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Of course this is anecdotal but it's obvious for me I do share several personality traits with my parents. I can see the same in many of my close acquaintances.

Of course this is anecdotal but it's obvious for me I do share several personality traits with my parents. I can see the same in many of my close acquaintances. Of course this warrants a lot of social issues we simply don't want to face, but I always felt we were just trying to make them a tabu to discuss.

actionfromafar 2y ago
Is it nature vs nurture? If, so, how does your anecdote untangle that?
- lazide 2y ago
  I think the taboo the poster was referring to was more along the lines of discussion of actual free will, level of control of self, etc. 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.
  - phkahler 2y ago
    >> 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?
    - lazide 2y ago
      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 mind), but punishing someone for something they can’t control seems cruel - and that will stop many people from applying them. Resulting in more damage and more bad behavior. So regardless of if it’s true or not, treating it as true is fundamental for a functioning society.
      - steve_adams_86 2y ago
        This is conjecture. Why are the people on the fence choosing the dark side? Why does a lack of free will preclude the possibility of any kind of consequences?
        lazide 2y ago
        Regarding your first point - usually because the 'dark side' is easier (short term), and life periodically gets hard. So it's often inevitable. Especially in the face of others doing bad acts to you. Regarding the second - see my comment. At least in the western world, most crimes require fault and mens rea. Those require someone being able to make a informed choice, which means having free will. If there is (actually) no choice, or the choice was based on faulty information processing (aka actual insanity), then therefore there is no fault and no mens rea. The underlying belief (philosophically) is one cannot be good or evil if one cannot comprehend a choice or it's ramifications, or in fact actually effectively choose between options due to a lack of knowledge and independent agency. Interestingly, this is why the 'original sin' in Christian mythology was eating the apple from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. [https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-0-387-71802-6_480#:~:text=Original%20sin%20is%20the%20Christian,Eve%20(CCC%3A%20404) https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-0-3....] So philosophically, before that point, there was no 'good' or 'evil' because humans didn't know of such things, therefore were just acting. Regardless of what they did, they were innocent, because they were incapable of being anything else. After that, everything they did had such knowledge as a factor, and were no longer innocent - because they could choose. So, for example, if I murder someone in cold blood (aka rational/thinking/choosing), that is 1st degree murder. One of the most serious crimes in any society. However, if I murder my spouse because I found they betrayed me right in front of me and lose my mind (literally can't think straight, and react instinctively without being able to think or plan anything), most locations will consider me not guilty by reason of insanity, and let me go. [https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/temporary_insanity https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/temporary_insanity] This is already a great example of the problem, as MANY folks try to claim insanity already after getting caught when they are not actually insane. Another example is if I accidentally kill someone without knowing such a thing was a possibility. For example, I'm out hunting in the woods. I see a deer, and (as far as I know) legally shoot it. However, it turns out that was actually a human dressed in a very convincing deer costume, and I had no way of knowing this was the case. Most of the time, I would be charged with no crime, or worst case likely negligent homicide. As per the Supreme Court of Iowa, "In order to be an excuse and defense for a criminal act, the person accused, and who claims [temporary] insanity as a defense, must prove that the crime charged was caused by mental disease or unsoundness which dethroned, overcame, or swayed her reason and judgment with respect to that act, which destroyed her power rationally to comprehend the nature and consequences of that act.” If we assert that people actually act based on their nature/upbringing and have little to no rational control over their actions in fact (aka no free will), then does it not follow that no one actually has a choice, and therefore it makes no sense to actually punish anyone for anything they do? Since philosophically, without the ability to rationally actually choose their actions, they cannot be good or bad - they just are. And if we punish people based on who they 'just are', that opens another can of very nasty worms, and likely a lot of serious evil will result.
  - em-bee 2y ago
