the first post in this thread

wrong way around. The former is simply a system of symbols assigned onto perceptions... assigned by the latter, consciousness.

I mean just think of how dumb it is to lead a charade of outrage by pointing specifically at European leaders and scream at them "you've deprived me of my youth!" while the greenhouse gases emitted by the EU as a share of the global total is about 20%. Selective crticism much?

And then the EU politicians are all tripping over themselves and fawning over her with smiles in their faces while they get castrated by a little girl, because they're so terrified by the press, who mostly support the left/green parties of Europe.

My main problem with her and her movement is they point the finger of blame and criticism primarily at nations which
1) have low carbon emissions as a percentage of the global total, bar the USA (so, Europe, Canada, Australia)
2) whose carbon emissions are already dropping year on year and have done since the early 1990s.

The "solutions" they come up with are all going to slow down innovation. And innovation is, funnily enough, the very thing that's allowed us to reduce greenhouse gas emissions per capita in the first place.

I'm not sure there's an explanans to this explanandum.

If x is not x, then it's a contradiction.

X is x because I perceive it to be.

Are you reading these studies? This latest put heritability of intelligence by 12 yrs at 0.46, less than half. Ie intelligence at 12 is caused more by external factors than it is by genetics. — Isaac

Yeah, did you read the several places that heritability of intelligence for adults lies between 60% and 80%? Why are you cherrypicking what it says about 12 year olds?

...and proceeded to cite a study which demonstrated exactly what Artemis said - that IQ (in the context we're discussing) is determined in huge part by environment. — Isaac

No, it says that IQ is determined 60 - 80% by genetics.

And just to underline, the original article Artemis posted doesn't show that IQ is determined largely by environment either - it doesn't even address the question of nature vs nurture - all it shows is that adoption is associated with a 4.4 point IQ gain, which is small, but close to the biggest environmental effect that the literature shows.

Are you reading these studies? This latest put heritability of intelligence by 12 yrs at 0.46, less than half. Ie — Isaac

At 12 years. In adulthood it is about 80%.

Science assumes the uniformity of nature in order to prove it. That's what Hume identified in the problem of induction and why science is flawed.

I think that people do make some of their choices on logic. Most of what people do is noncognitivism, error theory, mixing different ethical systems together etc. But occasionally, logic wins out.

I have difficulty telling the difference between remain MPs who accept the vote and those who simply want to stop Brexit and bin the vote. Parliament appears to be doing whatever it can to stop Brexit, exemplified by Hilary Benn passing a law in his own name to "stop the catastrophe of No Deal" only to reject voting for a deal when he is given one.

All bets are off until tomorrow evening, it's basically a coin toss whether Boris's deal will pass, but as Cameron puts it "the greased piglet will slip through".

and tests a pretty narrow range of abilities. — Artemis

Completely wrong. It predicts lifespan, lifetime earnings, hesd circumference, success in many school subjects, the sizes of numerous brain gyri and the size and speed of your brain cells.

Adoption studies have shown over and over again that environment plays a huge role in determining IQ. — Artemis

By huge, do you mean 20%?

It's a mixture of nature and nurture. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4403216/ — Artemis

How many studies which actually measure heritability, which this one doesn't, did you have to disregard before cherrypicking this one?

From the study itself:

"Although the 2- to 5-IQ-point advantage in the adopted-away children is smaller than differences reported in earlier and smaller studies, it is important to bear in mind that the environmental difference between the adoptive and biological families was not especially large, compared with earlier adoption studies that intentionally sampled children from extremely deprived backgrounds."

The genetic effect on IQ is far bigger than 5 points.

Exactly. — Isaac

No, not exactly. https://www.nature.com/articles/mp2014105

It demonstrates a correlation between IQ and future wealth. — Isaac

I am referring Gregory Clark's research.

Where? I've already asked you for the information you're referring to proving that social factors don't have a causal relationship with wealth. All you've provided is evidence that IQ does have a correlation, not that other factors don't. — Isaac

My argument is that social influences are less than genetic factors.

In fact the very report you cited said, quite specifically, that sex at birth was also correlated. — Isaac

Wouldn't sex at birth be a genetic influence?

The report you cite only demonstrates a correlation. You can't claim correlation is causation when it suits your argument and that it isn't when it doesn't. — Isaac

I have difficulty seeing how attaining wealth could change one's genes. Or that necomjng wealthy would raise one's IQ, especially given pre-existing evidence that variation in IQ is ~75% due to genetic variation.

What was Peter's biggest asset (besides good looks and a big dick, which he reportedly had)? It was income from a hundred million dollar trust fund. Plus, it was the years at "public school" (AKA private schools) such as Eton and Oxford. — Bitter Crank

You're assuming the conclusion of your own argument. The information I've linked to outright refutes this.
Also, with a spot of Googling you can see that receiving a private education produces little to no effect on life outcome, which is amusing because people pay so much for it. Having gone to an exclusive school is associated with having a higher paying job as an adult, but I shouldn't have to point out to philosophers that that doesn't mean it causes it. What causes it is the genetic advantage of the parents wealthy enough to send their kids to an exclusive school.

point?
I can say "wealthy families" instead, does that make it clearer?

