Multiple factors create a multi-causal network, not a unidirectional chain
- Interdependent, not linearly separable
- Mutually reinforcing or co-constructing each other
- Context-sensitive, changing based on feedback loops or surrounding dynamics
Instead of ‘A causes B’, you get something like:
A influences B, which in turn affects A, and both are modulated by C, D, and context X
GxE: difficult dichotomy of nature vs nurture
- Complex multi-factor interplay = Decentralized Systems - difficulty in understanding it is an example of Conceptual Limitation
- The body switches on/off genes in response to the environment
- Evolved adaptations activates when environmental inputs trigger their development (calluses)
- Factors combining (not competing) → dissolving dichotomy
The framework of evolutionary psychology dissolves dichotomies such as “nature versus nurture,” “innate versus learned,” and “biological versus cultural.” If you go back to the definition of evolved psychological mechanisms, you will note that (1) environments featuring recurrent selection pressure over deep time formed each mechanism; (2) environmental input during a person’s development is necessary for the emergence of each mechanism; and (3) environmental input is necessary for the activation of each mechanism. Thus, it does not make sense to ask whether a callus or jealous behavior is “evolved” or “learned.” “Evolved” is not the opposite of “learned.” All behavior requires evolved psychological mechanisms combined with environmental input at each stage in the causal chain.
Link to originalLearning requires evolved psychological adaptations.
Link to original - Genes for resilience → higher IQ
The fact that people with high IQs have more symmetrical bodies suggests that they were subject to fewer developmental stresses in the womb or in childhood. Or rather, that they were more resistant to such stresses. And the resistance may well be heritable. So the heritability of IQ might not be caused by direct ‘genes for intelligence’ at all, but by indirect genes for resistance to toxins or infections—genes in other words that work by interacting with the environment. You inherit not your IQ but your ability to develop a high IQ under certain environmental circumstances. How does one parcel that one into nature and nurture? It is frankly impossible.
Link to original - Selecting/creating the environment (≠ passive)
The environment that a child experiences is as much a consequence of the child’s genes as it is of external factors: the child seeks out and creates his or her own environment. If she is of a mechanical bent, she practises mechanical skills; if a bookworm, she seeks out books. The genes may create an appetite, not an aptitude. After all, the high heritability of short-sightedness is accounted for not just by the heritability of eye shape, but by the heritability of literate habits. The heritability of intelligence may therefore be about the genetics of nurture, just as much as the genetics of nature. What a richly satisfying end to the century of argument inaugurated by Galton.
Link to original - Ability to absorb
the speed with which an infant habituates to a new stimulus correlates quite strongly with later IQ, as if it were almost possible to predict the adult IQ of a baby when only a few months old, assuming certain things about its education. IQ scores correlate strongly with school test results. High-I Q children seem to absorb more of the kind of things that are taught in school.
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Multi-factor determination
- The stress response
- Outside event
- Conscious/cerebral reaction
- Hormonal secretion
- Genetic switches
- Shaped by selection pressures, producing both universal qualities & individual variation
- Mental health: not psychiatric vs physical, but both
Multi-directionality
- Social behavior drives hormones
Testosterone levels correlate with aggression, but is that because the hormone causes aggression, or because release of the hormone is caused by aggression? In our materialism, we find the first alternative far easier to believe. But in fact, as studies of baboons demonstrate, the second is closer to the truth. The psychological precedes the physical. The mind drives the body, which drives the genome.
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The higher your self-esteem and social rank relative to those around you, the higher your serotonin level is. Experiments with monkeys reveals that it is the social behaviour that comes first. Serotonin is richly present in dominant monkeys and much more dilute in the brains of subordinates. Cause or effect? Almost everybody assumed the chemical was at least partly the cause: it just stands to reason that the dominant behaviour results from the chemical, not vice versa. It turns out to be the reverse: serotonin levels respond to the monkey’s perception of its own position in the hierarchy, not vice versa.
Link to original - Instincts shapes behavior > social influence
The main goal of twentieth-century social science has been to trace the ways in which our behaviour is influenced by the social environment; instead, we could turn the problem on its head and trace the ways in which the social environment is the product of our innate social instincts. Thus the fact that all people smile at happiness and frown when worried, or that men from all cultures find youthful features sexually attractive in women, may be expressions of instinct, not culture.
Link to original - Men touched more of the women who were ovulating → ovulating women initiated encounters more
Study that found that ovulating women initiate sexual encounters more than women at other phases of the cycle
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Flexible behavior & instincts ≠ opposed
- Genetically programmed to be flexible Neuroplasticity
Human x environmental
- Ultimate/Long term: environmental destruction, but could absorb
- Proximate/Short term: climate change
a series of good years, with adequate rainfall or with sufficiently shallow groundwater tables, may result in population growth, resulting in turn in society becoming increasingly complex and interdependent and no longer locally self-sufficient. Such a society then cannot cope with, and rebuild itself after, a series of bad years that a less populous, less interdependent, more self-sufficient society had previously been able to cope with.
Link to original - overshooting the environment’s carrying capacity during good times
The end of the Greenland Norse colony is often described as a “mystery.” That’s true, but only partly so, because we need to distinguish ultimate reasons (i.e., underlying long-term factors behind the slow decline of Greenland Norse society) from proximate reasons (i.e., the final blow to the weakened society, killing the last individuals or forcing them to abandon their settlements). Only the proximate reasons remain partly mysterious; the ultimate reasons are clear.
Link to original - No environmental determinism bc Irrationality
Link to originalPrivatization