[FRIAM] gen'fur

[Barry MacKichan]

When I was (much) younger, I tended strongly to the nurture side of the 
nature vs nurture divide.

My wife and I raised four kids, two from her previous marriage, one that 
we are responsible for, and one biracial adopted son. So, four kids, 
three fathers, and two mothers. It did not take long to see that the 
nature side has a lot going for it. It was amazing how much of their 
personalities was there at age two, and how different they all were,

But then… my wife and I agree that raising our adopted son was the 
hardest thing we did. He had a lot going against him — fetal alcohol 
syndrome (probably), some learning disabilities, and having to sort out 
race questions in our weird society. His birth certificate says he is 
black, and he looks mostly white, and he didn’t really sort out where 
he fit in until he went into the navy. School was a disaster, and yet 
with help from very good drug counselors and AA, he pulled himself 
together in his twenties. His fiftieth birthday is next month, and he 
has been sober and productive for a long time, and his common sense is 
as good or better than his siblings. He runs his own moving business in 
Seattle. His three sisters all have advanced degrees and interesting 
careers, but I think that I am most proud of how our son pulled his life 
together.

So yes. Nature is definitely important and can’t be ignored. But 
nurture can, with hard work and a generous portion of luck, overcome 
what seems might seem as inevitable. It’s complicated, really.

—Barry


On 9 Sep 2021, at 12:50, uǝlƃ ☤>$ wrote:

> I was alerted to this article this morning:
>
> Can Progressives Be Convinced That Genetics Matters?
> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/13/can-progressives-be-convinced-that-genetics-matters
>
> It should delight those amongst us who rant about the "woke". 8^D But 
> it dovetails nicely with the fraught concept of equality in the other 
> thread.
>
> Coincidentally, also on 9/6, the BIAPT announced their early career 
> prize winner Emily McTernan:
> https://www.associationforpoliticalthought.ac.uk/biapt-2021-early-career-prize-winner-dr-emily-mcternan/
>
> "In her forthcoming monograph, Dr McTernan develops her work on social 
> equality further, to advance a pioneering conceptual account – and 
> robust normative defence – of the phenomenon of ‘taking 
> offence’. Therein, McTernan contends, we should understand taking 
> offence, under appropriate conditions, as a civic virtue rather than a 
> vice, as an emotion that embodies the resistance of social 
> inequalities within a community."
>
>
> On 9/8/21 8:06 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> From about a cancer rate of 10% (without mutation) to 50% (with) but 
>> it depends on the BRCA variant.
>>
>> https://www.cdc.gov/genomics/disease/breast_ovarian_cancer/breast_cancer.htm 
>> <https://www.cdc.gov/genomics/disease/breast_ovarian_cancer/breast_cancer.htm>
>>
>>> On Sep 8, 2021, at 4:07 PM, Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com> 
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> 
>>> Is the Braca gene that little correlated with breast cancer?
>>>
>>> ---
>>> Frank C. Wimberly
>>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
>>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>>>
>>> 505 670-9918
>>> Santa Fe, NM
>>>
>>> On Wed, Sep 8, 2021, 4:57 PM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com 
>>> <mailto:marcus at snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>>     Yeah, it is hard to get excited about “unusual” 
>>> variance.   Modern classification algorithms like gradient 
>>> boosting make it possible to predict phenotypes, and to me that is a 
>>> lot more interesting (and still possible to deconstruct).____
>>>
>>>     __ __
>>>
>>>     *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com 
>>> <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com>> *On Behalf Of *Eric Charles
>>>     *Sent:* Wednesday, September 8, 2021 3:53 PM
>>>     *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
>>> <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>>
>>>     *Subject:* [FRIAM] gen'fur____
>>>
>>>     __ __
>>>
>>>     Gen'fur this, gen'fur that... and also the realities of 
>>> biological complexity.... 
>>>     ____
>
>
> -- 
> ☤>$ uǝlƃ
>
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