Oddbean

Humans are not born as tabula rasa. Our behaviors are partially genetically determined. But we are born with a very high level of plasticity allowing us to configure to our cultural norms and the local langauge, for example. Lewontin and Gould were afraid of the social implications of this knowledge, that it would be used as an excuse by racists to terminate certain genetic lineages, and they thought they were doing the right thing by denying the truth, especially given that the holocaust was just 30 years prior to this debate. But denying an inconvenient truth doesn't make it go away.

Twin studies bear this out. It is sometimes suprising how similar twins separated at birth are, even though they had very different cultural upbringings. So E.O. Wilson's rejection of tabula rasa was correct, and the "International Committee Against Racism" was over-the-top, cocksure and wrong. Yet if you search the Internet for E.O. Wilson you'll find many writings about how he was a bad man, how he promoted "scientific racism." The modern (mostly American) movement to reject inconvenient truths and replace them with desires (for that is my best description of what is going on) is naturally detrimental and destructive and is the root cause of America's slow but inexorable downfall.