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Three Identical Strangers is a 2018 documentary directed by Tim Wardle. It premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Storytelling. You can now watch it online at Amazon.com.
The documentary tells the story of Edward Galland, David Kellman, and Robert Shafran, identical triplets who were separated shortly after birth. (There was actually a fourth brother, who died at birth.) Born to an unwed Jewish mother, the brothers were placed by the Louise Wise Adoption Agency—which specialized in Jewish adoptions—into three rather different Jewish homes, the Shafrans, headed by a doctor; the Gallands, headed by a school teacher, and the Kellmans, headed by a shopkeeper, all of whom had different levels of education and income.
The boys were reunited by accident when they were 19 and became a media sensation. The story of their reunion is quite touching. The boys had never experienced blood kin before. And beyond that, they were genetically identical, so they were not just meeting their brothers, they were meeting other selves. Naturally, they shared a lot in common: their expressions, their gestures, their reactions to the same events. They knew their brothers’ thoughts and could complete their sentences. They all wrestled in high school. They had same tastes—in colors, cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, and women.
To make up for lost time, the triplets got an apartment together in New York City. (One image shows them sleeping in the same huge bed.) Later, they opened a very successful restaurant called Triplets.
This segment of the movie is quite entertaining and heartwarming, and it is an excellent way to introduce normies to biological determinism and Genetic Similarity Theory.
If one wants to study the role of heredity versus environment—nature vs. nurture—in the formation of personality and shaping the course of human lives, one naturally looks for identical siblings (who share the exact same genes) who are separated at birth and raised in very different environments. If the children’s personalities and lives more closely resemble those of their adoptive parents and siblings, then we can conclude that nurture is more powerful than nature. If, however, identical siblings raised apart more closely resemble one another (and their birth parents) than they do their adoptive parents and siblings, then we can conclude that heredity is stronger than environment. Note: this conclusion follows irrespective of the particular theory of heredity that you hold.
Of course this particular story is not the only case of identical siblings raised apart. There is now a quite vast literature on the subject. The best summary of these studies is Nancy Segal’s Born Together―Reared Apart: The Landmark Minnesota Twin Study (2012). I also recommend her highly entertaining popular books, Entwined Lives: Twins and What They Tell Us About Human Behavior (2013) and Indivisible by Two: Lives of Extraordinary Twins (2007). These studies provide crushingly persuasive evidence of fine-grained hereditary determinism, which refutes the “blank slate” theory of environmental determinism.
Blank slatism, of course, is the foundation of a host of modern political ideologies and social engineering projects. If people basically have the same potential, then different group outcomes—for instance, low black IQ and high black crime—must be due to inherently discriminatory social environments, which can be identified by social science and corrected by social engineering, so outcomes will be equalized. The failure of generations of egalitarian uplift programs is simply attributed to increasingly occult forms of social discrimination.
But if heredity is more important that environment in determining factors like intelligence and criminality, then modern egalitarianism is a fool’s errand. Multiracial societies will inevitably be unequal societies, with all the disharmonies inequality entails.
Identical siblings not only destroy the foundations of modern multiracial egalitarian social engineering, they also point to a better alternative. For if the most egalitarian and harmonious human relationships are between identical siblings, this means that the foundation of social equality and harmony is genetic similarity. This is the genetic foundation of ethnonationalism.
After about 30 minutes covering the triplets’ reunion, the media sensation, and their early life together, the documentary takes a dark turn, or actually two of them. The themes are entwined in the film, but it is best to review them separately.
Naturally, the triplets shared negative traits as well as positive ones. They all suffered from depression; at least two of them spent time in mental hospitals; and one of them, Eddie Galland, killed himself in 1995. All three boys had different experiences growing up in households with different sets of adopted parents and siblings. But apparently Eddie had been the most alienated.
The other dark theme is far more pronounced. Naturally, the adoptive parents wondered why the triplets were separated, so they went as a group to the Louise Wise Agency and were told by its directors that the boys were separated because it was hard to place a set of triplets. It seemed plausible enough.