    the issue with free will is that even with 100% free will, life is an optimization problem. we can not possibly make a conscious decision for everything we do. we'd stop breathing. therefore we must rely on doing things by habit. and where do we learn habits? from our parents. i fall on strongly on the nurture side of the nature vs nurture question, but the issue is that with the amount of habits and behavior patterns that we acquire, we simply don't have the capacity to change all of them without effort. we can change a few at a time, and each can take considerable effort to change. not to mention many that we are not even aware of. in short, there is no need to fall back to nature as a reason for why certain behaviors don't change. moreover, even if a certain behavior is nature, i believe willpower can allow us to change that too. what bothers me is that nature or lack of free will are abused to excuse certain behaviors as unchangeable. everything can be changed, because humans are very adaptable. we just need to carefully consider which things we actually want to change.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    I think free will is simply a restatement of the fact the future is unknowable and the humans are agents. You cant 100% predict what a person will do without duplicating the entire person and the world they are interacting with. Even if everything is causally driven by historic circumstance, it is the human that synthesizes that history and computes an action
    - lazide 2y ago
      That is not what free will is (philosophically). Free will is the belief that we can choose our actions. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will] In your statement, there is no choice - just a lack of predictability due to unknown starting states.
      - s1artibartfast 2y ago
        Im saying that there is no difference, and most of the arguments around fee will and responsibility are distinctions without a difference. Individual choice happens if someone believes in an extra-physical soul or not. It happens if you believe in determinism or not. The question of if someone could have made a different choice is meaningless without an argument for why someone would make have a different choice.
        lazide 2y ago
        All you're saying you don't (actually) believe in free will, philosophically. People who do believe in free will make an argument that regardless of the input state, the individual always has a choice what course they take, and is responsible for those decisions. So for example, if someone chooses to be a concentration camp guard or a capo vs be a prisoner and be murdered - that is their choice, and they are responsible for it. If free will exists. It's a rather fundamental philosophical question, actually. Because those concentration camp guards and capos did pretty evil things, which were also (in their circumstances) often the least 'bad' thing for them. Which enabled evil at a truly massive scale against others because of those other peoples upbringings/genetics. And those prisoners (most of which had no choice in the matter) mostly ended up dead, and stopped having much of a say in the matter. This is why it's an important philosophical debate. Because if people play out a script based on their circumstances/upbringing/genetics and have no actual choice in the matter (philosophically), then isn't punishing those guards and capos essentially doing the same thing to them that they did to those prisoners? Hurting them due to factors outside of their (actual) control, even up to murder? And if we think that upbringing/genetics was a major factor in creating that sort of destructive evil, doesn't that open up the possibility of tracking down and killing/punishing other people based on their upbringing/genetics? Regardless of any individual choices they had made? In this example, other potential concentration camp guards and capos - though it would play out as relatives and those with similar genetic traits and upbringings? Which then creates the circumstances exactly that was at the root cause of the Holocaust to begin with? Namely, assigning 'goodness' and 'badness' based on some general attribute (ethnicity aka genetics/upbringing, sexual orientation, etc.) that cannot be changed or chosen, and NOT a persons choices (aka did they commit a crime knowing good vs bad)?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- philipov 2y ago
  It's both. Attempting to reduce the complexity to just one or the other is a grave error. Here is a good starting point for getting educated on the matter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PL848F2368C...
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  The anecdotes don't untangle it, but academics sure as hell have studied adopted kids for traits that match their biological parents. Even more over have studied twins with identical genetics who grew up in separate households.
- halgir 2y ago
  More anecdotes incoming, but I'm regularly told that I share traits with my father, with whom I don't share DNA. To the point that people who aren't aware that we're not biologically related have remarked that we look alike - which is amusing considering we're different ethnicities.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

