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Episode 227: Genes for disease vs personality, parental influence, environmental genes
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we've got some questions today and there that some of them are about behavioral genetics so let's just get right to it dear dr. Lyle I know you proposed that personality is a hundred percent genetically driven but dr. mcdougal has shown that genes can be turned on and off by diet and that even the DNA of twins may diverge over time if each twin is raised separately on different diets might the same thing be true of the genes behind our personalities that certain genes could be switched on or off by environmental impacts and if so wouldn't that mean that nurture along with nature does in fact affect personality I understand where the people are coming from and there's like doc dr. mcdougal is I've seen his writings on this and he's he's showing obviously forget the genes if you have monozygotic twins and you put them in different environments so they're gonna for example eat different food get different amounts of sunshine your your your one Catholic one Jewish you know one in a gangster family you're going to have some differences in that person's life experience and you're going to observe you're going to observe for example one of them might be fifty pounds overweight and the other ones thirty five pounds overweight and so we don't need to hypothesize difference that the genes are changing this is a this is sort of an understandable human tendency it's like if you get locked in a prison the the prisoners spend no amount of time for a while thinking how they're gonna get out of it and so I know I worked in a in a maximum-security prison for ten years and I watched my mind go through an interesting process and it went through it for more than a year I was I was inherently interested in watching my own mind as it went about trying to solve the problem and I came up with all possible mechanisms for how I would escape if I was locked down because remember I'm talking to people everyday who have life sentences or extremely long sentences they might as well be life sentences so I I actually came up with the only plausible schemes and the schemes involved ruses in other words the the big chance would be to somehow figure out how you would mimic a guard that if you looked like a guard and you might you might be able to you know carefully figure out where you could get a uniform or something or you you wouldn't look at a uniform you would actually look like a like a staff I've you actually forgotten my whole thought process and now I'm recovering it with this question the way to do it is to look like you're a doctor or a nurse or something like that and and get and get a find a way to get some clothes that would look somehow like casual clothes etc whatever in other words it would be a ruse you're not going to break through the electrified double fences with with guards with guns and the towers this is not going to happen and so and then finally after about a year I quit thinking about it and the reason I quit thinking about it was there was no way to do it so in the whole history of CDCR there's been like two escapes both of them were from what's called level one level one is where you could just hop the fence because it's not electrified and you're not under a gun so there's no there's nobody watching the yard with a gun in their hands so that is actually happened like a couple of times and I mean really the reason why they don't guard people that closely is you only got like a year to go it's like hey dude like there's no reason to escape and yet some impulsive people a couple times just couldn't resist and it did it and it's L anyway there's have been a few things like that have happened but essentially you're not escaping now people want to escape the constraints of the jins so when they start to hear people like Jen and I and Robert Plomin or anybody else I mean we're not grouping ourselves with plumbing but when you start talking to people that know a great deal about genetics and influence on phenotype their outcomes and you start looking at what the truth is you realize no you're in it you're in a trap okay you're not getting out and so your people that ask these questions are essentially like like me my first year on the prison grounds I'm looking for a way out and it turns out ultimately you look hard enough you start finding out that there is no way out now so the it looks like there is just like when you look at the prison it looks like there is so let's talk about the difference conceptually between quote the concept of changing personality or god forbid trying to change your genetics through some epigenetic process the and then therefore we're going to change our genes and change our personality through some process it's like this is just a this is a fool's errand the in the same way that you know I would have loved to change the shape of my nose would it be great okay I can tell by 15 oh my god you know it was a joke in our family like glue you got the Fairchild notes like your sister got the lyre on those she got a perfectly nice nose I didn't I got the Fairchild nose which has been known for several generations such as life okay so no matter how much I stared at the mirror looked sideways you know everything I can think of to encourage it not to grow bigger and in the famous Fairchild style here it is 60 years later it's the same damn nose as I was facing to my horror at age 12 okay so what has changed well my skin is