I won't be able to reply in detail soon, but until then, material by Gregory Clark (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c2Ugb4VKH8) is central to showing why you're wrong. Quite simply, people from illustrious biological lineages who fall into poverty see their children and grandchildren return to riches.

I think I should refine my stance on whether or not there is equality of opportunity. I think your comment makes a good point. By equality of opportunity, I mean that nobody has any significant barrier to success. Some may have a small barrier.

So largely, I view outcome as a function of ability, with very little difference in opportunity between people.

Here's a source for my claim that IQ and conscientiousness predict future earnings:
https://www.mdpi.com/2079-3200/5/1/3

Some sources:

"Median Household Income in the Past 12 Months (in 2016 inflation-adjusted dollars)". American Community Survey. United States Census Bureau."

1 Indian $128,000
2 East Asian $85,349
3 White $67,865

The most socially mobile groups in the USA are non-white foreigners: 18 m 30 s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QyIMwzHuiCU&t=1110s

There isn't anything here that proves that opportunity isn't roughly the same for all people in America today.

Since education is organized along community boundaries, suburban communities have generally funded much better education than poorer cities. That's another way that opportunity is not equally distributed. — Bitter Crank

Studies (from the UK at least) show that education funding has very little effect on pupil's academic attainment and life outcomes.

Poor and poorly educated populations tend to have worse health outcomes than more affluent people. That's a third inequity of opportunity. — Bitter Crank

And what's the evidence that bad health outcome is mediated by low education or poverty?
I can simply claim that people who have the personality factors that cause them to be in poverty are the same ones that cause them to be uneducated and make bad decisions for their health.

Anyway, any claim that there's huge variation in people's opportunities in America has to deal with the fact that the highest earners are Asians and Jews. Do Asians have the most opportunity?

In addition, the groups of people with the highest representaion among high social status jobs are Copts, Hindus, Indian Christians, Iranian Muslims, Black Africans etc. Does that mean those groups of people have a surplus of opportunity?

And the picture looks even better when you start looking at which people in particular succeed and which personality traits they have that predict future success. That shows that IQ and conscientiousness are the traits that pick out an individual from a group, regardless of what group they're a member of, for being successful in the future.

There's a NY Times piece on how Italian Americans became white. It's pretty good. — frank

Could you let me know what it's called? What means does it use to prove that?
I've seen that Europeans never truly assimilated into America: that is that different European ethnicities have the same level of relative income, crime rate and alcoholism as they did when they arrived. e.g. Protestants from England and Germany at the top (highest income, lowest crime, lowest alcoholism) and Irish and Italians at the bottom.

It's here. — Isaac

Thanks. Although I would point out 2 things: that it reiterates that we can cluster people into meaningful groups, and that characterising 377 microsatellites will give an underestimate of how different individuals/groups are from each other. This because it's not just the sequence of small areas that matters, but the areas around them and the distances between them as well. It's like measuring how often a word is used in two different books to say how similar they are. It's not just the words that matter but the sentences they are in. You'd have to do full genomic sequencing to truly see how different people are.

All that you'd need to do is look at people. — Terrapin Station

So look like each other = have similar genes?

Anyway, to answer your question.

I think it's because we now have true equality of opportunity. And under these circumstances, you get to see what people's TRUE differences in ability really are. And progressives do not like what they see.

Now that biological inequality is being rubbed in progressive's faces, they are reacted badly. They are reacting by upping their group bias in favor of underachievers to insane levels. This manifests as advocating more and more redistribution and forced desegregation. Including redistributing school grades, advocating new welfare programs, reparations and programs promote favored groups up the hierarchies of institutions, etc.

"race" are at least as varied with respect to each other as people of different "races." — Terrapin Station

I've never seen the scientific evidence for this, I hear it often but I'm sure it's a myth.

Now, the colonial way races were divided up which we still use may indeed not accurately reflect people's degree of biological relation (whichi si what race is). The best example of this is how much racial diversity there is in Africa among all "black" people.

But a nore accurate definition of race would be haplogroup. And that's what a race is in every meaningful way - a group of people defined by how related they are to each other compared to other groups. And haplogroups exist, which means race exists. People within that haplogroup will have more in common with each other genetically than they do with anybody from a different haplogroup.

(i.e. signified) by some members of the racial majority e.g. white cops (US) - and thereby conducting oneself accordingly. — 180 Proof

As far as I remember, there's evidence black cops are more likely to use lethal force than white ones.

Also black men aren't more likely to be killed by police than white men when controlling for crime rate, they're actually less likely.

