Anyone who doesn't understand needs to go a sea beach.
It's impossible to not try. You can't do it.

I think it's a leftover genetic trait from when we emerged from the ocean. I picture a spiny finned fish wriggling out of the sea, seeing the kelp and exclaiming "WOOHOO! EAT SHIT HARRISON FORD!!!"

SssssssshhWHACK!!!

...and then sullenly limping back under the waves.

*commercial
Tommy's a moron, John is smart. It's utter bullshit that they have the same intelligence but one makes only stupid decisions and the other only smart decisions.

Trait number 5 is also absolute bullshit. The rich consistently blame others for their failures and never take responsibility for them, only their successes....see DJT.

According to the narrator, I should downvote since I enjoy learning about the cells of a leaf.

Legal, yes. Culturally accepted, not so much, slavery always had cultural opposition by the non ruling class. Natural, WTF?! Show me an example of pure non human slavery (not harems, not parasites) and I'll discuss it.

Granted, I don't know exactly how they measured, but his gene expression is what they measured, not his pure DNA. This goes to my point, that environment determines how your DNA is expressed, so twin studies are flawed from the onset by thinking they begin identical, they don't. They don't even start with identical DNA, just close.

"Genes and the environment", but not pure gene study....at least not like people think. People think twins are carbon copies, so one can be a control to study effects of what they're studying. That's not quite right. Certainly they are useful in genetic studies, but not that way. From before birth, they diverge in how nearly identical DNA is expressed. They might be good for finding what genes/traits need closer scrutiny, but only with large samples.

Grounds for individuals to (privately) discriminate, perhaps, but not (public) businesses....at least not in America. Our national identity is a melting pot of cultures, intolerance for the different is antithetical to that idea.


Gender, nope, you can totally choose that now.
Race, many people change their racial identity...Rachael Dolizal comes to mind....as does the term "passing".
Ethnicity, people pass as ethnic groups they weren't born into, sometimes unknowingly, daily.....again, Dolizal springs to mind.

So, I'll argue that all you mentioned for all intents and purposes are today often the result of free will and not beyond the control of every individual, but a full grasp of brain chemistry and design and well understood methods to change them are well beyond our current knowledge, so their behaviors and actions are, in part, out of their control and not the result of free will but of brain construction.....now what?

@newtboy

"Discriminating against people for their legal, culturally accepted, natural behavior makes the person doing the discriminating an asshole. "

Slavery also exists in nature, so it's natural, and once upon a time it was legal and culturally accepted. Discriminating against slave owners though, even back than, is contrary to your claim, quite noble.

"The space study with twins showed that in under a year their genes permanently diverged a full 7%"

You gotta be careful there exactly what is being measured, they did not find that fully 7% of his DNA changed and now was that different. Depending what you measure people also claim that human and chimp DNA only differs by less than 2%...


"Twins aren't genetically identical, even at birth. ...That makes twin studies a piss poor method of gene study."

If you read your own linked article it states:
Twins share the same genes but their environments become more different as they age. This unique aspect of twins makes them an excellent model for understanding how genes and the environment contribute to certain traits, especially complex behaviors and diseases.

If you bother to read the list of peer reviewed articles I linked, they are comparing mono-zygotic twins to di-zygotic twins. The very basic and largely accepted theory being that if a trait has a genetic component, 1000 twins split from the same zygote should share the trait more often than di-zygotic twins.

My argument though really doesn't care much though. I simply argue that beliefs, choices and behaviours are the result of free will and grounds to judge(discriminate) for and against those you deem good or bad, hurtful or harmful. Similarly, gender, race and ethnicity being things that are in zero way the result of free will and beyond the control of an individual and NOT grounds to judge(discriminate) for or against.

"A twin study of self-reported psychopathic personality traits"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886902001848

Perhaps the above is more to the point. Similar twin study showing identical twins having similarly significant genetic component to psychopathy as the prior studies show for sexual orientation.

