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[LegoLord]

My mom changed neutral after my brother and I gained political opinions; in fact, she was raised by conservatives.  Hence not inherited.  I became neutral out of hate for the division political parties bring.  But I digress.  Political parties are not inherited; they are taught.  There is a difference.  You can't teach a child to be tall, but you can teach him to be a republican, just as the child can't choose to be tall, but can choose to be democrat.

[Footkerchief]

LegoLord, you're missing two crucial points.
1. He's talking about inheritance more in the sense of inheriting jeans than genes.
2. He's talking about statistical likelihoods.  Your personal experience is not significant.

[LegoLord]

So why's he using it in an discussion about humans not evolving?

[Footkerchief]

Yeah, never mind about the genes, I misread.  Still, although I find any attempt at genetic explanation for political affiliation highly suspicious, your personal experience is not a rebuttal to a statistical argument.

[Mel_Vixen]

Well its part of a meta-evolution which affects "Ideas", "Memes" and viewpoints. Its not part of the discussion but so was the entire evolöution thingy also i think.

[Squirrelloid]

Your personal experience is not a rebuttal to a statistical argument.

Truth.

That doesn't deal with why i was using heritability for behavior as evidence of genetic inheritance.  I refer you back to my first post, in particular the Steven Pinker Blank Slate reference.

So, he concludes that 50-70% of behavior is inherited (based on numerous citations).  He also concludes that the other 30-50% is mostly 'un-shared' (ie, not shared between siblings) environmental - ie, not from parents (peer group interactions and so forth), also based on a number of cited studies.  My copy of the book is currently on loan to someone, or I would be more specific.

Basically, the scientific evidence is that parental environment is near meaningless in a statistical sense.  This isn't to say that it doesn't matter that your father beat you or your mother read to you - but rather that you grew up in one of those environments doesn't add any additional information beyond the tendencies you inherited from your genes.

I refer you to Pinker's book and his sources for additional information.

Because the research so compellingly rules out home environment, heritability of things like political party has to be due to genetic rather than environmental factors.

Also, it would probably be more accurate to talk about political attitudes than party (since the dominant beliefs of major parties in the US have varied over time - presumably elsewhere as well).  I mean, I imagine if someone had done the heritability study with generations across the Great Depression gap, there would be a marked lack of Republican matching because the nature of the Republican party changed dramatically.  (Prior to the Great Depression the Republican party was Classic Liberals, following the Great Depression/WWII it mostly unified around anti-communism with religious leanings).  The study in question which found high heritability for political party was conducted sometime in the 80s, when there was good philosophical continuation within party across generations, but the more accurate way to examine it would be on specific political attitudes.

Edit:

You can't teach a child to be tall, but you can teach him to be a republican, just as the child can't choose to be tall, but can choose to be democrat.

You're making a Blank Slate assumption, which I'll note Pinker's book meticulously deconstructs with the available scientific evidence.  Ie, we are not blank slates.  There is no reason to think that behavior is any more free to vary than height is.

------

On Alroy - no, I don't have anything more recent than 2007 at my fingertips right now, but I at least found his model convincing.  Anyone who cares is welcome to read his papers and his detractors to see where the points of disagreement are and come to your own conclusions.

[Broadsword]

But you forget that Dwarves don't need sunlight.  They would just live underground and consume Towercaps and Towercap wine until other life arose again.

Actually, sunlight is the source of all earth's energy, ultimately.  As far as life is concerned, anyway.  You can't just recycle crap, dead bodies, and food trimmings as fertilizer forever.

Somebody needs to read up on deep sea vents!

[MuonDecay]

My mom changed neutral after my brother and I gained political opinions; in fact, she was raised by conservatives.  Hence not inherited.  I became neutral out of hate for the division political parties bring.  But I digress.  Political parties are not inherited; they are taught.  There is a difference.  You can't teach a child to be tall, but you can teach him to be a republican, just as the child can't choose to be tall, but can choose to be democrat.

