The question of what is the optimal outcome for a particular person is subjective. Economists may believe that one outcome is optimal for me, while I believe that an entirely different outcome is optimal. If so, then my definition of “rational self-interest” would be different from the one used by economists. For example, if economists believe that it’s always in my self-interest to have as much money and material goods as possible, while I believe that it’s sometimes in my self-interest to have less, that would be one source of disagreement.
Thus far you haven’t specifically mentioned any study. If you wanted to convince me that “humans are hardwired with various cognitive biases (too numerous to list here) that enhanced our chances of survival on the savannah eons ago”, the obvious thing to do would be to give proper citations (authors, title, and publication information) for scientific papers which definitely establish that to be true. Alternatively, you could just link to the papers. I’ve never seen any such papers, despite reading many books on the topic and participating in many threads on the topic. I have seen a few papers more or less as I described: a scientist surveys a few American college students, finds that a majority of them have a certain taste or exhibit a certain behavior, and concludes that all human beings are hardwired to behave that way by their genes. I have never seen any paper on the subject more rigorous than that, so if you’d like to provide one, I’d be happy to read it.
For that matter, I can’t really understand how one would conclude that a certain behavior is caused by genes without being able to name the genes that cause it.
If all human beings are hardwired with certain cognitive biases, then to me it seems fairly obvious that peer review won’t eliminate those biases, and may well make the problem worse. Imagine for example that humanity was hardwired with a bias to perceive red objects as blue. If both an author and a peer reviewer agreed that a particular object was blue, that would do nothing to solve the problem, since it might well be that they had both fallen under the influence of the same cognitive bias. That’s a goofy example, but the same sort of thing could affect research on any other topic.
I don’t know what the accepted rules are on these things but I’ve been carefully avoiding spoilers for that movie and you’ve just given a major plot point away.
I don’t like the OP’s question, because when I try to look at it objectively, I can only conclude “we’re doomed”. We use more and more powerful tools and are indeed prone to misuse them, be it deliberatly or accidentally.
Of course, it could take several centuries, but that’s the blink of an eye even simply by comparison with how long we’ve existed as a specie. I expect we won’t make ourselves go completely extinct, at least.
Now I’m going to forget the question and think about our bright short term future instead.
Oh for the love of Pete - sigh yourself. :rolleyes:
You have no evidence whatsoever for the bolded part of your quote and if history is any predictor you never will present any evidence. Once again you confuse your beliefs for fact.
There is not much that is controversial about the part of the quote you commented on (the wording in the last sentence is terrible and not what is meant by genetic). I doubt there is a single human characteristic where its variability is not partially contributed to by genetic variation. There is also not a single human trait where environmental variability has no relationship with the trait’s variability.
As a test, name a human cognitive trait and I think I can find the evidence necessary to show that there is a genetic component to its variation.
I went to a family reunion many years ago on my mothers Italian side. She had 6 brothers and each one of those had about 5 or more sons. Every single one of the men at the picnic from this side of the family including myself left one corner of their sandwictch uneaten. My father picked up on this after getting on me and my brothers for always leaving one small corner of our sandwich or burger or hot dog. I have always wondered about this as it seemed obviously genetic somehow.
True, and should be convincing enough on its own, but I think the doubt people express that ‘trait x is genetic’ is a malformed question: “Is it really true that in humans, variability in behavior is partially due to genetic variation?”. So a doubt like zoid’s is most fairly addressed with the literature on humans.
Two off the top weaknesses of these studies: They’re from the same lab or at least the same department (always makes me uncomfortable when I don’t find an independent replication; on the other hand this view of humor and these studies are relatively new). Also, I am not linking to studies you have to pay to read.
Now these are heritability studies and there are caveats, but none so damaging that you cannot regard the data as evidence of a relationship between genetic variation and behavioral variation. If you really want to see something about specific genes and specific cognitive behaviors then you will need to focus on something that could be measured in nonhuman animals.
It could not be imitation because we never spent any time around that side of the family. That doesn’t sound like a behavior that would be imitated anyway. When I get to the last bite in a sandwich I just have no desire to eat it.
Well, if you think there is gene for not eating one corner of a sandwich, maybe you could do some research and publish a paper. There’s probably a Nobel Prize in Biology with your name on it!
Well if it takes several centuries, there’s a decent chance that we’ll have a few space colonies up and running. Which implies that the end of one ecosystem won’t be the end of all ecosystems.
And speaking personally, if we can’t manage to avoid extinction over the next 100 years, well that’s just pathetic: it’s not clear whether the loss of such a lame species matters especially, at least from a less than wholly anthrocentric POV.
John, just an observation that I thought very strange myself. I think I had it slightly off though. I believe it was my uncles who left their corners and the sons of my aunts. So it seems to be carried by the females. It has been over 50 years since I had this conversation at the reunion.
Besides some years breeding bird dogs and racing pigeons I have no expertise in genetics but how else could it be explained. I have very often seen quirks in dogs and pigeons that would accurately tip me off to a trait I was either avoiding or desiring.
John Mace - how do you reconcile these to snippets:
a)
b)
Just to be clear - I advocate the stance you have taken in the second example.
I believe there are numerous traits that are not genetic at all but learned. Speech for example has been shown to not present in individuals without a conducive environment (feral children are the example I’m thinking of).
That would be true if those cognitive biases were spread across the population for any given phenomenon–but they’re not. The specific cognitive bias that needs to be overcome in published academic work is confirmation bias, where the originator/holder of an idea will tend to overweight evidence that appears to confirm his idea, and discount evidence that appears to contradict it. Obviously, peer review will insert an element of objectivity, since the reviewers will have no personal stake in the idea.
Also, it’s untrue that the effects of the hardwiring cannot be overcome. For instance, there’s the cognitive bias called “fundamental attribution error,” where we interpret another’s actions as due to personality characteristics and completely ignore the context of those actions (this happens all the time on these boards). If, in our social interactions, we remain aware of our own tendencies toward this bias, we can stop ourselves and modify our snap-evaluations of others’ behavior.