But when Dr. Shafran returned to retrieve his umbrella, he saw the board uncorking a bottle of champagne and toasting, as if they had just dodged a bullet. The whole “Gentlemen, here’s to evil” quality of the toast led the families to conclude that the agency was hiding something. So they contacted lawyers with the intent of getting to the truth.
But after initial interest, various New York law firms declined to represent them, citing conflicts of interest. It was claimed that associates at the firms were seeking to adopt children from the Louise Wise Agency. It seems plausible, given that we are talking about law firms in New York City. But it was not unreasonable to suspect that very powerful people might be engaged in a coverup. Eventually the families dropped the issue.
Then investigative reporter Lawrence Wright discovered that primarily in the 1960s, the Louise Wise Agency, working in tandem with the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services, had been engaged in a study of identical siblings, who were adopted into different home environments, then carefully observed over the years as they matured. The parents of the cildren agreed to this. They were told that it was a policy of the agency to study the development of the children, but they were not told that they had identical siblings. All told, five sets of identical twins in addition to the triplets were part of the study.
The study was overseen by two psychiatrists, Viola W. Bernard and Peter B. Neubauer. Neubauer seemed to be the principal psychiatrist. Only he is discussed in the documentary. Neubauer was an Austrian Jew who fled from the Nazis. Neubauer studied medicine in Vienna and Bern, emigrated to the US in 1941, and worked as a child psychiatrist. He was a Freudian and worked closely with Freud’s daughter Anna.
Judging from the documentary, everyone involved in the study was Jewish: Neubauer and his staff, the agencies that made it possible, the adopted children, and the adoptive families. Nevertheless, the experiment was likened to something done by the Nazis. Apparently, we are supposed to think that Dr. Neubauer was the Jewish Dr. Mengele, who also took an interest in identical siblings.
The children and their parents were of course scandalized. But it is really not clear if anything unethical took place. First of all, a crucial piece of information is lacking: was the policy of separating identical siblings and not telling the adoptive parents dictated by the study? Or did the policy already exist—because it really was difficult to place sets of twins and triplets—so that all Neubauer did was to collect data that would otherwise have gone unknown?
The latter seems far more likely, given that “separated at birth” stories are widespread, but the Neubauer study was apparently unique. I would, of course, argue that it is unethical to separate identical siblings. But given that it was an accepted practice at the time, was there anything unethical about collecting potentially valuable scientific data?
The strangest thing about the Neubauer study is that the findings were never published. Neubauer did publish a book, Nature’s Thumbprint: The New Genetics of Personality (Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley, 1990), co-authored with Alexander Neubauer, which surely drew on his studies. But Neubauer’s research papers were presented to Yale University and placed under seal until 2065.
These papers surely do not record Mengele-like enormities. So why put them under lock and key? One of Neubauer’s assistants speculates that maybe people aren’t ready to learn just how much of their lives and choices are controlled by heredity. This seems quite reasonable, but the massive literature on other identical siblings “separated at birth” already establishes that point quite well. (The assistant, by the way, is a colossal liberal. She herself is probably not ready to grapple with the political implications of refuting blank slatism, given that the blank slate ideology is the foundation of the modern Left.)
Neubauer’s sample size was not large, but as far as I know, nobody else followed the development of identical siblings in different environments from birth. So perhaps his studies reveal something profoundly disconcerting, something worth covering up. Interestingly enough, Neubauer had his subjects filmed, and one of the reasons this documentary is so striking is simply seeing the triplets on film. I think it is quite reasonable to think that something deeply discomfiting is being covered up.
Neubauer came from the Freudian school, and Freudian psychology has little place for heredity. But this would not really explain why Neubauer would cover up his findings, because if he were an orthodox Freudian, he never would have embarked upon the studies in the first place.
A similar coverup takes place at the end of Three Identical Strangers. For despite the massive evidence of hereditary determinism presented by the triplets, they and members of their own family are not comfortable with the idea that nature is so powerful. One family member claims that she thinks that nurture is powerful enough to overcome anything. They believe this, of course, because they want to believe that Eddie could have been saved from suicide.