wrinkled I'm older you know I don't have the cardio pulmonary function I did when I was 26 yeah a lot of things change okay so in the same way two people same genetics one of them meets a bunch of crap one of them doesn't it look different okay so it is their genes really haven't changed you could say oh well this gene changed here over on that chromosome a little bit now we did there too I don't even know what you mean the the actions of those specific genes have changed but the person it's the same underlying genotype so don't we're yourself out thinking that we're going to somehow change the genes now did the food make an impact on the people's lives certainly did the gene action as a result of you know how did the genes have to adapt to the different diets it was there was there chemical action at the level of the gene yeah every damn meal there was so you know it has has there been different amounts of damage to the cells to the person's one person smokes that's all they do the other one doesn't they're monozygotic twins come back 50 years later one of them looks like 15 years older than the other one what's the cause the genes there's been genetic damage done by the poison yeah you know what are we clapping and calling that a victory for the person who didn't smoke I wouldn't it's just that the other person is damaged so this is a I understand when you start to hear feel the walls close in behind the concept of genetics and change particularly around personality you you start to feel like whoa does this mean I'm stuck with this personality can't my kid can I change my kid to be smarter no no you can't okay if your kid is is 125 IQ above average bright University capable kid but it's not frickin Einstein they're not going to be Einstein doesn't matter where you start the Baby Einstein problem we're not going to change the genes that are going to somehow cause a greater amount of conversation and in a now growing corpus callosum that's going to make them be able to talk like gen hawk never going to happen okay no the genes are constraints that's what they are the but so the answer is no there is no substantive change to personality over time what you see is you see the different manifestations of that personality depending upon the ecological circumstances that it finds itself in so my nose could look worse if somebody broke it a few times okay the same way your skin could look better or worse depend upon did you did you could be in tanning beds you know I'll see young ladies that that they want to tan and they're 22 years old and they think they're they're looking so hot because they're getting their tan and I'm just rolling my eyes like oh my god do you have any idea what you're setting yourself up for at 35 when you're 35 you're gonna look 42 and you did it to yourself right there by you know putting excess of Sun and you know exposure so no the the notion is is that ecological you know inputs can influence the the gene environment you know gin bar you you are the result of gene environment interaction life is the result of gene environment interaction the genetic code has to do something with the inputs that impact the the biochemical material inside the cell that those genes are operating in that think of the genes as I don't know like a little supervisor in there with a code but you know it's like a housing it's like a building supervisor but it can only do what it can do with the materials that the factory bring that they bring him so if they bring him a bunch of crappy old rotting wood then he'll build the best house he can with it because that's his genetic instruction but it's not going to look too good in the same way if you bring super pristine excellent hardwood it's going to build the very best little structures that it can okay so don't call that gene differences there might even be damage to the genes if if we wind up with a bunch of poison inside those cells and so and that's true and we can now hail that and call that epigenesis you know the genes have changed yeah they've been damaged okay you're not going to take a pristine undamaged gene and through through some spectacular environmental impact inside the cell improve its function no that will not happen okay so this is why essentially most environmental inputs for most things in including for example food wind up being about the same over time two monozygotic twins whether the race together wrist park.the they they will pretty much eat these the u.s. diet now maybe one month maybe one you know there's enough conscientiousness and intelligence in the system that one of them gets ahold of this information and freaking goes gangbusters in just a spectacular job but let's just forget it out the outlier and let's just look at how it really works so two people monozygotic twins and they they both have for example a lot of fat genes so that let's suppose their 75th percentile in terms of the how many fat genes that they have and so now at age 20 they're both like 22 pounds overweight not too bad it age 30 now the 34 pounds overweight at age 40 now they're 42 pounds overweight at age 50 now they're 47 okay now we look at the two of them they live in different areas of the country but they eat essentially their environment is basically the same so whether or not the retn and McDonald's or the reading at Wendy's or the reading at Whataburger in Texas it's pretty much the same food and so as their environments are actually functionally equivalent even though the McDonald's burger is probably higher quality beef than the what a burger and now I'll get a letter