Eric Turkheimer, alerted to the existence of this post by Charles Murray on Twitter, responds in a blog post:

Jayman on the Three Laws of Behavior Genetics (2019.05.19)

https://www.geneticshumanagency.org/gha/jayman-on-the-three-laws-of-behavior-genetics/

As is often the case when people of a hereditarian persuasion write about the three laws, Jayman gets it almost entirely wrong, reacting only to the headline, “Everything is Heritable� and ignoring the great majority of the paper that completely undercuts his conclusions.

The paper is actually titled, “Three Laws of Behavior Genetics And What They Mean�, and it is in fact much more about the what-they-mean part than about the laws themselves. And what they mean is: Behavioral differences are in a weak sense heritable, but that doesn’t mean that behavior in general has a genetic explanation. Quite the opposite.

At the beginning of the post, Jayman has the chutzpah to suggest that I have “since spent [my] time trying to undermine [my] own discovery.� Actually, it’s worse than Jayman suggests: I spent most of the paper itself undermining the interpretations he wants to assign to it. That’s pretty bad: I misunderstood the conclusions of my own paper!

You can read the paper yourself, it is linked here. But since Jayman doesn’t show any indication that he actually took the time to read it, let me summarize for you….

I’m late in the discussion, but the author has to answer my points before he can convince me parents don’t matter (outside their genes) :

1) How could your genes only react to specific environmental factors ? It doesn’t make any sense from a logical standpoint. It’s like saying gravity only works in New York but not in Paris. No, either gravity works for everybody or nobody. It should be the same for environmental influences : either any environmental influence has an effect or envinronment has no influence. Actually, everything react to everything, that’s why causality means something to physicists…

– The only logical and possible explanation is that the studies are unable to properly measure shared environmental influences or don’t look at the right things. Usually, they only care about psychological traits while what really matters are life outcomes, not psychological traits, even if they are correlated. For instance (and by caricaturing) if you score really high in agressiviness, you could become either a succesful boxer or an inmate.

– Let’s say you have a high genetic susceptibility to develop mental illnesses under stressful events : how an unstable family could not affect your innate propency to develop a mental illness ? Once again, it doesn’t make sense.

2) If genes and luck are so powerful, then this article doesn’t matter too, because as said the author : Beyond that it’s in the hands of “fateâ€�.

– Or perhaps the author acknowledge that knowledge can make a difference in your life. And i’m certain that many people here would live their life differently if they knew what they know today. If your parents say you genes matters a lot (and i don’t dispute this fact) then it may influence how you choose your furtur partner for instance…

3) My last point is this one : what we can conclude from those studies is that parenting may not make children more similar in their psychological traits. This doesn’t mean parents can’t affect their child’s life in a positive or negative way. Once again, only actual life outcomes matter and twins studies typically don’t measure that. People with similar personalities and IQ can totally have different life outcomes. Good parents may not make their children more similar psychologically, but this doesn’t mean they don’t make their children more similar in how successful they were in their life.

– For instance, by many aspects, Bill Gates is closer to someone like Snoop Dogg (status, money, etc.) than a random engineer who only earns 2000$ by months.

Excuse me if you don’t always clearly understand me because english is not my native language.

Speaking of sloppy science

“Identical twins raised apart will be similar – and usually highly similar in every conceivable measurement”

Only if you ignore how they are different. Good grief. One battles depression, the other does not. One like cram cheese the other breaks out. One commits suicide the others do not. So much for the first law which is predicated on similar — My dog and my cat are similar — guaranteed their do have the same genetics. It’s the bias of honing in on data that supports my position and ignoring the rest.

Let’s test it another way. Short parents produce average height children. Parents who are both deaf from birth produce gearing children.

The laws at certainly the first is a shell game.

More generally, behavioral and other phenotypic similarity is predicted by genetic similarity for all behaviors and phenotypes”

One factor that isn’t mentioned here is the problem of “Like with Like” – people with similar personalities producing children. I’m thinking of two situations:

– When people on the low end of IQ, who are highly impulsive, prone to action, and poor at planning for the future, have children. Those kids have a double dose of genetics that are associated with poverty, crime, and failure in life.
– When people on the high end of IQ, who are rigidly controlled about their actions, less emotional and more logical, competitive, and personally ambitious, have children. Those kids have a double dose of traits associated with not getting along with other people, leaning more towards the autism personality, and unwilling to compromise their own ambition for the team. That combination of traits can also lead to failure, both in career and in personal relationships.

There is something to be said for picking a partner who is UNlike you. That resulting offspring tends to resemble a personality more close to the mean, which has beneficial outcomes for the society as a whole. Yes, the outliers can do amazing things. But, a society filled with them would devolve into a cutthroat mess.

I have a similar question to @Not Here

What is the basis of adding those three components, namely:

effect of measurement error, the heritability estimate, and the negative gene-environment correlation values?

