Nature makes nurture its bitch

[yavoon]

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/07/nature-vs-nurture.html

"Among a group of adopted sons, which is a better predictor of high education and high earnings?

(a) Having highly educated biological parents.
(b) Having highly educated adoptive parents.
According to results in a new study of Swedish data from Anders Björklund, Markus Jäntti, and Gary Solon , the answer is (a).

The results in this paper seem broadly consistent with those of Dartmouth economist Bruce Sacerdote, who examines a completely different data set in which adopted children were assigned randomly to parents.

In both papers, nature is stronger than nurture for determining the educational attainment of adopted children, although both nature and nurture have some role. And in both papers, nature completely dominates over nurture for determining income. (See Table 3 in the Sacerdote paper and Table 3, column 6, in the Björklund et al. paper.)"

that just raped a lot of welfare programs implicit ideologies.

[epicSocialism4tw]

The indwelling Christ makes both of them relevant only as an aside.

[alkemical]

I posted a bunch of stuff related to this..... On how DNA, etc have a far more lasting effect than we realize.

Nurture goes a good bit to the psychological side of things though. So someone could make more money, but as (yet another thread i have illustrates) - people are still more often happy with what they have, than do not. It's an illusion of things so to speak.

It's kinda why the "do not covet" thing is an important part learning. You can strive for more, but it's the intentions that can determine what true success is based upon a number of qualifiers.

[alkemical]

You can also make a case that the Danish student who shot up the school - his writings he left dictated he was going to kill those unfit for survival. An extreme Darwinist so to say.

But since the only taboo is that the individual doesn't set their own taboos it creates a number of interesting positions.

[SJ Bronco]

Just because nature gives you lemons, it doesn't mean that nurture can't make a decent lemonade out of you. its idiotic to think that both don't matter. you can't have one without the other.

[yavoon]

Just because nature gives you lemons, it doesn't mean that nurture can't make a decent lemonade out of you. its idiotic to think that both don't matter. you can't have one without the other.

little defensive about the importance of DNA eh? it certainly raises troubling philosophical issues if DNA is too important.

[alkemical]

yah but it's like being skilled in using any "tool". You can use it for malice - or use it for betterment.

That's where nurture can come into play. Biology only plays so much into it. Since your enviornment also creates imprinting that conditions you.

You can be a smart "mf'er" - but lack foresight to know how to use it correctly.