from the Whataburger but the point is is that it's functionally equivalent and so when we see these two people at age 50 we're gonna find that their bodies are extremely similar now the fact that sometimes early in life you're gonna find people might be in dramatically different places for a while so one of them goes to the Peace Corps and they're in Costa Rica and they're eating rice and beans for a year and they come back on their lean and fit okay and you look at them and they're like wow you guys are identical twins you know wanting to use 26 pounds overweight and the other is fit as a fiddle and the reason is is that the environments have been substantially different is this as a result of genes changing from epigenesis no okay this is just the fact that the genes had different materials to work with in one condition versus the other now we bring that person back to the United States back to their desk job at PETA Peace Corps and now they're eating the standard American diet probably in all probability and now we look at them now at age 26 and now they start to converge okay now we look at him at 30 they've converged some more and one of them has some kind of weird little habit as a girlfriend and now he's trying to lose weight so it bounces around okay when we see them at age 50 we're gonna see that they have converged unbelievably well and the reason is is that the environmental influences have kind of even themselves out so one point this environment was a little different than the other ones a little different we can't tell who's going to be heavier at any point in the equation because somebody's on a diet trying to do things differently or they get a job change and they got to walk 200 yards to the subway and now they're a little bit better shape for a while so these little random environmental inputs will cause differences in the outcome but if we look over time we're going to find something very interesting and that is is that they will converge and we can measure this by the correlation coefficient as to how much of the variability that we see in monozygotic twins for example at age 60 with respect to their weight it will be over eighty percent of the variance will be accounted for by the genetic code so in other words we already NIM if we had measured one of them we can almost not perfectly but almost perfectly map what the other one looks like that's how powerful the genetic code is for example with respect to weight now with respect to personality we're gonna find exactly the same process going on so we're gonna find that one person you know for a while is more anxious because they're working under a boss it's an unbelievably stickler and there really anxious about it okay and they're 23 years old and and they're pretty conscientious but boy there are under a dragon the other one is more relaxed and is having a better time at life and it looks like their personalities are different because the second one isn't under some draconian situation and so when they meet and they're chit-chatting they they look pretty similar but one of them looks a little more nervous and you might say it's just a personality change and the answer is no that's not a personality change they're living in different environments okay so it's like the genes of two people's skin hasn't changed if 2mc twins one of them goes to Panama and starts getting a deep tan and the other ones up in Minnesota and isn't getting it their genes haven't changed okay what's changed is the gene environmental action has changed and down there's so much Sun down there that the genes have to say we've got to kick out some melanin we've got to darken the skin to defend ourselves so the genes haven't changed but they're the job they're doing is different that's called that's called epigenesis that's the epigenetics that's the genes can have a variety of outcomes depending or they're flexible about what those outcomes can be dependent upon the inputs so the it's gonna turn out that with personality you might say hey well if it's flexible doesn't that mean the personality can change no I didn't say that I said that the the behavioral output that you see at any given moment you can change fairly dramatically you can have a real sob but you put a gun to his head sometimes he gets very cooperative particularly if you shoot three other people right in front of them okay suddenly it's yes sir no sir okay did we change his personality no but we changed his behavior as a result of eck illogical conditions it was possible for him to be very respectful it's just that it's not going to be his typical ways going to do things a person with very light-colored skin is not typically going to have darker bronze but if we put them under different ecological conditions they may well be able to have quite brown skin okay so the genes can manifest differences in outcomes and you might say well well could that make me more conscientious yes you absolutely can be more conscientious if we put you under constraints where the cost-benefit analysis is essential for very important outcomes for you to be more conscientious as soon as we drop that pressure you're going to go right back to where your monozygotic twin is is working for the DMV and is relaxing okay so the it's the notion of there's a difference in thinking that the genes have changed versus that the epigenesis of what you're looking at has changed so you're you are a flexible organism that can stretch and mold your behavior including your waistline depending upon the environmental inputs the variance of the environmental