Nature VS Nurture

[PAINKILLƎR]

I look at personal experience as what shapes us, within the constraints of what our genes allow.

For example, my mother put a heavy emphasis on education and sparked my interest in things when I was young. I think, without her, I wouldn't be as intelligent (not saying I am SO smart or like SUPER intelligent or anything) or have as much of an interest in learning. However, there is no amount of teaching that can change genetics, so if I only have the potential for a 120 IQ there is no way I can get more than that.

So environment plays a part in every single person, but more so in determining how strong/weak certain traits are, not whether or not you have that trait at all.

Hence, Nature via Nurture.

Yeah I was thinking the same.

I'm the oldest of sibling in my family and both my mother and father grew up fatherless. So they really never had a father figure and I think that kind of played a role on how I grew up. My father also had a strong emphasis on education but the way he raised me was way different than my younger brothers. I was spoiled most of my childhood tbh and I had everything done for me, we didn't have much but my dad did the best he could. Anyway I think as time passed he learned to become a better father and he made my brothers work for things and they're always more ambitious and hungrier than me and I would say more successful too. I'm doing pretty well atm but what what I'm trying to say is that the way we were raised definitely had to do with experience.

I don't know if what I just posted translates well with the topic at hand, just posted what I was thinking.

But what if I were just handed shitty genetics. I don't know I feel bad now lol.

[UofLCard]

It depends on the case.

Are you suggesting there are cases where nature (ie genetics) play little to no roll?

It's hard to know exactly what you mean, because you only posted 5 words...

What I meant was, while I think something like heterosexuality/homosexuality is nature, someone's 'aggressiveness' is nurture (i.e. someone who is constantly angry and breaking rules).

[PAINKILLƎR]

It depends on the case.

Are you suggesting there are cases where nature (ie genetics) play little to no roll?

It's hard to know exactly what you mean, because you only posted 5 words...

What I meant was, while I think something like heterosexuality/homosexuality is nature, someone's 'aggressiveness' is nurture (i.e. someone who is constantly angry and breaking rules).

So you believe people are born gay?

[UofLCard]

More or less, yes.

[PAINKILLƎR]

Never really given much thought to the possibility of people being born gay. I always thought the environment or whatever influence people to be whatever they are.

[SliK]

It depends on the case.

Are you suggesting there are cases where nature (ie genetics) play little to no roll?

It's hard to know exactly what you mean, because you only posted 5 words...

What I meant was, while I think something like heterosexuality/homosexuality is nature, someone's 'aggressiveness' is nurture (i.e. someone who is constantly angry and breaking rules).

Totally false.

[CrashBand]

Didn't read your essay, but I remember reading a lot about identical twins that were split up at birth.

They turn out very fucking similar.

Sexuality definitely isn't nurture.

My view of "nurture" is that it would usually just be heavily suppressing something.

[viJilance]

someone's 'aggressiveness' is nurture (i.e. someone who is constantly angry and breaking rules).

I'd have to agree with this. I never had any parental guidance, and I grew up breaking the law for fun. Nobody was there to stop me from stealing bikes, breaking into schools, vandalism, ETC. But was it the way I was nurtured? Or was it a lack of nurture I received, and my 'inner genetics' for destruction manifested???

[SliK]

someone's 'aggressiveness' is nurture (i.e. someone who is constantly angry and breaking rules).

I'd have to agree with this. I never had any parental guidance, and I grew up breaking the law for fun. Nobody was there to stop me from stealing bikes, breaking into schools, vandalism, ETC. But was it the way I was nurtured? Or was it a lack of nurture I received, and my 'inner genetics' for destruction manifested???

Genetics. However, adolescent anti-social behaviour like you are describing is common in almost everyone and is influenced via environment (peer pressure for example). Everyone grows out of this kind of anti-social behaviour. Life course persistent anti-social behaviour (that is, anti-social behaviour that you develop as a child and persists throughout your life exactly like aggressiveness) is mostly caused by genetics.

How old are you by the way? Also, when you say you never had any parental guidance, what do you mean? You don't know them or they just weren't around much? Annnd, do you still steal/vandalize or did you grow out of it?

[EminemInsider]

Nature by nearly 100%. The studies show adopted kids are more like their birth parents than their adoptive parents.

I don't think we have nearly as much say in our outcomes as we'd like to think. I think people's experiences in life that people think "shape them" are largely determined by genetics.

For instance, the way you look plays a major role in how you are treated growing up. If you grow up with people treating you a certain way, that will influence how you perceive yourself...but the reason they treated you a certain way in the first place was rooted in genetics.

[SliK]

EminemInsider:

But if genetics determine everything physical about us (I.e. "looks" - which you accurately claim leads to how we're perceived/treated) why wouldn't they determine our personality? Things like emotions, which determine how we respond to everything (anger, affection, embarrassment, aggression, etc.), things like thought patters, things like memory and IQ - all influence personality and are all determined by genetics.

I would take it a step further than you suggest and say that our personality is determined directly by genetics, not how we are treated because of our genetics.

[SliK]

Let me know when you get on it by the way, good luck.

High Distinction

[EminemBase]

Well we're definitely not blank slates...

That theory has been quite convincingly disproved and goes against everything we know about the brain and common-sense observation...

How can babies be blank slates when they already show needs and desires and inclinations towards certain types of activities over others for example.

We are the sum of our parts: we have 50% genes of both our parents, and they are certainly not blank slates; so we inherit traits and characteristics and ways of thinking but, I think it's HOW we think that is genetic, now what we think...

There's a brilliant lecture by Steven Pinker on this though and he talks about this study that was done with two identical twins (identical genes / as close to two identical humans as you can get) that were separated at birth and grew up in different countries, with different friends and upbringings... yet they met-up years later and had psychological tests done and... basically they were the same people, they shared so many of the same perspectives and ways of thinking.

You can change the surrounding and the input but now how the information is processed or what your brain veers towards or what you will actively seek out due to your natural, genetic inclinations and functionality - clouded by the illusion of free-will by consciousness, which is actually just the conscious realization of thought you've already had. Not the live control of it.

So yeah I think it's a mix - peers and the information you're exposed to all matter to some degree, but ultimately genes dominate and are the driving force of how you think and therefore what you will seek out and therefore what you learn and who you become. Which is why you can have somebody like Eminem grow up where and how he did yet become such an astute communicator of words.

[BigBoss]

Learned in psych class... it's more in the genetics, what our natural instincts tell us to do out weighs what our experiences will tell us