Nature vs nurture

Do people differ psychologically from each other more because of their biology or because of their environment? I used to not think about this much, and when I did I would definitely favor the environment. I've always had a utopian side which wants to believe in the underlying good and limitless malleability of people. But I've also had a curiosity for the truth, and science (and real life) have a way of shaking even the most cherished beliefs of anyone with an open mind.

Part of it is that I can't resist a good, high stakes debate. Think about the huge implications-- if the environment is responsible for most of our differences, then there are concrete changes that we can make to start making things a lot more fair and equal in our educational system and the economy. If genes are responsible for most of our differences, then we're living under the veil of a huge cultural myth and our understanding of ourselves as a species is greatly hampered. Either way, brash teenager that I was, I set out a few years ago to solve the puzzle of nature vs nurture.

A huge amount of research has been done on the genes vs environment question, and it can be overwhelming at first. But, as with all things, you eventually start getting a hold of it. The surprising finding from the research is that genes are more important than we'd expect, and that the environment doesn't work in the way we'd expect it to.

The best controlled studies-- those of twins or adopted kids-- find that which (first world) family you're raised in has little or no effect on your later personality or intellect as an adult. To give a concrete example, there tends to be little or no correlation between an adult adoptee and his parents for IQ, personality traits, or psychopathology. This flies in the face of research by developmental psychologists who have been reporting correlations between kids and their parents for years, but never controlling for heredity.

The twin and adoption studies have various problems, though, which might be biasing them significantly against the family environment. I've dabbled quite a bit in that debate, and even wrote an article arguing for the importance of which family you're raised in for your eventual IQ. Debates over social science statistics are incredibly difficult, so my policy is to remain skeptical but open to differing viewpoints and theories.

While the significance and nature of environmental influences remains unclear, no one thinks that genes don't play a significant role in psychological differences. So, this decade will be a very interesting one, as big studies using new genome-scanning technology discover the genes underlying everything from Crohn's disease to neuroticism.

Religion

Right now at the Large Hadron Collider there are a group of scientists using one of the greatest, most magnificent machines in existence to study the smallest theorized constituents of the universe. If you think more abstractly about it, the scientists are themselves made of these small particles. So, after billions of years of evolution, the universe is studying itself.

When I think about things like this, or the fact that I even exist and have consciousness, I am led to believe that there is some supernatural force (God) which is trying to assert itself, by guiding the progress of the universe, towards truth or the Good or something else. This is not only an intellectual view; I feel it deep down in the same way that any fervent religious believer does. Sometimes I'll be going about my day and get this "feeling" about the universe, about God.*

This idea has been around for a while-- it's called Logos:

Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, wrote in the first century CE. Philo offered a syncretic theology that attempted to blend Hebrew tradition and Greek philosophy, faith and reason. Such reconciliation required eschewing a literal reading of scripture and embracing an allegorical one, which Philo did happily. In Philo's theology, the Logos—reason, order, or the Word—is conceived in the mind of God and then uttered into the physical universe. The unfolding of the Logos introduces, among other things, a directionality into history.

Beyond the "feeling" I have for it, it's possible to create many strong arguments in favor of a supernatural force. First, there's the fact that for no apparent reason, a universe exists with laws which are fine-tuned for the evolution of life into higher forms of consciousness. Second, a completely natural metaphysic is unable to explain consciousness. Conscious experience is itself supernatural because it cannot cause things to happen, as things in nature are supposed to be able to; some philosophers wish away this problem by pretending that brain function and consciousness are identical. Obviously, there are also arguments against the supernatural-- e.g. if the supernatural force favors our spiritual/moral evolution, why does it allow all this interfering stuff like evil get in the way? I haven't spent enough time reading about ethics, religion, and free will to competently address these arguments, but they don't seem unanswerable to me.

But what do I think of existing religions, like Christianity, Judaism, and Islam? I think the first thing that needs to be acknowledged is that the core texts of all the religions in the world are made-up stories. Moses didn't split the Red Sea, Jesus didn't walk on water, etc. If you spend some time reading up on historiography, history, and social psychology, you'll see that there are relatively straightforward historical explanations for how these religions came into existence and came to make the claims that they do. Physics, as set forth at the Big Bang, is simply not violated.

On the suggestion of my friend, I took the Beliefnet Beliefomatic quiz. I highly suggest taking it. My top result was "Unitarian Universalism." Reading up on this religion, I find that it holds pretty much the same views as I do. Like me, it is hesitant to lay out the specifics of God. On this basis, people criticize it for "having nothing to say." Compare this with the various major religions which are insistent that there are really two Gods, or that God is one and has three parts, or that God wants you to stop eating pork.

However, I am not a Unitarian Universalist. I am Jewish; I follow the commandments to a reasonable extent, such as keeping kosher. Now, why would I identify as Jewish if I don't completely agree with its theological beliefs? Really, it comes down to Judaism having a richer tradition, and that I identify with the group maintaining that tradition. Maintaining its ethnocentric and esoteric traditions is part of that. Obviously, there's a down side to excessive group identification, so I try to keep a balance.

As I said, I have much more to read about ethics, religion, and free will. Maybe as I learn and think more, I'll move beyond the broad concept of Logos. In the mean time, I'm in awe of the wonderful universe that we're living in.