inputs when it comes to personality it's going to turn out that your your psycho-emotional behavioral process in any given point of time can look one way because the pressure from the environment as soon as that pressure goes back and equals the pressure of your ma's monozygotic twin it's going to turn out that the two of you are going to converge so I hope that you know it's equivalent of you get a tan and lose a tan and get a tan and lose a tan and get a tan and lose a town okay the tan your your jeans are remaining the same the outcome of the gene environmental inputs is changing so that's how that works so you can get confused and I just briefly read on MacDougal poster that recently from an old article that he had read he's probably trying to make the case to say listen you're not locked in by your genes and he doesn't want to hear it and he's right in for the kinds of things that he's talking about if you've got the quote genes for cardiovascular disease which you might if you do it isn't a death sentence it just means that you have to have an extremely restrictive intelligent diet not for that to manifest okay that isn't changing your genes that's just optimizing your outcome remember we didn't improve your genes there folks what we did was we didn't give your genes the bad materials to have a bad outcome that's different okay so if you're 60 fit for let's say you've got a kid that's 30th percentile conscientious don't bother trying to pound that kid in with environmental inputs to try to get him to the 50th percentile for conscientiousness that's a total waste of time you can put constraints on that person's life if the government doesn't stop you to make that kid behave like he's 99 percentile conscientiousness you understand you could take out a whip and chains and you could make that kid terrorize that child into essentially 99 percentile conscientiousness but as soon as you take that pressure away and you give that kid a reasonable electrical condition he's going right to the 30th percentile that's where his gun okay so you can't model it you can't encourage it you can't reinforce it and you cannot change it all you can do is temporarily modify the outcome that you see as a result of the environmental inputs that you put on the system that child that they have a monozygotic twin also at the 30th percentile for conscientiousness when you see them hanging out together at a bar when they're 35 years old their life stories are going to be remarkably similar in terms of the how how the conscientious in this equation and where they stand his has stacked up try put one of them with an unbelievably fastidious accountant family where they scream and rage about about for example credit reports all right trust me it won't make any difference at age 35 the flake brother with the 35th percentile conscientiousness will have no better and no worse credit report than our friend who grew up in a family with intensive scrutiny on credit reports and I can tell you that there's plenty of evidence to support exactly what I'm saying in fact you couldn't tell at the end of that at the end of 18 years when you finally let that child go which child would be more likely to have the higher credit report at age 35 now you would be able to predict that at age 18 and a half because the environmental shadow is still hanging over that individual this is the unbelievable beautiful research that Plomin reports that of course the environment looks like it's having an impact early and so therefore we think ah we've got some traction here okay but then all you need to do is watch it and it's going to turn out that the environmental influence will drop drop drop drop drop drop to zero okay so by thirty five those credit reports are the same in fact they're the same by 28 okay they're not the same at 19 but they will they are quickly headed that direction so that's the that's a long story if people want and sort of you know I'm haphazard because I'm winging this question but if you want a beautiful comprehensive discussion of this it's on our the new part of our website the members section is jenn hawk on personality so jen does an hour in four separate intermediate you know science lectures that are beautiful integrated peace on the exactly what what she and plumbing call the the nature of nurture all right good all right thanks so much dr. Lyle i mean that website by the way for our listeners is a steam dynamics calm all right our next question dear doctors though parents don't shape their children's personalities that time at home can leave all sorts of lasting outcomes including anything along the spectrum of wonderful to terrible memories respectful relationships or bitterness and resentment towards one another great financial inheritance or debt and generally the set of examples and information made available or limited for the child can heavily influence their life choices and performance after can't a child and emerging adult only work with the ideas they have available to them and can't they get set into certain ruts of ideologies and perspectives including for example their religious beliefs good question so now we're going to we're gonna rewind this for a minute and we're going to to attempt to remove the the distortions from the person's thinking the you have enormous influence as a parent over your children's happiness when they're under your roof so you can you can make their life a living hell you can you can also make it potentially much better so you can make it great potentially so you just in the same way that anybody in any