Of course, different contingencies made a mark of the three boys. They grew up in different families. They married different women. One had appendicitis. One killed himself. But in a very real sense, they were the same person living three different lives, which diverged in countless ways. But if they had switched places, they probably would have reacted in pretty much the same ways to the contingencies that separated them. Today, one of the brothers is heavier than the other. They wear their thinning hair differently. But because they so bitterly regret Eddie’s suicide, they cling to the faith that if he had just been nurtured a bit differently, he would still be alive. They seem blame his death on his father, who was known as a disciplinarian. It strikes me as grotesque, but they might even be right. If Eddie were alive, chances are he’d think the very same thing.
I highly recommend Three Identical Strangers. It is an ideal way to introduce people to hereditary determinism and Genetic Similarity Theory—as well as the motives that make people shy away from their ultimate political implications.
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I thought this film interesting and true to form, you and others cling to similarities but miss the or ignore the vast differences. Differences in personality, especially and interestingly enough — their physical development.
And most importantly, what data we have from the research indicates that each of the boys are seen uniquely different, despite their DNA.
“Identical siblings not only destroy the foundations of modern multiracial egalitarian social engineering, they also point to a better alternative. For if the most egalitarian and harmonious human relationships are between identical siblings, this means that the foundation of social equality and harmony is genetic similarity. This is the genetic foundation of ethnonationalism.”
So harmoneuos in fact, that 1/3 of the community committed suicide. And the argument is not to biology, but environment, had the three been raised together — that would have made a difference. That is the basic premise of adopting out children as siblings as the best choice. But as noted the record suggests that made adopting out either child more difficult, because most who seek adoption are seeking one child. And that is not an unethical practice if the goal is to place a child with parents as opposed to a group home/orphanage living environment.
Note: I suspect the arguments and turn in the film on ethics and the pain of loss is to a lawsuit.
No. In a very real sense — the film depicts three different people. In fact the opening sequence bears that out. He looks like his brother, but noting in his DNA caused him to respond like his brother.
It is a film worth seeing.
I don’t know anyone who seriously contends that any human is a blank slate.
Neubauer’s sample size was not large, but as far as I know, nobody else followed the development of identical siblings in different environments from birth. So perhaps his studies reveal something profoundly disconcerting, something worth covering up.
Or maybe they DID things that they would rather not be known.
I wonder if ANNA TO THE INFINITE POWER was inspired by rumors of such studies.
Video Link
If the Left is into blank-slatism, why does it believe that one is BORN homosexual and nothing can be done about it?
The gender-bender things seem to be a contradiction. On the one hand, it’s argued that biology or genetics makes a man want to be a woman. So, biology rules. But, a man can artificially overcome his biological makeup and really become a ‘woman’. So, biology is overruled.
Or, the biological wish for a man to be a woman overrides the biological fact that he is physically a man.
The middlebrow Buzzfeed, HuffPo, Tumblr Left claims everything they want to excuse is genetic (homosexuality, fatness) and everything they want to engineer away is a social construct. We aren’t dealing with serious people here, however.
More intelligent Leftists are consistent about their embrace of social constructivism. Thus Rachael Dolezal had her defenders on the Left.
“Cling” — like to guns and god, I suppose.
Quite a large number of intelligent and influential people have promoted the Blank Slate theory. It is the foundation of most of the Left-wing social engineering schemes that afflict our civilization today.
There are plenty of differences between the triplets. But they are non-genetic. They still have important lifetime consequences, though. For instance, in addition to being raised in different families, they all married different women, had different children, etc. One triplet killed himself, but they all had the same mental health problems.
As for harmony & genetic similarity: They had all sorts of things they might get into arguments over: parking spaces, babysitting, conflicts in their social calendars. One of them left the business. But being genetically identical gave them a huge advantage over less similar people in understanding one another and therefore being able to overcome and work around differences.
Maybe not the Dr Mengle of Jewish adoption, but there is a lot of competition for that position.
No, they are NOT the same. For every uncountable, unverifiable “sameness,” there is a difference. You people are so simple-minded.
