More generally, I believe that people who have a hard time getting started on sexual/romantic relationships have parents who didn’t have a good relationship.
Interesting. What evidence do you have for this?
I believe we’re looking at a bottleneck where only people who really want children are having children, and I don’t know what the outcome will be.
Extrapolating from the current situation, feminists, liberals, environmentalists and the highly educated don’t have kids, while conservatives and religions people do. In the unlikely case that there is no singularity or genetic engineering or brave new world style babies in tubes for the next few hundred years, the world turns back into a medieval theocracy, with nukes.
I find it plausible that at least some of the people who don’t want sex have had a traumatic sexual history. I really can’t say that the world is a worse place because such people don’t have to have sex to have children.
It depends on how it affects them. If they are a complete nervous wreck because of the trauma, maybe it is best they don’t have children? But that is a worst-case scenario.
Extrapolating from the current situation, feminists, liberals, environmentalists and the highly educated don’t have kids, while conservatives and religions people do. In the unlikely case that there is no singularity or genetic engineering or brave new world style babies in tubes for the next few hundred years, the world turns back into a medieval theocracy, with nukes.
This is a commonly-repeated point which I have seen no evidence for. Specifically, I am aware of no evidence that propensity to believe in religion is passed on as a hereditary trait. Indeed, there are many human behaviours that would seem to be highly selected against in evolutionary terms but still persist to a high degree in the population (homosexuality, etc.) The reason of course is that these behaviours have a strong developmental component that is independent of genetics.
As an anecdotal example, I am the child of very religious parents and I have zero belief in religion, and I have always had zero belief in it ever since I remember.
People always make the implicit assumption that children are going to be identical to their parents. In practice, culture, environment, and other factors play a huge role. The key to securing the future success of a society lies less in getting ‘smart’ people to breed and more in providing a good and intellectually stimulating environment for future children to grow up in.
This is a tangent, but I just caught myself thinking, ‘If my religious parents had a less amorphous image of religion—although maybe in their heads it really is so—a more structured way of how the world should be, instead of is, I would find religion more to my liking. After all, they taught me to doubt, they taught me to tolerate incompatible beliefs when they don’t likely lead to what I consider ‘bad outcomes’, they taught me to be curious about the world, so they have to have these values themselves! But no, it was as if they just thought religion is something you pick up with age… Maybe religious and unreligious people are more concerned about their own generation, and the respective vocal minorities who ‘go after the children’ are regarded as truce-breakers?
This is a commonly-repeated point which I have seen no evidence for. Specifically, I am aware of no evidence that propensity to believe in religion is passed on as a hereditary trait. Indeed, there are many human behaviours that would seem to be highly selected against in evolutionary terms but still persist to a high degree in the population (homosexuality, etc.) The reason of course is that these behaviours have a strong developmental component that is independent of genetics.
Also, homosexuality is 35-40% hereditary. There have been twin studies done. This is plausible, if for instance its caused by recessive genes which confer a homozygote fitness boost.
The key to securing the future success of a society lies less in getting ‘smart’ people to breed
Intelligence isn’t orthogonal to religiosity, and I didn’t propose any sort of eugenics.
and more in providing a good and intellectually stimulating environment for future children to grow up in.
Why do you believe this? All the evidence I’ve seen is that intelligence is mostly genetic, and providing an intellectually stimulating environment (beyond normal schooling, I suppose) will have very little effect.
I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you; I know that homosexuality is somewhat influenced by genetics. Which is why I said it has a strong developmental component. It is not 100% genetic, like eye color or skin color.
All of this said, twin studies are highly unreliable and I don’t recommend them as hard and fast evidence.
Why do you believe this? All the evidence I’ve seen is that intelligence is mostly genetic, and providing an intellectually stimulating environment (beyond normal schooling, I suppose) will have very little effect.