relationship particularly one that's effectively forced in is it has to happen that you have a lot of influence on what that other person's life experiences suppose I have a co-worker and we're in some government contract and neither one of us can be fired and neither one of us wants to leave and we can't stand each other and so I go to work and the my behavior and the impact on him is substantial and his behavior and impact on me is substantial we have an enormous influence over each other's life experience at that point okay so the so as a parent do you have an enormous influence over your child's life experience when they're under your care absolutely you do do you have an influence over their personality none you have no influence over the personality so you can't change your 30th percentile conscientious kid to 35 not going to happen you can't change your hundred twenty-five IQ child to 128 can't happen okay you can't change your 87th percentile introverted child into average so that they can function more easily in society not going to happen you're not going to move at one percentile point if it looks like you've moved it as soon as they're out of your care the pressures that you're put putting on them ie get your homework done get your homework done get your homework done okay as soon as you those pressures are removed that child is going to revert to exactly who it is that they are genetically now the other issue is so they're saying is there this heavily influence on their futures no no you don't have a heavily influence on their future life is long folks that that kid leaves at 18 so a friend of mine left at 18 couldn't stand his dad they argued all the time the very acrimonious and so he hit the road and joined a rock band and you know toured the country and it was wild and did all kinds of stuff okay but this guy has two characteristics along with the disagreeable and open also is extremely intelligent and highly conscientious where did he wind up he wound up a vice president of a fortune 50 company in technology that's where he wound up okay so that's kind of where you would have expected to wind up had you given him a big five in an IQ test when he was 16 okay now it took a while to get there why well his dad and him over had an acrimonious situation his dad you know yelled at him and said danach ought to go to law school you just argue like a lawyer okay and so the had the dad been gentle suave you know been more like meet me and you know tried to guide and could've added different existence yeah would have been bull tall at Berkley law school what a graduate of the middle of his class or might be probably lower because he you know we want to still be partying at 24 and so his career would have looked different and where would it have been well he would have been counsel for that same fortune 50 company you know 20 years later instead of the vice president of business development oh well you we're gonna call that a big heavy influence on that child's life I don't think so okay so your genes now do you do opportunities to make a difference in life does a lot to make a difference in life yes but how do you know that it's good luck that your parent is stirring you towards something with very best of intentions and tries to put you in the best school and tries to put you in the best position for success does that really mean anything and the answer is no I don't think so I don't really think it does the the truth is is that success is going to come as a result of your diligence and native abilities as you apply them in a competitive marketplace so you know the idea of the silver spoon in your mouth and that you you have the the road pay for success for you maybe in a few rare cases but but not typically most of us are out here fighting it out with our abilities in the competitive marketplace and it's our it's our intelligence and our conscientiousness and personality characteristics the the circumstances can put roadblocks in people for a while and then they will find their way around those roadblocks by essentially competitive necessity their nervous system now let's face it that is far more true today than it would have been fifty or hundred years ago 50 100 years ago important roadblocks would be in people's way that had great talent and they couldn't get past something you've literally couldn't survive or they were their skin was the wrong color or they were the wrong gender and so there was legitimate obstacles 100 years ago today there are not legitimate obstacles not obstacles enough to stop anybody and so as a result of this it's going to turn out that in a in a perplexing frustrating thing for people who believe in the blank slate and learning theory it's going to turn out that all the evidence indicates that on across all measures the genes are explaining more of the variance and outcomes now than they did 30 years ago why because the environments are effectively becoming equivalent across people so this questionnaire is thinking oh now wait a second what if you inculcate your kid with the right ideas put them in the right school give them the right to Turing isn't that really paving them the Royal Road the answer is no I don't think so I think that maybe maybe a little bit short term but if that kid doesn't have the drive believe me it's some other kid is gonna make partner okay I went to a law thing a blob review there was much lawyers up there entertaining each other at an annual thing for a partnership and there was this gal but sang this song sort of sultry song about you know making Whoopie and