Should we be similarly upset at people assigning morality to psychopathic behaviours?

"Genetic and Environmental Influences on Religious Interests, Attitudes, and Values: A Study of Twins Reared Apart and Together"
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40062599?seq=3#page_scan_tab_contents

Religiosity shows the same thing, strong correlations for identical twins, raised apart from one another, and much weaker correlations for non-identical twins also raised apart.

If Tom Cruise claims his belief in Scientology is a birth right and how dare we judge him, is he really backed by the science?

Where I am coming from, is insisting that for all the factors involved in human decision and behaviours, I still want to conduct ourselves as though free will exists.

More importantly, the freedom to discriminate against people based upon their behaviours must be defended as strongly as the right to discriminate based upon purely in born, unchangeable attributes like race, gender and ethnicity must be opposed.

Yes...you did...and still do.
Yes, you did say we're in dire straits."A constant slide toward globalism all the while a less better way of life.
Constant strife, sliding towards a ever more debasement humanity and of values clearly promoted in Hollywood, and media. Who is really pushing this agenda".
Yes, you did admit he's unqualified...."This current state of being is a long time in coming not a POTUS Trump fault.. One can argue Trump is not qualified but this was laid at his feet when he took office" if you don't mean that as an admission, you need to study American phrases, perhaps that means something different in Russian.

Most Americans believe in diversity as a positive trait. Most Americans believe in individual freedom and liberty. Most Americans believe corporate personhood is a horrendous idea that destroyed our political system. If most of America didn't enjoy what Hollywood produces, why are they still buying it?
Granted, adult programs exist. As a parent, it's your responsibility to monitor what your kids watch, not mine. I don't have to go without adult programming because you suck as a parent. Ratings and child locks make it easy as hell for you, but still you whine. (What's your cure? Regulating entertainment to allow pg-13 at most?)
Hyper violence is as American as Apple pie, has been since the great war (ww1) if not our inception.

Is he the only one, far from it. Is he the worst offender, lying about everything, incapable of honesty on any topic, with multiple admitted felons committing treasonous crimes as part of his administration? Clearly. Is he even trying to be honest and give Americans real information, or is he outright boldly lying about tripling the deficit for personal gain. Hint...it's the latter.

Edit: Politicians and police are allowed to lie? Talk about debasement of humanity and values....geez. Only allowed to lie by people like you, not me. Liars are liars, not to be trusted again, not to be handed more power, and are undeserving of respect or acceptance. There's a big difference between lying and mistakes. People who unintentionally make misstatements, then correct them may not be liars. Trump is a proud, intentional, pathological liar, and not even a good one, so intelligent people stopped listening to him long ago, it's just a waste of time. Sadly, that includes our recent allies, who are turning their backs on us in droves. Even you cannot be so delusional or dishonest as to make a case that this is good for America or the globe, or something any rational parent would teach their children is proper behavior....but you are. I hope your kids learn the lesson you're teaching, that it's fine to lie if it helps you get what you want, and the next 7+ years are full of bold lies, unfulfilled promises, and excuses for why your kids are now teenage junkie parents with disdain for civility.

"Your score was 36 out of a possible 50.

Scores in the 33-50 range indicate significant Austistic traits (Autism)."

Thanks - I've suspected Asperger's as likely for some time, and that confirmed it to whatever degree a self-select internet-based test can do. Seems I fit that definition / set of traits moreso than ADHD. Yay?

Good link, but where did you see "test further"? I see the range 33-50 indicates significant autism traits, but no suggestions of what to do with that information.

@SDGundamX those cultural factors are all true, and none of it contradicts my point. Both culture and inborn personality traits play a role. A place where murderers have been routinely caught and removed from the gene pool for centuries is going to be a place with a lot less genes for psychopathy. Not so much in a frontier society without effective law enforcement for much of its history, like the US. The US isn't the worst in this respect, but it hasn't been civilized for nearly as long as Western Europe or Japan, and this is a source of both genetic and cultural differences.

