The Nature/Nurture Debate

[OverlordMondo]

"Been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding." - LIT

 

Most children are raised by their biological parents, which means it's probobly a combination of the two, though if I had to choose, I'd say environment had more to do with it.

 

Even if they're raised by foster parents or something, foster parents tend to be the "holy" set of parents that don't allow you to do anything, which is just as bad, if not worse, then parents who are alcoholic and beat you for no reason. I see my parents as better than most, but still not perfect, and far from the average. Yet most people would look at me and assume that I'm a depressed suicidal dude who writes poetry about death. Those people are pricks.

[Skythe]

Don't you mean the other way around?

No.

[shin_nihon_kikaku]

though if I had to choose, I'd say environment had more to do with it.

Me too.

[shin_nihon_kikaku]

Don't you mean the other way around?

No.

Surely you understand that genes (nature) alter your physical appearance and the environment (nurture) alters the mental side...

You have mixed up.

Edited September 21, 2004 by shin_nihon_kikaku

[Gryph]

You do realize that the condition of the grandparents and previous generations is also important because that's how genetics works. Sure for the nurture part going back to parents is okay, but to use just parents to try to figure out the nature part wouldn't work. That why scientists are always on the lookout for large families who span several generations.

[Skythe]

Surely you understand that genes (nature) alter your physical appearance and the environment (nurture) alters the mental side...

You have mixed up.

No I didn't mix my post up cuz it was about behavior not apperaance. Your attempt at correcting me to your point of view is void.

 

Since someone decided to use Gattaca as an example. There's an old black and white film that I will use but sadly I can't remember the title. Basically, it's about a young girl who kept killing random people for no reason at all because of her genes that affected her mental state while growing up in a rich/clean neighborhood which gave her nice/innocent look thus no one believing she could do such a thing. I saw this film thanks to my PSYCHOLOGY CLASS!!!

[shin_nihon_kikaku]

At first this made sense as a decent experiment, and then I realized it's kind of a chicken and the egg issue...  What if Child A's scumbag parents were only scumbags as a result of their environment?  Likewise about Child B's great parents.  Without making any unscientific assumptions, how would you tell when you got a set of genes that were prone to "good" vs. "bad" things?

 

I guess you'd have to find people with traceable genetic tendencies, like a family history of depression or something.  And even then it seems like it would be tough to tell what's what if each successive generation was raised by the previous.  Weirdness..

I understand what you were getting at now. I was only considering that it didn't matter how the parents who were to raise the children, got how they were (good or bad people).

 

I didn't realise that you were talking about how you would find the children with the definite bad genes because when I came up with this far-fetched experiment I wasn't thinking about that. It could never be a real experiment and was all hypothetical so I didn't go into how you could 'make sure' that the children in the experiment had the genes they were supposed to have. There would be many more problems that would arise to call into question the purity or accuracy of the test. So hypothetically, you would agree that, if it could all work as it was supposed to, the upbringing would affect the outcome far more?

Edited September 21, 2004 by shin_nihon_kikaku

[Daeval]

At first this made sense as a decent experiment, and then I realized it's kind of a chicken and the egg issue...  What if Child A's scumbag parents were only scumbags as a result of their environment?  Likewise about Child B's great parents.  Without making any unscientific assumptions, how would you tell when you got a set of genes that were prone to "good" vs. "bad" things?

 

I guess you'd have to find people with traceable genetic tendencies, like a family history of depression or something.  And even then it seems like it would be tough to tell what's what if each successive generation was raised by the previous.  Weirdness..

I understand what you were getting at now. I was only considering that it didn't matter how the parents who were to raise the children, got how they were (good or bad people).

Right, at first glance, that wouldn't matter. Maybe it would to a psychologist for reasons I didn't think about, but I dunno, I'm not a psychologist.

 

I didn't realise that you were talking about how you would find the children with the definite bad genes because when I came up with this far-fetched experiment I wasn't thinking about that. It could never be a real experiment and was all hypothetical so I didn't go into how you could 'make sure' that the children in the experiment had the genes they were supposed to have. There would be many more problems that would arise to call into question the purity or accuracy of the test.