I’m not talking in terms of raw intelligence potential per se. I’m talking about how that intelligence is used. I’m sure that “medieval theocracies” had plenty of smart people, in fact they were almost definitely just as smart, in raw intelligence terms, as people are today. This is why I’m saying the key to a successful society lies in providing a good cultural environment for children to grow up in.
The Amish are actually a good example, they live quite differently today than they used to in the past and they’re starting to embrace non-indigenous technology; some examples include more use of things like cellphones and motorcycles. If given 100 years, would the Amish still live as they do today? It’s very likely in my opinion that they won’t. There have been many ultra-conservative religious movements in the world that persisted for centuries and then died out in a single generation due to changing factors in the external world.
OK, I’ll be clearer: the Amish are a closed subculture within the U.S. Inside the Amish little world it is very difficult to learn about other ways of living. Outside of the Amish little world, but still within the U.S., you find the tremendously complicated, varied, and unpredictable chaos that is normal society, where you can see both the borders of other closed subcultures (e.g. underground crime syndicates, elite social clubs, or Druze) and the cross-pollination between relatively more open subcultures (e.g. hipsters, emos, goths, surfer dudes, straight-edge punks, Harley-Davidson riders, tattooists, backpackers, metalheads, otakus and LARPers all hanging out with each other) which together constitute the “normal.”
Inside the Amish little world it is very difficult to learn about other ways of living.
This is not true. Amish do not live in gated communities. They are in daily contact with normal (albeit rural) American life.
hipsters, emos, goths, surfer dudes, straight-edge punks, Harley-Davidson riders, tattooists, backpackers, metalheads, otakus and LARPers all hanging out with each other
That’s not true either. They don’t.
In any case, your claim was “More children of conservatives does not equal more conservative people”. There are a lot more Amish and Amish are definitely “conservative people”. Why are there more Amish?
I googled it again, (I really need to start organising bookmarks more) and the first two sources I found both said religiosity/spirituality is 40-50% genetic.
Now, this doesn’t mean that the actual ideas are genetic, but unless children are separated from parents at birth they will pass on memes too. Its also possible that in a secular environment, people with a genetic tendency towards religion will adopt a quasi-religious attitude towards philosophies or politics.
It is also possible that in some places, current world religions loose out memetically before the religious genes take over, and the future theocracy could be some kinda new-age religion. I’m not saying its likely, but I am pointing out that I’m not arguing that specific ideas are genetic, only that traits such as religiosity are.
I should have been clearer—I find it very plausible that people whose parents had an unhappy marriage are more likely to have trouble getting started on relationships, but that’s what I find plausible, not what I have evidence for.
I find it very plausible that people whose parents had an unhappy marriage are more likely to have trouble getting started on relationships
I don’t know. I find it very plausible that children of bad marriages would have trouble creating and maintaining a stable and happy relationship, but I’m not sure about just starting a relationship.
Part of the situation is that people are under less pressure to start relationships (less likely to deal with parents who are demanding grandchildren), and that they’re in a social environment where it’s easier to turn people down. Even a slight flinch reaction at the idea of starting a relationship is going to raise the threshold effort.
I’ll track down the link if it’s wanted, but there was a piece by a woman from the UK who decided to accept every date that was offered to her. It turned out that a lot of men had no plans for the date—they’d say “whatever you want to do”. Admittedly, this isn’t a formal survey, but I wonder whether it’s an indication of a lot of men who aren’t actually enthusiastic about dating.
It turned out that a lot of men had no plans for the date—they’d say “whatever you want to do”. Admittedly, this isn’t a formal survey, but I wonder whether it’s an indication of a lot of men who aren’t actually enthusiastic about dating.
I don’t think offering a woman the choice of what the date is about indicates lack of enthusiasm of going to a date with the woman.
The thing is “signal” is at least a two place verb—it probably needs more places because there are a large number of people involved.
I may have just acquired signal as a word to be sensitive to—signals have to be interpreted, so just saying something is being signaled leaves out altogether too much variation in many cases.
