Aaron Gross
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rongwrong.bsky.social
Aaron Gross
@rongwrong.bsky.social
96 followers 95 following 210 posts
“Every word that is uttered creates an angel.”
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rongwrong.bsky.social
Aaron Gross @rongwrong.bsky.social · Nov 21
I won the Worst Tweet of 2023 tournament
Tweet by @jeremiahdjohns showing my tweet in the Finals bracket of Worst Tweet of 2023. My tweet: Did the Nazis do anything to their victims that was as horrific as what was done on October 7? That’s an honest question, I don’t know holocaust history. October 7 seems more savage and sadistic than the Nazis, more like ISIS or the Comanches. 6:49 AM · Nov 21, 2023 · 1M Views Poll showing my tweet winning the Worst Tweet of 2023 finals, 56.7% to 43.3%.
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rongwrong.bsky.social
Aaron Gross @rongwrong.bsky.social · 18d
“We know there are no uncontrolled confounds, because we discovered the mechanism.”
“What’s a ‘mechanism’?”
“A causal process where we know there are no uncontrolled confounds.”

Seems you need a more direct conception of mechanism for the concept to be useful?
rongwrong.bsky.social
Aaron Gross @rongwrong.bsky.social · 18d
Interesting post!

There’s something that bothers me though (maybe my misunderstanding) in the “Mechanism is Unconfounded Causation” section. Doesn’t your “quick and dirty” definition of “mechanism” lead to circularity? Like…
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Reposted by Aaron Gross
ent3c.bsky.social
Eric Turkheimer @ent3c.bsky.social · 19d
In 2018, Charles Murray challenged me to a bet: "We will understand IQ genetically—I think most of the picture will have been filled in by 2025—there will still be blanks—but we’ll know basically what’s going on." It's now 2025, and I claim a win. I write about it in The Atlantic.
Your Genes Are Simply Not Enough to Explain How Smart You Are
Seven years ago, I took a bet with Charles Murray about whether we’d basically understand the genetics of intelligence by now.
www.theatlantic.com
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rongwrong.bsky.social
Aaron Gross @rongwrong.bsky.social · 25d
Happy holidays to all, and Fuck Palestine 🙂
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rongwrong.bsky.social
Aaron Gross @rongwrong.bsky.social · Sep 24
…were also only assuming heritability and nothing else, like Lewontin, probably because I misread.

But if you’re assuming we ALREADY know an IQ variant X and its frequency in different races, then sure it’s like the island example and it’s clear. Thanks!
rongwrong.bsky.social
Aaron Gross @rongwrong.bsky.social · Sep 24
I understood that and the island example, but it wasn’t clear how that carried over to Lewontin’s point about races, maybe because I misunderstood your whole point?

Lewontin’s example was about heritability, by itself, not implying between-population “genetic” differences, right? I thought you…
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rongwrong.bsky.social
Aaron Gross @rongwrong.bsky.social · Sep 19
If anybody could explain this to me I’d appreciate it. The context by the way is criticizing Lewontin’s “two populations of seeds” thought experiment.

Somehow the sentence sounds intuitively reasonable, but I don’t know how to translate it to precise language, much less to a result in statistics.
rongwrong.bsky.social
Aaron Gross @rongwrong.bsky.social · Sep 19
Specifically, who are the “you”, “me”, and “groups of people like” you/me? Are you and I in the same population? If so, aren’t the “groups of people” also in the same population?

Or are you and I in different populations? If so, the premise of the conditional is exactly what we’re trying to answer!
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rongwrong.bsky.social
Aaron Gross @rongwrong.bsky.social · Sep 19
Thinking again about this deceptively simple sentence from @ent3c.bsky.social:

“If you believe…that genetic differences explain why you are smarter than me, then those same genetic differences will cause groups of people like you to be smarter than groups of people like me.”

What does this mean?
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rongwrong.bsky.social
Aaron Gross @rongwrong.bsky.social · Aug 23
I think that question mostly comes down to how you define “biological reality”, not to anything about race itself.

Depending on that definition, race is either not biologically real at all; or biologically real only to a trivial, insignificant degree.

This is my last reply here. Have a good one!
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rongwrong.bsky.social
Aaron Gross @rongwrong.bsky.social · Aug 23
This was a really interesting talk! Interesting Q&A too.
ent3c.bsky.social Eric Turkheimer @ent3c.bsky.social · Aug 18
My Dobzhansky lecture at BGA: "Theodosius Dobzhansky and the Origins of Radical Behavior Genetics" is publicly available. I talk about the tensions introduced into the field at the difficult border between science using model organisms and human beings. Thanks to BGA for the opportunity.
Sat_208_Dobzhansky_Lecture
Dobzhansky Lecture by Eric Turkheimer
vimeo.com
rongwrong.bsky.social
Aaron Gross @rongwrong.bsky.social · Aug 23
Uh, no.

bsky.app/profile/rong...
rongwrong.bsky.social Aaron Gross @rongwrong.bsky.social · Jan 3
So I read this new book by Eric Turkheimer, “Understanding the Nature–Nurture Debate”, and it’s really good.