Blank slatism, nurturism, and egalitarianism are elements of an irrational, quasi-religious belief system. Challenging this belief system provokes believers into angry professions of faith and arrogant dismissiveness.
Successful family businesses —
— not a twin or triplet among them.
— number 10 doesn’t count is more a play on the notion.
https://www.worldstopmost.com/2017-2018-2019-2020/news/most-famous-families-largest-richest-top-10-popular-list/
More:
https://www.businessinsider.com/the-worlds-21-biggest-family-owned-businesses-2015-7?international=true&r=US&IR=T#16-richemont-6
More: small family business
https://www.brighthub.com/office/entrepreneurs/articles/126179.aspx
——————————
As for their psychological issues not at all unique as families throughout history and around the globe share the same and most never experience anyone who ended their life. The real issue here is why didn’t their genetic disposition — as you want to place emphasis on provide the symbiosis you claim such genetics provides among siblings as genetic replica’s. It didn’t. Whatever harmony could have prevented the loss one would have to admit was missing from their genetics. The other two experienced depression but did not commit suicide — so either they had a genetic tick that differed or there was some other variable at play.
Your comment about how well they got along is missing something very important — we have no idea about the nature of their specifics intrapersonal exchanges, not one. We are having to filter through the drama of the suicide – which undoubtedly had intrapersonal components. Here i am guessing (and I certainly could be wrong) but the brothers are shielding themselves in the pain of the loss.
It would be interesting to examine their DNA structure to see if that is accurate — the no difference, even subtle variations. but if there is no difference, in this small sample, environment is the greater factor, in my view.
appreciate the exchange
I agree with your comment, but it’s no reply to the other commenter’s statement.
He didn’t advance egalitarian/environmentalist positions, he didn’t deny (or so I hope) the importance of genetics.
He, if I am not in error, tried to point our attention to a further subtler level.
I have never doubted that both nature AND nurture play important roles in a person’s development & life.
Exactly how they interact is beyond me: I just wish extremists from both sides, each with ideological tat to flog would shut up & allow scientists to get on with Science, unafraid that their lives & careers will be destroyed b/c they slipped into “heresy”.
What a disgrace – rigid orthodoxy which Galillao (sp) would have recognized immediately.
The middlebrow Buzzfeed, HuffPo, Tumblr Left claims everything they want to excuse is genetic (homosexuality, fatness) and everything they want to engineer away is a social construct.
But for some things, they argue for both genetics and social engineering. They say a tranny is the way he is due to genes. He is a man who wants to be a woman, and there is nothing he can do about it. But via surgery and other artificial means, he can really be turned into a real woman.
I have never doubted that both nature AND nurture play important roles in a person’s development & life.
Brain mass is like muscle mass.
If someone starts to lift weights, he can go from being able to life 150 to 200. But his nature will still set a limit in how far he can go. He won’t be winning medals in the Olympics.
Same with brains. Obviously, if a person trains his memory and problem-solving skills a lot, his mind will grow faster and sharper. So, a 100 IQ person can become somewhat smarter. But no amount of training will turn him into a genius.
Nature/nurture.
Now, I think EVERYONE agrees on this among individuals. And I think most people won’t be ‘triggered’ by findings that suggest that Arabs are somewhat smarter than Amazonian Indians. The real issue is Negro Worship. As blacks are such sacred objects, the notion that they, the Negroes, might have lower IQ is what ‘triggers’ our PC culture that sees blacks as founts of genius, creativity, and wisdom.
Laughing.
Had Gallileo, not suggested that the pope was a dunce he would have had very little issue, regarding his science.
And I do agree that unpopular opinion alone should not be cause of stripping anyone’s earned credits.
I’m always saddened that in these discussions of nature vs nurture there is a blanket underlying agreement that the totality of the category “nature” is genetics. No one ever mentions the human spirit, the soul essence which contains the real essential personality with all of its propensities. I watched the film and was struck by the very obviously different personal aura or vibration I perceived off of each of the boys. Clear three unique and whole human spirits, whose shared genetics simply allowed their skin suits and brains to match their inherent spiritual qualities, present before birth.