Behavioral genetics has only found weak effects from parenting (shared environment). While the nature of the research only allows for detecting large effects, and I doubt your specific argument has been studied, I generally assume such selection effects are weak unless there is evidence to indicate otherwise.
Edit: Unless you’re arguing that if someone’s parents are naturally bad at relationships, they too will be bad at relationships, but since whether a marriage is good or bad is generally more complex than that I don’t think that’s what you’re arguing.
Interesting. What evidence do you have for this?
Extrapolating from the current situation, feminists, liberals, environmentalists and the highly educated don’t have kids, while conservatives and religions people do. In the unlikely case that there is no singularity or genetic engineering or brave new world style babies in tubes for the next few hundred years, the world turns back into a medieval theocracy, with nukes.
It depends on how it affects them. If they are a complete nervous wreck because of the trauma, maybe it is best they don’t have children? But that is a worst-case scenario.
This is a commonly-repeated point which I have seen no evidence for. Specifically, I am aware of no evidence that propensity to believe in religion is passed on as a hereditary trait. Indeed, there are many human behaviours that would seem to be highly selected against in evolutionary terms but still persist to a high degree in the population (homosexuality, etc.) The reason of course is that these behaviours have a strong developmental component that is independent of genetics.
As an anecdotal example, I am the child of very religious parents and I have zero belief in religion, and I have always had zero belief in it ever since I remember.
People always make the implicit assumption that children are going to be identical to their parents. In practice, culture, environment, and other factors play a huge role. The key to securing the future success of a society lies less in getting ‘smart’ people to breed and more in providing a good and intellectually stimulating environment for future children to grow up in.
This is a tangent, but I just caught myself thinking, ‘If my religious parents had a less amorphous image of religion—although maybe in their heads it really is so—a more structured way of how the world should be, instead of is, I would find religion more to my liking. After all, they taught me to doubt, they taught me to tolerate incompatible beliefs when they don’t likely lead to what I consider ‘bad outcomes’, they taught me to be curious about the world, so they have to have these values themselves! But no, it was as if they just thought religion is something you pick up with age… Maybe religious and unreligious people are more concerned about their own generation, and the respective vocal minorities who ‘go after the children’ are regarded as truce-breakers?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity#Genes_and_environment
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-08/what-twins-reveal-about-god-gene
Also, homosexuality is 35-40% hereditary. There have been twin studies done. This is plausible, if for instance its caused by recessive genes which confer a homozygote fitness boost.
Intelligence isn’t orthogonal to religiosity, and I didn’t propose any sort of eugenics.
Why do you believe this? All the evidence I’ve seen is that intelligence is mostly genetic, and providing an intellectually stimulating environment (beyond normal schooling, I suppose) will have very little effect.
http://www.medicaldaily.com/intelligence-and-iq-scores-children-are-not-influenced-parenting-style-good-or-bad-313588
I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you; I know that homosexuality is somewhat influenced by genetics. Which is why I said it has a strong developmental component. It is not 100% genetic, like eye color or skin color.
All of this said, twin studies are highly unreliable and I don’t recommend them as hard and fast evidence.
I’m not talking in terms of raw intelligence potential per se. I’m talking about how that intelligence is used. I’m sure that “medieval theocracies” had plenty of smart people, in fact they were almost definitely just as smart, in raw intelligence terms, as people are today. This is why I’m saying the key to a successful society lies in providing a good cultural environment for children to grow up in.
More children of conservatives does not equal more conservative people. For the godzillionth time: transmission of ideas is not genetic.
Amish population grew by about 120% between 1992 and 2013. Do you think their ideas are that attractive..?
The Amish are actually a good example, they live quite differently today than they used to in the past and they’re starting to embrace non-indigenous technology; some examples include more use of things like cellphones and motorcycles. If given 100 years, would the Amish still live as they do today? It’s very likely in my opinion that they won’t. There have been many ultra-conservative religious movements in the world that persisted for centuries and then died out in a single generation due to changing factors in the external world.