Indeed, when we consider the effect of measurement error (adding it to the heritability estimate and to the somewhat nonsensical negative gene-environment correlation values), the heritability of political attitudes and social values skyrockets, being upwards of 85% (74%) for views towards pornography in women (men). The heritability of overall political orientation, when accounting for measurement error, teeters on 100%!

I think I am getting a bit confused here, regarding the bolded…

Why would you add Measurement Error to the Additive Genetic value? I thought the reason that it is removed from the original Additive Genetic value itself is because it is an error and being corrected for.

Nothing in the paper itself says to Measurement error to the Additive Genetic value…

social mobility is WAY higher than Clark’s estimate. It’s common for high ability men to marry attractive but less intelligent women, resulting in a sharp socioeconomic and IQ decline in the next generation, especially if they’re boys, since boys tend to be closer to their mother in IQ than their father. Women will try to marry into more intelligent families, raising the IQ of their offspring above their own level, whereas men marry into less intelligent families lowing the IQ of their offspring. The idea that assortative mating is greater today is preposterous, during most of history people practiced arranged marriage, to keep intelligence and wealth from diluting back to average. India’s caste system was specifically designed to ensure intelligence and wealth maintained itself over the generations. People today marry people they “love” it doesn’t matter if her father was a truck driver or elite, people marry by education level, which is’t a great proxy for IQ unless it’s STEM.

Ian Fleming refers to this as “orphans make the best agents”.
It’s alluded to in more than one 007 novel; the scriptwriters for Skyfall put it in M’s mouth.

Data on recorded crime 1900-1999 is here

http://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/RP99-111

During the 70s and 80s there was a big debate about the numbers, with a school of left wing criminologists (i.e. most of them) arguing that the rising figures were a cultural artefact (“people report crimes now that they would ignore in the past”, “domestic and sexual violence was common and unreported in the past” etc) – this approach inspired by Stanley Cohen’s influential 1973 “Folk Devils And Moral Panics”. It wasn’t til the end of the 80s that it was generally accepted that the rise was real and substantial.

Well the cool experiment was performed for several generations of Christian kids in the Balkans, every few years an Ottoman inspector came round and selected kids of 10 or 11 for the Janissaries – I imagine the criteria would have been intelligence plus stature. The Janissaries were the elite shock troops, the SAS or Airborne of the Ottoman forces – lived in celibate barracks, fanatical Muslim by conversion, “death before dishonour” types, scary enough that the regular Turkish forces were leery of them.

Now whether their personal behaviours were very different from their siblings back home (apart from the small matter of slaughtering large numbers of Christians) I don’t know – but their corporate behaviour was very different.

“Is the native British crime rate all that different?”

Yes, the native British crime rate went up dramatically between 1950 and 1980, when the UK was still pretty monoethnic. There just weren’t enough minorities to heavily tilt the scales in those years. By 2000 recorded crimes were ten times the 1950 levels.

Some of this will be down to fertility patterns – i.e. the cleverest girls having fewest kids, the dimmest having most (thanks to a post-war UK welfare state which made lots of kids a rational choice for a not too bright girl, which in pre-war times would not have been the case) – but again I don’t think it can explain such big increases. Some of it would be due to the 1980/90s heroin epidemic, which affected even small towns – smack users need to steal a lot – but again, a ten times increase is way beyond, not enough smackheads.

“Also under appreciated, the Second Law talks about the “shared environmentâ€� – parents, peers, schools, neighborhoods – all the things children growing up in the same household share. The effect of all those things on any behavioral trait or other phenotype is nil. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Zero. All the things people (especially in the modern West) think matter to children’s development have no effect at all.”

I can see there might not be an effect on phenotype, but behavioural traits? I guess it’s how you define it, but a Christian child in the Ottoman Empire selected at nine or ten for Janissary training would as an adult exhibit very different behaviour to his twin brother who was hidden or absent when the selectors turned up. Same I imagine with a child ‘recruited’ by the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda.

The Chinese of the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward were genetically pretty much the same as today’s Chinese, yet I know which China would be better to live in. The high-crime, low-church attendance British are (mostly, though it’s changing fast) the genetic descendants of the low-crime, (relatively) high church attendance Brits of the 1930s or 1950s – yet their behaviours are very different. You can recognise some ongoing behavioural traits, I’d agree – like relatively high trust in authority and a lack of clannishness – traits, once an advantage, which may now be the death of them.

Amen. If I believed in Darwinism I’d keep my insults to a minimum.

Regression to the mean would indicate high downward and upward mobility, if class structure was this rigid regression to the mean is clearly overstated. According to Stephen Hsu IQ can go from genius level (140) all the way back down to 110 in 3-4 generations. It’s not uncommon at all for upper middle class people to produce offspring who would be better suited to blue collar work. Regression to the mean is a powerful phenomenon and it indicates that one cannot maintain high intelligence over many generations. Stephen Hsu said that it’s common for super high IQ physicists to produce kids who can “only” become doctors, and doctors could also produce kids who could only become electricians.

