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The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

news.nationalgeographic.com

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Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#61

Post by RodericDay »

astazangasta wrote: post #46
Retric wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been using bows for 500+ generations and ranged weapons for even longer. That's plenty of time for a preference for ranged combat to show up (ed: become frequent). The Atoal is believed to be ~30,000 years old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear-thrower And spears are ~400,000 years old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amentum is rather hard to date, but it's simpler than an Atoal.

This is the kind of argument I am criticizing; "its possible based on our vague understanding of the evolutionary background and selection that this behavior is adaptive, therefore my speculation that this behavior is genetic and the product of evolution is correct."

Noam Chomsky was concise on this point:

> "You find that people cooperate, you say, ‘Yeah, that contributes to their genes' perpetuating.’ You find that they fight, you say, ‘Sure, that’s obvious, because it means that their genes perpetuate and not somebody else's. In fact, just about anything you find, you can make up some story for it."

Cordelia Fine also does a great breakdown of all of these "monkey does this, therefore women shopping men guns" arguments.

The nurture side of the debate has its "no nature" clowns, but the caricature by the top-level post is completely uncalled for in this context.

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#62

Post by bonoboTP »

ooo000ooo wrote: post #58
mystic001 wrote: post #35

"We’re constantly dividing people into “us” vs. “them.” And once we put someone in the “them” category, it can open up the floodgates for violence and is the root of a lot of human misery and wars." Some may call this naive, but this is the reason we need more unity in the world. Less division. More us...less us and them. The media seems to do a great job of pitting one side against the other. I think many of our att…

> Some may call this naive, but this is the reason we need more unity in the world. Less division. More us...less us and them. Then you have learned nothing. The tribalism in humans is hardwired. It's not going away, whatever we may wish or do. The media doesn't create the divisions, they just profit from them. The key to peaceful coexistence is properly delineated regions and nations, so that each thede can have the…

But divison is not just about nations.

1) It's also political differences in the same nation. Tribes fragment to smaller tribes, small tribes merge to large tribes etc.

2) There are divisions based on topics of interest, subcultures, etc. that aren't location-based, but thanks to telecommunications, global.

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#63

Post by crimsonalucard »

sarciszewski wrote: post #47
crimsonalucard wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to break it to you. But behavior and gender is determined by genetics. Therefore gender identity is not just a social construct but a biological one as well. Take for example the correlation between feminine behavior and two X chromosomes (XX). There is high correlation between these two factors. Additionally examine the correlation between masculine behavior and XY. Again another high correlation implying the…

> I hate to break it to you. But behavior and gender is determined by genetics. Therefore gender identity is not just a social construct but a biological one as well. I must admit my knowledge of the scientific literature around the relationship between biological sex and gender identity is limited. Have they found a genetic/epigenetic/hormonal marker that correlates with 95%+ of transgendered people yet?

No they have not found such a marker.

They have not found a definitive biological causal mechanism that causes transgendered traits. They have found correlations between certain biological mechanisms and transgendered traits. However these findings lead to only about a 70% correlation at most.

Please note that the 70% correlation cannot be ignored. It indicates high likelihood of a causal connection. It is unwise to dismiss this correlation even if it is below a 95% criteria. My intuition tells me that 70% is only a statistic for a single causative biological agent out of several. Once all biological markers are discovered and correlated together, I believe that the number will be 99%.

Please also note that the correlation between the XX chromosomes and the female gender is above 95%, same with the XY chromosomes and the male gender. These correlations meet your criteria. There is no scientific study that proves this but you will note through common sense that males and females tend to act within their gender role over 95% of the time.

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#64

Post by popmystack »

golemotron wrote: post #9

> When you look at the subject of aggression there is no more important factor than gender. Something like 90 percent of the people in prison for violent crimes are men. Men have different brains than women, which comes from our different roles during evolution, when the brain was formed. Men had a role of being aggressive, which makes no sense for a woman because a woman was not endowed with the physical strength of…

Yeah let's all rely on pseudo-science with no empirical evidence to back it up -- except for U.S. statistics on imprisonment.

HAHA SNARKY COMMENTS!