A fair conclusion is that normal nurture can marginally affect a life’s positive outcome – but that abusive nurture can be a huge negative factor in one’s life.
Thank you for making this explanation of my post of what should be obvious to anybody who can read.
Joseph Boulogne, the Chevalier de St. Georges, is superior to any of you bozos, that’s for sure. He is an almost unimaginable superman. And he is black. I guess it’s that old genetics at play again.
Video Link
A study on individuals, who mostly remain private, born in the 60s, is “sealed until 2065” so it could be a “cover-up”?
I think you’re missing the extremely obvious answer for why it would be sealed for a lifetime after its subjects’ births…
‘He was a freudian and worked closely with freuds daughter anna’
Anna freud eventually became infamous for abusing and running experiments on refugee children in England during world war two. I’m guessing the refugee children were Jewish just like in the study mentioned above. The deliberate separation of children from thier parents even when they could be reuinted as well as limiting contact with other adult role models and even other children was common. This was of course backed up by her own putrid pseudoscience. Freud himself was a quite a bad father and there were rumors of sexual abuse.
I’m wondering if there was a connection and if there really was a big scandal to hide. I cannot think of another reason for the champagne.
I am certainly not going to give Bezos my money to watch this turd.
What I want to know is why the single mother yenta whore did not abort? Jews love abortion and were certainly running all the clinics in town. Abortion is a jew industry just like the film industry.
And just like the film industry, there are 2 sets of rules for abortion. Jews really, really want Christians to abort multiple children to provide fodder for their satanic rituals. But jews don’t want jews to abort. How do I know? Because this psychopathic race of Palestinian murders force their own women to meet with 3 rabbi’s in order to get the permission required to abort.
To increase the salience of the above block quote:
Spanish hotel story (heard, not experienced, almost certainly apocryphal)
Customer: The cold water tap in my tub gives hot water.
Hotelier: Ah, but this is Spain! The “C” on the handle stands for “Caliente”, hot!
Customer: The cold water tap is also marked “C”.
Hotelier: Ah, but we are an international hotel. That “C” stands for “Cold”!
Half funny as a joke, not funny as a political stance.
Why do people _still_ take these expressions of contempt and vindictiveness seriously?
Counterinsurgency
Quote 1:
Quote 2, re: quote 1.
I disagree. The level he uses is very crude: assert a false argument, then add an insult. Remember, postmodernists/Leftists don’t believe in either reality or rationality — they believe in social effect. This one tried to use something with the form of an argument, but not the content of one.
Let’s start with basics: logic (and for that matter language) is an abstraction, literally a “pulling away” of some parts of reality. When you say that lemon is yellow, you’re pulling its color away from its shape, its juiciness, its sourness, and very many other physical qualities (weight, angular moment of inertia) and also very many non-physical associations (the connotations of “a lemon”, the symbolic importance of lemons as attractive items that are too sour to eat directly, etc.)
The “subtler level” is the assertion that one can’t say that lemons are yellow because lemons have many other qualities, which qualities might (unlike color) vary. This is an obvious attempt to deceive, and, in politics, a clear attempt to defraud.
Similar example: One can’t say that animal species have strategies in the games theory sense to animal behavior because animals aren’t human, therefore can’t be strategists. By this logic, the person making the objection can’t be making the objection because objecting requires using a language, and the objecting person isn’t a linguist.
To catch such attacks, one must realize that (a) the person making the statement is hostile, and (b) that the person making the statement intends to cause loss to the listener. To a postmodernist, everything is oppression, _including every social interaction of the postmodernist_,. This most definitely includes his current interaction with _you_.
The postmodernist isn’t a serious reasoner, but _is_ a serious attacker.
Counterinsurgency
Quite a few events have to be understood as drawing random samples from a specified probability function that is (somehow) an inherent property of some “underlying process” that is often not directly observable. Given a sample of three, one has to guess at the distribution and the underlying process, but (humans and most higher mammals being characterized by predilections rather than reflexes) the distribution is still there. Suicide is associated with depression [1]. Depression can vary in strength. I would expect each episode of severe depression to have some chance of ending in suicide, but that the association would be probabilistic.
