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> If acquiring disciplined habits and learning to defer gratification end up influencing genes—if, as he rather wildly speculates, "a twelve-year-old kid could
by exit 16y ago
> If acquiring disciplined habits and learning to defer gratification end up influencing genes—if, as he rather wildly speculates, "a twelve-year-old kid could improve the intellectual nimbleness of his or her future children by studying harder now"—that would seem to multiply the Matthew Effect, for ill as well as good.
i don't think "activating" genes means they become more heritable.
- YogSothoth 16y agoSmacks a bit of Lamarckism doesn't it? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism
- dcx 16y agoThat's true, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing. Epigenetics is a pretty hot topic these couple of years. Straight from Wikipedia: As reported in MIT's Technology Review in February 2009, "The effects of an animal's environment during adolescence can be passed down to future offspring ... The findings provide support for a 200-year-old theory of evolution that has been largely dismissed: Lamarckian evolution, which states that acquired characteristics can be passed on to offspring." This was shown to happen in humans and does make intuitive sense - Mealy machines are more efficient than Moore machines!
- hga 16y agoYou may not think so, but this area is a hot topic of research. E.g. poor nutrition at the wrong times of life has a measurable genetic effect on children. Viewing this as just a matter of what DNA gets inherited is too simple a model. There's a lot more that goes into the picture in terms of gene regulation, a topic that for eukaryotes is still fairly young and very complicated. E.g. a lot of "junk" DNA isn't, in that it has regulatory roles even if it doesn't code a specific protein. Within the last few months there was an interesting HN item on this topic.