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*I definitely think there's something to the idea of religious feeling being genetic. I have the "God gene(s)", and I'm friends with many people whom never have spiritual feelings. I think the genetic element is mainly limited to the emotional side, though.. There are a good amount of people who have religious feelings but don't believe in the supernatural, and people who believe in God w/o the associated feelings.

Iran and the Bomb

Yesterday's New York Times published an Op-Ed entitled "There’s Only One Way to Stop Iran" by a foreign policy analyst specializing in nuclear proliferation, Alan J. Kuperman. Unlike most people I've read who urge action against Iran, he put forward a very reasonable and convincing analysis.

Kuperman begins by outlining the evidence that Iran is quickly headed, politically and logistically, towards a nuclear weapon. I believe the facts are very much on his side here. Even a writer at the leftist New York Review of Books estimates that Iran could have a bomb in as soon as 6 months.

Kuperman then argues that the best way to prevent an Iranian bomb is through an airstrike, as opposed to the full-scale invasion desired by some neoconservatives such as Norman Podhoretz. I'm in full agreement that an invasion is a bad idea. If Iraq has shown us anything, it's that you can't invade a Middle Eastern country thinking you can create stability and peace, let alone a liberal democracy.

This all begs the question, though, of whether an Iranian bomb is truly a threat to Israel and Middle East peace at-large. Critics of intervention against Iran argue that it would be completely crazy of Iran to ever use a nuke, because of the massive retaliation that would ensue against it. I emailed Kuperman for his thoughts on this argument, and he told me:

I think there are powerful elements in Iran who would do so, especially if they thought it could not be traced back to Iran. Given Iran's opaque, unstable, and non-unitary political apparatus, it cannot be ruled out that such elements would some day be in a position to do so.

No one can say precisely what are the odds that a nuclear weapon would be transferred, but to me they seem non-trivial.

Again, Kuperman seems to be staking out pretty solid ground. If you want to tell me that concern over Iran is alarmism, you also have to show me that there is no reasonably possible scenario where an Iranian bomb would be used against Israel.

Gender identity: nature and nurture, but mainly nature

Reiner & Gearhart's NEJM Study on Cloacal Exstrophy - Review by Vernon Rosario, M.D., Ph.D.:

Of their 16 affected subjects, 14 had been reassigned female at birth. At follow-up, between ages 5 to 12, 8 of those reassigned female now identified as boys. The children and their parents completed a battery of questionnaires assessing psychosexual development, sexual identity, and gendered behavior. Follow-up assessments were done at least annually ranging from 34 to 98 months follow-up. All of the subject had moderate-to-marked male-typical attitudes and interests. The two children reared as males continued to identify as males. Of the 14 reassigned female at birth, five still persistently identified as girls, four spontaneously declared a male identity, and four chose to identify as boys after told that they were born male.

While nature can explain why most of them later identified as male, the 5 who didn't suggest a significant role for the environment in the development of gender identity.

American Bureaucrats and Explorers

I was recently visiting a small, boring Midwestern college. While touring the campus, I ran into a middle-aged man with dozens of small bags of popcorn and a dull expression on his face. I was pretty bored, so I decided to try my luck at hustling a bag of popcorn from him.

In the most jovial way possible, I say "Hi there. I'm visiting your excellent town, and really enjoying this great university, and it strikes me that the only way I could really improve my experience would be to try some of your excellent local popcorn."

The guy tells me that the popcorn is a reward for people who watch some student's film that the university is featuring. Apparently the film is so boring that they need to bribe people to stay the whole way through.

Unmoved (and, more accurately, annoyed) by my friendly attempts at popcorn acquisition, the guy tells me that I should wait until after the people watching the flick are done.

So, I go and do some other stuff, and come back a while later as people are leaving the theater. No one is interested in the popcorn. The guy has to start marketing it to people. "Try some popcorn!".. He's interrupting conversations. When he finally starts getting takers, he tells people to "take two!". There are literally dozens of popcorn bags there, and he still hasn't offered me one.

It's at this point when I realize that he's actually trying to prevent me from getting any. This guy is experiencing something I can only call "authoritarian spite". He has his worthless little job (probably titled Assistant Events Director or what have you) and he's enjoying the small sense of bureaucratic power/responsibility he gets from denying a person something that they kind of want.

The sad thing is that there are millions of people like this throughout America. They're in a pointless bureaucratic position, and they're unmoved by any appeal to them as an individual.. In fact, they savor the chance to reject individual warmth and decency in favor of their place as a cog in the bureaucracy. The Bureaucrat is an American archetype.

However, America provides another archetype which is a foil to the Bureaucrat. I'm talking about the Explorer. The Explorer is a person who lives by their own rules, seeking out new territory and challenges. An Explorer is a misfit in traditional society, forced either by temperament or circumstance to "build cities on the slopes of Vesuvius."

The Reconstruction Era was the heyday of the Explorer, with folks like Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane out winning the West. American Explorers have left their mark at every point throughout history, though. In the 1930's you could find them among the Okies and Arkies in California. The Explorers in Easy Rider hit the open road in search of the frontier spirit that America had forgotten. Today the American Explorer can be found making millions with an innovative idea, or living life on edge, one adventure to the next. That same spirit, that same drive to explore uncharted frontiers has never left us.

Everyone worth knowing in America is somewhat of an Explorer; everyone worth knowing in America has something of the original pioneer spirit.