In this episode, we dive into the controversial topic of hereditarianism in dogs and why many progressives acknowledge it in pets but not in humans. The discussion covers the pit bull debate, including the moral implications of neutering the breed to prevent attacks on other pets and humans. We also explore the historical and societal roles dogs and cats have played, arguing for their special status and potential future alongside humanity, even in space. The script wraps up with an exploration of online backlash against the hosts and their defense of hereditarian views, followed by a personal conversation about dinner plans.

[00:00:00 ] Most progressives do believe in hereditarianism and dogs. And the question is why did they believe it there and not in humans?

And it is because they have raised and interacted with dogs. It is very hard to miss hereditarianism if you have actually been around young people . So what you're saying also is this is a product of the fact that they don't have human children.

I think the previous thing is what everyone's gonna freak out about in the comments. He wants to genetically modify dogs to be smarter? How dare he? But this is where things get spicy. The pit bull debate yeah. I do not think that there is a huge moral negative to neutering the pit bull population humans who love dogs, neuter dogs all the time.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-5: Pit bulls in the United States kill an average of 8,730 dogs per year in 2,904 cats per year. That means that if you neutered the entire us pit [00:01:00 ] bull population,

You would be saving one cat or dogs, a life that is somebody else's pet for every 3.8, six pit bulls. You neutered.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-3: Over the next hundred years.

And I will tell you the best argument for not neutering pitbulls. And then I will tell you why it doesn't even work.

Would you like to know more?

Hello Simone, I'm excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be doing an episode that was inspired by somebody who was criticizing us. It was an article that was actually not so bad. Where was the article published? It was like The LA Review of Books. Yeah, and what's really interesting in it is when you went to look up The the writer of the article to learn more about her and her perspectives.

She was in the middle of a fight on the internet based on this article because she called out us and a few of our friends like Johnny Anomaly and diana Fleishman podcast. Yes. And so she calls out a few of our friends. And so, you know, obviously they've got supporters as well online and she's getting trashed in, [00:02:00 ] in Twitter.

Which is actually interesting that it happened this way because Often when people attack us. Enough of a Twitter spasmob forms, like whenever we go viral, that we are on the minority side, but when they fail to go viral, the only people who notice are the supporters of the various people who are being attacked and they end up getting s**t all over.

So, she was getting having to be defensive and somebody found and she ended up defending this position, a post where she claimed anti hereditarianism in dog breeds. So specifically. Not only does she not believe that none of a human's personality is heritable, but she doesn't believe that any of a dog's personality is heritable.

Right. So like on, on, on Twitter, I can read a bit like how some of this conversation played out because this is a very common conversation we see again and again, which is really weird. With Emily Merchant, the author of this article representing [00:03:00 ] the, the kind of person who is very well educated and very well meaning but also very progressive and just will not believe, will refuse to believe that, that behavioral traits, including intelligence are heritable.

So Stegosauro Benedet writes, I can't help thinking I should really be screening for the gene that makes otherwise apparently intelligent people fall for pseudoscientific nonsense like eugenics. And then. Conchabar responds, I haven't read the essay yet, but the claim that we can't select for specific traits in a population is utterly wrong.

We've been doing it with animals for millennia. To which Emily Merchant, the author of this article responds, it's much easier with animals, but a project by behavior geneticists in the 1950s to 1960s to breed an dog failed utterly. And she links to this, this study. And , someone reads it and [00:04:00 ] then includes a screenshot of the study saying, just skimming this, they seem to suggest that.

That it can be successful with dogs. Emily merchant responds. No, they're saying that differences between dog breeds are small, especially under similar living conditions. She continues. Scott was a member of the American eugenics society in the 1960s, and he expressed extreme skepticism about the possibility of breeding intelligence and humans on the basis of his experience, trying to do it with dogs.

So she's trying to argue that, you know, this, this dog breeder. Okay. So first of all, I should note. The other study that she's citing here, because this is going to be important in a lot of progressives who do believe like anti hereditarianism in dogs is real, will cite this it was a recent study, actually, used a giant sample size.

