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Matus1976

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  1. Matus1976

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    The 'blank slate' is a figurative one because while our behavior is a complex interaction of chance, environment, genes, and choice, choice ultimately over rules the others. Through introspection and habitualization one can generally alter their behavior even when it is influenced by our genes. No one has been presenting such a rigid egalitarian stance, it's obvious that we have genetic differences and that these limit our potential in some areas, but the degree to which genius or ability is commonly attributed to genetic head starts or predispositions is a gross exaggeration. For starters, from the largest identical twin studies IQ seems to be about 85% genetic, meaning a large variation in IQ can come from nutrition, environment, habits, and choices we make. Further, some research suggests that IQ is fixed throughout life, while others suggest that it can be changed. Still other research suggests that IQ tests are incredibly disingenuous representations of intelligence anyway. Other research suggests that the general average IQ is climbing in humanity, which contradicts the notion that it is fixed either throughout life or genetically. So your gifted level IQ could very well have come from things you've done in your life, and not just the genes you were born with. As I pointed out to Sophia, very small differences, below the threshold of perception level, especially starting at a young age, can grow into tremendous differences later on. As a child or while growing up it's entirely plausible that you engaged in many activities which you might have done only slightly more frequently than other children but that never the less created a profound difference in your ability by 12th grade. Hard work and the results there of are not a direct indicator of ability. You can work or train very hard, but if you do not do it properly, you will not get any better. I've spent many thousands of hours driving, but I am perhaps only a slightly better car operator today than I was 10 years ago. If I spent thousands of hours on a police driving training course, I'm sure my skill levels would improve dramatically. What you study and how you study make a big difference. If your friend spent hours trying to memorize every minute detail, he would waste a great deal of time and not score very well. Perhaps in your study, you recognized the important facts, considered what was likely to be on a test and what was not likely, focused on patterns between and within data, and looked for the over arching concepts that governed that knowledge, and not necessarily memorized every tiny note. No one is disputing that we all have different levels of ability, or that everyone is capable of anything (Obviously Stephen Hawking won't be running any Marathons anytime soon) what I am disputing is the extent to which this is attributed to genetic 'gifts' and not attributed to the things we do throughout life. Since our actual ability to memorize things varies very little among typical humans (including those of high IQ) the large difference in your and his ability is probably more a result of his poor study habits and practice and the advantages you've gained throughout life because of thing's you've done or chosen to integrate. Is your father good at math? Your mother? grandparents? Where is the genetic link that has caused you to be good at math? Why these concepts came easy to you might not be obvious, but just because you can't think of any obvious reason (any more than a gifted artist would realize that at 2 months he was 1% more likely to grasp an object or trace a line in the floor) does not mean it automatically must come entirely from genetics. One of the most remarkable things about Einstein's family is that they were entirely unremarkable. When asked by an early biographer whether he got his incredible intelligence from his mother or his father, he insisted neither, and that he was just passionately curious. Well, had you never cracked open that biology text book at all, it's doubtfull you would have scored well on it. So you do work for them. But you may have done a great deal of related work when very young at a critical stage of physiological development of your brain, it may have been an entirely unrelated tasks but one that ended up using a part of your brain which also happened to be used in making connections or grasping mathematical concepts later on.
  2. Matus1976

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    Actually it's probably thousands, and nice context dropping, but when I say there are 12 genes I'm talking about genes that govern the HUMAN brain. There are some 500 genes that pertain to cellular replication alone, and of course cells in the brain also replicate. But the context of this discussion is the variability from one human to another, genes that all animals share in regard to their brain are not relevant, genes that humans share with primates are also not relevant. The more complex a system is, the less tolerant it is of mutation and variation. Mutations in these genes usually have tremendous consequences of functionality. They don't make you better at math, they make you have a small barely functioning brain. It seems two genes primarily control the size of the human brain, and a mutation in one of these causes the Microcephalin gene to not function properly, causing microcephaly. The Brain is simply too complex to be determined by a small number of genes, these genes control the general structure of the brain, the underlying pattern which governs the growth of it. You prove the point, the vast majority of potential mutations to the genes that pertain to the human brain cause significant problems, when they all operate normally you attain a normal human functioning level. When they have mutations, you perform poorly or not at all, such as in Anencephaly.
  3. Matus1976

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    Yes, I remember you saying you could not be a great guitar player because your thought your hands were too small. I wonder then what you would say of a video like this? Dude rocks out on a giant guitar As for the opera singing question, first, I did not say that anyone can become great at anything, Stephen Hawking won't be winning any marathon's anytime soon. But I do assert that virtually anyone can become at least an expert, and probably great, at virtually anything. Beyond that, I do not know enough about vocal chord physiology or opera to answer your question. Assuming I have a limited vocal range, can I be an opera singer yet only have a vocal range that is within one octave? Can your vocal chords be trained to extend into other physical ranges. Googling 'extend your vocal range' turns up many hits, though I am not clear if it is physically possible. Perfect pitch is not necessary, and even if it was, as long as you arent deaf you can learn to distinguish notes. Many foreign languages are tone based. But yes it is entirely possible that some people might not have the physiological ability to become great at some things.
