Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability
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Re: Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability
#2I'll post a comment later.
Re: Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability
#3Little by little the evidence is starting to show that people's problems aren't always a system, a government, an ideology, or another group of people, but rather themselves.
Hopefully one day "blame culture" can be ended altogether.
Re: Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability
#4Little by little the evidence is starting to show that people's problems aren't always a system, a government, an ideology, or another group of people, but rather themselves. Hopefully one day "blame culture" can be ended altogether.
Do you think we are done with the natural experiment of people moving into places with different systems or different cultures and finding out their own prospects, or the prospects of their children, change?
Re: Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability
#5Little by little the evidence is starting to show that people's problems aren't always a system, a government, an ideology, or another group of people, but rather themselves. Hopefully one day "blame culture" can be ended altogether.
This is an interesting point, and brings up a kind of weird philosophical issue I've often wondered about.
Suppose that genetically, someone is predisposed to have very high motivation and discipline. Born into whatever environment, they have the aptitude to improving their life. Now imagine someone who, genetically, is predisposed to very low motivation and discipline. Born into a poor, or low-class environment, they are going to have a hard time moving up. However, someone with little natural discipline born into a high-class environment may still do okay in life (not great), by sheer virtue of the fact that they were born into fortunate circumstances.
Similarly, what if we find that most criminal behaviors have a genetic component? What distinguishes mental illness from "evil"? A serial killer is clearly not right in the head; do we lock them up or treat it as an illness? Is the distinction simply based on the whims of the majority at a particular point in history? (Note the history of homosexuality.)
A lot of times, people will complain about "lazy, uneducated people" and that if they'd just work harder, there wouldn't be any problems, but that's easy to say when you have an innate ability to work hard. (Ignoring, of course, all variables other than "hard work".)
In another vein, it's easy to be a good, moral person if being a good, moral person is easy. That's a tautology, but I think it really highlights my point. Similarly, losing weight is easy for some people but much harder for others. Everyone projects their natural aptitudes and weaknesses on everyone else, and then makes political decisions on the basis of that projection.
Anyway, I don't know what the correct answer is. But these thoughts bother me.
Re: Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability
#6Little by little the evidence is starting to show that people's problems aren't always a system, a government, an ideology, or another group of people, but rather themselves. Hopefully one day "blame culture" can be ended altogether.
hum, saying someone is a procrastinator is still a blame culture, it's just blaming them. Moreover if it's really genetic, then you'll need a system around them, probably managed by a government to compensate for the deficient genetic trait.
I see you where looking for confirmation for some kind of ideology, but I don't think I would blame short people for being short, but try to identify in which areas height is a issue and route around in various ways (climbing on stuff, abandoning some activities, or finding taller surrogates to do them).
Re: Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability
#7A little bit off topic: Setting goals is something that I'm pretty bad at - at work, I set obvious goals like "finish project X by Y.", but other than that, I have a hard time setting goals in my life. I have some higher level goals - eat healthy, exercise, read a technical book every quarter, but barely anything approaching SMART goals. Because of this, I feel like I lack ambition sometimes. How do you identify goals? What do your goals look like? How do you measure yourself against them?
Re: Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability
#8I didn't see where they separate 'nature vs nurture' in their twins study. Was that done? Is it hasty to label these correlations as 'genetic'?
Re: Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability
#9Little by little the evidence is starting to show that people's problems aren't always a system, a government, an ideology, or another group of people, but rather themselves. Hopefully one day "blame culture" can be ended altogether.
Scott S. Alexander wrote a great blog post about this called Society Is Fixed, Biology Is Mutable: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/10/society-is-fixed-biolog...
Re: Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability
#10Little by little the evidence is starting to show that people's problems aren't always a system, a government, an ideology, or another group of people, but rather themselves. Hopefully one day "blame culture" can be ended altogether.
This is an interesting point, and brings up a kind of weird philosophical issue I've often wondered about. Suppose that genetically, someone is predisposed to have very high motivation and discipline. Born into whatever environment, they have the aptitude to improving their life. Now imagine someone who, genetically, is predisposed to very low motivation and discipline. Born into a poor, or low-class environment, the…
"Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills."
One of the oldest questions in philosophy to which I don't think there has every really been a good answer. Or at least I haven't read one.