61–70 of 198 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s become a very tiresome rhetorical technique: “Listen to me yammer on vaguely but at length about a thing that I pretend I’m not allowed to talk about despite literally doing that right now” Whatever aura of mystery and suspense this may have once imbued is long gone by now.
"It's not taboo because people can discuss it anonymously on an internet forum" is not quite the compelling argument that you seem to think it is.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This implies one's being upper class is a reflection of having better habits than the poor, which is incorrect. They just have more money. Rich people could not survive poverty.
Some of the richest people I've ever met have middle class or upper-middle class appearances. They do make good decisions, have good jobs, etc. We see some evidence in studies that wealthly grandparents are strong indicators of wealthly adult grandchildren. We also know that poor habits deplete wealth quickly (like with lotto winners). It seems reasonable at least some wealthy people have good habits and that at leas…
Seems just slightly obvious, though I'm sure the studies are more nuanced than this
Some of the comments here are quite baffling for me to read. Of course I'm like my parents. I'm completely made up of their genetic material and for my formative years I spent almost all of my time with them. I've never considered this to be taboo either, it's bloody obvious. Is there some sort of hidden context here I'm not getting?
Even when kids are put in school, they still spend a lot of time with their parents, and children do a lot of mimetic Would genetics lead to some personality disorder that are common in a family, and would that lead to similar personalities? Or would some brain-related genes lead to some forms of personality tendencies? I would also guess the definition of personality could be rejected by skeptics, since it's very di…
The personality metrics they're using are the Big-5. The Big 5 has good test-retest scores (if you take the test a month apart, you're likely to get the same scores). Big 5 is used in a ton of psychological studies now. If I had to bet on nature vs nurture, I'd place bets on nature. Separated twin studies seem to suggest genes are a strong determiner. And if you've ever met a kid who stubbornly prefers to be introver…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> My take is that free will is, 90% of the time, a necessary lie. Because if we didn’t believe it, everything would get far far worse. Why? Would people choose to do bad things because they don't have a choice?
If people can argue they should not be held accountable for doing something bad, because they defacto had no choice (due to nature/nurture) - and people will take that seriously - then exactly the worse kind of people will never be held accountable. And folks on the fence will hop over it onto that side. Because consequences do matter for preventing most behavior (weighed by the rational and non-rational part of the…
For those who arent aware, this entire field is largely pseudoscience; though this paper goes out of its way to be fairly sincere in its modelling, it's still just nonesense methodologically. The correlation coefficient is not a measure of correlation, but of co-linearity, and coefficients the entire system of computing correlation coefficients is bunk if the data is nonlinear. Almost all interesting phenomena outsid…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The suggestion that personality or really any sort of brain function is linked to genetics at all seems to fly in the face of mind-body dualism and Hollywood-movie-ethics ("anyone can do anything if they work hard enough") both of which are things most people seem to hold very dearly.
People can do a lot more than we give them credit for. Humans are fucking tough, creative, and persevering if you teach them to be. I worry that the people screaming the loudest about how we have no free will or no ability to even make choices because of physics and neuroscience are handicapping the next generation with a sort of learned helplessness. It is true that there are serious limitations on what I can or can…
I find the rhetoric when you start touching on things people don't like to be so odd. Suddenly I'm portrayed as having some sort of temper tantrum about heritability or limiting the next generation's capability or whatever.
I think the next generation, like this one, will be fine. My whole point is that you can do things other than your upbringing.
Some of the comments here are quite baffling for me to read. Of course I'm like my parents. I'm completely made up of their genetic material and for my formative years I spent almost all of my time with them. I've never considered this to be taboo either, it's bloody obvious. Is there some sort of hidden context here I'm not getting?
You really don't understand why nature/genetics having a large impact on people's personality, thus behavior, and thus life outcomes is taboo?
It seems that this is a taboo topic to discuss oftentimes (especially academically), despite the fact that most people I meet seem to have an intuitive understanding that kids are often like parents. It also provides compelling alternate explanations for things like 'children of abusive parents are more likely to abuse' that you also are not really allowed to discuss nowadays.
Why aren't you allowed to discuss it?
For those who arent aware, this entire field is largely pseudoscience; though this paper goes out of its way to be fairly sincere in its modelling, it's still just nonesense methodologically. The correlation coefficient is not a measure of correlation, but of co-linearity, and coefficients the entire system of computing correlation coefficients is bunk if the data is nonlinear. Almost all interesting phenomena outsid…
as i mentioned in another comment, what bothers me the most is that heritability is used as an excuse for not changing certain traits and and as a reason to demand the right to continue bad behaviors
Why? The covariance of genes with accent is near 100%: almost everyone who speaks scottish interbreeds within the same geographical area.
As for eyes: there is almost no variation in the species between the number of eyes. Since ~everyone has 2, no genetic variation whatsoever discriminates.
The co-variation of a gene with an observable trait is irrelevant when vast amounts of cultural (, geographical, social, etc.) traits cause (irrelevant) genetic variation. So "heritability" is basically nonsense outside of cases when the experimenter is actually causing genes to differer between populations (it was invented for the case of engineering crops).