While your anecdote does count as evidence, consider that the situation of one family is statistically insignificant when talking about humanity as a whole. Your situation would appear to you to be evidence against the truth of inheriting political tendency but the preponderance of statistical data may weigh in the opposite direction. The truth of it is that it's a very complicated issue to try and study in a properly empirical way and without seeing the text of a few peer-reviewed studies I'd be inclined to believe either truth is possible, but nonetheless one family's experience does not necessarily correlate to statistical truth, especially when dealing with studies of broad, vaguely defined overall tendencies of behavior.

Statistics can be a very hit-or-miss field for a lot of people. Many things which are intuitively obvious are statistically anything but. Our assumptions based upon our own experience seem to be wrong more often than they aren't. We're all drawing upon a very narrow set of data and extrapolating from it, which as the rules of statistics would suggest is usually very inaccurate.

[LegoLord]

You don't inherit it, it's part of your beliefs and choices, not your genes.  "Inherited" is an invalid term, implying it is genetic or a physical object passed down.  Many people change political parties and opinions.  There have been instances in history in which political candidates have done so.

Also;  Let me get this straight.  You take every word of this Steven Plinker for fact just because he said in his book that he had evidence?  Does he have a direct reliable source?  What is this "blank slate" thing?  That's vegetables and fetuses, dude.  Why does it seem to imply that people's choices are genetic?  No, people aren't blank slates, but they're written with chalk.

[Squirrelloid]

You don't inherit it, it's part of your beliefs and choices, not your genes.  "Inherited" is an invalid term, implying it is genetic or a physical object passed down.  Many people change political parties and opinions.  There have been instances in history in which political candidates have done so.

First of all, please note that I specifically made a note about the true unit of inheritance likely being attitudes towards specific ideas, not to party membership itself.  Its just that over a few generations political parties tend to be reasonably consistent, so tendency to believe particular ideas -> tendency to belong to particular political parties.   When you realize that political party ideology is a group of ideas, each of which is heritable at some frequency, you'd expect political party to be *more* heritable than any of its component ideas (because people who believe in some critical fraction of them are going to prefer that party to the competition), especially in a political system as bipolar as the US.  That is, as long as there is philosophical continuity within the party.

These are also tendencies, not guarantees.  Just like you can't perfectly predict your height based on your parents' heights.  Statistically the heritability of political party is above .8 for the time period when the study was conducted (that is, better than 80% agreement between parents and their children, the time period being relevant because there was philosophical continuity within parties).  This means that 20% of the time there won't be agreement.

Finally, you make claims but have no warrants to justify those claims.  "You don't inherit it, it's part of your beliefs and choices, not your genes."  Why?  I've cited evidence to the contrary.  Your saying things work in a way that doesn't conform to actual data isn't going to make me change my mind.  If you want to debate this, you need to bring actual evidence to the table, not just baseless claims.

Also;  Let me get this straight.  You take every word of this Steven Plinker for fact just because he said in his book that he had evidence?  Does he have a direct reliable source?  What is this "blank slate" thing?  That's vegetables and fetuses, dude.  Why does it seem to imply that people's choices are genetic?  No, people aren't blank slates, but they're written with chalk.

He didn't just say he had evidence.  He cites a remarkable amount of primary literature and *describes the results* of those studies, sometimes in meticulous detail.  I also don't think every word of the book is gospel truth - some of the chapters weren't as meticulous.  But you are welcome to read his book for yourself and make your own assessment.  I found the scientific data relevant to the conclusions i've referenced compelling.

I certainly find Pinker's book more compelling than your "no its not true" line of argumentation with only the meagerest anecdotal evidence in support. 

The Blank Slate concept is the pure nurture side of the nature vs. nurture debate.  Its also clearly wrong a priori.  The part of our body that 'makes decisions' is the brain.  Its a bio-chemical organ.  It develops and operates based on blueprints found in our genes.  The very idea that how the brain operates is going to be independent of genetics is both laughably naive and lacking in evidentiary support.

