Agriculture and voting are far from universal in humans.
As are homophobia and transphobia. That was my point.
Because I'm curious.
So are other people who disagree with you; that can't be it.
Any behavior could have a biological basis, or not. Suppose you magically learned which behaviors are biologically determined, which are culturally determined, and which are a mix (and the proportions of the mix). Now what? What do you do if you did, somehow, prove that homophobia has a "gut-level" basis? It seems similar to (again, magically) finding out that women are, on average, slightly ~worse at math~ (supposing that were both a plausible assertion and a well-defined concept); you can't do anything with that information, at least not anything good. When Tim mentioned agendas, I didn't read him as accusing you of having an evil agenda, but as noticing that the only agendas that seem to be furthered by investigating hypotheses like "women are bad at math" or "people are naturally homophobic" are bad ones.
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tim's journal
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Date: 2011-05-12 04:26 pm (UTC)As are homophobia and transphobia. That was my point.
Because I'm curious.
So are other people who disagree with you; that can't be it.
Any behavior could have a biological basis, or not. Suppose you magically learned which behaviors are biologically determined, which are culturally determined, and which are a mix (and the proportions of the mix). Now what? What do you do if you did, somehow, prove that homophobia has a "gut-level" basis? It seems similar to (again, magically) finding out that women are, on average, slightly ~worse at math~ (supposing that were both a plausible assertion and a well-defined concept); you can't do anything with that information, at least not anything good. When Tim mentioned agendas, I didn't read him as accusing you of having an evil agenda, but as noticing that the only agendas that seem to be furthered by investigating hypotheses like "women are bad at math" or "people are naturally homophobic" are bad ones.