There are a few things that didn’t help the book, and there were a couple minor cases where I found his “gloomy prospect” argument unpersuasive. But overall, well-presented and convincing.
Book cover of “Understanding the Nature–Nurture Debate” by Eric Turkheimer
rongwrong.bsky.social
Aaron Gross @rongwrong.bsky.social · Apr 6
Nice article on film noir from the NYRB, 1991 <https://archive.li/2B57B>

This is a really good point about how audiences experienced film noir in the 1940s–50s. They weren’t ancient Greeks experiencing catharsis from a tragedy. They were there to enjoy thrills and entertainment.
Disillusionment, apocalypse, pessimism, nihilism, corruption, nervousness, bitterness, dysfunction: Are these really what most viewers of these movies have experienced, either in the 1940s or since? Even with the most luridly perverse and pessimistic melodramas-Out of the Past, Criss Cross, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers—it may well be asked whether spectators were any more devastated by the destinies of the doomed lovers and killers than viewers of Knots Landing or Dallas. They had come to the movies for excitement, and were more likely to be entertained than crushed by the spectacle of a comfortably vicarious emotional showdown. In the world of film noir, words like "dark" or "empty" or "desperate" refer not to real-life experiences but to movie experiences: they describe certain sub-varieties of spectatorial thrill. The movies' actual effects might more accurately be described in terms of exhilaration, gaudy invention, tight and jaunty choreography, cocky self-assurance. They practice an aesthetic of flamboyant exhibition, reveling in exuberant sexuality and hip self-parody.
rongwrong.bsky.social
Aaron Gross @rongwrong.bsky.social · Apr 4
OK a last comment about race.

When I say that human races have existed for thousands of years, that might sound ridiculous to educated people, who say race was invented a few centuries ago.

But like it or not, right or wrong, I think most ordinary people agree with what I said about it.
rongwrong.bsky.social
Aaron Gross @rongwrong.bsky.social · Apr 4
OK, no more posts from me. I did post one reply after that but before I read your post.
rongwrong.bsky.social
Aaron Gross @rongwrong.bsky.social · Apr 4
Like, don’t even label that concept I quoted “race”. I think the “race” label might be misleading. Call it R-groups or something. Then I’m saying that R-groups existed thousands of years before that R-groups concept existed.

That’s separate from the question of whether it’s really a race concept.
rongwrong.bsky.social
Aaron Gross @rongwrong.bsky.social · Apr 4
Electrons were a bad example because they’re a natural kind and race is not. My point was simply that THE DEFINITION I QUOTED describes a thing that existed before the concept was invented.
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rongwrong.bsky.social
Aaron Gross @rongwrong.bsky.social · Apr 4
Of course those statements are consistent. There’s no tension at all between them. I’m sorry that I couldn’t explain it clearly.
rongwrong.bsky.social
Aaron Gross @rongwrong.bsky.social · Apr 4
If you don’t accept that distinction, between the concept in our minds and the category it picks out, then fine. But it’s a disagreement that has nothing to do specifically with race.
rongwrong.bsky.social
Aaron Gross @rongwrong.bsky.social · Apr 4
OK, well at least we finally got to the disagreement. It’s got nothing to do specifically with race.

For example, we have an invented concept of ELECTRON. The concept has only existed for less than two centuries. But the concept picks out a category, electrons, which has existed for much longer…
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rongwrong.bsky.social
Aaron Gross @rongwrong.bsky.social · Apr 4
All talk about beliefs, discourse, practices, etc.—which everyone agrees were socially invented—seems irrelevant to what I said above.
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rongwrong.bsky.social
Aaron Gross @rongwrong.bsky.social · Apr 4
That CONCEPT picks out a CATEGORY. The CATEGORY is constituted entirely by non-social things: just read the definition again. I’m saying the CATEGORY existed—was non-empty—long before the CONCEPT existed…
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Aaron Gross @rongwrong.bsky.social · Apr 4
You just described how people’s CONCEPTION of race was invented, along with race-oriented discourse and practice. Of course those were invented! No one denies that.

Set aside for a moment the question of whether the concept I posted is an ordinary concept—not conception, but concept!—of race…
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Aaron Gross @rongwrong.bsky.social · Apr 4
My beliefs aren’t in opposition to anything. My definition of what I called the (or an) ordinary conception of race was a rough paraphrase of this, below.

I said it has certain implications, such as, races have existed for thousands of years. I still don’t see why that doesn’t follow obviously.
A race is group of human beings (C1) that, as a group, is distinguished from other groups of human beings by patterns of visible physical features, (C2) whose members are linked by a common ancestry peculiar to members of the group, and (C3) that originates from a distinctive geographic location.
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Aaron Gross @rongwrong.bsky.social · Apr 2
Also I should add, Glasgow’s chapters in “What Is Race?” He explains his “basic realism” again, but he also argues cogently against Sally Haslanger’s constructivism as described in her chapters.

(I don’t agree with everything he says, but I agree with his argument against constructivism.)
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