nature v.s nurture debate? Nature won!

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The debate is over. Watch the entire lecture: http://sciencestage.com/v/30491/13.-why-are-people-different?:-differences.html

Some where at the end of the lecture, it states "identical twins separated at birth are so similar that a brain scan cannot distinguish between the twins".

Any opposing view points?

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@TuringEquivalent,

Correction, "the brain scans of identical twins separated at birth are so similar that it's hard to tell which is which".
A subtle difference from what you wrote.

The lecture was very interesting, but full of those subtle points that it seems you might have overlooked if you are inclined to say the debate on nature vs nurture is over.

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@TuringEquivalent,

I'm about halfway in and have already spotted simplistic statements like:

"Two people raised in the same house by the same parents have 100% the same environment."

That is obviously wrong for a couple reasons. First, if the siblings differ by a couple years in age, then one has the experience of of growing up with an older sibling, while the other has the experience of growing up with a younger sibling. Totally different, in other words. Second, even if you're talking about fraternal twins, one may be an early bloomer, and the other a late bloomer. So again you effectively give one a more-mature, dominant sibling to work with, while you give the other a less-mature sibling. It's a key environmental difference in what they will be exposed to.

Of course, it's hard to have "powerful" models unless you abstract out half the important facts.

So far, I needn't even quibble about your analysis. I flat out disagree with the lecture.

In any case, I already knew about the heritability of IQ. That personality differences could be innate as well seems like the most interesting point.

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@Oylok,

Quote:

"Two people raised in the same house by the same parents have 100% the same environment."

Again, notice that this relates to shared environment. Considerations of older or younger siblings fall under the category of non-shared environment. At some point he says that shared environment has virtually no impact on a person's intelligence or personality. It is all hereditary or a result of non-shared environment, was the implication.

The lecture did not give any conclusive answers to the claim made in the headline of this thread. Only implications.

Quote:

I flat out disagree with the lecture.

You flat out disagree with a lecture presented at Yale? And you have information to support this that is inaccessible to the very intelligent and professional people at Yale?

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@Cyracuz,

Well, okay, but I don't see how "shared environment" encompasses very much in that case. The professor says something about how having lousy parents would fall under "shared environment", because "presumably two siblings raised in the same household would have the same lousy parents." But that seems wrong, since the same parent may adopt one persona when dealing with one child and a different persona when dealing with the other.

Anyhow, I'm still only at the 42-minute mark.

Thanks for pointing out the distinction between "shared" and "non-shared."

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@Oylok,

If one parent adopts different persona for each child, wouldn't that fall under the category of non-shared environment? I think we have to view it from the perspective of the subject we are examining, not from ours or the parent's.

I think the purpose of establishing "shared environment" and "non-shared environment" is to identify factors that have any bearing by categorizing them. Even though "shared environment" apparently has little bearing, that doesn't mean that there are no experiences that can be categorized as "shared".

Intuitively, though, I get the impression that this is a slight oversimplification. As he says during the lecture, he intends to revisit alot of the subjects he touches on in later lectures, which may mean that he didn't give the full story this time around. My point is that it seems to me that an experience can have elements of both shared and non shared environment. I don't think it happens quite so neatly as he presents the theory.

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Okay, I found the twin argument somewhat more compelling. He finally won me over to the side of genetic-determinism with his example of the "giggle twins" (as I think they were called) who grew up on different sides of the world and both giggled at everything.

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

My point is that it seems to me that an experience can have elements of both shared and non shared environment. I don't think it happens quite so neatly as he presents the theory.

Yes, that's a good point. Consider the case of an alcoholic parent, who shows favouritism towards one of two children. The parent's alcoholism and all its violent consequences are common to the experiences of both children, but the favouritism renders their experiences different.

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@Oylok,

In that case I would think that the favoritism could be seen as positive "non-shared environment" for the one and a negative "non-shared environment" for the other. It could perhaps be thought of as a shared environment for both, but that wouldn't really account for why one got messed up and the other did fine.

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@TuringEquivalent,

TuringEquivalent wrote:

The debate is over. Watch the entire lecture: http://sciencestage.com/v/30491/13.-why-are-people-different?:-differences.html

Some where at the end of the lecture, it states "identical twins separated at birth are so similar that a brain scan cannot distinguish between the twins".

Any opposing view points?

0 Replies

@TuringEquivalent,

TuringEquivalent wrote:

The debate is over. Watch the entire lecture: http://sciencestage.com/v/30491/13.-why-are-people-different?:-differences.html

Some where at the end of the lecture, it states "identical twins separated at birth are so similar that a brain scan cannot distinguish between the twins".

Any opposing view points?

TE, I don't think the debate is over; it remains a stand-off but only because some people want to be absolutely on one side or the other. It seems to me that in most situations--perhaps even in the IQ scores of identical twins) there is slipage between function (behavior) and structure (physiology). It's more a matter of both nature AND nurture, rather than either nature OR nurture (except in rare situations).
I do not think people's responses to "identical" stimuli are ever necessarily identical; we do not respond to stimuli directly--except at the most primitive levels of reflexive response--we respond through our interpretive understandings of the stimuli. There is usually the intermediate "black box" of interpretation at various levels of consciousness. We might agree with some sociologists who say we do not respond simply to situations but more complexly to our (culturally and psychologically constituted) definitions of situations.

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@Oylok,

Oylok wrote:

I'm about halfway in and have already spotted simplistic statements like:

"Two people raised in the same house by the same parents have 100% the same environment."

That is obviously wrong for a couple reasons. First, if the siblings differ by a couple years in age, then one has the experience of of growing up with an older sibling, while the other has the experience of growing up with a younger sibling. Totally different, in other words. Second, even if you're talking about fraternal twins, one may be an early bloomer, and the other a late bloomer. So again you effectively give one a more-mature, dominant sibling to work with, while you give the other a less-mature sibling. It's a key environmental difference in what they will be exposed to.

Of course, it's hard to have "powerful" models unless you abstract out half the important facts.

So far, I needn't even quibble about your analysis. I flat out disagree with the lecture.

In any case, I already knew about the heritability of IQ. That personality differences could be innate as well seems like the most interesting point.

Really? How do you deny the high heritability of IQ, and personality?

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Quote:

So, this leads to two surprising findings of behavioral genetics. This is the first one. There is high heritability for almost everything. For intelligence, for personality, for how happy you are, for how religious you are, for your political orientation, there--for your sexual orientation, there is high heritability. There's a high effect of genes for just about everything.

from http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:h_cvqsq0SIEJ:oyc.yale.edu/yale/psychology/introduction-to-psychology/content/transcripts/transcript13.html+there+is+high+heritability+to+almost+everything&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com

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@TuringEquivalent,

TuringEquivalent wrote:

Really? How do you deny the high heritability of IQ, and personality?

I don't deny it. You see evidence of both all around you in daily life.

Bloom made a few minor claims in the middle that I didn't particularly like. That's all.

I can poke further holes in that claim that "nature has won", though, if you like... Twisted Evil

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nature v.s nurture debate? Nature won!

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