4 ms·

You have argued against culture's influence, by saying that, today, there are genetic differences which cause high level personality traits in adults, such as b

by curi 19y ago

You have argued against culture's influence, by saying that, today, there are genetic differences which cause high level personality traits in adults, such as being feminine. I know 15megs is enough to implement intelligence, but how much do you imagine is left over to throw in quirks and differences? Certainly many orders of magnitude less information than our culture has it it. Less than our personality has in it. Also bear in mind that to write intelligence in 15 megs, you need a very good programming language. Concise, powerful, lots of libraries, very good abstraction, high level of generality. And it will be targeted towards writing powerful, general, reliable things. On the other hand, these features will be inconvenient when you want to code weird special cases and hacks, so that kind of code will take more lines to write.

Tichy 19y ago
That's the same kind of argumentation the creationists use "see how complex life is, surely it could not just have developed by chance". Well duh, but it has. What do you know about how many genes are required for a behavioral difference? I am really asking you! Don't just throw around numbers like "surely xyz genes can not be enough to make a difference". I think just one gene can be enough in some cases. Maybe some hormone has a higher concentration in the blood of person A than in person B, and zing, totally different personality. Or whatever - I am not a biologist, but I suspect that neither are you.
- curi 19y ago
  There exists no explanation, ever invented, by anyone, which details how a gene could code for complex parts of adult personalities, like femininity. You can make things up like how a hormone might umm somehow affect stuff. But that isn't an actual mechanism that goes from start to finish. You don't have to prove that a particular mechanism is in fact the one used by our bodies. You don't need any scientific evidence. Just make one up that actually could work and makes sense. No one has ever done that. End of story. Meanwhile, there do exist possible explanations of how culture could account for the same phenomena (like femininity). They have no rival theories. Thus, all reasonable people should tentatively believe that kind of explanation is correct.
  - Tichy 19y ago
    Sorry, that is complete bullshit. There are tons of papers on why genders exists, in terms of evolution theory. There are tons of studies on the effects of various genes - it is a billion dollar industry! Besides, why should I provide the details, if you started with claims of the sort "the number of genes is too small"? Apparently mechanisms exists, humans are being created from mere genes, with lots and lots of differences. I don't think I need to provide any evidence for that - just go out on the street and look at the people. Nobody looks alike, except for the twins. May I ask you: are you a creationist? I really don't want to waste my time... If the hormone level doesn't convince you, let's take body height: can you imagine that body height could make a difference in temper? Again, I don't know, but if there was a study showing it, I would have no trouble believing it. There are actually studies showing that tall men earn more on average than smaller men. The world is a complicated place...
    - curi 19y ago
      I know there are many studies to do with genes, I've read a variety of them. If you believe you know of one which answers my challenge, then feel free to cite it. Am I a creationist? Umm, lol. No. If I was, why would i talk about evolution of both memes and genes? Since you keep bringing up personal issues, maybe we can put them to rest: I am a very (classically) liberal person, a scientifically-oriented atheist, generally a small-l libertarian. Not a science-hating, lunatic, religious conservative. body height might control temper? how? a correlation between height and income doesn't imply height causes income, especially not directly.
      - Tichy 19y ago
        Of course not, but your challenges are a bit off: we are discussing complex systems, that nobody really has a hold of yet. And that includes you and me. I don't know if body height affects temper, I am just giving examples that could e plausible. For example, body height could affect the blood pressure, which would surely affect temper. What is your challenge again, that genes can affect temper? I don't even feel the need to read any papers, really. Body height doesn't convince you, take something else, say some ugly deformation of the body. Might cause depression? Maybe those examples sound ridiculous, but so does the notion that a butterfly on the other end of the world could affect the weather on the other side of the world. Actually I think the butterfly really is an exaggeration, but nevertheless, small changes can have big effects on the outcome in a complex system. So I don't think we even have to argue. Oh yes, and being a woman or a man obviously has a different outcome in temper. You claim that is only cultural, but that doesn't matter: in our current environment (a ka culture), your temper is affected by being a woman or a man. Point proven.

by curi 19y ago

Tichy 19y ago

That's the same kind of argumentation the creationists use "see how complex life is, surely it could not just have developed by chance". Well duh, but it has. What do you know about how many genes are required for a behavioral difference? I am really asking you! Don't just throw around numbers like "surely xyz genes can not be enough to make a difference". I think just one gene can be enough in some cases. Maybe some hormone has a higher concentration in the blood of person A than in person B, and zing, totally different personality. Or whatever - I am not a biologist, but I suspect that neither are you.

curi 19y ago
There exists no explanation, ever invented, by anyone, which details how a gene could code for complex parts of adult personalities, like femininity. You can make things up like how a hormone might umm somehow affect stuff. But that isn't an actual mechanism that goes from start to finish. You don't have to prove that a particular mechanism is in fact the one used by our bodies. You don't need any scientific evidence. Just make one up that actually could work and makes sense. No one has ever done that. End of story. Meanwhile, there do exist possible explanations of how culture could account for the same phenomena (like femininity). They have no rival theories. Thus, all reasonable people should tentatively believe that kind of explanation is correct.
- Tichy 19y ago
  Sorry, that is complete bullshit. There are tons of papers on why genders exists, in terms of evolution theory. There are tons of studies on the effects of various genes - it is a billion dollar industry! Besides, why should I provide the details, if you started with claims of the sort "the number of genes is too small"? Apparently mechanisms exists, humans are being created from mere genes, with lots and lots of differences. I don't think I need to provide any evidence for that - just go out on the street and look at the people. Nobody looks alike, except for the twins. May I ask you: are you a creationist? I really don't want to waste my time... If the hormone level doesn't convince you, let's take body height: can you imagine that body height could make a difference in temper? Again, I don't know, but if there was a study showing it, I would have no trouble believing it. There are actually studies showing that tall men earn more on average than smaller men. The world is a complicated place...
  - curi 19y ago
    I know there are many studies to do with genes, I've read a variety of them. If you believe you know of one which answers my challenge, then feel free to cite it. Am I a creationist? Umm, lol. No. If I was, why would i talk about evolution of both memes and genes? Since you keep bringing up personal issues, maybe we can put them to rest: I am a very (classically) liberal person, a scientifically-oriented atheist, generally a small-l libertarian. Not a science-hating, lunatic, religious conservative. body height might control temper? how? a correlation between height and income doesn't imply height causes income, especially not directly.
    - Tichy 19y ago
      Of course not, but your challenges are a bit off: we are discussing complex systems, that nobody really has a hold of yet. And that includes you and me. I don't know if body height affects temper, I am just giving examples that could e plausible. For example, body height could affect the blood pressure, which would surely affect temper. What is your challenge again, that genes can affect temper? I don't even feel the need to read any papers, really. Body height doesn't convince you, take something else, say some ugly deformation of the body. Might cause depression? Maybe those examples sound ridiculous, but so does the notion that a butterfly on the other end of the world could affect the weather on the other side of the world. Actually I think the butterfly really is an exaggeration, but nevertheless, small changes can have big effects on the outcome in a complex system. So I don't think we even have to argue. Oh yes, and being a woman or a man obviously has a different outcome in temper. You claim that is only cultural, but that doesn't matter: in our current environment (a ka culture), your temper is affected by being a woman or a man. Point proven.