Therefore: To say that one of three people committed suicide does not even strongly imply that the probability distribution, much less the underlying process, for the three people was different, and is most assuredly not a definitive proof [1]. It would be a cause for further investigation, probably along reductionist lines, should further investigation be possible. Current state of the art in brain function apparently doesn’t support such studies.
Counterinsurgency.
1] Jie Zhang, Ziyao Li.
“The Association between Depression and Suicide When Hopelessness Is Controlled for”.
National Institute of Health, US Library of Medicine, 2014/04/13.
NIHMSID: NIHMS459657
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3745521/
2] Given the data, one has no way of selecting the correct parametric distribution (one with a formula, roughly speaking), much less the parameters (things _like_ mean and variance for the Normal distribution). One can say that the other two should be considered to have a higher suicide risk, but that’s prudence and legal protection from liability, not understanding of the underlying process.
“I watched the film and was struck by the very obviously different personal aura or vibration I perceived off of each of the boys. Clear three unique and whole human spirits, whose shared genetics simply allowed their skin suits and brains to match their inherent spiritual qualities, present before birth.”
Hmmm …. a New Age, Oprah-esque perspective, not often seen in these parts.
But if heredity is more important that environment in determining factors like intelligence and criminality, then modern egalitarianism is a fool’s errand. Multiracial societies will inevitably be unequal societies, with all the disharmonies inequality entails
I take issue with the assumptions. In behavior genetics is impacted by life time experience(culture habituated man), and two different quantum acting influences on the DBA activity, structure, and function pre and post conception, DNA is a multiple set of multiple programs the chromosomes are both independent of each other and dependant on each other. DNA can be thought of as one home built in a subdivision of many exactly the same homes. Each home in the subdivision must have a different foundation because the soil beneath is different between lot locations, power connections are at different spots because the power pole is differently located, sewer connections are different because the sewer line and connections are different, sometimes very different. and on and on. Yes the homes all look the same, they are painted the same color, but they fade and crack in different places, allow infestations at different places, and last for varying lengths of time. In short, its not long after the homes in the subdivision are occupied before it is clear the homes are different, very different even though the plans show them to be the same.
In humans, DNA is a structurally one chain of building blocks connected by base pairing to a second opposed different chain of the same or similar building blocks both of which run in twisted and compacted fashion for miles. but the building blocks in the chain itself are subject to multi many changes over very short time frames and over generation to generation. DNA is like 21 different buildings or more. each wall is connected to the other wall, and inside of each building products are being produced by tools. The production is scheduled <=so to speak to meet product demand, and the different buildings house many more than one factory or many more than one process. DNA is the structure, it has coded within its walls many already written programs (tools to make things with and to recognize things with) but the construction activity is controlled by spectrum elements (which i will call the internet, some parts are wireless, some parts are done by carrier pigeon, some parts are done by induction, and so one).. So DNA is little more than the concrete you driveway is made from.. It needs a skilled worker to mine it, produce it, deliver it, distribute it, and to make it fit for a particular use, and fitting to that use requires a designer. To say that DNA between any two individuals is the same as saying all of the planets in the universe are the same. and to say that the products produced and functions performed by DNA from the same two individuals (for any reason) is the same as saying all computers and all computer programs are the same.. DNA is concrete and a collection of computer software that sometimes fails. This little discussion is not completely accurate, I tailored it to convey that DNA, is a starting place..a manufacturing facility, a construction worker and a programmer waiting for a job. and the job that can be performed is based on existing programs in the walls of the DNA, the DNA ability to build what is called for to be built, and on new programs the DNA, its designers and tool sets allow to be figured out or invented.