  4. Matus1976

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    True, but I do not support the idea that biological behavioral influences are absolute, because evidence does not back that up. Someone may be biologically inclined toward a shorter temperament, but active habitualization of a different temperament will eventually become reflexive. If that is your criteria than I want to ask, can you admit the opposite? That the evidence is not strong enough to reach the conclusion that a genetic predisposition must be present in order for someone to become great at something? That is, are we starting from the perspective where it is assumed that hardly anyone can do hardly anything great unless they have a genetic gift favoring that, and I must prove that these limitations are not that pronounced? Or can we start from the perspective that virtually anyone can do virtually anything great and the limitations must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. To put it another way, on a concrete personal level, if you set out to learn a new skill, do you assume you can do it unless proven you can not, or do you assume you can not do and not start it unless you prove to yourself that you can do it? With the evidence I've listed including the limited human genetic variation available and the fact that all great people can have their greatness much more obviously attributed to their hard work and purposeful study than a genetic gift, I think the later explanation is a more reasonable one to start from. Assuming axiomatically the prevalence of biological predeterminism and insisting it must be proved incorrect is arbitrary. We can just as easily start with the axiom that virtually anyone can do virtually anything great, and ask that the existence of specific limitations be proven to apply to a wide variety of the population. Either we are trying to prove you need a genetic gift to be great, or that you don't need a genetic gift to be great. In the former case, we must examine everyone who is great and show that they have this genetic gift. In the latter, all we need do is see one single person who does not have this genetic gift and we have proven that it is not required to be great. I wasn't specifically referring to that, but it's a good easy example to work from. And this is a good time for me to be absolutely clear that in no way I am suggesting that there is never any relative difference in the ability for a person to learn something from another person. This is obvious with even the most cursory examination. What is wrong though is to automatically attribute that completely to genetic variation. In your case, even as a child, you still had years of developmental influence, choices that you and your parents made, which could have influenced your ability to pick up a new musical skill. You may have also had a genetic predisposition to make it more difficult, but how would you isolate the two? From the very moment we are born every thing we do and that is done to us alters our neural and physiological development, primarily while we are growing, but even into adult years. Genetic differences would be most obvious in two scenarios 1) with absolutely no conditional differences and 2) with identical controlled conditional differences over a long time. The first would best be approximated by newborn infants. The second is virtually impossible to create. Even if a child, starting from infancy, is 1% more likely to grasp and pick up an object, this difference, taking place throughout their developmental years, could easily be compounded into major difference in physical dexterity down the road. At 1% this is below the threshold of perceptibility (which is generally 2%) so no one would think this child had done or behaved in any different way than any other children, but these small differences early on can create tremendous differences later. I'm perusing Google scholar looking for infant performance tests on dexterity or motor skills but have had no luck so far. The papers I have found present infant scores as an aggregate to be compared against other scores, at a later age, for instance. Though I did come across this gem (emphasis added)
  5. Matus1976

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    Nor is, by your own standard "12 does seem like enough"
  6. Matus1976

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    Yes, obviously I don't have the experience directly with raising children or cultivating that kind of environment, but I'm sure that it's not just the environment and the potential but also the desire, and no child no matter how brilliant will be good at something they don't want to do, so I would never push or try to coerce or manipulate in some Machiavellian way a child into a particular course, but would only ever encourage any kind of passionate interest I observe. I want to be clear that despite my assertion that virtually anyone can become an expert or great at virtually anything, that does not in any way shape or form mean they ought to or have some moral obligation to. Further, I myself have no desire to become great at a myriad of things I am interested in, I can get to work just fine without being an 'expert' race care level vehicle operator. I'm content with being able to weld metal well, I don't need to be great at it to further my goals, and I would rather spend that time and effort cultivating other skills I find useful. You seem to be attributing your lack of success though, in other situations, to the lack of a pre-existing genetic advantage. I certainly don't know the specifics of your situation, but in my own life I've accomplished a great deal of things, taught myself many new skills, and in many of them had a great amount of difficulty getting through particular hurdles or finally conceptually grasping some difficult aspect, in many of those cases I thought that this is just not something I am able to do. But after this happened in a few areas and I pushed through it anyway, I realized that this is just a common speed bump in learning new skills, a cusp, so to speak. I think at these cusps, when progress slows dramatically and effort increases dramatically, is when many people stop. In some cases, if you didn't engage in the most worthwhile activity when you are young (like learning other languages) it makes it much more difficult to do it later on. Likewise with physically or mentally demanding habits. Further, one has to deal with one's own psychological motivation, there are many things I want to do, and it's really easy to say that or think of it, but actually doing the work required to achieve things is a far different scenario. Keep in mind many of the great artists and geniuses spent virtually every waking moment studying or refining their skill. This to me verges on interfering with a eudaemonic quality of life. If you aren't prepared to do that it's unlikely you'll become one of the greats at something. Beyond that, the way you practice and study can make a significant difference and actually