Jay,

Please do me a favor and explain things in more detail. I’ve spoken to another person about your article. She and I both don’t understand what you’re trying to say. And to the extent that we do understand, we find it hard to believe.

What about religion: Clearly the religion you are born into plays a role in the religion you eventually adopt, right? I know you’ll say the intensity of religion is genetically determined, but I’d just like you to say that, at least, the type of religion one adheres to is not!

What about suicide rates: I’ve read that Koreans have a very high suicide rate. But Korean American suicide rates are about half as high as the American national average–and so presumably much lower than the Korean average. Aren’t we talking about, in a sense, shared environment here?

What about education: Suppose a family with one biological child and one adopted child decides to travel the world teaching their children about languages. As a result, both their kids learn Spanish, French, Russian, Flemish, Swahili, and Chinese. If they hadn’t done this, perhaps the child with a propensity toward languages might learn one or two languages at most–assuming he’s an American where learning one or two languages is considered an awesome accomplishment!

A better example: Why are the Swiss so good with languages but Swiss Americans not so good with languages? Isn’t the fact that they’re Swiss, in a sense, shared environment?

What good are parents, in your view? What exactly do you think parents do for children? (And what about the Romanian children raised in orphanages–didn’t they have bad outcomes?) And what about sexual and physical abuse–doesn’t this have an effect on outcomes? Suppose identical twins are reared apart–one is abused and one isn’t. Are you saying that they will still be no more different than identical twins raised in non-abusive environments? Which types of environments are you considering so extreme that they should be culled out of the study?

You got me curious!

All biological entities have the trait of “want to last” – our human method of reaching that goal is “free will thinking.â€�

The will to live – is “free will.” It is our defining trait.

Our physical nature, our biological nature, and our intellectual nature drives us forward. Each entity in its own systems of organization, endeavors to go on and on.

For we humans, the best way to go on and on is to be intellectual free!

Jesus said it “the truth will set you free� – those are immortal words.

For those words along – he deserves our love and thanks.

Peace — Art

SOME parents impart knowledge and skills, you must mean.

No ma’am. If I could see into that black box then I could put my thumb on the outcome that I wanted instead of just taking what I gave myself.

Are you seeing the (biochemical) pattern in your approach to (this) discussion?

When I thought that I had free will I disagreed with you over the existence of free will and its nature.

Now that I believe that I don’t have free will, I disagree with you over the nature of its non-existence.

So we came up with the concept of free will to enable us to feel blameless…

Except, if this theory is right, the sense of blame logically depends on the concept of free will; the concept that created blame can’t be its cause

Not “we”.

We as agents and executioners of what “works” in an evolutionary sense. Assigning blame lets us do what we want against our fellows and do it guilt free.

The genetic force of “free will� is more important than our lessor genetic traits. Every rational human has one goal – that is to extend their lives. Our rational nature compels us to live on and on. If we think about something we will “freely chose� the path to living longer. We naturally “will ourselves� into making decisions about the future.

Making rational decisions about tomorrow is the ultimate genetic human trait. It overrides all other human traits. “Willing to get to tomorrow� is the trait the separates us from our fellow species.

All biological entities have the trait of want to last – our human method of reaching that goal is “free will thinking.�

Peace — Art

I actually have “changed my mind”, but then my great grandfather knew that I would, rather he made me do it.

I like the idea that the concept of free will or agency allows us to pick and choose which behaviors we will reward or punish. We can see that what is granted agency and to what degree changes over time. We no longer impose capital punishment on animals that kill humans (no pig trials like in the olden days). On the other hand, more and more people have come to believe that blacks do not have agency and should not be held responsible for their behavior (some do have the decency to extend the belief to the lower classes of other races).

So we came up with the concept of free will to enable us to feel blameless…

Except, if this theory is right, the sense of blame logically depends on the concept of free will; the concept that created blame can’t be its cause. However, apart from any sense of blame, it is amazingly hard for most humans to kill another human. So substitute for “feel blameless,” “feel praiseworthy.”

I did not choose to write the previous sentence and I deny and denounce whoever or whatever it was that made me type it.

After you wrote this (if not before – in which case it was a joke), you probably realized that the same logic (if valid) would preclude you from denying or denouncing, as these behaviors too involve “choice.”

But perhaps you are onto something. Belief isn’t something you choose, but something that happens to you.

This is supported by the observation that one seems less likely to experience the sense of blame when one thoroughly (as thoroughly as possible for humans, that is) rejects the existence of free will.

So we came up with the concept of free will to enable us to feel blameless in getting rid of people whose behaviors earned disapproval? It’s okay to kill them off because they are to blame for what they did.

