I would recommend against reading the newspaper for science, since you're much more likely to read "Scientists spend $1000 dollars on hamster treadmill" than "Scientists spend negligible amounts of funding on a standardized instrument to quantify the relationship between exertion and blood glucose and how it interacts with dozens of additional variables".
I also take issue with the argument that knowing more about something can ruin it, unless the majority of its value was in the mystery. Knowing that air is made of atoms, thinly dispersed, that follow certain large-scale patterns of movement, does not make it any less air, does not make the symbolism assigned it any less meaningful, does not make it any less calming to breathe deeply for a few moments. None of those things have anything to do with the atoms, only the pattern of atoms we call wind. The same applies to thoughts, patterns arising in the brain (which is itself a pattern of neurons, and so on). I don't know about you, but the beauty of the mind to me is not in its mysterious nature, but in its complexity, its elegance, and its fundamental importance to defining what "I" means. If nothing else, I'd recommend against letting mystery dominate a thing's worth - every mystery, once solved, loses that value, and has it only while the solving is in progress. They're uninteresting if you let them sit unregarded, as much as once you complete them. So it's a self-defeating thing. Now, a lot of this paragraph is opinion, I do have to admit. But it just seems wrong to argue that learning something can be wrong. There can be things wrong with the method used, to be sure, and with how that knowledge is applied, but the knowledge itself is a different thing.
Now, there are unquestionably problems with how people frame this question in reality. A lot of the time, people want to use the answer as a defense for homosexuality, or as a means of "fixing" it. The former is a flawed approach because it amounts to the naturalistic fallacy (what is is what ought be), but at least they have the right conclusion in mind. The latter is flawed (moreso, in my opinion, and far more dangerously) because it's based on the assumption that there is only one correct sexuality, and nobody should have the freedom to vary from it, but at least they understand that knowledge isn't going to tell them what the course of action they should take is (they have already decided on a pretty horrific one and just want to learn how). What needs to be done is to address the ideas people come into the conversation with, because the problem is entirely there - with the decision by some people that some others are made less human by their sexuality. The question itself isn't to blame for that, it's something that gets asked after that decision.
Author
Topic: Is being gay genetic or something else? (Read 6330 times)