prevent you from progressing in certain areas if you pursue the wrong course. Scientific American's "The Expert Mind" is excellent background on the role of the correct type of practice or study - http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-expert-mind. If a functional premise you hold is wrong it can prevent further advance (like Einstein's insistence that Quantum Mechanics was wrong) If you are memorizing something, or learning new information, there are optimal ways to do that and poor ways to do that. So again, I don't know the specifics of your situation, but it's hard for me to think of specific circumstances where you can be so sure that it is a genetic limitation you hit, and not a psychological or behavioral one. I find Francisco the least realistic of the Atlas Shrugged characters, being perfect at everything with no effort. From my own experience of numerous setbacks and missteps in learning new things to the clear historical record of all the greatest geniuses, nobody was perfect from the start, Michelangelo experimented with different painting techniques and was tutored by the greatest artists in Florence. Tiger Woods has reworked his entire swing, often at great difficulty, something like 3 or four times. Pick any genius in history and none were as superlatively efficacious as Francisco! So don't feel bad =P
  7. Matus1976

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    Right, the point is then that the extensive phenotype variation is not relevant when considering the limited genetic variation of the human species, because all species exhibit similar extensions in phenotype variation but only humans (in the context of this discussion) apparently have such a limited genetic variation. The overall available variations are just as limited. I'll have to dig the sources up. The leading suggestion for the limited genetic variation in humans is that the entire breeding adult human population dwindled to about 1,000 adults about 70,000 years ago, a time which coincides with the indonesia caldera volcano eruption. A valid point. However, how would we distinguish between these two scenarios? In one, (mine) the resultant Olympic level athletes are only the ones who through training and perseverance made it to that skill level, where there final individual differences, amounting to about 1% among each other, are probably primarily from their genetic variations. In the other scenario, These are only the top 1% of humans in the first place who also happened to have trained this long and this hard, and their resulting 1% variation is compounded with the 1% sampling. My suggestion is that that these genetic differences don't play a large role in any person until you reach this level of training, you seem to be suggesting that the genetic difference plays a large role in getting to this difference in the first place. In other words, if we take a sample of 1,000 adults, put them through identical rigorous training, diet, etc, and assume they all have the same passion and dedication to the goal, would the best person be 1% better than the worst? 10% better? 100% better? Obviously this is an extremely difficult variable to isolate. It seems your possible explanation assumes that the primary reason for quitting is because you train as hard, but aren't as good. There are a myriad of reasons why one person might not be as good as another that extend beyond genetic differences. I can't speak to the major reasons why athletes give up, but the vast majority of them won't know that they are this good until they all ready put the years and years of effort in anyway. You must first get your body to it's peak potential performance capacity before the genetic difference among individuals in that peak potential performance envelope become obvious. They may also train poorly, not have the same passion or dedication, or choose to pursue a different course in life. How many simply decide it's not worth the gamble in the genetic card game and opt for payouts that are more plausible? How dedicated would you be to spend 10 years of intense training only to find out that the guy from Kenya has a genetic advantage over you that no matter how hard you train you can not compete against? Then it's back home with no job and no skills (except running) Can we look to other areas where a large number of typical people are put through the same training and diet regime and see what their ultimate differences end up as? The only similar scenario I can think of is the PFT. The US Army has a standard physical fitness test, to pass the minimum requirements a 22-26 year old must run 2 miles (3.2km) in 16:30. The closest Olympic event is the 3km steeplechase. Reducing the Army standard to a 3.0 km instead of 3.2 would be about 15:20. The average age of the first heat of the male 3km steeple chase in the 2008 olympics top 10 finishers was 24.4 years old, and average time was 8:30. Granted, they are jumping over hurdles as well, but in this example, the worlds best trained most elite athletes and presumably most genetically gifted run 3 kilometers in about half the time that the US army lists as the minimum requirement. After one month of basic training about 90% of recruits who have not dropped out for other reasons pass the PFT. The top score is given at 12:00 minutes, which about 5% of recruits score. So, your average person after one month of training can run the same distance as an Olympic athlete at half the speed, and 5% of them can run the same distance in about 66% of the speed. With the same training and diet, they differ from each other by about 20%. I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that with more training (since this is only 1 month) that difference will get perpetually smaller. Until after about a decade you hit your peak potential performance, at the Olympic athlete level, where they differ from each other at about 1% I just don't see the evidence that at some point genetics show a person to be leaps and bounds more able than their counterparts, and that the vast majority of performance difference comes from the habits and choices made throughout life. I disagree on this, that the skill variability is not related to any specialized training. At this young age, the majority of your differences specifically come from habits and skills (from choices) you've made throughout your life and the more varied and active you are in any particular area and the younger the age the more profound the difference will have on you, because in fact your are physiologically developing at the same time, and your habits and choices can actually alter your body. Once you are an adult, your ability to alter your body is limited to some epigenetics. My favorite example of this is Tori Allen, a young female speed rock climbing phenom, watch here win the xgames gold or here doing 4 finger pull ups or this segment on She can do 2 finger pull ups, at 13 broke all the adult climbing records, has the grip strength of an NFL Athlete, her arm length exceeds her body length and