The bio-determinist child-rearing rule of thumb [but see caveats below!]: Things you do as a parent will have generally small or zero effects on what the kid will be like as an adult—their personality, their intelligence and competence, their mental health, etc.
I found it pretty interesting here and back when I was reading about it that this list does not include happiness. This is part of a larger societal disinterest in happiness. But I do wonder if it might be influenced by parents nontrivially by them seeding children with a life philosophy and a set of cognitive habits about how to think about life.
I also noticed that the data they tracked about how parents treat children included no efforts to determine how much parents actually loved their children, or how much they fought with their children. While most parents, particularly the middle-classers that take part in studies, love their children, how much and whether that prevents ongoing feuds with their children does seem to vary a good bit.
Of course that would be problematic, because how much parents love and feud with their children is also clearly influenced by how much said children are acting like little shits. :)
I doubt any of these would show large effects, I’m just noting their absence.
I used to care about genetics for reasons 2 (what effect do parents have) and 3 (do your adult decisions like attending therapy really matter), back when I planned to use my PhD in cognitive psychology and neuroscience to write about “free will” (really self-determination; do our decisions matter for our outcomes) in ourselves and our society. My thesis was that we have substantial self-determination but also substantial limitations in it; and that liberal American philosophies tend to emphasize the extent to which we don’t, while conservative American philosophies emphasize the extent to which we do. Neither is entirely correct, causing strong adherents of either to make no sense and therefore be super irritating to talk to.
But those ambitions ended when I first read Yudkowsky, and decided free will was small potatoes in the face of an onrushing intelligence explosion and alignment crisis. Thus, my ideas related to genetics have never before been published, and probably won’t be. Thanks for the excuse to rant.
Again, wow. I’ll be referring anyone to this writeup if they express more than the vaguest interest in what we know about genetics.
Wow! That is a hell of a comprehensive writeup.
I found it pretty interesting here and back when I was reading about it that this list does not include happiness. This is part of a larger societal disinterest in happiness. But I do wonder if it might be influenced by parents nontrivially by them seeding children with a life philosophy and a set of cognitive habits about how to think about life.
I also noticed that the data they tracked about how parents treat children included no efforts to determine how much parents actually loved their children, or how much they fought with their children. While most parents, particularly the middle-classers that take part in studies, love their children, how much and whether that prevents ongoing feuds with their children does seem to vary a good bit.
Of course that would be problematic, because how much parents love and feud with their children is also clearly influenced by how much said children are acting like little shits. :)
I doubt any of these would show large effects, I’m just noting their absence.
I used to care about genetics for reasons 2 (what effect do parents have) and 3 (do your adult decisions like attending therapy really matter), back when I planned to use my PhD in cognitive psychology and neuroscience to write about “free will” (really self-determination; do our decisions matter for our outcomes) in ourselves and our society. My thesis was that we have substantial self-determination but also substantial limitations in it; and that liberal American philosophies tend to emphasize the extent to which we don’t, while conservative American philosophies emphasize the extent to which we do. Neither is entirely correct, causing strong adherents of either to make no sense and therefore be super irritating to talk to.
But those ambitions ended when I first read Yudkowsky, and decided free will was small potatoes in the face of an onrushing intelligence explosion and alignment crisis. Thus, my ideas related to genetics have never before been published, and probably won’t be. Thanks for the excuse to rant.
Again, wow. I’ll be referring anyone to this writeup if they express more than the vaguest interest in what we know about genetics.