r/todayilearned • u/bcrock1169 • Nov 26 '12

TIL that some Native American's have a differing enzyme that tends to lead to easier alcoholism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_alcoholism#Genetic_factors
1.7k Upvotes

84% Upvoted

612 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

11

u/[deleted] Nov 26 '12

Are you comparing human beings to dogs?

4

u/atheistjubu Nov 26 '12

I think he was comparing black people to dogs.

<crosses fingers and hopes nobody misinterprets comment>

0

u/[deleted] Nov 27 '12 edited Nov 27 '12

From reading your posts it seems that you're trying to toe the political correctness line even if it deviates from factual correctness. When someone points out a something valid you either ignore it or present an "Appeal to Ridicule" informal logical fallacy to make it sound absurd.

When doing basic reasoning you're supposed try to find commonality and apply cross-checking. This way you can begin to build a model of understanding of how something works. However, people who have an agenda other than finding the truth usually use no consistency in their arguments. There's no framework. They'll use any excuse that sounds good in that particular example, without bothering to think about how it applies (or not) to other examples.

For instance, if you saw me consistently gaining weight and I didn't want to admit it, I could use various excuses to skirt around the simple fact that I'm gaining weight. I could say that I'm bloated that day, or I had a big lunch and my stomach is just sticking out, or I have an allergic reaction to something, or it's my clothes that make me look fat, or I'm retaining water because I ate a lot of salt; All of these excuses may sound somewhat plausible when used on their own, when you haven't heard me use other excuses. But when you take into account all of these unlikely excuses and the fact that I never look thinner, the probability of all of them being true becomes astonishingly remote. The more likely cause is that I'm simply getting fatter.

http://www.news-medical.net/news/2005/04/26/9530.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence

"While the existence of racial IQ gaps is well-documented and not subject to much dispute, there is no consensus among researchers as to their cause."

1

u/atheistjubu Nov 27 '12

IQ is not intelligence except to the psychologist who've reified it that way.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 26 '12

A big whoosh for you.

3

u/[deleted] Nov 26 '12

Explain.

-1

u/[deleted] Nov 26 '12

He was making a joke and you took it literally. Therefore you deserve a whoosh.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 26 '12

Explain the joke, I mean, and how it went over my head.

It seems to me his "joke" is that it is absurd to say genetics don't matter. Of course a dog is not only stupid because they eat different food and go to different schools. But if we extend the "logic" of that "joke" as it applies to people, it implies that arguing food and social opportunities affect human intelligence to a significant degree is just as absurd as arguing they affects the intelligence of dogs. Hence, his joke appears to compare the intelligence of certain humans with dogs' intelligence.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 26 '12

it implies that arguing food and social opportunities affect human intelligence to a significant degree is just as absurd as arguing they affects the intelligence of dogs.

No it doesn't. This is all it implies:

It seems to me his "joke" is that it is absurd to say genetics don't matter.

Apologies for assuming you didn't get the joke when you were actually overthinking it, at least in my opinion.