has large, oversized hands, fingers, and knuckles. Neither of her parents have these traits. Instead, she acquired them because as a young girl she lived in Africa and her best friend was a small spider monkey, she basically spent all her free time climbing around trees with her Monkey. Because she was doing this while she was growing and developing, her body responded to the stresses and became more optimized for climbing. These developmental conditional advantages put her leaps and bounds over her competitors, but they are not genetic in origin. Similarly, Tiger woods was hitting golf balls before he could walk, Michelangelo was drawing human figures at a very young age, Beethoven was composing orchestras. Because of the things you choose to do as a child, you're body and mind will respond in an appropriate way which in many cases will give you an advantage for the rest of your life. Basically any activity you engage in as a child, whether tracing cracks in a floor or trying to crawl as fast as possible, has a much greater effect on 'specialized training' than almost anything you can do as an adult and will have immediate repercussions on mental and physical abilities in any other tasks you engage in. Again, the point was that human's have much less variation than other animals, even taking into account those phenotype, expressed gene and epigenetic differences, since other animals have them to the same degree. Of course, the point is though that this previously genius level ability is now far more common BECAUSE of the new training available, NOT because of a plethora of mutants. The same goes for any skill, which is why I have stated that virtually anyone can become good, an expert, or even great (depending on whether your definition of great is relative to other people or to an objective standard) at virtually anything. I don't disagree with you there, all I am saying is that the amount of difference commonly attributed to genetic variation is way over emphasized, and the amount of difference which comes from our choices and actions (especially at a young age) is way underestimated. In most cases, virtually all difference in performance between individuals comes from non-genetic origins, and only when a peak performance envelope is reached to genetic differences start to play a significant role. I don't find this troubling at all, I simply go where the evidence suggests. Human variation is extremely limited. Very few genes determine the development of the brain. Our choices have profound consequences on both the course and quality of our physiological and mental development and growth. All the great geniuses of history lived lives filled with hard work from a very young age and throughout the whole of their life. The average human brain exceeds in capacity the most powerful supercomputer today by 3 orders of magnitude. A person of average IQ who spends their life in study and continually refining their skills will far exceed the performance ability of a person with a genius level IQ who does nothing but talk about his IQ score. The predominant narrative in science today is one of biological determinism and this philosophical interpretation has come to dominate our own landscape in regards to human potentials, which has profound consequences. People who believe that intelligence is a fixed quantity avoid intellectual challenges, because they merely reveal to them their faults and limits. They despise ever being wrong because it puts a permanent ceiling on their potential for life. People who believe intelligence is not fixed thrive on intellectual challenges because of the advantages they feel it gives them. People come to attribute success not to productivity and hard work but to a genetic luck of the draw. The excessive credit given to genetic advantages is basically used as a cop out by most people as an excuse for not trying to do anything significant in their lives, like looking at a body builder and saying 'lucky you, born with all those big muscles' insulting the years of dedicated hard work they put into it. While they should never harbor the notion that they ought to do something significant in order to justify their existence, which most do owing to the altruistic ethic and secular remnant of original sin, and one major reason I think that this narrative is readily adopted, they should never the less not attribute their lack of doing anything significantly productive or innovative to some mystical genetic bad luck and instead to the fact that their life is their own to live and they don't need to accomplish anything in order to justify it. It's an incredibly psychologically crippling attitude to adopt, it scares people away from intellectual challenges, associates genius with a mystical muse like inspirational quality (which mystics readily promulgate) and has probably robbed humanity of a great variety of fantastic innovations and geniuses. More than that, it's wrong. Genetics play a significant role only at the extreme end of the performance envelope. hahaha, working on that!
  8. Matus1976

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    Thanks! There was a previous discussion on this topic which had some great exchanges http://forum.ObjectivismOnline.com/index.p...mp;#entry153833
  9. Matus1976

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    I should have clarified, I was speaking of the differences when starting from the same baseline. Earlier in that post I wrote: ...and that is certainly applicable here. Take any task and group of people, and (especially as they get older) some will have done more things in their lives that relate to the ability to pick up this particular skill. They may have learned a similar skill, or integrated a better technique for learning new things, or learned an entirely different skill which happens to be related to this one in a non obvious way. Removing all of those things and put a group of people with a new skill and they will show very similar learning curves, I would guess like the elite athlete examples, varying to less than 1%. 1%, though, can make a big difference when compounded over a long time. A nations which has 4% GDP growth per year will have almost twice the GDP after 60 years than a nation with 3% growth. If someone has a 1% advantage due to genetics, another 1% from previous skills, another 1% from knowing the best learning techniques, etc., they can add up really quick and result in a person who appears leaps and bounds more intelligent than his companion. It's very hard to get an entirely new skill that is independent of others, but simple memory tests of random strings can test this very well. Tests of these type have shown that almost all people have the same optimal memory recall interval, the same working memory length, and the same memory fade rates. Obviously learning a skill is much more complicated than a series of memories, but the more you deviate from that the harder it is to isolate the variables and the more those variations in lifelong behaviors interferes.