it was called making partner and it was the the song was something like you know keep your eyes on another Python making partner okay it's like yeah that kid didn't come from the fancy school that your dad got you into because you're a legacy but that guy's a Python and he's going to make partner and you're not going to make partner if he's 30% time more conscientious than you okay so yeah I I disagree with the notion that as parents we have a heavy influence on outcomes you might have some and you certainly have some people to get blocked by frustrated opportunities and cost benefit you know challenges come up and they will be blocked but they're they're generally not blocked for a lifetime it will it can it can set them back you can put them on a different path they can it can cost them years but it's not going to cost them the whole enchilada there's too many decisions to be made in this lifetime and there's enough opportunity and people don't have to worry about literally starving any more to the point where the genes are taking over more and more percentage of the variants when it comes to looking at life outcomes now so and the final part of this is aren't they bound by the ideas that they have and that you've taught them no not at all the the truth is is that they will learn new ideas they will listen they will be looking to imitate successes and people that are have achieved things that they think they might be able to achieve they will also find themselves reacting to situations in the environment and learning about things that they like and dislike they can't help it they are there gene built machine and if it turns out that dad really wanted them to be a lawyer because that's where the money was and by god if you got financially secure early that was the key to human happiness but the kids a freaking artist okay they just are and they he the kid wants to choreograph on Broadway and so the truth of the matter is is that that that that's where the happiness is going to be and they're going to find it you're not going to be able to hide it from them in terms of they're going to be searching for stimuli in the world of human action and they're going to be trying to find out where do I fit where's where what hits me this is like a this this is a little slightly now I'm not trying to beat up this questioner this is a very good question an important one but this is the sort of the equivalent of thinking you know what as a parent I know how to pick mates for my kids you know I mean I know that my kid Joanne should not be marrying Jim I don't think that's a good match for her okay you know what you may be right but you're gonna be terrible compared to Joanne picking mates she may make mistakes but she knows a hell of a lot more than you do about what turn turns her on and so you're in the same way that parents can you can give them ideas but they'll reject those ideas if they see better ideas particularly as it relates to them so do you have influence of you on your kids yes you do you have a great deal of influence over their life experience while they're under you you also have an influence over their life experience like every other person does as you and they age so if you continue to try to shape your child and and be frustrated with them and signal your annoyance that they aren't achieving this or that or that rolling your eyes then you're gonna just be like some critical pain-in-the-ass pressuring friend and they're not gonna like you very much and you're not gonna have a very good relationship oh well okay so the so do you have an info influence on their life later as adults of course you do what kind of relationship do you have and the answer is and it's the one that I hope you have but I hope that the whole process is been one of a really loving attachment and investment in a great future relationship and there's going to be vicissitudes and challenges just like there are in all the best of relationships but are we respectful are we thoughtful are we also trying to not change them but rather to inform them about what it is that we know about about their environment that they may not know okay and that when they learn some of the hard way you know we put our arms around them when we say hey you know life's got its bumps and bruises but you know you're still here you survive we move on and this is this is how we parent and this is how we are best friends to anybody so think of think of these little people as little sovereign creatures who are seeking their own happiness and respectful of their individual differences and just as when when we have conflicts of interest with them we have every right to impose reasonable rules on them for reasonable demands for their behavior and living in a group setting and we do but that doesn't mean change who you are you know that's that's not going to fly and no matter what we give them we cannot guarantee any beautiful outcomes for them they can also find their way life finds a way and so do personalities wonderful thank you so much dr. Lyle your as you keep talking I have a few questions and then I keep listening and you keep you answering the questions all right all right our next one looks like yeah our last question as deer doctors I'm sold on your this year's another one about behavior genetics I'm sold on your lucid explanations of how behavioral genetics shapes personality so doesn't it naturally followed that by going back in time to study differences between the ecological political religious influences in different areas of the world throughout our history that we