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#65

Post by crimsonalucard »

phyllostachys wrote: post #51
crimsonalucard wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As fluid as people wish it was, certain gender identities highly correlate with certain sexes. To be male sexually and female behaviorally is abnormal, statistically speaking. This gender =/= sex is a recent concept invented by mankind.

> This gender =/= sex is a recent concept invented by mankind. I thought it was fairly recent concept too until I learned this tidbit in a Anthropology survey course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender#Indigenous_cultur...

I stand corrected. However I could still argue that the concept has only recently become popularized.

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#66

Post by bonoboTP »

golemotron wrote: post #16
vzip wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of frightening that people are leaving university with a developed hostility toward the notion of sexual dimorphism in humans.

Steven Pinker's'The Blank Slate' explains it well. Western culture has a bias toward nurture explanations rather than nature explanations because admitting nature affects people's perceptions of their abilities and our sense of agency as a culture. If all differences are culture we can fix them. That's why it becomes political.

This is especially so in US culture. The "eveyone's responsible for their own fate" meme is still very strong there.

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#67

Post by ooo000ooo »

bonoboTP wrote: post #62
ooo000ooo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some may call this naive, but this is the reason we need more unity in the world. Less division. More us...less us and them. Then you have learned nothing. The tribalism in humans is hardwired. It's not going away, whatever we may wish or do. The media doesn't create the divisions, they just profit from them. The key to peaceful coexistence is properly delineated regions and nations, so that each thede can have the…

But divison is not just about nations. 1) It's also political differences in the same nation. Tribes fragment to smaller tribes, small tribes merge to large tribes etc. 2) There are divisions based on topics of interest, subcultures, etc. that aren't location-based, but thanks to telecommunications, global.

> Tribes fragment to smaller tribes, small tribes merge to large tribes etc.

When boundaries can change slowly enough we don't even notice. That's organic growth, that's ok.

> that aren't location-based, but thanks to telecommunications, global.

Thankfully I only have to close the browser tab to forget about someone Who is Wrong On The Internet. But I can't do that in meatspace.

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#68

Post by Retric »

astazangasta wrote: post #54
Retric wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what I said. I said there was enough time, not that anything actually happened. Thus evolution did not teach anything to anyone about guns is not a supported statement. Also, a preference for guns may or may not be there. But, males having more accurate spatial reasoning due to ranged weapons, or hunting, and or fighting seems likely. The obvious alternatives are men developed better spatial reasoning due…

Based on my understanding of genetics this reasoning is very unattractive. 500 generations is the blink of an eye in genetic terms, certainly not enough to establish a pervasive biological truth that splits the whole species across gender lines; maybe you could drive a single variant to global fixation in that time, certainly not a whole host of them. We also know nothing about how strong the selection in question mi…

For clarity, 500 generations is easily enough for some things to shift frequency, but I agree it would be fast for a mutation to go global. However, thrown weapons are on the order of ~20,000+ generations which is plenty of time for mutation and adaptation.

As to testing, I suspect we are going to get good at decoding and editing human DNA fairly soon which is going to have a lot to say about these debates. This stuff is either there or not, when and how it showed up (or not) is a separate issue.

EX: Domestic cattle are also around 500 generations old and lactose tolerance has been spreading. http://www.foodbeast.com/news/map-of-milk-consumption-lactos... lactose tolerance: 96% in Sweden, 10% in China.

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#69

Post by delecti »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #65
phyllostachys wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This gender =/= sex is a recent concept invented by mankind. I thought it was fairly recent concept too until I learned this tidbit in a Anthropology survey course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender#Indigenous_cultur...

I stand corrected. However I could still argue that the concept has only recently become popularized.

The concept has only recently become popularized in the west, but the reality is not new that societal upbringing, reproductive sex, and mental self-image, while strongly correlated, aren't intrinsically linked.

Re: The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap

#70

Post by PhasmaFelis »

golemotron wrote: post #9

> When you look at the subject of aggression there is no more important factor than gender. Something like 90 percent of the people in prison for violent crimes are men. Men have different brains than women, which comes from our different roles during evolution, when the brain was formed. Men had a role of being aggressive, which makes no sense for a woman because a woman was not endowed with the physical strength of…

Gender is social and genetic; like most human behavior, nature and nurture are both involved. Pretending it's exclusively one or the other is foolishly reductionist, no matter which side you're on.
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