I remember once, about 1981, I was at a meeting of distinguished high school graduates who also had MD degrees. One of the HSG-MDs stood up, pointed to me, and said to the audience this man wants me to treat each individual person as different and to expect diseases to behave differently in each different person. Beside his other two qualifications, he was a BC radiologist. Cancer is a disease of a single cell, but it is expressed differently with each generation even within the same individual.
back to the quote But if heredity is more important that environment in determining factors like intelligence and criminality, then modern egalitarianism is a fool’s errand. Multiracial societies will inevitably be unequal societies, with all the disharmonies inequality entails
That is the reason the criminal law requires a jury of peers, .. no one can judge the behaviors of others without the same or similar experience.. and no experience is completely repeatable. We must all find a way to allow everyone to be themselves ( the right of self determination:life, liberty and pursuit of happiness) in ways that do not harm any other and we much punish most severely any false or misleading propaganda, society to be fair, must base its findings and design its activities on facts.
It is this variability based on experience that makes false and misleading propaganda so criminal. I can think of no crime more damning to a society than to allow anyone to mislead the individuals that form the substance.of a society
thanks for the article.
Before we get to distrubtion and in this case your comments don’t make any sense. It appears you are attempting to defend something that has no bearing on on whether the genetics is the determining factor verses the environemnt and how much either biology (and its processes) or environment was the greater factor.
If you claim biology, then you are locked into biology. You don’t get to dancing off the reservation. The contention that biology is the primary factor or as some claim the sole factor means – regardless of environment (making room for extremes or drastic variation) the outcomes would be the same – biology is static. like a computer code regardless what room you place the computer, it will operate the same and and same any same function will produce the same results. In this case the sample is a problem to extrapolate generalized application. However, it’s pretty clear that despite having the same coding, the boys developed different personalities and even different responses to stresses. at the end of the day, they did not choose similar spouses in appearance or personality. Their hairstyles were different. In fact, until they met, they did not mimick one another, save in behaviors connected to their biology. The suicide is important because it makes a stark shift in how they responded to stressers. The determined model in the end is not very hard to comprehend.
Now your comment about distribution supports what I suspect is the huge hurdle when determining genetic code determinism — knowing what the variables are and how they interplay (that would include distribution) and more complex would be the impacts of said distribution. No kidding. I find it curious that anyone advocating for a genetic determined state outcome, would even suggest variance and that varying stresses would be different — but what your position describes is that environment over genetic. Different pond produced differences, regardless of the equation of genetics.
Now I would think that would be obvious when making conclusions about morality, IQ, any number of subjective traits, in spite of DNA. In the bid to appear scientific, we add commentary by someone measuring which processes are at work and, there impacts and how widely they are distributed across the or the lives of all three men is clear indication that in the field of psychiatry unless they are measuring for extremes they simply have no means of identifying personality characteristics to people unless they have long range data sets over time in which they know the variables, their impacts and how their distribution in the case of the triplets, we don’t even know their genetics to depression, muchless the distribution which a determinist would conclude is evenly distributed. If accurate — then the determining factor is environment.
I love the attempted dance here. The contention is that there is no way of knowing mean, distribution, etc. And then concluding the other two are “high risk”. Based on what the contention was made no conclusions could be drawn — save as to “guessing” that the other two are high risk. That’s a rather interesting conclusion, having admitted that one is missing certain data sets as precursor to that conclusion. There is a way out of the logical conundrum the contentions create for themselves. It is this.
There are high risk, not because of biology, but rather because there are strong correllations in community settings that when one person in said community commits suicide, it is not uncommon for other members of the same community also commit suicide — that some manner of contagion occurs, even among people who are not family.
One third of the set chose to take his life in response to the environment. So whatever DNA structure that the other three had that barred that as choice or determined end, one of the three either did not have, the code varied from the other three, or the environmental factors caused a different impact in developing personality —
Which returns us back to the environment. Because if applied something as common as the principle of fight or flight instinct – both indicate the biological drive to survive. The body itself, the biology, the DNA coding operates to maintain existence. I am going to take a leap here. In cases of suicide even in this painful episode, minding overrides genetics.
Let’s remove the faux conflict here being pressed by the advance being made – there isn’t one. Sure the stressers of any given environement are different from person to another and how one responses to those environmental factor shapes who we are inspite of our genetic code. The same rules would generally be applied to other subjective factors of being. Our biology matters — fundamental. But is not the final determinant of subjective aspects of self. And few biological traits mean less to the subjective than skin color, unless one socially makes it so by construction. A perfect example has been the hat rick by yellows, browns and whites to categorize blacks subjectively via skin color in part of the power game.
