Zachriel's link in a comment section about skin tone reminded me of an odd phenomenon Steve Sailer pointed out years ago: people who believe human behavior is entirely* environmental and cultural are willing to accept and even applaud research that shows differences earlier and earlier in human development. Finding themselves appalled by behavioral and cognitive differences in males versus females and among different races when they show up in kindergarten, they start tracking back, running experiments to see when this begins and what cause it. They accept that it is already present in preschool. They breathlessly report that it shows up even in toddlers. Clever researchers uncover that even among infants boys and girls look at different things, mothers speak to them differently, and Chinese infants are better-behaved and cry less often than European ones. No matter how far back we push the research, it seems, people are different.
They are not willing to push it back to before birth, however, and certainly not nine months before birth. (They acknowledge the possibility of prenatal influences in theory, but then never mention it again in any discussions, not even in recognised categories like Fetal Alchohol Syndrome. Oh that, yeah. Terrible stuff. Now, as I was saying about mother's attitudes to girls versus boys in terms of what they coo when they are nursing, did you know that their nonsense language is softer and at a higher pitch toward girls? It just goes to show...). We seem to communicate a wealth of destructive cultural information in the first few months which takes a lifetime of intervention to undo.
It is bizarre reasoning when looking at 15-year-olds and their problematic behaviors to keep going back, and back, always saying "so it must be even earlier than that, huh" through all the years that children aren't listening to their parents, their teachers, their priests, or their grandparents about anything else are somehow learning all this terrible stuff unconsciously beginning in the first year of life. It must be the TV! Or movies! Except that we reportedly had even more of those terrible ideas before there were even newspapers...
But not just a few days before that.
When what looks at the consequences of those beliefs, however, they suddenly look less bizarre. If children are already responding in horrible sexist, racist, homophobic ways by the time they enter Montessori school at age three, then it just should that we've got a lot of work to do here! The government needs to be involved, we need to have programs for toddlers, we need to get more words being spoken to little black babies, we need to supervise the colors and fabrics children are dressed in, we need to have puppets explaining to them about social attitudes and cute animated characters singing to them! This has got to be a full-court press. There is not a moment to be wasted. Civilisation is at stake. Society needs to find ten times more jobs for people like us to intervene here.
But if those things are present at conception, then there's not a lot for them to do anymore. It means those jobs are useless, and may even run the risk of being harmful. I suggest that is a powerful motivator. People may not think their particular job or prospects are in danger, but folks are extremely alert to what things benefit their tribe and which things benefit some other tribe instead. Their students, their neighborhood, their children - they are all going to need jobs, and mates, and friends, and status. And the sources of that must be protected.
*As I have noted many times, there will be a theoretical acknowledgement that some heritable factors contribute to behavior and ability, but all of their experiments and their reporting about them do not notice that this possibility is even on the table. The genetic is routinely excluded as even a possible explanation among almost everyone in the social sciences, except those who are specifically interested in it and looking for it. I mention this from time to time when a new study hits the news and I feel the obligation to point out once again that the heritable is a clearly possible explanation for x, but in this expensive study of 4,000 middle-schoolers it has clearly not even occurred to these professionals. But it gets tiring. It's always the same.
14 comments:
There's only one thing for it: a massive, tax-funded project to make sure everyone's DNA is identical.
Harrison Bergeron? Hell's Pavement?
They know what utopia is supposed to be, and come Hell or high water, they're going to force it to happen...
"They know what utopia is supposed to be, and come Hell or high water, they're going to force it to happen..."
"I have an evil plan
"To save the world for every man;
"And I think it's better than
"The way it's being run.
"Oh, the groundwork's laid!
"No, don't be afraid.
"I'm sure that I can fix it
"(When I figure out the physics).
"My evil plan to save the world;
"Just you wait 'till it's unfurled!
"It'll go down in history!
"It's prophetic!
"No, it's not pathetic!
"I can't believe I made it up myself!"