can use these differences to speculate as to how these differences have shaped personality in different areas of the world the question is can you identify or speculate on historical factors that may explain statistical differences in personality between different people yes beautiful question great question grand question it's actually a question that has been possibly strategically ignored by very high you know brilliant minds in academia that are thoroughly steeped in evolutionary theory and for good reason the the truth is is that this kind of talk is potentially explosive for you know on many dimensions so the the blank slate notion that we all come into the world and that we are shaped like silly putty by our environmental impacts and that's what we become that is an unbelievably hopeful looking message unbelievably democratic and fair and it basically says your child could be the next Einstein just get to work on you know getting get him a little crossword puzzle kit except make it with numbers so the the theory of evolution doesn't necessarily contradict the blank slate it doesn't wind in principle but it starts to it starts to give us a little creepy feeling when it starts to say you know what it turns out that you can't turn your kid into a giraffe no matter how hard you try it's not going to think like it's a rap behave like a giraffe run like a giraffe it's just not going to do it it's not going to eat leaves out of trees not going to happen and that's because it's genes have built a brain across a bunch of very tight specifications to make it into a human and when you start to grasp that you start to realize whoa blank slates in trouble you can't start shaping people's behavior that easily it turns out that it's tightly constrained by the channel code not too far behind that starts to be the notion of wait a second if the genes build brains in a way that it's tightly specified by species and also of course then by gender so you start to see that quote not only are you different than other animals you're also different from each other in substantial ways depending upon what gender you have and the difference of the genders is X amount of genes and you start realizing okay well first of all notice how much backlash that the notion that the males and females are different has gotten like it was on the front if I don't know Time magazine or Newsweek or something some some woman geneticist is saying I don't know there's no difference in neuroscientist for God's sake it's just ranting up and down cover of the of the magazine no differences but she's completely wrong and like she's completely ignoring all the data behind nothing other than her own personal political agenda not true big differences in male and female brains substantial differences easily akin to the differences you see in male and female hands if you show me ten PM groups of male hands ten groups of female hands I'm gonna be pretty good at telling the difference will I be perfect no there's some there's some effeminate guys out there like me that have really pretty hands okay but then so I know a few of us we would fool a few few judges the brains are thus and literally looking at the brains anatomically you can tell the difference about the same level you can tell hands big differences different ecological forces have shaped those differences alright we're gonna get off at gender so now we're going to say well wait a second if that's true which it is and we can see the differences which are substantial we can also see huge overlaps of course but when you look at the interests and passions of males and females there are substantial differences between those things and those mimic the specialization of Labor and survival reproductive strategies of those two genders across the last several million years of course okay now in the same way the question then arises what about different people's living in different places what if you're living in Southeast Asia do you face the same ecological pressures that you live living in Greenland and the answer is no you don't you face many many similar pressures of course but you face substantially different ecologies as a result we would expect that the same brain that would do well in greenland may be somewhat different in terms of its likes propensity z' etc them a brand that evolves in Southeast Asia of course look at the structure of the bodies the bodies are structured somewhat differently are they mostly the same of course they're mostly the same are they somewhat different yes can you tell the difference of course you can is race a social construct absolutely not these are genetic variances they're extremely obvious we can blow off the notion of a social construct by putting it under the genetic code and identifying it you can find out where the heck your genes came from you could pinpoint it on a map apparently within 25 miles you know back to your great-grandparents so the so the point is is that different peoples on different continents in even different places on different continents evolved under different conditions and those led to different changes in their bodies and we know what that means when the bodies of one animal looks different than the body of another animal we know that their behavior is going to be different an aardvark isn't the same as a raccoon they have different ethological problems to solve and therefore they have different brent's and it's true that the male and the female do not look the same they have different reproductive problems and therefore they have different brains