4 ms·

Society will never admit that most behavior is genetic

thatfrenchguy 4y ago
Because it’s not true?
ch4s3 4y ago
People working in epigenetics would probably disagree, moreover while some genes are highly predictive their predictive power is usually not as high as people think.
mrwh 4y ago
Er, because we behave the same way as we did thousands of years ago? It's the fact that so much of our behaviour is cultural that's made humans such a success. An obvious corollary is the importance of education.
- _aavaa_ 4y ago
  While I agree with you main argument, I think that it’s easy to equivocate between schooling and education. The linked study essentially does so in it’s very title.
  - mrwh 4y ago
    I don't have access to the full article itself, but isn't it testing the difference between compulsory schooling and a bit more compulsory schooling, rather than some school or none? To be sure, education is wider than school, but I find it difficult to believe that schooling doesn't make a profound difference, even if slightly more schooling shows diminishing returns.
    - _aavaa_ 4y ago
      It is. My point was that “compulsory schooling versus a bit more compulsory schooling” is what they are measuring and not “less educated vs more educated”. I too would expect a difference in outcomes between more and less compulsory schooling. But I would expect it from the non-education related impacts of it (I.e. de-facto childcare and keeping the kids/teens from engaging in as much long-term harmful activities)
epgui 4y ago
It really is not. Genetics account for much of behaviour, sure, but not a majority: environment and conditioning account for most behaviour. (biochemist)
- gruez 4y ago
  Source for your claim? I have a source that says the opposite. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/sep/29/so-is-it-nature-not-nurture-after-all-genetics-robert-plomin-polygenic-testing https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/sep/29/so-is-it-nat...
  - epgui 4y ago
    First, a few comments from pieces FTA: > Plomin’s argument is that, in a society with universal education, the greatest part of the variation in learning abilities is accounted for by genetics, not home environment or quality of school – these factors, he says, do have an effect but it’s much smaller than is popularly believed. It's important to recognize that in this model, the hypothetical control group is also treated with a very high quality[1], universal, education. > He finds that genetic heritability accounts for 50% of the psychological differences between us, from personality to mental abilities. But that leaves 50% that should be accounted for by the environment. However, Plomin argues, research shows that most of that 50% is not attributable to the type of environmental influences that can be planned for or readily affected – ie it’s made up of unpredictable events. And of the environmental influences that can be moderated, much of it, he argues, is really an expression of genetics. I'm not sure where that 50% figure comes from, it seems rather generous. Nonetheless, I'll accept it for argument's sake. It's not unreasonable to split nature and nurture roughly 50-50 as a sort of rough bayesian prior. Nonetheless, this touches on genetics as a confounding factor for environmental factors. More on this here: [2] --- I could go fishing for papers that contradict yours, but I think it's perhaps more helpful to switch perspectives a bit. Think of this as extra information, not a rebuttal. At the international scale, access to education's impact on vertical mobility is huge, and this difference overshadows the influence of genetics.