  10. Matus1976

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    Yes, I wanted to make it clear that I was not suggesting there are no differences, or that those differences do not effect our behavior. Even a cursory knowledge of behavioral genetics shows beyond any reasonable doubt genetic correlations to behavior, and it's wrong for objectivists to reject such clear evidence. However the idea that they are absolute and deterministic is, by that same evidence, utterly wrong. Valid point, and as I understand it current research in epi-genetics suggest still further variation which can come throughout life, even through choices we make (eating certain foods can turn off a gene expression or turn it on, for instance) But wouldn't that same extension of differences apply to any animal? If our genotype variation is limited to about 1/1,000th that of chimpanzees, but our expressional variation is greater than our genotype, wouldn't that same ratio of differences between genotype and gene expression exist other animals? Or is it generally attributed to extreme variation in human environments amongst individuals and populations, compared to e.g. chimpanzees which all live in almost identical environments. Discover Magazine on Epigenetics - http://discovermagazine.com/2006/nov/cover Well, in the physical realm, there is no one who is 10 times more efficient at storing oxygen in their hemoglobin or able to run 10 times faster than another person who underwent a similar training regime. The functional difference in elite athletes seems to be less than 1% (looking at a random sample of the top 3 finishers of a few events in the 2008 Olympics) While they may be 10x better than you or I, who have not gone through the same training, they are not 10x better than their counterparts who have. Barring gross deformaties like mental retardation of birth defects, I see little evidence that significant or big functional differences come from genes in our physical development, and the evidence to me suggests that is even less likely regarding mental capacity, given the extremely limited genetic variation that controls the human brain. Today, for example, we have some 100 times the Chess Grandmasters that we did 100 years ago, a time when to be a Chess Grandmaster was considered to be 'genius' This wasnt due to a chess gene, but the tools to teach and learn chess have become much more available and powerful, which enables so many more people to reach this level. It's clear that a mathematical genius will be more likely to rear a mathematically genius child, but if that child is raised in an entirely different environment would they end up as a mathematical genius still? The largest separately reared identical twin studies show that IQ is roughly 85% similar between them, and of all behavioral aspects the average is about 50%. Even a homosexual identical twin reared only has a 50% chance of a gay sibling. I just don't see the room or the evidence for huge functional differences in ability or capacity due to our genetic makeup.
  11. Matus1976

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    It's debatable whether 'perfect pitch' is a real thing, and whether it is a skill which can be learned. Many people suggest that it can in fact be taught, but perfect pitch is not required to be a musical talent nor a musical genius. Here is software you can download to try to develop 'perfect pitch' http://www.jimmyr.com/blog/Free_Perfect_Pi...ch_144_2007.php It's highly debatable how much of that difference actually comes from some 'innate' difference (genetic) or if it comes from a behavioral attribute adopted early on in life. Since it is difficult to test learning ability until later in life, when numerous other behavioral characteristics have taken shape, influenced by genes, environment, and choices, isolating the natural genetic component out is extremely difficult. A child may adopt play habits which make it easier later on to acquire some new skill, people no recognizing the relationship between that habit and the new skill will conclude the child has some innate 'gift'. Further, research shows that most people's ability to retain memories varies minimally across human variants, following a specific 'forgetting curve' It seems you mean here by ability something like 'are more likely to be able to learn a particular skill quicker' but again, there is very little evidence suggesting that clearly, and that the vast majority of peoples abilities to learn new skills require roughly the same amount of effort, but it must be a particular kind of effort which optimizes refreshing memories and continually pushes one's self beyond their current limit. People who spend years studying something but getting no better at it are not less capable of learning, they are not instead just not learning properly. If you have journey into artificial intelligence and technophiles circles, you will quickly come across estimates of the computing power required to emulate a human brain. Disregarding the debate about the feasibility of that, estimates are usually around 100 petaflops, or about 100 times more powerful the the most powerful current supercomputer. Given the fact that everyone of us has a supercomputer sitting atop our necks and costing us a mere few thousand calories per day to operate, I find associating talent and or genius with genetic variation, and not habitual and volitional variation, extremely disingenuous. If we used that supercomputer at nearly every waking moment to acquire, develop, and refine a skill, we will become an expert at it, possibly a genius. This is indeed what the lives of the most accomplished geniuses show. Sure, there may be a guy out there whose 1% faster, but since almost nobody utilizes their supercomputer for anything but memorizing survivor episodes, nowhere near it's capacity, variations are far more likely to come from lack of effort and not some kind of 'talent gene'
