Graydon

@bitofhope @swlabr This completely messes with the idea that you can use “good genes” as a guarantee of a desirable outcome.

It also hauls in the idea of environment as the arbiter in more-difficult-to-ignore ways. Even if you’re using Origin and nothing since, you should be aware that “fitness” means “in some specific environment and moment in time”, only there’s this drive to ditch that. Recognising how much developmental plasticity matters breaks any concept of inherent quality of organisms.

@bitofhope @swlabr One of those quiet little scientific revolutions; cheap genetic testing let biologists realise that insects they had classified as different species were not, they were different morphs using the same genes. This let in the idea of developmental plasticity and the current consensus is that a whole lot of stuff is developmental, not genetic.

In humans, almost everything brain-based (sexuality, identity, language, symbol manipulation…) is likely significantly developmental.

@georgetakei@universeodon.com It’s the same reason various folks on the right go berserk over hijabis.

A hijab is a very visible “unavailable, unattainable” marker, which is intolerable to anyone with patriarchal supremacist beliefs.

Even the usual run of fact-averse folks on the right can’t delude themselves into believing they’re in Ms. Swift’s league, so it’s the same “unavailable, unattainable” presence and the same “this is not how I command the world to be organized” tantrum.