FWIW, other evidence from the primary literature:
The heritability of partisan attachment
Martin, NG, et al. Transmission of Social Attitudes. 1986. PNAS. 83(12): 4364-8. (not available online, sorry)
The heritability of attitudes: a study of twins

I'm sure if you are sufficiently motivated you can find additional literature.

[LegoLord]

The Study of Twins?  I hope no one seriously needed research for that.  Twins have the same chance of getting along as normal siblings, since there are a variety of ways twins can form and some personalities tend to get along poorly with others of the same personality.

My skepticism largely comes from the fact that these are guys whose credentials are unknown writing books and selling them whether or not the official scientific community accepts them or not (not even saying what the latter case is, sometimes).

It sounds a lot like pure nature to me.

[Squirrelloid]

The Study of Twins?  I hope no one seriously needed research for that.  Twins have the same chance of getting along as normal siblings, since there are a variety of ways twins can form and some personalities tend to get along poorly with others of the same personality.

You clearly didn't actually read the paper, despite a link being provided.  Mindless denial is not endearing, and criticizing methodology that you demonstrate an abject lack of knowledge about is bewildering to say the least.

They use *adopted* twins who end up with different adoptive families because it lets them control for genes while home environment varies.  This is basic methodology for this type of study, because its the only (ethical) way to control for genetics when dealing with human subjects.  They also make a point of distinguishing identical twins from fraternal twins.  You could have learned all this simply from reading the links provided.

I provided links so you could actually read some of the primary literature and the evidence for behavioral inheritance.  Responding in ignorance despite the evidence being made directly available to you is disgraceful.  Holding opinions contrary to evidence is only respectable so long as you are unaware of that evidence.

My skepticism largely comes from the fact that these are guys whose credentials are unknown writing books and selling them whether or not the official scientific community accepts them or not (not even saying what the latter case is, sometimes).

It sounds a lot like pure nature to me.

Steven Pinker is a PhD who taught at MIT until 2003 and since then has been at Harvard, which you could have easily found out by googling his name.  Those papers I provided citations or links to are from peer-reviewed journals.  The current employment (as of publication) of the authors should be on the first page in a footnote, and those papers survived review by other experts in the field.  That you are doubting the scientific validity of papers from journals like the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (probably the third most prestigious scientific journal in the world after Science and Nature) is beyond belief. 

"Credentials largely unknown".  Steven Pinker?  Really?  He's the rockstar of evolutionary psychology and has written at least 3 highly successful books for the interested lay person summarizing the results in his field.  Not having heard of him merely indicts your knowledge of the field.

Regardless, the credentials of the research paper writers are *irrelevant*.  Their methodology, data, and analysis is available for your scrutiny, all you have to do is read the papers.  Credentials have nothing to do with that - either their methodology is sound, and their analysis of the data supports their conclusions, or it doesn't.  Science does not depend on appeals to authority.

[MuonDecay]

One of the nice things about the rules of academic research and citation is that in theory a person's own reputation should not need to be a serious concern.

If one writes an essay, paper, or book asserting a claim and makes proper use of primary sources to justify their opinion, then the only criteria needed by you, the reader, to evaluate their point is judging the validity of how they interpret their data and whether you trust the validity of their sources.

If someone asserts a certain opinion and goes through due rigor in citing properly conducted, respectable scientific studies, there is a very good chance that they are correct insofar as they are asserting something that is accurate to the best of our current scientific understanding.

Could they still be wrong? Certainly, the acceptance that our knowledge is limited and the willingness to change viewpoints when presented with new evidence is crucial to scientific progress. Nonetheless, if someone knows how to research their publications and then properly cite the sources, their credibility is going to be roughly the same as that of the scientists whose work they are building upon.

If Charles Manson picked up a pen and wrote an academic paper detailing a particular facet of fluid dynamics, and cited good, solid research which was properly interpreted, he would have penned a trustworthy paper on that subject regardless of the fact that he's a mentally ill criminal.

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]