In bulk numbers, about 500 white men are killed by police in the USA every year, compared to 360 black men. Those rates have nothing to do with population and almost everything to do with violent crime rate. See men vs women.

note to the mods, if you want, you can move my post to this discussion: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/2765/if-hate-speech-doesnt-incite-hatred-then-where-does-hatred-come-from

such as stealing from a big company or stealing without detection, because of principle and character reasons. — Andrew4Handel

I think you could argue that stealing from something very rich still does cause harm, and if you could prove it doesn't, people would have concerns that accepting theft in such a case sets a bad precedent that has net-negative entailments.

Likewise most people would oppose defiling a corpse even though the person is dead. I think the reason bad behavior causes pain is often because of the psychological judgement you make not because of the action. That is to say the pain is worst after you discover you have been wronged. Hence pain and pleasure could be caused by the act of making a moral judgement. — Andrew4Handel

I'd explain this by saying that people can experience displeasure at things that aren't physically harmful to them due to our inherited social psychology. Understanding that your kin have been insulted damages your social status, so your brain imposes a "toll" which represents your diminished reproductive prospects.

I'm not talking about the etymology of the words, I'm talking about what people mean by "bad and good" whether they're aware of it or not. If something ultimately causes pleasure it is good, if it causes pain it is bad.

challenging N. Korea with inflammatory rhetoric — hks

Well something appears to have worked in North Korea. They are for the first time demilitarising their border. It's impossible to say if Trump is responsible for the improvement, but his presidency and total change of POTUS policy towards North Korea coincides with that improvement.

Not stealing, not lying not causing harm. The problem is convincing other people not to do these actions as well. — Andrew4Handel

Well if you can't convince them, force has to be used.

We can judge painful life saving surgery as good and we can see the pleasure from drugs and alcohol or over eating as bad. — Andrew4Handel

This is "will lead to feeling good/will lead to feeling bad".

"Morality Versus Action"
All morality depends on action.
For morality to mean anything, force has to be used. Otherwise it is just a plea for the T-rex not to eat you. If you or a third party cannot bring force to bear against the T-rex to get it to relent, then morality is just a whimper for mercy.
And even any moral system that denounces "force" or "violence", it would have to arbitrate its claims using violent force.

I would say that the word "moral" means "feels good" or "will lead to feeling good" in however many ways you can fathom it, and "immoral" means "causes pain". So the very dichotomy comes from the dichotomy of the pleasure-pain axis.
Force comes into it because obviously, without the use of force, no morality can exist; with no might you cannot make anything right, and so moral decisions can only be made by those using force. Just that some act in favour of their own pleasure-pain axis and against those of others.

Just want to throw in a random 2 cents, something I enjoy pointing out about Trump.
Listen to what Mitt Romney had to say about Trump. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpZGR_eTbAI
"the country would sink into prolonged recession."
Keep in mind how wrong people can be, because currently, the opposite appears to be happening..

I agree that some rights should be conferred to everyone (based on the consequences). I wouldn't use the word inalienable though, because they're not. They should be based on a cost-benefit analysis inclusive of everyone who is affected by them.

So why does your right to do those things change when you go from one country to the next?

Could you tell me specifically what with and why?

I think there's very little to discuss here.
Revamped blasphemy laws in the forms of public order offences are now widespread, and they de facto favour the most intolerant and violent, large groups people. Namely, they favour any religion large enough to cause trouble, and they were written and are being enforced because there exist worshippers of religion to follow through with their threats of violence.
The only point at which this situation will reverse is when Europeans who are not favoured by said public order offence laws start getting violent in response to it.

" I do think as human beings we have certain inalienable rights - simply due to our humanness"
Let's get one thing straight - rights are not immaterial, infinitely extendable things. They're awarded to you by other human beings because those human beings made a cost-benefit judgement on whether or not you and everyone else should have them, correctly or incorrectly.
Rights are very much physical. They are dependent on resources and the ability of other members of society to coordinate violence (law enforcement). All rights come at a cost to somebody, some rights have low costs to everyone, so we have them. Other rights would come at a huge cost to everyone and a benefit to a tiny minority, so if we're rational, we don't have them.

Any ontology has to be based on what you know for certain. It's known unquestionably that "this" feels like "that", and inferences and concepts have no influence on that fact. Whatever ontology you have it has to be based on something you cannot question away, which are qualities, or qualia. And when you think about it, they're not static things. Pain repels, pleasure attracts. Redness is red "outwardly". They're fundamentally moving, or becoming. So when we're talking about continuous quantities, they're really just assignments we make onto those moving feelings. It's mostly visual of course, and what is logic and counting? They're both extensions of visual reasoning. They're consequences of our ability to resolve two things in space, to tell one thing apart from another. What does it mean for there to be 5 things without a perception of 5 things? It's just an abstraction. Numbers are assignments consciousness makes when it's perceiving something.