The Grey Griffin Lounge and Coffee House

Waverly · Post by **Waverly** » Wed Apr 18, 2001 11:47 am

Alright spammer, quit dredging up the past in my intellectual coffee house...

Minerva · Post by **Minerva** » Wed Apr 18, 2001 11:48 am

Sorry, Waverly. You are right.

FoulDwimmerlaik · Post by **FoulDwimmerlaik** » Wed Apr 18, 2001 11:50 am

Sorry Waverly, I'll try to make her stop. No more dredge-spamming in here.

Minerva: Do you remember way back when Chrissy and Waverly were arguing...

Minerva · Post by **Minerva** » Wed Apr 18, 2001 12:07 pm

@Foul: We should talk about that somewhere else...

I respect this place as for the intellectual debate, and I appreciate Waverly for trying to keep here that way.

FoulDwimmerlaik · Post by **FoulDwimmerlaik** » Wed Apr 18, 2001 3:01 pm

Originally posted by Minerva:
@Foul: We should talk about that somewhere else...

I respect this place as for the intellectual debate, and I appreciate Waverly for trying to keep here that way.

Oh, I couldn't agree with you more. There it is then, no more spamming in here. Sorry again Waverly

Minerva · Post by **Minerva** » Wed Apr 18, 2001 3:03 pm

@Foul: Okay, let's go somewhere else... Your place, or mine?

C Elegans · Post by **C Elegans** » Wed Apr 18, 2001 4:23 pm

Originally posted by Flagg:
we all turn out a certain way. I am wondering whether this because it is basically decided in our genes or are we formed by our environment?

In case of the environment, how is it possible that two brothers raised in the same way turn out to be completely different?

So are we born with a blank slate or are we born with a blueprint to our character?

Dear Flagg, you ought to know better that get me going on a subject like this. The classical "nature v nurture" question.

The Greek philosopher Theophrastus wrote as early as the 4th century BC "Why is it that while all Greece lies under the same sky and all the Greeks are educated alike, yet we all have characters differently constituted?"

My hypothesis on this, would be that genetics and environment both contribute roughly equally to individual differences. Not in a deterministic fashion, but in a complex, interactive, multifactor way.

Many different approaches have been used to study influence of genetic factors in human personality, behaviour etc, including comparison of family members, twin studies and adoption studies. In order to control for similar environment, many studies have studied twins separated at birth. Like I wrote in an earlier post about religiosity, the conlusions of these studies are that monozygotic (identical) twins are significantly more similar in than dizygotic (fraternal) twins, even when raised in different families. Genetic influence consistently show an explanatory power of about 50%, and family and peer factors about 45%. These findings support the view that genetic factors are important determinants of personality and behaviour, and some or all of these factors, may have evolutionary basis. So wer are certainly not born as "blank wax tables"!

Flagg · Post by **Flagg** » Thu Apr 19, 2001 12:30 am

@Miss E., To what extent would it then be possible to influence a person's character by altering his genes?

Flagg · Post by **Flagg** » Thu Apr 19, 2001 2:59 am

Another interesting question. Do we live in a world in which freedom of speech is really possible. GameBanshee is for example a place where this is (unfortunately) not possible. Does this make GameBanshee a bad place?

C Elegans · Post by **C Elegans** » Thu Apr 19, 2001 3:46 am

Originally posted by Flagg:
@Miss E., To what extent would it then be possible to influence a person's character by altering his genes?

To quite a large extent, probably. But to what extent also depends on what environment a person is living in. For example, if a child is constantly abused and neglected by the parents, no genotherapy in the world could take away the disruptive effect this had on the child's character. But the child's genetic makeup probably contributes a lot to the severeness and quality of the effects.

fable · Post by **fable** » Thu Apr 19, 2001 12:37 pm

@C Elegans: And to make things more complicated, certain environmental factors may contradict or transform the effects of others, while certain genetic factors are masked, or inhibited for bio-chemical reasons although present.

Moral: We should all just sit back, ignore the Human Genome Project, and agree that life is one big crapshoot.

Brink · Post by **Brink** » Thu Apr 19, 2001 10:23 pm

Ignorance is bliss

C Elegans · Post by **C Elegans** » Fri Apr 20, 2001 6:09 am

@Fable: Yes, and it's very improtant not to jump to premature conclusions and generalisation in this are. Media unfortunately tend to simplify a lot.

@Brink: Why do say that? Is it your answer to the classical question what is best, being a happy pig or an unhappy Socrates (famous Greek philosopher).

Brink · Post by **Brink** » Fri Apr 20, 2001 7:26 am

C Elegans-Something like that (in other words,a summary of fable's post before me

)

Brink · Post by **Brink** » Sat Apr 21, 2001 7:41 pm

Originally posted by Flagg:
Another interesting question. Do we live in a world in which freedom of speech is really possible. GameBanshee is for example a place where this is (unfortunately) not possible. Does this make GameBanshee a bad place?