associated with the parts of their life that have to do with those problems and how they're different of course that would be true and therefore it's also going to be the case that of course people that evolved in different places on the globe are going to have somewhat there are they largely the same of course they are are there substantial differences well are the bodies substantially different ask yourself that and the answer is yes they are substantially different well if they're substantially different would we expect that the big five in other words psychological characteristics we would expect averages to be different in different places on the globe yes we would in fact it would be unbelievably astounding if it wasn't the case do you really think that if we were to have an Olympic Games that we should expect that people that have been in Alaska for the last 10,000 years would have the same ability to run a hundred meters as people who have been in the Congo I don't think we would we have a different ecological problem do we think that the people that are in the Congo would be able to stand up to the problems of ice fishing easily as easily could they stand the low temperature could they get locked in a freezer at 30 below and be okay for an hour and a half I don't think so they're going to lose temperature more easily they're designed to wick that temperature away from Heat they're not designed to conserve it so the point is is that we would because the bodies are different we would expect the mines to be different would they be largely the same of course they would be largely the same would we expect general average differences continental differences of course we would and there are okay this question is as you can imagine very touchy when it comes to political issues so that's why I don't get into it okay I'm not interested I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings we're not ranking these people are better than these people I'm just gonna say look there is different ecological conditions like what do you find more beautiful personally do you find African people more beautifully do you find aged northern Asian Southern Asians Northern Europeans Mediterranean I find believe me I'm a heterosexual I find women from all over the world of every race creed and color that they're gorgeous they're gorgeous and quite frankly I have no preference I just have a preference for beauty sorry just a complete that's it I couldn't care less personally anything about the superficial characteristics of the skin or strut it's just beauty man and beauty makes me weaken the knees and form okay now so I'm not interested in what inevitably happens with people they start rank ordering and putting these up and higher and those lower and that's almost forget it not interested are there differences you've got their differences those differences were beautifully explored by a fine writer fine science writer by the name of Nick Wade Nicholas Wade and and his book I think was about 2012 I think it's called a troublesome inheritance and so also this was revisited much more recently this year by charles murray in a book called human diversity their their thinking is a lot of times not comfortable it's a little disturbing i I can't even remember what it is that I read other than that there's it's obviously true I expect to see different kinds of talents and propensity put it this way there there's somebody from from northern Alaska and that's where their ancestors from who is damn fast damn I'd trust me they're up there and a lot faster than me right so it doesn't mean that if you're a member of a group and your group on average is lower in some ability than some other group that that means that that assigns anything to you forget it that would be racial prejudice for example but the notion that there are average differences that men on average are interested in building things and nailing things into a wall and having monster trucks and stuff like that that doesn't mean you can't find a girl who loves monster trucks and if you have one for goodness sakes don't turn try to turn her into a little girl with a twirly dress let her play with monster trucks that's who she is okay but on average do men want mat monster trucks and girls want twirling little dresses yes and that's not socialized that's innate to do to gene differences so the so I will leave the teaching of that particular firestorm to mr. Wade and mr. Murray and but hopefully I introduced the topic in a way that we we can feel the threat of prejudice and fear over over sounding prejudice when in fact we can look at this from a scientific point of view shrug our shoulders and acknowledge the obvious that people around the world are vastly similar because they're the same species but in different locations - I mean everywhere we're going to find number-one locations on average we'll have average differences both in physical presentation and in psychological presentation and individual differences within those groups are also very substantial so two people from France who whose ancestors grew up 20 miles from each other and have a lot of the same genes those two people can be very different one of them can be artistic in and funny and outgoing and the other one can be a little nerd that just wants to learn how to steam engine works so the genetic diversity within populations is huge the genetic diversity between populations is notable interesting and can be important just as genetic differences of all kinds can be important
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