[3][4] IMO the macro perspective on education helps! --- Edit/addendum. I did go on a little fishing expedition, and found this very helpful: [5] Selected extracts: > When environments are homogeneous for all, all individual differences become heritable. [...] Moreover, even highly heritable traits can be strongly manipulated by the environment, so heritability has little if anything to do with controllability. For example, height is on the order of 90% heritable, yet North and South Koreans, who come from the same genetic background, presently differ in average height by a full 6 inches. > The discovery that all behavior is partially heritable transformed psychology, but, ironically, it also transformed behavior genetics. Once we accept that basically everything—not only schizophrenia and intelligence, but also marital status and television watching—is heritable, it becomes clear that specific estimates of heritability are not very important. The omnipresence of genetic influences does not demonstrate that behavior is “less psychological” or “more biologically determined” than had originally been thought; rather it shows that behavior arises from factors intrinsic as well as extrinsic to the individual. The real implications of heritability lie not in questions of relative biological determinism but in revealing the need to understand both the mechanisms through which the individual, whether consciously or not, directs his or her own life course and his or her power to do so. --- [1] from a historical perspective [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-020-00079-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-020-00079-z [3] https://ourworldindata.org/better-learning https://ourworldindata.org/better-learning [4] https://ourworldindata.org/global-education https://ourworldindata.org/global-education [5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2899491/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2899491/
paulpauper 4y ago
Also outcomes. Even under perfect settings/conditions in which everyone has equally access and opportunity, huge disparities in learning ability and achievement will remain.
tresil 4y ago
I am growing more disturbed in recent years by how true this statement is in our current society. While not all behavior is hereditary, genetics plays a massive role. I wish it were not taboo to talk about this more openly. While I have found few, at least there are some people attempting to give this subject more consideration: https://youtu.be/-4VCISnwE-k https://youtu.be/-4VCISnwE-k https://youtu.be/62jZENi1ed8 https://youtu.be/62jZENi1ed8
jimbob45 4y ago
I have two sets of identical twins as parents and a twin for a girlfriend. I’m certain that you’re wrong.
- seibelj 4y ago
  Everyone becomes a geneticist when they have biological children. Even in the small talk and banter among strangers when they observe parents and children.
- tresil 4y ago
  The twin study described here may interest you: https://youtu.be/yPSRgcEpfWY https://youtu.be/yPSRgcEpfWY
dougmwne 4y ago
I really don’t think there is evidence of that. Really we seem to be a lot of raw hardware with few factory programmed behaviors. Our culture and environment is the software. It’s not any less disturbing. We like to think of ourselves as individuals with free will, but between genetics and environment, we are at best steering the car, not building the roads.
imtringued 4y ago
If that were actually the case there would be far less inequality. The reality is that money and land are used as weapons to distort any concept of letting genes express themselves in a non distorted environment. Humanity has never suffered from a lack of "good genetics", the entire point of "genetics" is to ensure compatibility with the surrounding environment. Poverty by far exceeds what is explainable by genes.
afpx 4y ago
Check out the book “Behave” by Sapolsky. It gives an excellent overview of how biology effects and doesn’t effect behavior.

