Sometimes science hurts. Are you really willing to follow the science? Here is a bellwether test from Geoffrey Miller:
Here's the evidence for the blank slate crowd: "Genetic variation, brain, and intelligence differences," Molecular Psychiatry, February 2021.
Twin and family studies report that genetic differences are associated with individual differences in intelligence test scores (Box 2). If studies from all ages are taken together, genetic differences account for about 50% (standard error [SE] about 2%) of the variation in intelligence [24]. Higher heritability (see Glossary) estimates are found in samples of adults (where it can be 70% or slightly more) than in children (where estimates as low as 20–30% have been reported) [24,25,26,27]. The finding that intelligence is heritable has been replicated across multiple data sets sourced from different countries and times [28]. Our emphasis herein is on results from the newer, DNA-based studies rather than on traditional twin and family studies.
DNA-based studies have shown that a pattern of hierarchical variance is evident at the genetic as well as the phenotypic level. Using genomic structural equation modelling [29] it was found that a genetic general factor explained, on average, 58.4% (SE = 4.8%, ranging from 9 to 95% for individual tests) of the genetic variance across seven cognitive tests in people with European ancestry. This provides some support for the idea that the phenotypic structure of intelligence is in part due to genetic effects that act on a general factor of intelligence and also at more specific cognitive levels.
I like to create video interviews of interesting people. One of the most compelling interviews I have made was that of Ben Fainer, a holocaust survivor. He spent six tortured years in several camps. I loved Ben's attitude. He was patient and forgiving in spite of all that he had been through. And he was a wise man too. Many other people have been moved by Bens words too. More than 100,000 people have viewed his video. He died a few years after we created his video, so I was especially glad that his words were preserved.
I had another friend who almost died in WWII. Like Ben, she was Jewish. Susan was in her late 80s when she mentioned that she had escaped from Europe to the U.S. through Japan. It sounded like an amazing story. She agreed to tell me all about her escape. We agreed to meet the following week on a Tuesday. She died that weekend, so we will never know her story. Her death has served as a reminder to me that once I recognize something to be important I need to schedule it and do it promptly. Or else.
And I know that life isn't always that simple. There are conflicting platitudes that remind us that it's not that simple: A) "He who hesitates is lost." And B) "Look before you leap."
When I conclude that something is important, however, I try to jump at it. You see, I'm in my 60s. I hope to be around for decades, but I might get the horrible diagnosis tomorrow. Or that car might swerve into my lane next week.
We are all traveling along a Life Arc and there is nothing you can do to slow it down. Your only option is to fill it up with quality experiences. Schedule it and make it happen, Laura Vanderkam reminds us over and over. Do that, or don't do that, thereby allowing the sands of time to slip through your fingers. Those are your only options. Live your life or fail to live your life.
Here comes the next hour. What are you going to do with it?
I was discussing a social issue with a neighbor more than 10 years ago. I said something like "that really bothers me" or "I really care about that." He stopped me and said something like this:
"If you really cared about it, you would be doing something about it."
That stopped me in my tracks because the only thing I was doing was ranting. I think of this often when I hear the choruses of virtue signalers. They are almost everywhere. For instance, among those who Identify as Democrats, I constantly hear that the environment "is the most important issue" and that "it is an emergency situation" and that "no other issue comes close in importance."
This is what I hear, constantly, from Democrats whose life style is indistinguishable from the life style of the average Republican. They drive similar gas-guzzling vehicles. They go on gas-guzzling vacations. They live in fuel guzzling houses. They live far from their places of work. They don't car pool or (in my city) use mass transit or bike to work. They revel in getting take-out food and coffee sold by businesses that use single-use paper, plastic and foam wrappings. I'm still doing my research, but I found one 2013 study that concluded that Democrats generate only 5% less fossil fuel than Republicans per capita. They claim that this is an emergency situation but they don't act like it is an emergency situation. If you asked the average Democrat to turn their thermostat down 5 degrees in the winter and put on a sweater, they will look at you like you are insane.
Apparently, that gives them the right to claim that they "care" and that Republicans don't "care" about the environment.
The environment is merely one example of many. We are surrounded by virtue-signaling virtuosos of both political parties. But at least they all "care."
What happened to progress in the US? It seemed like we had a plan and a good track record for progress back in the 1990s. A lot of things happened, of course. That is the topic of this discussion involving Jonathan Haidt and John Wood Jr and April Lawson. Here's how Haidt set the table for the longer discussion:
We can go back to some of the ideas in The Righteous Mind, because that's the summary of my own work as a social psychologist who studies morality. What I've always tried to do in my work is look at evolution. What is human nature. How did it evolve. [What is the] interplay of human nature with culture? And of course, everything can change over the course of just a few decades, too. We're very dynamic species.
What I'd like to put on the put on the table here first: let's really lower our expectations for humanity. Okay. Now, this sounds depressing. But let's be serious here. What kind of creatures, are we? We are primates who evolved to live in small groups that dominate territory, in competition with other groups were really, really good at coming together to fight those other groups. Part of our preparation for doing that, I believe, is the psychology of religion, sacredness, tribal rituals. We have all this really complicated stuff we do that binds us to each other. This is a human universal. Every group has rituals. I'm a big fan of the sociologist Emile Durkheim.
And so from that kind of perspective we ought to still be pre-civilization times with very high rates of murder. And somehow we escaped that. Somehow we've had this incredible ascent. This unbelievably rapid ascent, in which we've gotten wealthier, smarter, healthier. We've made extraordinary progress on women's rights, animal rights, gay rights, the concern about the environment. So let's start by appreciating our lowly origins as really violent tribal creatures, and the way that we've rocketed up from
Okay, now, in the last 10 or so, years, 10 to 20 years, we've had a little bit of a come-down. I really want to put this not just in an evolutionary perspective, but in a recent historical perspective, because this, I think, is the key to understanding what is happening to us now. It is that we were fooled in the 1990s into thinking that democracy was easy. The founding fathers were under no such illusion. They knew that democracy is prone to faction. That's what Madison wrote about, especially in Federalist 10. They knew that democracy is generally self-destructed, so they gave us all kinds of safeguards, They tried to create a system that would not be so prone, a system in which these tribal, irrational emotional creatures might actually live together. And it worked. It worked pretty well. And it worked badly at times.
But by the 1990s, we had the the mistaken view, that if we just wait for Iran, and Russia and North Korea to develop market economies, they'll get prosperous, their people will demand rights. And this was true for China too. That people will demand rights. Liberal democracies will break out everywhere. Liberal democracies are the endpoint, the end of history.
And so that's the way those of us who live through--I'm older than you guys--but the late 20th century was an incredibly dangerous and an exciting time in which there was a victor and it was liberal democracy. Okay, but like in a lot of movies where it seems like there's an early denouement and everything's great? Well, we still have a lot of stuff to go and in the 21st century, things have really come down from there. So that's the backstory.
People sometimes ask me for advice regarding relationships and I laugh. I've been divorced twice and I've been in about a half dozen serious relationships that are, alas, no more. Not that I regret a minute of this adventure. As Tennyson wrote: "Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." And I truly celebrate vibrant romantic relationships, even though most of them fail, whether or not it is apparent to others. What a strange prelude to "advice" that I suspect is mostly tongue in cheek. Here are my two rules for preserving romantic relationships:
Don't expect your lover to change.
Don't expect your lover to not change.
There you have it. Good luck to all of us who are seeking love and affection out there! The quest is worth it, regardless of the outcome.
Oh, and one more thing. If you are in a marriage that fails and you need something to buoy your spirits, consider this advice from Louis CK:
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