Yeah, but ignore all the benefits society gave him to make those things easy and beneficial...forget that (forced) hard work, work ethic, and obedience are hallmarks of black history, forget that God and family are far more deeply ingrained in black culture than white (yeah, I expect you'll counter with 'they don't have families', and ignore the reason why so many are missing the father....disproportionate prosecutions and sentences, and ignore that poor whites are in the same boat but with a white life preserver that often keeps them out of prison, so in society and home). Forget that embodying none of these has helped them, because historically those traits are easy to exploit, and 'white America' has historically exploited them in black Americans....but you won't see that.

Edit: put more simply, doing those things isn't white privilege, but being secure in the knowledge that they'll benefit you is.

What gives me the right to know things about southern white people? Being one...born and raised in Texas. I notice you deleted "many" from my statement then lied by saying I "placed an entire group in derogatory terms", typical Bob.

You must be either unbelievably dumb or just frantically trolling again, Bob, your choice, but I would hate to see you banned.....but you calling someone racist for a quote you altered...oh Bob. That's terribly sad even from you.

Our legal system up here already has codified that 'idiocy', and it's been in place quite awhile.

The women's only clothing optional spa that tried to say 'no penises allowed' is legally at odds with the provincial human rights code:
http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/male-genitalia-policy-spurs-backlash-at-toronto-women-s-spa-1.3456844

The Canadian charter of human rights also lists freedom from discrimination as being no different for choice/behaviour things like religion, alongside birth traits like race or gender. So legally our system doesn't think rejecting a clergy application for being atheist as any different to rejecting it because of race.

And I kind of hate using a 'trivial' and much trumpeted example from America but a bakery not wanting to make a cake based on people's sexual preferences was declared illegal:
http://aclu-co.org/court-rules-bakery-illegally-discriminated-against-gay-couple/

I'll try to summarise my last paragraph better.

The Democratic party needs to reach out to people that didn't vote Hillary. They are instead choosing to condemn those that didn't vote Hillary as racists or friends of racists. They need to be doing the exact opposite. They need to find things to compromise on and reach out to the people that didn't vote Hillary. That doesn't have to necessarily be on any of the ideas I've tossed out above, but they've gotta do something.

A last point, the moral relativism or correctness of the cause here isn't the only thing that matters. If you can't convince a majority of the population that you are on the side of their self interest and liberties and freedoms, then you are going to lose. The things I've listed are examples of the left taking away freedoms that many on the right consider important or even fundamental to them. If no compromises can be made, the Democrats haven't got much reason for optimism about the next election looking any better.

Is this sweet fish just lonely? Not much entertainment value in that environment ... looks to me anyway.

I've had a variety of fish several times in my life. Many have displayed distinctive personality traits and would be amazingly interactive with me. Elvis and Costello [Oscars] were my favorites as was Jambi [goldfish ... old vids still on YT]. Too bad I dreaded cleaning those tanks though [ugg]. Coupled with the heartache of the eventual/inevitable burial at 'sea' [in most cases], my urge for serenity on that front has been satiated for good.

You may be right, no harm done. Other than me rolling my eyes because yet another person is suffering from “syndrome-itis”, and now they have a $10 word that magically elevates, explains and excuses their traits. It just strikes me as shallow and pretentious as someone who gets a Kanji tattoo without knowing shit about the culture.

Then again it may just me the Gemini in me. haha

I think this narration makes a lot of assumptions.

That wolf was never domesticated. Domestication is a genetic adaptation that involves retaining juvenile traits that allow an animal to overcome the boundary that would instinctively cause them to flee or fight. This would take many generations. You can imagine how that adaptation would be advantageous to animals that benefit from living at the edges of human settlement.

There's no way to know why that wolf interacted the way it did but it was wild and posed a potential risk due to it's instinctive programming.

Happy that it remained an uplifting story. But it's not responsible to spread the narrative that you can domesticate a wild animal.