-- Five Iron Frenzy, "My Evil Plan to Save the World"
Assistant Village Idiot: people who believe human behavior is entirely* environmental and cultural are willing to accept and even applaud research that shows differences earlier and earlier in human development.
Very few researchers believe there are no important genetic differences. Indeed, most parents realize that children have their own personalities which assert themselves very early in life. However, there is also little doubt that environmental effects can occur very early in human development.
Assistant Village Idiot: Chinese infants are better-behaved and cry less often than European ones.
It's not always so easy to untangle the genetic from the environmental. For instance, babies cry less in Denmark, Germany and Japan, and cry more in U.K., Canada, Italy and Netherlands.* Note that Germans are more closely related genetically to the Dutch than to the Japanese. Kenyan babies tend to cry less often than English babies, but that may be because Kenyan mothers immediately take action to assuage the baby's concerns, perhaps due to breastfeeding far more often than English mothers.
That is not to say there are not genetic differences in baby crying, only that it is very difficult to untangle.
* Wolke et al., Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis: Fussing and Crying Durations and Prevalence of Colic in Infants, The Journal of Pediatrics, 2017
Assistant Village Idiot: When what looks at the consequences of those beliefs, however, they suddenly look less bizarre. If children are already responding in horrible sexist, racist, homophobic ways by the time they enter Montessori school at age three, then it just should that we've got a lot of work to do here!
Let's assume that xenophobia is a natural, biological response. That doesn't mean that, as we acculturate children, we don't try to minimize this natural, biological response. In modern society, we don't encourage children to bully people who look or act differently (e.g. 'sissies,' 'darkies,' 'cripples'). What may have been rational suspicion or violence towards others during lithic times may not be appropriate behavior today.
In both your comments you take what is said by researchers and social scientists at face value, which I specifically cautioned against. They say that heritability is important, yes, very important, and then design - and especially interpret - their studies so that it is not even mentioned. I dug up a quick example here
https://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2016/06/is-trauma-driver.html, though I have to say that I most frequently point it out when someone posts about a study over at Maggie's. It is not just liberals who do this, BTW, not by a long shot. In the general population, liberals may be on to this more than conservatives. But social science researchers are drawn enormously from one side of the political spectrum.
As to your comment that "there is little doubt..." that's one of my red-flag terms of an assertion that is not much true, but people want to shut down counter-argument. In your case I don't think that is quite so, but you are slipping there if you think that is true. There is actually a lot of doubt, and strong evidence or early childhood influences are not robust, other than highly physical ones like starvation or exposure to toxic substances.
As to the second, that is the theory, yes. That was what I was trained on in the 1970s and how we started in child-rearing. Rather intensely, in fact, because we did believe that time was of the essence and early childhood intervention was going to be key. I learned both personally and professionally, from a lot of trying to modify the behavior of actual human beings, that the acculturation and minimisation you speak of has much less influence than advertised.
I have no other evidence than what you have put forward here, but I have to guess on that basis alone that you don't have much experience with this. People usually need to watch a second child grow up, or adopt, or work with very small children to have the point driven home that the theory is weak.
Assistant Village Idiot: In both your comments you take what is said by researchers and social scientists at face value
On our first comment, not sure why you would be unduly skeptical about Wolke et al. Are the underlying studies unable to properly measure and report crying and colic in babies? Seems to be straightforward empiricism directly relevant to your claim above.
Assistant Village Idiot: that's one of my red-flag terms of an assertion that is not much true, but people want to shut down counter-argument... strong evidence or early childhood influences are not robust, other than highly physical ones like starvation or exposure to toxic substances.
So our statement was ... true.
Even your own previous blog suggests the same. Some people are more genetically susceptible to trauma. That some who are susceptible to trauma are then subjected to trauma and some are not is a strong environmental influence on their development.
Our second comment isn't based on a study, but an argument. Do you reject the premise, that xenophobia is innate?
