Do you believe in Tabula Rasa?

  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account
wtfNeedSignUp said:
Ignoring the spicier racial case. The sadder examples are children of criminals being adopted by normal families even from infant stage. Those children will very likely grow to be fucked up like their birth parents. Usually repeating the same mistake.
Click to expand...
I definitely think that's true. At one point, it was more of a suspicion (if also backed by twin study data)
I once talked to a childless nurse who spoke glowlingly about her nurse friend that adopted two children, both from a different addict prostitute, one going to prison. the other dying.
When I pried a little about if she still had good contact with them, it turned out that she had broken contact with her foster son after he pushed her down the stairs in anger, and her foster daughter was at least doing well, if dealing with mild addictive tendencies.
She immediately started saying both must be because of the drug use while in utero. I guess my questions weren't as subtle as I had thought.
 
Last edited:
Lemmingwiser said:
I definitely think that's true. At one point, it was more of a suspicion (if also backed by twin study data)
I once talked to a childless nurse who spoke glowlingly about her nurse friend that adopted two children, both from a different addict prostitute, one going to prison. the other dying.
When I pried a little about if she still had good contact with her, it turned out that she had broken contact with her foster son after he pushed her down the stairs in anger, and her foster daughter was at least doing well, if dealing with mild addictive tendencies.
She immediately started saying both must be because of the drug use while in utero. I guess my questions weren't as subtle as I had thought.
Click to expand...
If there is no data for this trend then it's just personal anecdotes that could as well be made up stories because we are on the internet.
 
Anime Waifu NFT collector said:
If there is no data for this trend then it's just personal anecdotes that could as well be made up stories because we are on the internet.
Click to expand...
There is data for this trend and it's called twin studies. For example, biological parents have a much bigger effect when compared to the parents that actually raised the kid, on whether a kid is a smoker, drinker, high or low iq, and so on. The effect is about 50-65% genetic. The effect of the adoptive parents 10%. The rest undefined/unknown.

But studies you can easily look up without a forum post, but my personal anecdotes... while you can question the authenticity, are at least a unique contribution that you couldn't have found with a google scholar search.

And I do my best to tell the truth. For example, I was exposing my lack of tact in that anecdote, but kept it in, because that's what happened.
 
Cherry Eyed Hamster said:
I’d be very curious to see where Farmers fall under the Tabula Rasa-Innatism umbrella. Do you believe in the blank slate theory, or that humans are predisposed to genetic factors, or something in-between?
Click to expand...
Do you think Chris Chan could become a high level corporate attorney getting payed millions upon millions of dollars per case and spends his free time flying all over the globe fucking supermodels if he was just raised in a different household?
 
I've had the misfortune to deal with enough shitskins to know that whatever is wrong with them is written a genetic level. You can take the nigger/spic/pajeet out of the jungle/desert/shitting street, but you can't take the jungle/desert/shitting street out of the nigger/spic/pajeet.
 
Neither is correct. Your genetics give you a range to work within and then your environment and your personality and circumstances shape where you end up within that. We have instincts built in, and we seem to have concepts built in too.
Anyone who has kids will laugh at the idea they are a blank slate. They have personalities from birth. Even in the womb they move differently.
 
Cherry Eyed Hamster said:
Wasn’t that the same book where he acknowledged that African Americans have lower IQs than whites, but he’s for censoring studies that examine the correlation between IQ and race because it might cause people to give blacks a lack of benefit of the doubt? Pinker is a hypocrite.
Click to expand...
I dont recall him saying that in that particular book, but he may well have said it elsewhere, and if so that is really unfortunate. If he is in favour of censoring scientific research then he is indeed a hypocrite, and I am extremely disappointed. That old saying about "never meet your heroes" comes to mind
 
I mean this stupid shit was literally disproven
I assume the idea you can actually measure this is nonsense but the rule of thumb I hear is 40% nature, 40% nurture, 20% volition.

It was always an Enlightenment dogma, along with the idea that supernatural miracles are impossible (this sort of makes sense if you take the idea of God as Logos super seriously to its endpoint, but still dogma).

Pure dogma, never had a bit of evidence for it.

SofondaCox said:
"Free will" is a superstitious concept with no basis in reality.
Click to expand...
My gordian knot cutting philosophical slam dunk: your mental state may be predetermined but your mental state is still causal to your actions. Free will preserved, God still supreme in his dominion over nature.
 
Tabula rasa is so debunked that it's more of a buzzword than a genuine theory ... it's usually invoked as a synonym for nurturing or brainwashing or something. Even at the time it was proposed it is an idea so lacking in rigor that it was more an idealistic assumption to try implementing policies around than a serious belief on how babies are when they are born.
 
Blank slate is one of those ideas that made sense back when we thought that thoughts happened in some immaterial ghost that inhabits every human body. Now that we know what brains are, it's firmly in the category of anti-scientific superstition.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom