by one mechanism, and in another by a different one.
Crowley, “But, of course, no one is doing that, nor even thinking of doing that. The whole ‘g’ concept is being shown up for the garbage it is, and always was.” His forte, obviously, is assertion. I asked for the evidence for it. but he ignored my request in his next post. No, I’m wrong: his evidence was that if genes causes intelligence, all the governments in the world would be pumping billions of dollars into the search for those genes, but they aren’t. Hence, they must not exist. He ended the post I’m quoting by telling me never to give up on the beliefs I acquired at school. “They can’t possibly be wrong.”
Paul believes that I claim Shakespeare wrote the works attributed to him because I was told he did in school; therefore I must accept everything I was told in school. Oddy, I think it’s much closer to the opposite of that, as this blog surely suggests. He also has the weird idea that the schools I went to taught genetic determinism. The opposite, of course, was, and is, the case.
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