Right, it looked good on the surface, until I started thinking about it. Like most things, it's more complicated than it first appears. That's why we leave these things with people to degrees in real life.

 

 

So hypothetically, you would agree that, if it could all work as it was supposed to, the upbringing would affect the outcome far more?

Ehhh.. Maybe.. See my first post in this thread about my general views on all that. It would be interesting to find out, but until convinced that's where I stand.

[shin_nihon_kikaku]

Yeah I think the experiment would produce very interesting results but the test could never be done. Which is a shame really.

[shin_nihon_kikaku]

Since someone decided to use Gattaca as an example. There's an old black and white film that I will use but sadly I can't remember the title. Basically, it's about a young girl who kept killing random people for no reason at all because of her genes that affected her mental state while growing up in a rich/clean neighborhood which gave her nice/innocent look thus no one believing she could do such a thing. I saw this film thanks to my PSYCHOLOGY CLASS!!!

The neighbourhood obviously only made her look slightly different (clothes, hair, cleanliness etc). If both her parents were downright ugly looking trailor trash, she would look very ugly also.

 

I think this film sounds more like a spin on how genes and upbringings actually work. In real life, the genes affect physical appearance much more than how they are brought up.

 

It is true that nature and nurture can or do affect both the physical and mental parts of a person. But i think that nature affects physical more and nurture afects the mental side more.

[Gryph]

Alright, time to whip out my notes from Freshman biology. These come directly from it:

 

A measure of the influence of genes and the environment on the phenotype is heritability.

 

Heritability - the proportion of phenotypic variation in a population that is due to underlying genetic variation. For example - skin color differences can be due to genetic differences and/or due to difference in exposure to sunlight in the recent past.

 

Heritability ranges in value from 0 to 1. H = 0 means all of the phenotypic variation is due to environmental differences - e.g. language spoken.

 

H = 1 means all of the phenotypic variation is due to genetic differences - e.g. tongue rolling.

 

Many traits are due to a combination of genetic and environmental influences. Normally heritability is measured as a statistic - a ratio of measures of variation. Heritability can also be measured by raising a large number of pairs of identical twins in different environments. If the twins, when raised apart, always exhibit the same trait, then the heritability is high (near 1). If the twins almost always exhibit different traits, then the heritability is low (near 0).

 

Measuring heritability can be tricky because the measure always depends on the environment in which the measurement was made. For example, if all twins were raised in Norway then we might conclude that speaking Norwegian is a highly heritable genetic trait. If all twins are raised in different countries with different languages then we would conclude the language has a low heritability.

 

Many human behavioral traits have been shown to have both a genetic and environmental component: introversion/extroversion, the tendency to smoke, the tendency to curse, sexual orientation, marital fidelity.

 

If you have time then you should read these: http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp806845.html

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heredity/

[Jjangthekid]

i was just reading my pyscho book too and came to the nature/nurture debate..

 

from what John Locke said..our minds are started out as a blank piece of paper..and through experiences..you'll become that "person"..bc of those memories../experiences.

 

so i say environment.>?

[Gryph]

i was just reading my pyscho book too and came to the nature/nurture debate..

 

from what John Locke said..our minds are started out as a blank piece of paper..and through experiences..you'll become that "person"..bc of those memories../experiences.

 

so i say environment.>?

John Locke was also a flocking idiot. Not really. We read some stuff by him in Psych but my teacher didn't like him for some odd reason. I think my teacher was the idiot.

Edited September 22, 2004 by GryphonKlaw

[AntiWinner22]

I have AP Psy and this comes up a whole lot as well:

 

Well, look at this way. Say someone created an exact duplicate of you. EXACTLY the same genetically. Would he run out the same as me? Do twins, even, turn out the same? No.

 

Anon.

[Jjangthekid]

i was just reading my pyscho book too and came to the nature/nurture debate..

 

from what John Locke said..our minds are started out as a blank piece of paper..and through experiences..you'll become that "person"..bc of those memories../experiences.

 

so i say environment.>?

John Locke was also a flocking idiot. Not really. We read some stuff by him in Psych but my teacher didn't like him for some odd reason. I think my teacher was the idiot.

ehh..i just took info from what i read..didn't really say if he was stupid or not..but he went against socrates and plato.i think..or was it aristotle??