With the limited faculties available to me, I have considered the current comments, past comments, readings on the subject and the Jayman’s writings and I am ready to “switch” sides.

The problem that I have now is that I apparently can’t make the choice to write, “I have no free will.”

I did not choose to write the previous sentence and I deny and denounce whoever or whatever it was that made me type it.

I can now “see” that I don’t have free will, I just can’t, can’t …

I think a future orientation which is short term for genetic or other congenital reasons certainly has to be considered relevant to some aspect(s) of our assessments of an individual when we consider how the billions of neuronal connections in his head have led to his decisions. That’s ttue particularly if we put protection of other people well before retributive emotions and huffing and puffing about “evil”.

But if we are to speak of behavioral traits or phenotypes generally, we’re free not only to speak of ‘language’ as a trait but also specifically of speaking Swahili. Each language will yield its own partition into familial and peer effects that will be distinct from the average over all languages. (Please correct me if that’s wrong.)

Not getting killed in a car crash is part of my past, but it sure as heck isn’t a behavioral trait.

Sure it is. And I’m confident it’s heritable.

If I understand you, yes there has to be a working definition of free will. It’s like The Truman Show producers deciding how to run Truman’s life. We have the ability to decide how we will run society, what is legitimate and what mitigating circumstances are allowed. In fact the whole liberal debate hinges on this. How many excuses can liberals come up with for gangs – austerity, closure of youth centres, lack of role models, institutional racism, single mothers, absent fathers, poverty, peer-group pressure – ? Free will is only going to be the product of the organism so if as hbders suggest there may be a lower level of ‘future orientation’, then in that case ‘free will’ will operate on a shorter time scale. Have I gone off topic?

And if it’s merely an illusion of capacity where is the benefit to the illusion?

Important question. But remember that not every evolved trait has a direct benefit, some being byproducts of accomplishing other purposes. Think visual illusions, like the Muller-Lyer. (Or to take a common example, the fact that we have 10 fingers and 10 toes, despite there being no reason to think the same number of minor appendages are optimal for both types of subappendages.)

I see two main possibilities. One is that the illusion of free will evolved to support the practices of praising and blaming. This is supported by the observation that one seems less likely to experience the sense of blame when one thoroughly (as thoroughly as possible for humans, that is) rejects the existence of free will. [Something like this was the basis for Albert Ellis’s rational-emotive psychotherapy.]

The other is that the illusion of free will developed by a classical conditioning process operating on the sense of effort and behavior. This results in mistaking the sense of effort for the cause of the behavior. I develop the latter in Why Free Will? – http://juridicalcoherence.blogspot.com/2011/01/what-how-and-why-of-free-will.html

Some philosophers have sketched a version of free will that is deterministic. The Wizard of Oz alludes to one such effort by a physicist, and Jayman says some free will concepts are useful. This is called compatibilism, which I think involves a fairly subtle confusion but which probably needs here to be distinguished from voluntarism, which is the object of Jayman’s contempt. But the philosophical refutation of voluntarism (as opposed to that of compatibilism) is very simple. The doctrine is incoherent because, of the two logical possibilities, determinism and randomness, voluntarist free will can be neither and be true to its concept. It’s incoherence (like that of qualia, which I wonder whether Jayman will admit he experiences) doesn’t stop us from feeling as though we have it when we act.

To my thinking, that’s rather like saying you don’t experience the Muller-Lyer visual illusion because you know it’s not veridical. [You mean to tell me you don’t feel as though you could do something different from what you in fact do? Maybe you have evolved differently!]

Yes, but maybe “free will” [note the quotes] is a tool for allowing us to distinguish various actions for socisl or legal purposes. How would you describe their correspondence?

Thanks everyone for your comments. I learn so much from all of you and I especially like the fact that most commenters focus on substance rather than personal attacks. Raising my own children, I have concluded that the variations in their behavioral traits are largely genetic coupled with their unshared environments which they had an innate propensity to select.

The idea that parents can necessarily teach “self-control” is nonsense. I have two younger brothers who have very little self-control and very short time horizons, despite my parents’ best efforts.

Parents are responsible for keeping their kids healthy and safe. However, my parents didn’t have too many rules for me. But I had no desire to smoke, shoplift, have sex with girls, be a juvenile delinquent or not attend school, so any rules they had against such things were irrelevant.

So parenting does matter?

[FTR, I found much better success in paying my sons respect (when earned) rather than getting them accustomed to praise, per se. Yes, my sons are part of a lineage of very bright, capable, highly productive people so they were likely to exhibit respect-worthy behaviors and accomplishments. But in my experience, since all successful human relationships are based on mutual respect, getting them accustomed to “trading” in this medium seemed wise…and the results are quite gratifying.]