Because it’s not true?

People working in epigenetics would probably disagree, moreover while some genes are highly predictive their predictive power is usually not as high as people think.

mrwh 4y ago

Er, because we behave the same way as we did thousands of years ago? It's the fact that so much of our behaviour is cultural that's made humans such a success. An obvious corollary is the importance of education.

_aavaa_ 4y ago
While I agree with you main argument, I think that it’s easy to equivocate between schooling and education. The linked study essentially does so in it’s very title.
- mrwh 4y ago
  I don't have access to the full article itself, but isn't it testing the difference between compulsory schooling and a bit more compulsory schooling, rather than some school or none? To be sure, education is wider than school, but I find it difficult to believe that schooling doesn't make a profound difference, even if slightly more schooling shows diminishing returns.
  - _aavaa_ 4y ago
    It is. My point was that “compulsory schooling versus a bit more compulsory schooling” is what they are measuring and not “less educated vs more educated”. I too would expect a difference in outcomes between more and less compulsory schooling. But I would expect it from the non-education related impacts of it (I.e. de-facto childcare and keeping the kids/teens from engaging in as much long-term harmful activities)

epgui 4y ago

It really is not. Genetics account for much of behaviour, sure, but not a majority: environment and conditioning account for most behaviour. (biochemist)

gruez 4y ago
Source for your claim? I have a source that says the opposite. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/sep/29/so-is-it-nature-not-nurture-after-all-genetics-robert-plomin-polygenic-testing https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/sep/29/so-is-it-nat...
- epgui 4y ago
  First, a few comments from pieces FTA: > Plomin’s argument is that, in a society with universal education, the greatest part of the variation in learning abilities is accounted for by genetics, not home environment or quality of school – these factors, he says, do have an effect but it’s much smaller than is popularly believed. It's important to recognize that in this model, the hypothetical control group is also treated with a very high quality[1], universal, education. > He finds that genetic heritability accounts for 50% of the psychological differences between us, from personality to mental abilities. But that leaves 50% that should be accounted for by the environment. However, Plomin argues, research shows that most of that 50% is not attributable to the type of environmental influences that can be planned for or readily affected – ie it’s made up of unpredictable events. And of the environmental influences that can be moderated, much of it, he argues, is really an expression of genetics. I'm not sure where that 50% figure comes from, it seems rather generous. Nonetheless, I'll accept it for argument's sake. It's not unreasonable to split nature and nurture roughly 50-50 as a sort of rough bayesian prior. Nonetheless, this touches on genetics as a confounding factor for environmental factors. More on this here: [2] --- I could go fishing for papers that contradict yours, but I think it's perhaps more helpful to switch perspectives a bit. Think of this as extra information, not a rebuttal. At the international scale, access to education's impact on vertical mobility is huge, and this difference overshadows the influence of genetics.[3][4] IMO the macro perspective on education helps! --- Edit/addendum. I did go on a little fishing expedition, and found this very helpful: [5] Selected extracts: > When environments are homogeneous for all, all individual differences become heritable. [...] Moreover, even highly heritable traits can be strongly manipulated by the environment, so heritability has little if anything to do with controllability. For example, height is on the order of 90% heritable, yet North and South Koreans, who come from the same genetic background, presently differ in average height by a full 6 inches. > The discovery that all behavior is partially heritable transformed psychology, but, ironically, it also transformed behavior genetics. Once we accept that basically everything—not only schizophrenia and intelligence, but also marital status and television watching—is heritable, it becomes clear that specific estimates of heritability are not very important. The omnipresence of genetic influences does not demonstrate that behavior is “less psychological” or “more biologically determined” than had originally been thought; rather it shows that behavior arises from factors intrinsic as well as extrinsic to the individual. The real implications of heritability lie not in questions of relative biological determinism but in revealing the need to understand both the mechanisms through which the individual, whether consciously or not, directs his or her own life course and his or her power to do so. --- [1] from a historical perspective [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-020-00079-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-020-00079-z [3] https://ourworldindata.org/better-learning https://ourworldindata.org/better-learning [4] https://ourworldindata.org/global-education https://ourworldindata.org/global-education [5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2899491/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2899491/

paulpauper 4y ago

Also outcomes. Even under perfect settings/conditions in which everyone has equally access and opportunity, huge disparities in learning ability and achievement will remain.

tresil 4y ago

I am growing more disturbed in recent years by how true this statement is in our current society. While not all behavior is hereditary, genetics plays a massive role. I wish it were not taboo to talk about this more openly. While I have found few, at least there are some people attempting to give this subject more consideration: https://youtu.be/-4VCISnwE-k https://youtu.be/-4VCISnwE-k https://youtu.be/62jZENi1ed8 https://youtu.be/62jZENi1ed8

jimbob45 4y ago

I have two sets of identical twins as parents and a twin for a girlfriend. I’m certain that you’re wrong.

seibelj 4y ago
Everyone becomes a geneticist when they have biological children. Even in the small talk and banter among strangers when they observe parents and children.
tresil 4y ago
The twin study described here may interest you: https://youtu.be/yPSRgcEpfWY https://youtu.be/yPSRgcEpfWY

dougmwne 4y ago

I really don’t think there is evidence of that. Really we seem to be a lot of raw hardware with few factory programmed behaviors. Our culture and environment is the software. It’s not any less disturbing. We like to think of ourselves as individuals with free will, but between genetics and environment, we are at best steering the car, not building the roads.

imtringued 4y ago

If that were actually the case there would be far less inequality. The reality is that money and land are used as weapons to distort any concept of letting genes express themselves in a non distorted environment. Humanity has never suffered from a lack of "good genetics", the entire point of "genetics" is to ensure compatibility with the surrounding environment. Poverty by far exceeds what is explainable by genes.

afpx 4y ago

Check out the book “Behave” by Sapolsky. It gives an excellent overview of how biology effects and doesn’t effect behavior.