actionfromafar 2y ago

Is it nature vs nurture? If, so, how does your anecdote untangle that?

lazide 2y ago
I think the taboo the poster was referring to was more along the lines of discussion of actual free will, level of control of self, etc. 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.
- phkahler 2y ago
  >> 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?
  - lazide 2y ago
    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 mind), but punishing someone for something they can’t control seems cruel - and that will stop many people from applying them. Resulting in more damage and more bad behavior. So regardless of if it’s true or not, treating it as true is fundamental for a functioning society.
    - steve_adams_86 2y ago
      This is conjecture. Why are the people on the fence choosing the dark side? Why does a lack of free will preclude the possibility of any kind of consequences?
      - lazide 2y ago
        Regarding your first point - usually because the 'dark side' is easier (short term), and life periodically gets hard. So it's often inevitable. Especially in the face of others doing bad acts to you. Regarding the second - see my comment. At least in the western world, most crimes require fault and mens rea. Those require someone being able to make a informed choice, which means having free will. If there is (actually) no choice, or the choice was based on faulty information processing (aka actual insanity), then therefore there is no fault and no mens rea. The underlying belief (philosophically) is one cannot be good or evil if one cannot comprehend a choice or it's ramifications, or in fact actually effectively choose between options due to a lack of knowledge and independent agency. Interestingly, this is why the 'original sin' in Christian mythology was eating the apple from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. [https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-0-387-71802-6_480#:~:text=Original%20sin%20is%20the%20Christian,Eve%20(CCC%3A%20404) https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-0-3....] So philosophically, before that point, there was no 'good' or 'evil' because humans didn't know of such things, therefore were just acting. Regardless of what they did, they were innocent, because they were incapable of being anything else. After that, everything they did had such knowledge as a factor, and were no longer innocent - because they could choose. So, for example, if I murder someone in cold blood (aka rational/thinking/choosing), that is 1st degree murder. One of the most serious crimes in any society. However, if I murder my spouse because I found they betrayed me right in front of me and lose my mind (literally can't think straight, and react instinctively without being able to think or plan anything), most locations will consider me not guilty by reason of insanity, and let me go. [https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/temporary_insanity https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/temporary_insanity] This is already a great example of the problem, as MANY folks try to claim insanity already after getting caught when they are not actually insane. Another example is if I accidentally kill someone without knowing such a thing was a possibility. For example, I'm out hunting in the woods. I see a deer, and (as far as I know) legally shoot it. However, it turns out that was actually a human dressed in a very convincing deer costume, and I had no way of knowing this was the case. Most of the time, I would be charged with no crime, or worst case likely negligent homicide. As per the Supreme Court of Iowa, "In order to be an excuse and defense for a criminal act, the person accused, and who claims [temporary] insanity as a defense, must prove that the crime charged was caused by mental disease or unsoundness which dethroned, overcame, or swayed her reason and judgment with respect to that act, which destroyed her power rationally to comprehend the nature and consequences of that act.” If we assert that people actually act based on their nature/upbringing and have little to no rational control over their actions in fact (aka no free will), then does it not follow that no one actually has a choice, and therefore it makes no sense to actually punish anyone for anything they do? Since philosophically, without the ability to rationally actually choose their actions, they cannot be good or bad - they just are. And if we punish people based on who they 'just are', that opens another can of very nasty worms, and likely a lot of serious evil will result.
- em-bee 2y ago
  the issue with free will is that even with 100% free will, life is an optimization problem. we can not possibly make a conscious decision for everything we do. we'd stop breathing. therefore we must rely on doing things by habit. and where do we learn habits? from our parents. i fall on strongly on the nurture side of the nature vs nurture question, but the issue is that with the amount of habits and behavior patterns that we acquire, we simply don't have the capacity to change all of them without effort. we can change a few at a time, and each can take considerable effort to change. not to mention many that we are not even aware of. in short, there is no need to fall back to nature as a reason for why certain behaviors don't change. moreover, even if a certain behavior is nature, i believe willpower can allow us to change that too. what bothers me is that nature or lack of free will are abused to excuse certain behaviors as unchangeable. everything can be changed, because humans are very adaptable. we just need to carefully consider which things we actually want to change.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  I think free will is simply a restatement of the fact the future is unknowable and the humans are agents. You cant 100% predict what a person will do without duplicating the entire person and the world they are interacting with. Even if everything is causally driven by historic circumstance, it is the human that synthesizes that history and computes an action
  - lazide 2y ago
    That is not what free will is (philosophically). Free will is the belief that we can choose our actions. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will] In your statement, there is no choice - just a lack of predictability due to unknown starting states.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      Im saying that there is no difference, and most of the arguments around fee will and responsibility are distinctions without a difference. Individual choice happens if someone believes in an extra-physical soul or not. It happens if you believe in determinism or not. The question of if someone could have made a different choice is meaningless without an argument for why someone would make have a different choice.
      - lazide 2y ago
        All you're saying you don't (actually) believe in free will, philosophically. People who do believe in free will make an argument that regardless of the input state, the individual always has a choice what course they take, and is responsible for those decisions. So for example, if someone chooses to be a concentration camp guard or a capo vs be a prisoner and be murdered - that is their choice, and they are responsible for it. If free will exists. It's a rather fundamental philosophical question, actually. Because those concentration camp guards and capos did pretty evil things, which were also (in their circumstances) often the least 'bad' thing for them. Which enabled evil at a truly massive scale against others because of those other peoples upbringings/genetics. And those prisoners (most of which had no choice in the matter) mostly ended up dead, and stopped having much of a say in the matter. This is why it's an important philosophical debate. Because if people play out a script based on their circumstances/upbringing/genetics and have no actual choice in the matter (philosophically), then isn't punishing those guards and capos essentially doing the same thing to them that they did to those prisoners? Hurting them due to factors outside of their (actual) control, even up to murder? And if we think that upbringing/genetics was a major factor in creating that sort of destructive evil, doesn't that open up the possibility of tracking down and killing/punishing other people based on their upbringing/genetics? Regardless of any individual choices they had made? In this example, other potential concentration camp guards and capos - though it would play out as relatives and those with similar genetic traits and upbringings? Which then creates the circumstances exactly that was at the root cause of the Holocaust to begin with? Namely, assigning 'goodness' and 'badness' based on some general attribute (ethnicity aka genetics/upbringing, sexual orientation, etc.) that cannot be changed or chosen, and NOT a persons choices (aka did they commit a crime knowing good vs bad)?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
philipov 2y ago
It's both. Attempting to reduce the complexity to just one or the other is a grave error. Here is a good starting point for getting educated on the matter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PL848F2368C...
Workaccount2 2y ago
The anecdotes don't untangle it, but academics sure as hell have studied adopted kids for traits that match their biological parents. Even more over have studied twins with identical genetics who grew up in separate households.
halgir 2y ago
More anecdotes incoming, but I'm regularly told that I share traits with my father, with whom I don't share DNA. To the point that people who aren't aware that we're not biologically related have remarked that we look alike - which is amusing considering we're different ethnicities.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]