Russian scientists showed in the 1990s that a strong selection pressure (picking out and breeding only the tamest fox pups in each generation) created what was — in behavior as well as body — essentially a new species in just 30 generations. That would correspond to about 750 years for humans. Humans may never have [...]
Posts Tagged ‘biological determinism’
Stop making excuses
Malcolm Gladwell, the genetic freak of nature who brought us the clear and intelligent The Tipping Point, has now brought us excuses: “People don’t rise from nothing,” he writes. “They are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of [...]
Monks and Knaves
Election 2008 is important like every piece of history is, because the next piece is built on the last. This one will be important for a major reason: it divided the monks from the knaves. Imagine a small medieval valley with a small town in it — maybe 2,000 people. In this town, the movers [...]
Problems with equality in education
High schools are coming under pressure from the federal government to improve the nation’s dismal dropout rate — one in four students. “In this country today, half of our minority students do not get out of high school on time. That’s outrageous,” Spellings said in Columbia, S.C. Making schools responsible for progress in every group [...]
At least 40% of your personality is 100% genetic
An Australian psychologist has aggregated the results of hundreds of studies on human behaviour and found 40 per cent can be put down to human genetics. “We looked at a whole range of normal and problem behaviours, and what we found was that again and again, the genetic component of these behaviours tended to clump [...]
Secrets of the Ancients revealed
Scientists have discovered that high achievers such as company executives, Olympic athletes and even world leaders live on average up to four years longer than the general public. Researchers believe that being both industrious and scrupulous at the same time appear to be the key to the extra longevity even though the individual’s jobs may [...]
Education doesn’t change people
Among high-school students who graduated in the bottom 40 percent of their classes, and whose first institutions were four-year colleges, two-thirds had not earned diplomas eight and a half years later. That figure is from a study cited by Clifford Adelman, a former research analyst at the U.S. Department of Education and now a senior [...]
On the importance of IQ
4. The spread of people along the IQ continuum, from low to high, can be represented well by the bell curve (in statistical jargon, the “normal curve”). Most people cluster around the average (IQ 100). Few are either very bright or very dull: About 3% of Americans score above IQ 130 (often considered the threshold [...]
“This Is Progress”
Patients begin preventative measures based on gene tests Slowly, science is convincing us that genetics (i.e., nature) is responsible for most of what occurs in our lives. Yes, behavioral sciences still have their uses, and psychology shouldn’t be entirely ignored. The problem is that genetics is universal and psychology & other behavioral sciences can be [...]
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