PS: I didn’t raise girls, but boys are born barbarians. Parents either socialize it out of them (teaching self-control, because the only alternative is “others-control,” and they often come with badges, guns and bad attitudes) or they spawn demons on the world at large.

A male human is the single most dangerous animal on the planet. Spawning a feral one is far worse than mistreating a 90 lb pitbull terrier.

You missed my point.

Not getting killed in a car crash is part of my past, but it sure as heck isn’t a behavioral trait.

Behavior and experiences are two different things.

A woman can be low on the spectrum of novelty-seeking but if she gets married at 25 having had two prior “adult” relationships, she’s not likely chaste. If she got married out of the first relationship, she would have been. (This applies to men, as well.) Is her behavior different? I don’t see why I’d expect it to be.

My point: Events matter, and become part of what we must work with forever. Behaviors, however, are HOW we operate in the presence of the past. It’s the difference between data in a warehouse and the software that utilizes it. The data isn’t the software instructions.

My quibble with Jayman’s claim that “parenting doesn’t matter” is that if he believed this, he’d let his kids do whatever the heck they wanted. After all, “parenting doesn’t matter,” and if his son was slated to grow up into a self-controlled man, good household discipline didn’t teach him squat, while zero discipline won’t spoil him, and a zero discipline household wouldn’t hurt him.

Seriously? Bull.

I’d believe that if I saw it. Having raised three kids, I damn well know better.

“Parenting doesn’t matter” is a statement only an ideologue lacking experience could maintain. I wonder how many kids raised in an “anything goes” home live to see adulthood (where presumably cease expression of teenage stupidity.)

Would you say not to diet and exercise because in the end it’s genetic anyway?

I am not sure what he is saying. The only thing I could see as plausible is that diet and exercise will have differing effects/levels of success based upon genetic predisposition. Subject A, who follows the same diet/exercise regimen as subject B, may have better results (higher muscle gain/fat loss, etc.) than subject B due to genes. Still, subject B who diets and exercises will be better off than subject B who doesn’t.

The experiment one should try to determine the extent of modern man’s understanding of intelligence and free will is to go talk to one of the more advanced ‘bots’ that people have on the internet.

This immediately will banish any delusions that brilliant modern genius science man has any clue either how the brain, cognition, free will, or intelligence works.

Think of free will like the person who announces trains arriving at the station (do you have that in USA?). Most of the time the announcer announces the right trains. But they are not his personal trains or schedules. Sometimes somebody might misunderstand the schedule and announce the wrong trains – i.e. sometimes people simply make the wrong decisions, their wires are literally crossed. Free will is a tool produced by the functioning of the complex organism to enable it to function at that level of complexity. Say what? No me neither, God.

https://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/free-will/

I went to a lecture by Susan and she demonstrated that our brains think before our minds know what they have thought. I can’t remember what we did exactly. The audience was divided into groups and we each had to think something and there was a time element …it was very convincing even if this isn’t!

Hi Jayman … Always like your posts.

I have spent a lot of time in Costa Rica. When Americans go down there — especially to the hippie compounds — they get super thin. Happens to me every time. Inflammation goes down, my whole body feels better. Costa Rica is a blue zone and reportedly people live longer there.

Secondly … how does your theory handle the explosion in obesity in the US? Clearly this is insane what is happening. Is it not related to GMOs?

Tx …

PS Sorry if you’ve covered this in the comments — I read most of them but not all as there are quite a few now.

Whether JayMan’s word will or will not have any effects had been predetermined.
The fact that JayMan will post his article was predetermined by the time of Big Bang, and so were your complaints about it.

Whoever Allah guides – he is the [rightly] guided; and whoever He sends astray – it is those who are the losers.

https://quran.com/7/178

I hear what you say. Now please tackle the quote from Rovelli beginning “To be free doesn’t mean……”.

Do you disagree with him?

I think it was from Steven Pinker’s “How the Mind Works” about 20 years ago that I picked up reference to and quoting of Judith Rich Harris’s work concluding that genes counted for about 50 per cent of personality (behavioural manifestations I assume), peers [presumably including close siblings] for 45 per cent and parents about 5 per cent. I seem to remember David Rowe coming into it also.

Is there more up to date research you would care to cite? Is what I have quoted/cited compatible with your findings?

I believe I have judgment and decision making capacity

How did decision making capacity evolve if there are no decisions to be made?

And if it’s merely an illusion of capacity where is the benefit to the illusion?

What’s the benefit in thinking one is making decisions when one is not?

<<As [Rovelli] puts it “I decide� because it would be absurd to suppose that I could do something different from what the whole complex of my neurons decides.>>

So now neurons “decide”? Can anybody explain to me by which “laws” the pixels on my computer screen that represented the quoted sentence caused my neurons to cause themselves to move my fingers to type a reply to the quoted sentence? Is there any doubt about the fact that the sentence and the reply to it are as incomprehensible to my neurons as they are to my fingers? Are we supposed to assume that neurons are capable of “understanding”, “thinking” and “self-criticism”?
But then, what’s the point of neuronizing yourself, if you must humanize neurons even to pretend to be able to express yourself meaningfully?