The Amish intentionally restrict their children’s exposure to foreign ideas. That’s less achievable in normal society.
Define “normal”. US looks pretty normal to me :-/
OK, I’ll be clearer: the Amish are a closed subculture within the U.S. Inside the Amish little world it is very difficult to learn about other ways of living. Outside of the Amish little world, but still within the U.S., you find the tremendously complicated, varied, and unpredictable chaos that is normal society, where you can see both the borders of other closed subcultures (e.g. underground crime syndicates, elite social clubs, or Druze) and the cross-pollination between relatively more open subcultures (e.g. hipsters, emos, goths, surfer dudes, straight-edge punks, Harley-Davidson riders, tattooists, backpackers, metalheads, otakus and LARPers all hanging out with each other) which together constitute the “normal.”
This is not true. Amish do not live in gated communities. They are in daily contact with normal (albeit rural) American life.
That’s not true either. They don’t.
In any case, your claim was “More children of conservatives does not equal more conservative people”. There are a lot more Amish and Amish are definitely “conservative people”. Why are there more Amish?
From Wikipedia:
Rumspringa notwithstanding, the Amish way of life has several built-in features that repel modern influences without needing physical fences to do so.
Well, of course. That’s how a culture survives without being melted down in a pot. In a certain sense, that’s what makes it “conservative”.
I googled it again, (I really need to start organising bookmarks more) and the first two sources I found both said religiosity/spirituality is 40-50% genetic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity#Genes_and_environment http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-08/what-twins-reveal-about-god-gene
Now, this doesn’t mean that the actual ideas are genetic, but unless children are separated from parents at birth they will pass on memes too. Its also possible that in a secular environment, people with a genetic tendency towards religion will adopt a quasi-religious attitude towards philosophies or politics.
It is also possible that in some places, current world religions loose out memetically before the religious genes take over, and the future theocracy could be some kinda new-age religion. I’m not saying its likely, but I am pointing out that I’m not arguing that specific ideas are genetic, only that traits such as religiosity are.
I should have been clearer—I find it very plausible that people whose parents had an unhappy marriage are more likely to have trouble getting started on relationships, but that’s what I find plausible, not what I have evidence for.
I don’t know. I find it very plausible that children of bad marriages would have trouble creating and maintaining a stable and happy relationship, but I’m not sure about just starting a relationship.
Part of the situation is that people are under less pressure to start relationships (less likely to deal with parents who are demanding grandchildren), and that they’re in a social environment where it’s easier to turn people down. Even a slight flinch reaction at the idea of starting a relationship is going to raise the threshold effort.
I’ll track down the link if it’s wanted, but there was a piece by a woman from the UK who decided to accept every date that was offered to her. It turned out that a lot of men had no plans for the date—they’d say “whatever you want to do”. Admittedly, this isn’t a formal survey, but I wonder whether it’s an indication of a lot of men who aren’t actually enthusiastic about dating.
I don’t think offering a woman the choice of what the date is about indicates lack of enthusiasm of going to a date with the woman.
It might be a matter of tone, but I’d rather hear at least an offer of a plan with room for other suggestions rather than no plan.
There are two different issues:
1) What does the woman prefer.
2) What does this behavior signal about the guy.
The thing is “signal” is at least a two place verb—it probably needs more places because there are a large number of people involved.
I may have just acquired signal as a word to be sensitive to—signals have to be interpreted, so just saying something is being signaled leaves out altogether too much variation in many cases.
Behavioral genetics has only found weak effects from parenting (shared environment). While the nature of the research only allows for detecting large effects, and I doubt your specific argument has been studied, I generally assume such selection effects are weak unless there is evidence to indicate otherwise.
Edit: Unless you’re arguing that if someone’s parents are naturally bad at relationships, they too will be bad at relationships, but since whether a marriage is good or bad is generally more complex than that I don’t think that’s what you’re arguing.
I agree, that does sound plausible, both genetically and psychologically.