I don't think that freedom of speech in the world is possible,at least not at the moment.If we do have freedom of speech now,there are bound to be people who will abuse this priviledge to cause havoc and misunderstandings with others.I feel that freedom of speech in the world will only be possible once humans as a whole respect each others' opinions or at least become more open-minded about things.

Minerva · Post by **Minerva** » Sun Apr 29, 2001 8:32 am

QUESTION

How do you learn/been taught about so-called "discovery of the new world" in 1492? And, do you use the word "discovery" for it?

Hazim ibn Gorion · Post by **Hazim ibn Gorion** » Mon Apr 30, 2001 1:06 pm

...looks like a good point to jump in. I had never bothered to scroll down far enough to realize that there WAS a "speak your mind" forum. C Elegans (an elegant name for such a--ahem--curious creature) was polite enough to invite me in for a drink 'n' chat.

Regarding 1492, thinking people everywhere recognize that the European colonization of the Americas (if we should call them that) was plainly an invasion. By definition, we took land from its inhabitants and sent them packing, or just killed them outright (to such an extent that you could accurately call it "genocide" as well). Was it a "discovery"? Well, whose perspective are you asking for? It was certainly a discovery to the Europeans, inasmuch as we didn't know it was there.

Now, having said that, I think the PC set frequently makes some absurd assumptions and arguments about the topic in question. The most annoying of these is the tendency to see the aboriginals as peaceful folk living in perfect communion with Mother Earth. Poppy****. Intertribal warfare was common and viscious. And the only thing that really held back serious environmental degradation was smallish population. (There's some pretty juicy literature on forest decimation by non-nomadic natives even before Columbus...stuff that would really cause Sting to well up a tear.)

Another is to deride Columbus, and by extension Europeans, for confusing the "New" world with the East Indies. That's a historically arrogant position if ever there was one. Consider how sketchy and subjective our (Europe's) knowledge of east Asia was in the 15th Century. I think that, in Columbus' shoes, it was FAR more reasonable to assume his calculations had been off (by quite a bit, no doubt) than to think he'd just stumbled upon two whole continents that none of his people knew were even there before.

Anyway, that's my $0.02.

PS--Good quote on the nature/nurture discussion from Stephen Jay Gould: "Asking which is more important, nature or nurture, is a bit like asking which side of a quarter is worth more cents."

Weasel · Post by **Weasel** » Tue May 01, 2001 4:48 pm

Drakron Du´Dark · Post by **Drakron Du´Dark** » Tue May 01, 2001 5:01 pm

Well I am not going to anwer Minerva question.

This is for the long tread after it.

The Vikings discovered america, its a fact.

However it was the esquimos that discovered america, (yep, no native human population before that.)

Colombo (that is his name) found the caraibas, not america, he was trying to reach India by going west, instead of east.....

Why? well because he belived that earth was round and if not for that continent that was over that, he would reach it. (if he lived long enough)

True, he made a mistake about it (and we here, in Portugal were the first ones to know...he he) but from lack of actual facts about India (that is why native americans were named indios) and its culture.

C Elegans · Post by **C Elegans** » Wed May 02, 2001 2:31 pm

Originally posted by Minerva:

QUESTION
How do you learn/been taught about so-called "discovery of the new world" in 1492? And, do you use the word "discovery" for it?

I'll describe what I was taught in Swedish school, not my personal opinion about the subject matter, since those differ A LOT.

In elementary school, Colombus "discovery" (yes it is called discovery) of what he thought was India, was presented more or less like a heroic fairy tale, where brave adventurous navigators and sailors "discovered" an unknown continent. But, since I live in Sweden, we were of course also taught that Scandinavian vikings had sailed to New Foundland and named it "Vinland" long before Colombus crossed the Atlantic.

There was no real discussion about the European claim on the land. As in the case with how we were taught about the European colonisation of Africa, Australia and other places, there was little focus on what happened to the native population of those places, and more focus on the European achivements. Fortunately for me, I have always been interested in reading a lot, so I read other books that told another story.

In Swedish high school, where you go between 16-19 years of age, a more complex picture of the events was described, but still from a very European perspective. I think our books contained about 5-10 pages about the history of both South and North America BEFORE the European colonisation, but many 100s of pages about the history after that.
Interestingly, the Spanish Inquisition was presented as cruel, with descriptions of atrocities commited by the invaders, whereas the colonisation of North America was described as almost romantic. (Probably because Sweden has been protestantic for a long time, and there was a lot of Swedish people emigrating to the US.)

[ 05-02-2001: Message edited by: C Elegans ]