Aaron

…that C CAUSES F.

C&B agree this language is useful as a “quick or informal” “shorthand”. I simply say it should be used rigorously as well.

In any case, that interlevel “causation” is explained by intralevel causation plus interlevel constitution. So I think this is just a semantic disagreement.

After reading the whole Craver & Bechtel article (I’d only read excerpts before, including the hotdog example), I think my disagreement with Eric is purely semantic.

We agree that a cause C CAUSES (intralevel) an effect E which CONSTITUTES (interlevel) a higher-level state F.

I say that means…

I think you misunderstood me initially. I am NOT talking about any DIRECT causation across scales or levels. I am talking about direct causation WITHIN a level of organization.

I don’t recognize the Craver & Bechtel reference. Were they the ones with the hotdog vendor crossing the street example?

…which CONSTITUTE chroreiform movements. To collapse all these molecular processes, linked in causal mechanisms, into “the same entity” just hides all the causation that’s going on!

The macro movements are constituted by molecular processes, but NOT those directly involving the gene.

Do we agree that the clock gears CAUSE the hands to move? If so, then I think the only disagreement is about what “telling time” is. I agree that if you could tell time by watching the gears, then the gears would be “telling time”.

Similarly, the Huntington’s variant CAUSES molecular processes…

And again following the analogy, the Huntington’s variant itself (its presence in the genome) CAUSES the choreiform movements in the same way that the clock gears themselves CAUSE the clock to tell time.

So, where’d I go wrong here?

The expression of the Huntington’s variant at the molecular level CAUSES—not constitutes/composes—the choreiform movements of the body. There are lots of chemical substances and processes which constitute those movements, but there are CAUSAL mechanisms leading from the DNA to those processes.

You could go further and say the gears themselves cause the clock to tell time. (The gears wouldn’t turn the hands if they weren’t there in the clock.) That may be less precise than saying the turning of the gears, but it’s no less true.

Now the genetic case is analogous…

I see the clock gear analogy differently and I can’t see where my mistake is.

First, with the clock itself. The turning of the gears does cause the clock to tell time; it does not constitute or compose it. What constitutes it is the motion of the hands over the dial; the gear motion CAUSES that.

“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?

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…

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.

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.

Happy holidays to all, and Fuck Palestine 🙂

…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!

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…

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.

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!

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?

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!

This was a really interesting talk! Interesting Q&A too.

Uh, no.

bsky.app/profile/rong...

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.

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.

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.

OK, no more posts from me. I did post one reply after that but before I read your post.

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.

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.

Of course those statements are consistent. There’s no tension at all between them. I’m sorry that I couldn’t explain it clearly.

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.

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…

All talk about beliefs, discourse, practices, etc.—which everyone agrees were socially invented—seems irrelevant to what I said above.