Showed only about a 9 percent personality difference between breeds. What they won't tell you, this reminds me of the spanking studies where huge sample sizes did not control at all in the way they were collecting data, is the personality of the dogs is based on owner's self reports. Yeah. [00:05:00 ] Here's the problem with that.

The owner's self report of a dog personality is going to have more to do with the owner's personality than with the dog's personality. How many owners speak of their pit bull? They're just the sweetest little things, you know, because they use their dog to augment their own self perception, which is of course, you're not going to get much correlation there.

Man, you can just look at like, just to go into pit bull statistics so people can understand how absolutely insane this position is. Pit bulls make up 5. 8 to 6. 6, nice around. Let's say 6 percent of the total dog population in the United States, okay, but they're responsible for 69 percent of fatal dog attacks.

Okay. From 2005 to 2019, they killed 346 Americans, which is 6. 5 X higher than the next closest breed. So. 650 percent higher than the next closest dog breed.

 Which only killed 51 people. And [00:06:00 ] pit bulls inflict nearly half of 48% of all fatal attacks on infants. Those are babies under 1-year-old, not okay. And from 2015 to 2019, 76% of the fatal attacks on children under nine years old were from pit bulls. Keep in mind, they only make up 66% of the doll population.

Mm-Hmm. So you like, well, that's the people who maybe buy pit bulls and blah, blah, blah, blah. Like what? Like, it's very obvious to me. And if you've owned a dog, and this is the other thing that gets really interesting to me in regards to this. When you were talking to this lady, you were like, or you mentioned with somebody who was like, well, try to teach a non Well, yeah, I'll read it.

I mean, first someone, James Dog on Twitter Made a very good point saying, if you're concerned that EA, cause she also writes about effective altruism is a crude measure. Perhaps you should be campaigning for researchers to be permitted to access vast existing IQ linked databases, which is something that's being quite restricted right now.

But then he continues, alternatively, try teaching a Greyhound to memorize over 1000 distinct commands [00:07:00 ] and use it to herd sheep. And then Kanchabar comes back in with, OP should, should prove how intelligent these, these breed variations are by raising a pack of Basset hounds and putting them through IPO.

She'd lose her mind trying to get them to IPO, probably like a, maybe like an assistance dog training. I don't know. She'd lose her mind just trying to get them to stop sniffing, let alone competing against breeds specifically bred for it. I mean, the thing It's so clear with dog braids. Wait, here I need to talk about like herding dogs, for example.

So we, I've always believed that the core difference between dogs is what they're bred for. So I think that dog personalities predominantly, if you're like, what type of dog should I get? You're looking are, are you a ratting dog, a herding dog, a hunting dog, or A fighting dog. I mean, pit bulls are fighting dogs.

Let's, Oh yeah, fighting dogs. Like, is it a dog meant to kill other dogs? Yeah. The, the typically in my experience for like what my family [00:08:00 ] likes, I always go herding dogs and I find herding dogs are fairly similar across herding dogs, but if you've ever had a herding dog, it will be clear to you just how much of their behavior is genetic.

So a great example is I grew up with an Australian shepherd. Today we use corgis, which are another type of herding dog. But for, for our family's primary dog. We adopt Corgis. We don't use them. Yes. Australian Shepherds, they it, when it rained when I was a kid because they need to get the sheep to high ground whenever it rains.

So they didn't drown. And clearly we didn't teach it to do this. It would nip at all of the family's heels to try to get us upstairs. That is really sweet. And also, yeah, really weird. If you don't believe things are inherited because no one taught this dog to do that. Yeah, no one taught the dog to nip at our feet to try to get us to go upstairs.

So where did it get this really specific behavior pattern tied to hurting? And, and you see this yeah, just sort of like across, it's, it's, it's, I mean, it's so wild to me that someone could [00:09:00 ] think this, but