The making of us | Robert Plomin, Simon Baron Cohen, Güneş Taylor, Angela Saini | IAI

Robert Plomin, Simon Baron Cohen, Güneş Taylor and Angela Saini debate our genetics and the environment. Hosted by philosopher Barry Smith

00:00 Introduction
02:36 Robert Plomin
05:45 Angela Saini
08:50 Simon Baron-Cohen
12:26 Güneş Taylor

Most of us believe that our upbringing and environment are critical to our success, and to shaping the person we become. Yet a flurry of books from behavioural geneticists, backed by long-term twin studies, contend that our DNA is primarily responsible for determining who we are.

Is genetics more influential than we might wish to believe? Are parents deluded in imagining that upbringing and education are vital to their children's future success? Or do these studies and the apparent evidence risk leading us toward dangerous ways of thinking, cementing privilege for those with privileged backgrounds and worsening adversity and disadvantage?

#Genetics #RobertPlomin #NatureVSNurture

Author of Blueprint Robert Plomin, geneticist at The Francis Crick Institute Güneş Taylor, author of The Essential Difference Simon Baron Cohen and author of Superior Angela Saini lock horns.

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[Paulus_Brent]

I never understood this fixation on genes. Why do we assume that only genetics and environment determine what we are? Why not also what we eat, the gut biome, serotonin in the brain, and other gillions of parameters that determine what we are?

[joedavis]

... Eyeballing our heritage... estimating what breed of human we are.... just like different breeds of dogs, different breeds of humans are good at different things.

[estherbenzaquen]

There are other reasons for human behaviors. It is strange that nobody talks about the plasticity of the brain and the adaptation to the environment. Furthermore, if genetic transmission were rigid, there would have been no evolution.

[SandipChitale]

Nature and Nurture (as opposed to Nature vs Nurture) are important. Sure. But when the color of one's skin and/or eyes (which is only one of the numerous genetic traits) stands for one's whole heritage, which is how it appears to work in our societies (or at least have worked in the past for sure), it is very dangerous. If we are serious to give weightage to genetics in determining opportunities, we should be doing full genetic testing of applicants. For obvious reasons, this is not acceptable in modern societies and is considered immoral. Without this, it is a dangerous idea to only talk about the importance of genetics. Having said that IAI is a better place to discuss (such a difficult subject matter) it openly compared to discussing this on Twitter or TikTok. But all the applicable cautions should be also strenuously discussed.

The success of people with all kinds of genetic backgrounds in places where there exist opportunities to succeed compared to the places these varied individuals may originate from tells us that nurture plays a much bigger role compared to genetics. This needs to be noted emphatically.

Also, statistical importance should not be taken as a predeterminant of an individual. Every individual should be evaluated by actually testing their capabilities for whatever opportunity they apply for. Thus, what Güneş said i.e. how to use this information becomes a key point.

[Faustobellissimo]

The real pickle is NOT which proportion is due to nature and which to nurture...
Biologists need to explain how genetic determinism of behavioral traits works in the first place.
No, they still haven't figured that out!

[ishrendon]

😅robert plomin dominated these opps so bad 😂😂

[markromine]

This panel sample makes me a bit sad that this is deemed content that might draw subscribers to your platform. None of the speakers make a single substantive point while schilling their respective fields of study.
What a waste of 15 minutes.
I'll throw out one sentence that'll take about 15 seconds to type. It's not nature vs. nurture, it's nature AND nurture.
I really hope you can do better than this.