you can't take it back it's out there

a voice for nature

Dr. Steven Pinker argues that significant innate behavioral differences exist between individuals and between men and women. Discussing child-rearing, he says that children's characters are shaped by their genes, by their peer group and by chance experiences; parents cannot mold their children's nature, nor should they wish to, any more than they can redesign that of their spouses. Those little slates are not as blank as they may seem.

Hundreds of studies have measured correlations between the practices of parents and the way their children turn out. For example, parents who talk a lot to their children have kids with better language skills, parents who spank have children who grow up to be violent, parents who are neither too authoritarian or too lenient have children who are well-adjusted, and so on. Most of the parenting expert industry and a lot of government policy turn these correlations into advice to parents, and blame the parents when children don't turn out as they would have liked. But correlation does not imply causation. Parents provide their children with genes as well as an environment, so the fact that talkative parents have kids with good language skills could simply mean that and that the same genes that make parents talkative make children articulate. Until those studies are replicated with adopted children, who don't get their genes from the people who bring them up, we don't know whether the correlations reflect the effects of parenting, the effects of shared genes, or some mixture. But in most cases even the possibility that the correlations reflect shared genes is taboo. In developmental psychology it's considered impolite even to mention it, let alone test it. [Source: Edge]

Why do people believe that there are dangerous implications of the idea that the mind is a product of the brain, that the brain is organized in part by the genome, and that the genome was shaped by natural selection?

- Dr. Steven Pinker [born 1954] on the ways genes shape human behavior. More here.

youth in solitude

"If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination."
- Thomas de Quincey [1785-1859] wrote Confessions of an English Opium-Eater [1821] which was about his opium and alcohol addiction.

A contemporary perspective on murderous thoughts from Harvard Psychologist Steven Pinker here.

Being Human

1/3 of Men and 15% of Women frequently fantasize about  killing someone they don't like; 3/4's of Men and 60% of Women occasionally think of doing so.

Statistics cited by Steven Pinker [born 1954], Professor of Psychology at Harvard, who argues that the human mind, like the human body, has been designed by natural selection through the process of biological evolution. A brief interview with Pinker discussing his book The Blank Slate here.

Denial is not just a river in Egypt

Denial is a defense mechanism postulated by Sigmund Freud [1856-1939] in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.

Certain personality disorders tend to be characterized by denial more than others. For example, those with narcissistic personality disorder deny information that suggests they are not perfect.

Harvard Psychology Professor Steven Pinker [born 1954] does not consider himself a radical thinker; watch the video of his discussion about his book The Blank Slate: A Modern Denial of Human Nature and judge for yourself.