We know culture can have an effect on the development of minds. There are deadening schools just as there are enlivening ones, and much can depend on the accident of being in contact with other creative minds. If DNA didn't matter, though, as Heinlein said, you could teach calculus to a horse. There's a big difference between making the most of one's immutable raw material and imagining that everyone's raw material is so close to the same that a few tweaks in the environment will override all differences. I wasn't going to be a star basketball player no matter how nurturing my environment was, and Joseph Robinette Biden wasn't going to win a Nobel Prize in a real subject even if someone had taught him to think honestly or carefully.
Do you reject the premise, that xenophobia is innate?
As far a as I can tell, you reject the premise when it suits your argument, and accept it it when it suits your argument.
If children can be trained to not act on xenophobia, what's the evidence that they aren't trained to act on it, or vice versa?
Christopher B: As far a as I can tell, you reject the premise when it suits your argument, and accept it it when it suits your argument.
As was clear from context, we introduced it arguendo. (Clue: the use of "Let's assume ....") Our argument followed from the premise. Xenophobia is probably innate in humans, at least to some degree. Then again, so is curiosity.
Christopher B: If children can be trained to not act on xenophobia, what's the evidence that they aren't trained to act on it, or vice versa?
Assistant Village Idiot addressed that, noting that xenophobia can be found in very young children. There is a complex interplay of innate and behavioral characteristics, far more so in humans than other organisms, so it can be difficult to untangle. Is xenophobia learned? Innate suspicion and curiosity concerning strangers can find many different expressions in human cultural behavior.
I forget just how long ago it was, and where I first ran into a "Zachriel" comment, but now when I see a "Zachriel" commenting, my mind says "DANGER, Will Robninson! DANGER!! Install Distrust Mode!!"
What is so seductive about the 'Equality-of-Outcome-is-something-we-can-engineer" school of thought that it doesn't crush itself under the weight of its own obvious fallaciousness? The evidence that there is a range of differences in the human physical and behavioral condition from birth onward is ubiquitous.
I've come to conclude that it's really just the seduction of having control over others. The argument is just the vehicle to get there.
Zachriel has done much better here than at Maggie's and I have enjoyed the interactions here more. He has now resorted to referring to himself by the pronoun "we," which I just find too irritating to deal with, and this might correlate with what I objected too before: subtle changes of subject. misunderstanding what I wrote, seizing on small points, refusing to acknowledge the slightest difference, ignoring the points which he doesn't like.
I have banned him in the past for these things, but I won't this time. He has earned the right to stay over the last few months. He simply does not see what is obvious to others about his forest/trees approach. I suspect I know why, but don't know, and won't speculate again.
Aggie: What is so seductive about the 'Equality-of-Outcome-is-something-we-can-engineer" school of thought that it doesn't crush itself under the weight of its own obvious fallaciousness?
While the claim that *everything* is environment is certainly wrong, it is a view rarely held today.
It's important to point out that, though human nature is relatively fixed, human culture has gone through vast changes over time. In just a few millennia, human kind has seen the invention of government, the notion of "unalienable rights," the democratization of government, the complex interplay of organization at all levels of society; international, national, city, neighborhood, military, police, church, political parties, public interest, clubs; increasing ethnic and cultural diversification; not to mention technological innovation.
So, while humans still grapple with jealousy and trust, violence and understanding, modern culture provides a framework for human nature to play out in a quite different manner than that of Abraham. It's not just possible for aspects of human behavior to change through culture, it's inevitable. Indeed, that's the history of civilization.
Assistant Village Idiot: Zachriel has done much better here than at Maggie's
We haven't appreciably changed in that respect. For instance, as per our wont, we provided an empirical study that appeared to contradict your claim about infant crying.
Assistant Village Idiot: subtle changes of subject. misunderstanding what I wrote, seizing on small points, refusing to acknowledge the slightest difference, ignoring the points which he doesn't like.
This is where you could point out how the subject changed, where we misunderstood what you wrote, what larger point we missed, identify the slight difference, and explain what point we missed.
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