What would be a scientific demonstration of the thesis “Free will does not exist”?
Suppose a neuroscientist succeeds in taking physical control of another person’s brain. Would that be an empirical, experimental refutation of free will? No, it would not. In order to set up and run a scientific experiment, he would have to be able to control certain parameters at will. If he had no free will, he would not be able to do so. His experiment would merely demonstrate his free will in addition to his power to override the other person’s will.
Suppose a neuroscientist succeeds in taking physical control of his own brain. Would that be an empirical, experimental refutation of free will? To ask the question is to answer it.
Are we, then, supposed to take it as Gospel truth that science and scientific experiments are impossible (because free will does not exist)?

All that Jayman and Rovelli are entitled to conclude is that many, perhaps most people are weak-willed most of the time. But, surely, that is hardly a discovery of modern science.

So it is totally irrelevant how JayMan views were determined.

But it still renders meaningless JayMan’s action of posting his views here.

If we are all nodes in a deterministic matrix, rather than independent beings (minds / souls/ whatever you prefer), then what effect will JayMan’s words here have on our biologically-predetermined views on the subject?

Well, people are stupid.

I’d bet that you, Jayman, believe in your own free will whenever you act. As with perception, there are inevitable illusions of cognition. What’s stupid is elevating an illusion into a doctrine.

Jayman’s claim does have some earthshaking implications, but (as I’ve stressed in a couple of earlier comments) it isn’t nearly as strong as the statement that every behavioral trait or phenotype has no variance attributable to family environment.

This is very obvious. (Perhaps the only reason it isn’t obvious to some is the tendency to dismiss obvious counter-examples as trivial.) Look, speaking the Swahili language is a phenotype, yet it is primarily determined by family environment. (I don’t speak it, and the main reason is my family didn’t.) If there are no behavioral genetic studies of this phenotype, it is because 1) it is too narrow to be of interest; 2) it is obviously a largely family-environment trait. (But there are likely to be nonobvious example.)

The claim is striking enough without overstating it to the absurd.

“More to the point, people evolved to create and enforce social rules that allow for a functioning society. Not to understand the deep causes of behavior.”

So what are we trying to do? Are we not evolved?

Isn’t the point that correlations attach themselves to causes – I was taught that when incomes rise the consumption of televisions and toilet paper goes up (in the 1980s anyway). But there is no causal link between TV and toilet. The causal link is, income to toilet and income to TV. i.e. watching TV doesn’t make one use the toilet more. Although perhaps that isn’t even true! After all, TV encourages snacking. But I digress. Perhaps another example would have been less confusing.

The effect of all those things on any behavioral trait or other phenotype is nil. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Zero.

that is pretty incredible if true. just threw all my previous thoughts on the matter into the trash.

Actually environmental determinism would create exactly the same problem about praise or blame. I might be a vicious thug because my genetic endowment strongly predisposes me to vicious behavior or I might be a vicious thug because I was grossly abused as a child. To many people, probably most, it wouldn’t seem to make sense to blame me unless my vicious behavior was the result of the choice of my autonomous will.

But that JayMan’s views are completely determined by biology doesn’t constitute any evidence against them. How people arrive at their views has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of their views. I could determine my views by throwing darts at a dart board. That doesn’t demonstrate that my views are false.

So it is totally irrelevant how JayMan views were determined.

Blaming or praising people as well for example as punishing or rewarding them materially may very well affect people’s behavior. It may very well explain how praising or blaming as a human behavior itself arose. But people generally do not conceptualize praise or blame in instrumental terms. They may praise or blame say Julius Caesar for the things he did even though affecting his behavior is no longer relevant.

Hume famously argued that correlation and causation are identical. Hume’s critics were quick to point out the flaws of this view. For example correlation is a symmetrical relation whereas causation is not. But Hume’s insight is important. Correlation is the only empirical aspect of causation. The rest of causation is metaphysics.

Actually an awful lot of understanding is available about how polynucleotides function in living creatures. I don’t deny that biochemistry is extremely complicated and an awful lot remains to be learned but there have been huge advances in the understanding of biochemical processes over the last 50 years.

You should read a good text on biochemistry.

Blaming or praising people for their behavior seems to depend on some notion of an autonomous will. But it’s hard from a scientific perspective to see how an autonomous will can be a true cause of any behavior.

Free will doesn’t exist

(Sarcasm On)

Disabled Bitches and Bastards of America (DBBA)

Hear us America – we are your bad people. We are the bitches and bastards who every day abuse your goodness. We are your liars and conmen, your swindles and thieves, your rapists and murderers, your lawyers and game wardens, your politicians and generals, your Jews and Jihadists, your KKK and Nazis.