  12. Matus1976

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    Human behavior is partially influenced by our genetic makeup, modern genetic studies and evolutionary psychology show this undeniably. But the idea that human behavior is either 'nature' or 'nurture' is fallacious, not only is it an either or fallacy, but it leaves out entirely volitional choice, the way modern science frames this debate - "either your behavior is completely determined by your genes or completely predetermined by your environment and upbringing!" is terrible. Correlations between genetic makeup and behavior are never absolute. The truth of the matter is that your behavior is a complex interaction of all of the above, which Aristotle presciently opined more than 2,000 years ago "Human behavior comes from four things, chance, nature, habit, and choice" The 'blank slate' of objectivism is a figurative blank slate, not a literal one. As Rand writes, the only real choice you have is to choose to think or not think, everything follows from that. Choosing not to think means you do not critically examine yourself, including your emotional reactions, your values, things which society has imprinted on you, or whatever whim, urge, or impulse you have. It means your behavior is governed by the combination of your genetic influences and your environmental influences. While an average person might find someone very attractive because of their scent (see the T Shirt Studies below) a thoughtful introspective person would consider what values they share with that person and if integrated well their emotional reaction will follow suit. Ultimately, choice can override all other influences on behavior, but only when you choose to think about your reactions, values, and influences. Even so, human genetic variation is pretty limited, a typical tribe of chimpanzees has more genetic variation than the entire human race. There are only some 12 genes or so that influence the brain, which doesn't leave a lot of room for a gene for musical genius or mathematical genius. The lives of the greatest geniuses historically show a very clear pattern of life long deliberate study, usually starting from a very early age. Michelangelo spent his boyhood in the streets of Florence sketching the musculature of working men. Spotted by the Medici's, he was adopted and raised with all the best instruction in the arts, cultivating his skill and driven by his own passion he became one of the best artists to have ever lived. Isaac Newton famously eschewed human relationships, spending most of his life alone with his books and studies. Tiger Woods was playing golf before he learned to walk. on and on. While you may get a head start with favorable genetics, talent and ability come primarily from deliberate study and most people can become good or experts at virtually anything with the right kind of training. While you may not become the best in the world, where someone else with both the lifelong training AND genetic advantage might be better.
  13. He does say in that link I can't help but wonder now how true that ended up being.
  14. Although I havent been too happy with the series so far, I wouldn't be so quick to discount it. It seems like Goodkind's philosophy evolved during the writing of the books, so some changes would be expected. But also, this might be a good avenue to move people from thinking the way they normally do about things to a more rational non-altruistic attitude. In this case, even though . It's one thing for the character to go on a rant telling you how you ought to think, it's another to demonstrate it concretely with the mutually rewarding aspects shining through as the most important factor of the episode, and suggest reasons why he thinks that way. Rearden was quite altruistic in much of AS when it came to his family. Perhaps in a later episode, Kahlan or Richard will explicitly identify that act as not being self sacrificial but instead of their own long term rational self interest. Although right now it came out as a kind of 'pay it forward' ethic, perhaps we'll the story move toward a more critical strategic analyzation of actions and prioritization of values for things that previously might have just appeared superficially altruistic. I can easily envision a nice campfire debate about what they ought to do. Anyone know to what extent Goodkinds has creative control over the show?
  15. D'oh, my bad, sorry. I can't go back and edit it now, any admins able to? I recommend getting the books on audio if you have don't have time to down to read them, they are a gem and usually have great readers.
  16. She was raised by a general and trained to fight throughout her life, I would imagine knife throwing and good horseback riding was included in that.
  17. Wow, looks excellent. I've been eagerly anticipating this for some time, looks like it will be an excellent show and Raimi and Goodkind have complete creative control over it. This series, if popular, could be the largest boom to objectivism ever, popular TV shows reach audiences 10 times larger than popular books. I wonder what portion of people unfamiliar with objectivism read Goodkind's series and become interested in the philosophy? 10%? 1%?
