Substack cometh, and lo it is good. (Pricing)

15 thoughts on “Most people say they think nurture is more important than nature, especially white Americans

  1. I am well aware that for various reason Americans children seem to believe in innate ability more than East Asians. But I think that that result is somewhat misleading. It represents something, but it is not everything. East Asians also believe in heredity, as evidenced by the Chinese government’s occasional nakedly eugenical pronouncements.

    When I was in middle school in East Asia, the air rifle shooting team coach came by the class one day. He examined every boys’ shoulder and arm structure and picked out several (among whom I was one) who fit his criteria of upper body stability. I guess his take was, first select by relevant genes, then beat relentless training into the candidates. Nature + Nurture. East Asians believe in heredity certainly, but they also tend to believe that pain can mold behavior.

  2. I’ve never understood how you and pseudoerasmus can talk to Noah Smith. He’s nauseatingly smarmy, and an inverse weathervane about a lot of things. I could easily have predicted the correct answer to this question (at least some aspects of it). What do you see in him? Not being snide by asking–I’d really like to know.

    “I was in graduate school studying genetics, and I can tell you that on behavioral stuff most geneticists believe nurture is dominant”

    Jesus wept.

  3. Yeah, Noah is a fantastic econ writer. He’s also kind of a dumbass! Absolutely will never change from his leftist denial of human nature crap.

  4. “These results surprised me enough that I double-checked the coding. And it looks like they are correct.”

    Interesting that progs admit greater genetic influence than conservatives. But it’s not broken down be race here, is it? Non-white groups with lower educational attainment than whites may be closer to the truth.

  5. “Yeah, Noah is a fantastic econ writer. He’s also kind of a dumbass! Absolutely will never change from his leftist denial of human nature crap.”

    Are there any economists who are not that way aside from Garett Jones?

    Razib: sorry, I didn’t read you closely enough. In that case, is their rabid anti-hereditarianism a case of praying away the gay?

  6. @Twinkie
    In the US, they do that sort of thing too. Scouts for strength athletes, including football and basketball players, test the standing vertical jump, as it’s a proxy for genetic explosive strength potential. With training one can improve it only 3-6 inches. General ranges are 8 inches at the low end and over 28 inches at the high end (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_jump#Standing_vertical_jump_norms).

    I wonder how professional sports scouts would score on the nature vs. nurture survey.

  7. In the US, they do that sort of thing too.

    Of course. But usually not at middle school and not for niche sports like shooting.

    I wonder how professional sports scouts would score on the nature vs. nurture survey.

    I think American sports scouts tend to be very hereditarian, if anything.

  8. “I wonder how professional sports scouts would score on the nature vs. nurture survey.”

    If they could answer the questions anonymously, they’d probably be 100% in the nature camp. If they had to answer publicly, they’d probably be close to 100% in the nurture camp, out of self-preservation so the screaming banshees of the left don’t destroy their careers.

  9. The left has adopted a third position which is, as near as I can make it out, neither nature nor nurture. Behavior they believe is controlled by mind. Mind is formed by culture and society, but it can spontaneously assume different states, that are not genetically determined nor are they inculcated by specific experiences, i.e., learned.

    E.g., a mind can discern that it has a female gender identity despite, and completely unrelated to, the fact that every cell of the body that contains it has XY chromosomes, and the body displays male primary and secondary sexual characteristics.

    Absolutely nothing but major surgery to remove male organs and hormone treatments can assuage the pain felt by the mind of a woman trapped in the body of a male.

    As I said previously, I think this stark dualism is basically Gnostic, and is a religious, not intellectual, belief.

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