For 26,000 years you good folks have wrongly looked down on us, jailed us, hung us, ostracized us, and banished us.

Now we learn that we have no fee will. We are bad because of our genetic make-up. With no free will we cannot help ourselves – we are stuck being what we are – we are disabled – it has always been so. We are the ultimate disabled group. How can you be so cruel to us?

We are the greatest victims of mankind ever. You owe us bigtime – we demand reparations from your government. We are going to become the strongest lobby in America. We have the conning, knowhow, and money to do it. We will bury you in shame – you will be our Stockholm victims.

Yours, Disabled Bitches and Bastards of America — (DBBA)

p.s. Thank god for college professors.

(Sarcasm Off)

I’m not sure I understand the question. Any adventitiously different influence would make them more different.

Aaron and Cal are identical twins. In high school Aaron befriends an extravert in the Drama Club and Cal befriends an introvert in the Chess Club. Aaron becomes more extraverted and Cal more introverted. Which twin befriends which alternative is (assumed to be) pretty much a coin toss.

[And if Aaron’s friend also turns out to be homosexual…]

“Anyone can tell anyone “what to doâ€� about anything. It’s called free speech. What’s not necessarily legal is selling that advice.”

If someone gives advice to one with diabetes, re lifestyle advice, then that’s illegal. That’s giving medical advice.

“You are trying to portray (and have convinced yourself that) anyone who offers free advice of the sort for which you charge an arm and a leg is a criminal. You are really a rather despicable person.”

Not a criminal, just giving “advice” that only trained professionals are to give under certain pretexts. This is why last history, current diet and exercise regimen, etc are taken into account before professional advice is given. One may be a layman but think he had the knowledge to give lifestyle advice to someone with, say, type II diabetes, but that advice may be horrible for that specific person in that specific situation.

My prices are fair and I’m cheaper than most. I don’t keep clients for long I want a revolving door of people to help as many people as possible while following up on people I’ve worked with in the past.

None of it matters to behavioral traits.

It does matter in specific ways too numerous to list. An axiom of LIFE is, “Everything we do becomes a part of us.�

If it becomes part of us, it constitutes a behaviorial trait. (You really can’t have it both ways.) Jayman, it seems to me, equivocates on whether a behaviorial trait is any behavioral description or one of the general “traits of personality.” (Where to draw the line should be of concern.) But in fact literally every behavioral trait (in the second sense) is (probably) heritable. But some obviously are transmitted substantially by family environment.

[Example. “Honesty” is probably devoid of familial influence. But “mannerliness” – it would be surprising indeed if families didn’t differentially inculcate manners.]

Anyone can tell anyone “what to do” about anything. It’s called free speech. What’s not necessarily legal is selling that advice.

You are trying to portray (and have convinced yourself that) anyone who offers free advice of the sort for which you charge an arm and a leg is a criminal. You are really a rather despicable person.

I must admit this entire line of thought sounds suspiciously like the difference between public health and individual medical decision.

Population studies reveal one thing, but it is but tangentially relevant to choices made by individuals.

Free will is not relevant to populations of people, but positing that personal choice doesn’t exist is akin to claiming that it doesn’t matter whether I chose to shoot someone simply because history will continue unaffected.

We have degrees of freedom. Jayman in other contexts has agreed with this.

But if shared environment is close to zero, then reductionism suggests the other 30% should mostly be something pretty simple.

Could you spell out your reductionist argument? One complex thing the 30% could be (I’d guess it is) has to do with the social networks outside the family one adventitiously enters into.

It is interesting that Turkheimer seems to have mutated towards the behavioral and social justice’y side.
Not surprising, though.
After all, considering the grant pipeline–claiming its all genes is not as conducive to the social engineers as is ascribing everything to behavior and environment.
Money in America has a long tradition of ringing the bell for the little salivating doggies.

Anything but free will, because that leaves the conundrum of having to treat people like humans.

Turkheimer seems to have decided to become a goodthinker: https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/5/18/15655638/charles-murray-race-iq-sam-harris-science-free-speech
I wonder if that was a result of the reaction to the heresy of his three laws.

I think the liability threshold model provides a good way to think about that: http://www.wikilectures.eu/index.php/Genetic_Liability,_Threshold_Model.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_model#Liability_threshold_model
IMHO more accurate to envision the threshold as being soft with environmental factors modifying where the phenotype appears (as you observe).

Thanks: it seems we are moving to far less cautious formulations: no objection from reductionist me.

On the subject of which, I like to use this estimate: ‘genes are about 70% of everything’ because that’s pretty close to the personality data from twin studies and the voluminous, multi-source, IQ data.