  18. Everything about 'sustainability' is a bad idea. Lots of small communities producing locally only what they need is a recipe for disaster. The first drought, hurricane, or tornado that swings through will basically condemn all those inhabitants to certain death. Neighboring sustainable villages do not produce food or supplies 'in excess' as that is not sustainable. I love these people who complain that a typical watermelon travels 1,000 miles to get to your kitchen ignoring the fact that they can't actually grow watermelons, or most other crops, where they live. For many centuries frontier life in America was essentially a life of sustainability. Families lived in small crowded houses, produced enough food for themselves, made candle from animal fat from animals they raised and slaughtered, made clothing from laboriously spinning various grass like plants, and spent virtually every waking moment doing what was required just to 'sustain' themselves. PBS ran a 'reality' show which humorously emphasized this, called (I think) Frontier life, it stuck wealthy families in the middle of the oregon forest with 1600's technology and asked them to survive the winter. The father did pretty much nothing but chop wood, and the mother almost nothing but pickle things. The children tended animals and crops. All of the families worked their butts off and by the end of the summer a judge determined that none of them would have survived the winter, not enough wood or food. It was quite the entertaining show. Advanced technologies may enable a more comfortable vision of 'sustainability' The technologies that the advocates of sustainability rely on, like wind and solar power, can only be afforded because they are mass produced by giant industries. Show me a man living 'off the grid' who is able to manufacture his own solar cells, or even able to sun bake his own bricks. And as Meghan pointed out, how do you have a 'sustainable' mine? This whole thing about 'running out of resources' is an absolute absurdity. My Econ professor tried to say the same thing, so I asked, ok, why then are there more people than ever before on the earth, but every one of the enjoys a higher standard of living with more material goods than ever before? He balked and the admitted that people have been making malthusian claims for decades. The problem is environmentalist compare potential available resources of the whole planet against the population of the earth, so they think, well if there's six billion people instead of 1 billion, then everyone has 1/6th the resources! What they don't compare is the utilized and processed resources against the population. My favorite example is Aluminum. Aluminum makes up about 10% of the Earth's crust. The earth, weighing in at 5.98 x 10^ 24 kg, has about 1% of it's mass in the crust, or about 5.98 x 10^22. 10% of that is 5.98x10^21. That's how much aluminum is in the Earth's crust. This is our total available exploitable resource repository of aluminum. At a population of 1 billion people, that's 5.98x10^12 kg per person available of Aluminum. That's almost 6 TRILLION Kilograms PER PERSON. So during the course of the 20th century where the earths population rose from 1 billion to 6 billion, the available resources of aluminum per person dwindled from 6 trillion kilograms PER PERSON to a mere 1 trillion kilograms PER PERSON!!! OH NO! MY GOD! We are running out of resources!!! 1 cubic meter of solid aluminum weighs about 2,700 kg. If we were to build a skyscraper that is 1 km tall and 100 m square at it's base, it would have a total volume of 10 million cubic meters. A typical structure might use 10% of it's volume to hold itself up, making us use about 1 million cubic meters of aluminum per 1km tall skyscraper. At 2,700 kg per cubic meter, and 1 million cubic meters, our skyscraper made of aluminum weighs in at 2.7 billion kilograms. Since each person has almost 1 trillion kilograms of aluminum at his disposal, that comes out to be a large city of 370 skyscrapers FOR EACH PERSON! Really, I think I would be happy with about a quarter of one skyscraper =P The malthusiasts and dishonest economists are comparing a growing population number against an EXTREMELY large resource number, but not really acknowledging that the total available resources are so astronomically high that the idea we are running out of resources is a laughable absurdity (consider an every asteroid contains enough nickel and iron to bury the whole of the earth a few miles deep, and there are billions of these just in these asteroid belt) They just want that quick superficial knee jerk reaction. What they should compare against is the total useable exploited resources, since the potential is basically irrelevant, and the usable keeps going up every year. The environmentalist fear mongers love to scare us about Global Warming, but ignore every other threat humanity and civilization face, like caldera volcanic eruptions, asteroid impacts, supernovae, solar flares, or even coming man made ones like an out of control self replicating nanotech device. We know that global warming poses no serious existential threat, but that these other things certainly do. The proposed solutions to global warming, like curtailing industrial or economic growth, or building 'sustainable' communities, is exactly what would make it difficult to survive any of these OTHER threats we face, which are best delt with by massive industrial and economic growth, until human civilization is wealthy enough and technological advanced enough to spread out into space, mitigated the chance that any individual threat will wipe it out. That asteroid impact won't give a damn what your carbon foot print was! And it may very well wipe out ALL life on earth. Some of sustainability is good, but only when it relates to self sustaining mobile biospheres (colonies or space stations) any talk of it on earth is a waste of time. Robustness and redundancy are good things, and decentralization of critical life sustaining technologies. But reducing everyone one of us to farmers making just enough food for ourselves is a horrible idea.
