The Nightstar Zoo

One time I was at this talk about Nature vs. Nuture. The gist was that:

It had been proven beyond all doubt that it's nature over nuture (I was surprised)
There is no right and wrong when looking at behavior and traits.
It was wrong for people to try to change the nature of others.
We should try to get people to stop trying to alter the natures of others

So I asked him... if it's all nature, then it's in the nature of some to try to change the nature of others. Therefore, when you try to get them to stop, aren't you trying to change their natures?

He never gave me a straight answer.

I've always found nature to be far more prevalent. Nurture isn't trivialized, but it does take a back seat when they come into conflict.

I agree that changing people is a part of nature (I'd suspect it's fundamental to human nature, since everyone tries to do it). Nice job of making the poor bastard stutter.

That's almost up there with asking people if they realize advocating against pushing morals on people is a moral they were trying to push on people.

In this town, we keep having rallies against intolerance. "Hate the haters!"

Oh, and what Raif said. DNA contains a LOT of information, but it doesn't say anything about whether or not you're given to leaving the toilet seat up. Most behaviors are learned.

Sounds a little like some of the militant peace rallies I've been to... they stop short of burning Bush in effigy, but not by much. Sigh... I think it's time for me to take control of the local peace movement again and get it back on the right track.


-=-Barnabas

I think that the problem is difficult because differant people are born with different amounts of nature. To at least an extent you have the nature your born with. Nature tends to take care of the rest. Nurture probally covers a lot more than nature does, but I think that nature may be the stronger of the two.

Does that mean I'm naturally innocent?

It's wrong.
Nature is to eat and shit.
Nurture is to eat at a table and shit in a toilet.
According to that list parents should stop teaching children when and when to do those.

Anyone trying to jam that crap down my throat is gonna find their behavior modified. Painfully.
Thats just some expert trying to promote himself (more likely herself) an easy job. Fscking social engineers.

That'll teach me to trust Ger's spelling. lol

dammit, spell it right.

It's NURTURE.

Two R's.

Warning: salty language ahead. Scroll past if you have sensitive eyes.






Moving on from Pronto's post:
Someone once asked me what the fair extent of this debate was.
I replied, "Eat, Shit, Fuck and Die."
The listener managed to mentally dump the punctuation and turn the "and" into a commanding contraction, and ended off offended. But I stand by this.

Breaks down like this.

Eat. By nature, you need to. WHAT, WHERE, and WHEN you eat is nurture.
Shit. By nature, you need to. WHERE, WHEN, and WHAT YOU DO AFTERWARDS is nurture.
Fuck. By nature, this is how you reproduce. You can get along without it, but it's not pretty in the long term. WHETHER, WHERE, WHEN, WITH WHOM, WHAT YOU DO WITH THE RESULT, and in some cases, HOW are nurture.
Die. By nature, you want to put this off as long as possible. WHETHER(Japanese kamikazes managed to override this one pretty well) and HOW (do you trust the maintenance of your body to herbs grown from a garden? Pills from a laboratory? Blessings from a priest? Two out of three? Whatever you can get your hands on?) is nurture.

Everything else--festivals, fashion, language, so on and so forth--is one sided.

I had a biology professor in college tell me once that all animals are hardwired for only four things. He called them the four F's.

Feeding, Fighting, Fleeing, and Mating.

It's my belief that all animal behaviors are based on, or extrapolated from, three core ideas: food, sex, and danger.

Indeed. Anything beyond that is learned.

And the only intuitive interface is the nipple.

Nature, for you cannot change the nature of a man, nor' a woman, animals too, sure you can alter their behaviour but eventually their nature is gonna shine through