But if shared environment is close to zero, then reductionism suggests the other 30% should mostly be something pretty simple. One strong possibility flows from stuff like Cochran’s gay germ theory, Flegr’s Toxoplasma work, congenital rubella syndrome etc: most of the other 30% is microbial effect that is more subtle than the classical syndromes. Regarding other possibilities, I’d sure like to know the mechanism of First-Born Advantage.

I’m not quite sure how I keep replying to myself.

There appears to be a problem in keeping the story straight:

The models suggest that in impoverished families, 60% of the variance in IQ is accounted for by the shared environment, and the contribution of genes is close to zero

It isn’t science when the number of degrees of freedom swamp (infinitely) the number of knowns.
It’s just another curve fit.

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.0956-7976.2003.psci_1475.x

Anecdotally, it’s apparent to me that each of us is born to a specific segment on the spectrum of each human attribute.

Each of us enjoys a segment of mathematical aptitude, neuroticism, musical ability, etc., on the 0-100 spectrum available.

We have a choice of where, ON THAT SEGMENT, we exhibit each attribute. Persons born on the border of addictive behavior might choose the path eschewing the addiction, or people born with musical talent might never encounter conditions to nurture it.

Life experiences (including those offered by parents) matter, because so much of life becomes path dependent.

This includes expensive schools, nice homes, strict discipline, religious indoctrination – none of it matters.

None of it matters to behavioral traits.

It does matter in specific ways too numerous to list. An axiom of LIFE is, “Everything we do becomes a part of us.” Parental guidance during adolescence can and should work to protect kids from exercising youthful folly.

Insuring your kid is unable to fully engage in risk taking excess can help them live to outgrown the immature assessment of danger common in teens.

Specific events in our lives make a huge difference.

There appears to be a large logico-linguistic gap between your wording of the second law – “the effect of being raised in the same family is smaller than the effect of the genes [my emphasis]” and your commentary on the second law: ‘the effect of shared environment is nil‘.

You seem to have transitioned from a number that could logically be as high as 49.999 etc percent to zero, with insufficient explanation. If there is good evidence that the effect of shared environment is zero, then should not the second law be re-formulated ‘there is no effect from being raised in the same family’? And if the effect of shared environment is low but not zero, should it not read, ‘the effect of being raised in the same family is far smaller than the effect of the genes’?

Using a VPN and a throwaway email is quite normal in these days of State surveillance

Thanks. I’ve been banned, but not from this site!

One can give general health advice but to tell people to do X is illegal without having the right credentials.

What is not legal – except for Medical Doctors (MDs) and Registered Dietitians (RDs) – is to provide medical nutritional therapy. That is, to prescribe nutritional changes specifically to treat disease.

http://nutritioncertificationreviews.com/nutrition-advice-qualifications/

I have seen and heard too often of identical twins where one nearly ways dominates conversation, typically if you ask what restaurant or play or sporting event they would like to go to, to doubt the truth of my generalisation.

I recall e.g.one of a pair of high IQ females (who could have made a living as a portrait painter and described herself as left handed right brained) saying to her 50 year old identical twin who was talking to me “shut up S I want to talk to W”. Absolutely typical. (It was the right handed “left brained” twin who got the high academic honours in languages and other g related subjects).

Then, amongst many other memories, I recall one twin saying “i hardly spoke to an adult until I was 3 [could have been 2]. L always did it for me”. L was a high powered investment banker. Her identical twin who spoke of their relationship was in the course of finishing a rather long drawn out path to a PhD in a specialised field of Art History. So… no brain damage or other such explanation.

The only way I can reconcile your reply with all that is that you would insist that it is only because of the peculiarly striking fact of their being identical twins that I have noticed these striking interactions and that they would be just ss common in any randomly chosen pair of frequently interacting people. If so, evidence please.

Speaking at different levels: In practice, it might always make sense to encourage someone to choose the salad instead of the fries at any given meal; In theory (supported by the basic research) it is highly probable that the people who ‘listen’ to ‘good dietary advice’, are predisposed to it anyhow, these people seek out advice which they can follow.

Hey Arts, why don’t you ask him how (if there is no free will) you can choose to be a philosophical Christian rather than an actual Christian?

iffen,

First being a philosophical Christian is being an actual Christian. Most philosophical Christian are in some part religious Christians. This will not always be so. With both, there is a reverence for Jesus.

I do believe that different tribes have different genetics.

Biological selection plays a part in tribal procreation. Within generations a tribe can have instinctive biological and social traits.

It would be very instructive to see the genetic differences between Christians and Jews. One thrives on truth – the other on lies. Had a teacher who thought that integrity was a genetic trait.

Hmm – is integrity and honesty genetic, or is it acquired through living. Is the dishonesty of the Jews inherent?

Peace — Art

They are twins…

And?

Are their personalities the same? Do they react to situations in an identical manner?

Misdirected: intended as reply to RaceRealist.