  19. I want to chime in on how great this show is, here's some of the reasons... 1) clear cut good and evil The G'ould in SG-1 are parasitic beings which take over humans (and other animals) and breeds humans as both warriors and genetically altered many of them to serve as temporary hosts. They pretend to be gods and engage in fuedal power struggles between the most powerful worlords. They routinely kill thousands of people and use humans as slaves. The SG-1 team does not 'try to understand' them or negotiate with them, they pit the warlords against each other and help free the Jaffa slaves. 2) Celebrates intellectual achievement as much as physical strength The G'ould dominate most of the galaxy with millions of warships and warriors, yet they have trouble defeating the humans from earth to a great degree because they are routinely outsmarted, strategy is demonstrated to play a clearly devise role. Leading characters are brilliant and pull through with solutions at the last minute. The SG-1 teams engage in special forces like activities, while the G'Ould march in formation with little strategy. 3) it is (mostly) internally consistent. Nothing drives me more crazy than a series or movie which contradicts it's own established premises. SG-1 rarely does this, though you can find occasional slip ups (the Gould warriors seem to get weaker with each passing season) it is almost entirely internally consistent, something established in the first season is referenced and adhered to, or built on, in all subsequent seasons. 4) actions have consequences The SG team is routinely depicted as having to weigh the consequences of difficult decisions and then act accordingly, often in split second situations. Sometimes the consequences are bad and sometimes they are good. 5) plenty of moral dilemmas and moral fortitude Similarly, they must weight the moral consequences of decisions as well, in one case about extinguishing an AI life form which could destroy the galaxy, or provide the key to saving it. Tealc, a formerly enslaved high ranking Gould warrior betrayed his 'god' and joined forces with the humans in the long term hope of freeing his people from the Gould. His moral fortitude is inspiring, as he struggles with losing his wife, his son, his people, his planet, he faces every decision with the same relentless devotion to his principles, often at his own peril. 6) no 'prime directive' nonsense The SG-1 has no nonsensical rule against interfering with the cultural development of a people, especially ones who are enslaved by false gods, and they routinely supply tech and foment revolutions in societies under the enslavement of the Gould.
  20. Starcraft is such a great game. I wish Blizzard would make a "Starcraft 1.5" which just had some new maps, higher resolution, and more units. It would probably be one of the best selling games in years, and require little effort and hold us over till Starcraft 2, which, I understand, will have fewer units =/ booooo.
  21. I flew out to San Francisco in late 2007 and did the touristy rounds, but I also visited the Cordair Gallery which was nearbye at the time, the visit to the gallery was the absolute highlight of my entire trip.
  22. I would add that in addition to all the other good reasons mentioned, it is a monumental waste of time and would demand all of your waking moments and effort merely to control the rest of the people. Hardly what could be consider a fulfilling or flourishing life.
  23. Rand was not suggesting a literal 'blank slate' but a figurative one. I think this is merely an incorrect interpretation that many objectivits draw. As you point out, any cursory knowledge of behavior psychological science proves as much. Aristotle wrote that all of human behavior is a complex interaction between chance, nature, habit, and choice. This is what leads to the seemingly contradictory evidence that behavior psychology is confused over, some experiments show that certain behaviors are chosen, others show that it is linked to particular genetic markers. Rand wrote One must ask then, what guides your actions if you choose not to think? That ultimate choice, the manifestation of free will, to THINK, is what leads to volitional conscious reasoned choice. If you do not choose to think, you're behavior is influenced by your culture, or your genes. To whatever degree you choose not to think about particular behaviors, is the degree to which they are influenced by habit, culture, and genes. Some behaviors have strong genetic influences on them, some have strong environmental influences acting on them, but all of them can be over ridden by conscious volitional choice. Thus we have identical twin studies which show approximately a 50% correlation of sexual preferences, but NOT 100%. This confuses the nature vs nurture arguers, because none of these psychological studies have ever shown an absolute correlation for ANY behavioral characteristic. The more 'examined' life you live, the more likely your behavior is the product of volitional reasoned choice, and your emotions the product of new or different values integrated over your life. The less examined, the more it is governed by nature, culture, and environment. If you do not have the capacity for reasoned introspection, for example, are raised ferral, then your genetic influences pretty much take over. I think this is a reasonable evolutionary strategy, when we look at the complexity of animals, we see a progression from instinctual behavior in less complex animals (fleas, slugs, etc) to a mix of instinctual and chosen behavior (cats, mice, horses) to one which can be dominated by volitional choices, humans and probably other animals with similar brain to body weight ratios. Ultimately, in complex intelligent animals, evolution has encouraged your genetic code to be submissive to complex rational thought, obviously surviving in the real, complex world, would be easier with a mind that can make connections between events and recognize over arching conceptual basis than one which can only follow pre-programmed behavior. But if you choose not to think, your genes take over, providing a greater evolutionary advantage than random behavior does.
  24. That was exactly what I was going to recommend once I saw the title of the thread, K-Mac beat me to it! I'd also recommend adding "Asimov's Guide to the Bible" http://www.amazon.com/Asimovs-Guide-Bible-...s/dp/051734582X The top review does it justice
  25. I find this kind of thing particularly irritating. The US, as 5% of the worlds population, makes 20% of the worlds goods and services, and well over half of the worlds food supply. These kinds of statements imply that Americans are consuming 100 quadrillion Btu's per year on hot tubs and SUV's, which is completely absurd (nevermind the fact that even if we were, that's obviously not wrong anyway) If they want Americans to cut CO2 emissions (even though we are all ready one of the most effecient producers in the world compared to energy consumption) this would merely make the price of food climb, and all those Sub Saharan africans would just starve to death. From my recent blog - http://matus1976.blogsome.com/
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