Most popular is crime. You ignore the vary same mechanisms being used here as defense. Se your attention to a small set of the population and make grandiose conclusions about the whole. You beg for attention to detail here, but wholly ignore it when making conclusions based on skin color to population set used to deny environment as the primary factor. But here it’s about variance and distribution of psychological factors to a very specific behavior.
Gentlemen, you get no argument from me about what you don’t know.
I don’t think i agree with several of your comparisons, but I get the point. I was however fascinated by this comment,
“Cancer is a disease of a single cell, but it is expressed differently with each generation even within the same individual.”
Of course closure of perspective and the urge for orthodoxy are seen everywhere, be it Ophra-esque or anti-Ophraesque or non-Ophraesque places.
They have too many positive qualities for it not to be so.
Doubt, nuance and openness of mind are ever at fault, in the wrong, and usually deserving of name-calling. You can confidently expect them to be seen not often, in these parts, and anywhere else.
“Naturists” are still people, as are “nurturists”.
Thereby, they are neither philosophers and artists (I am referring to authentical philosophers and artists).
Trust them over their opponents for they are habitually less vain, less virtue-signalling, and more interested in truth as well as apt to handle it.
After that, remember that they are yet people, with all that entails.
Some will want genetics to signify nothing, or as close to nothing as it can get; the others will want genetics to signify everything, or as near to everything it can get.
(None of the above is an endorsement of your stances.)
“Eventually the families dropped the issue.” Settled or figured out that the charity had no real assets to attach.
The opposite of these studies of identical twins would be to study the children of ‘The Sperminator’ Ari Nagel. Nagel inseminates any woman who requests a tissue sample. Few of the women appear to be Jewish, many are of African descent. To avoid cousin marriage Nagel kept the women up to date on who their children’s cousins might be. Nagel also is willing to devote time, but not money to the children’s upbringing. Nagel is high IQ and very capable as he is a math professor and was able to imagine and effect his plan. The women are probably smarter than most as they had to figure out how to contact and meet Mr Nagel while earning enough to raise the child.
So IQ realists, there is now a decent sized sample of identifiable children of the same father but widely varied women. What will the longterm outcome be? It seems to be that most multi wife families have genetically similar wives, who are genetically similar to their husband, which does not appear to be the case with the Nagel clan.
No need, there have been various documentaries on these triplets on JewTube for years. And with a good ad-blocker you’re not even feeding the beast.
He’s an African, just be grateful he’s not butt-naked and attempting to dismember and eat you.
Using Ron’s code-magic “ignore commenter” button you see it even less frequently. But I’m glad I hadn’t previously ignored this character, I was laughing uncontrollably for several minutes. Easily worth that hour’s LOL allocation.
I wish I could say I am a modern-day Gallileo, but I also suggest that the pope is a dunce (actually a flaming liberation-theology-believing Commie, to be exact). So, there’s that.
To the point here, for a change, thank you for the review, Mr. Lynch. Between this one and Mr. Sailer’s review of ~ a year ago (just guessing), I look forward to seeing this documentary. In fact, I will look for it right after finishing this comment.
The quest for knowledge, especially in the biological sciences, can involve the use of unorthodox, immoral and downright nefarious methods to get at the results we would like to observe. Think graverobbers of old and try to imagine the science done to observe the circulatory system, etc., a few thousand years back. Curiosity can drive us to do some wild things. Ask any cat or 10 y/o boy.
Once these kids were given away by their natural Mom, I don’t think that the splitting up of the 3 was the worst that could have happened. It may have been sad to think about after the fact though, for them.
Interesting case regarding the birth mother of the Parkland shooter, Nicholas Cruz who was Jewish.
“My real mom was a Jew. I am glad I never met her,” Cruz said.
This woman had children by three men, one Cuban, one black and one white.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6603167/Biological-mother-shooter-Nikolas-Cruz-seen-time.html
Crack-smoking biological mom who gave up school shooter Nikolas Cruz is seen for the first time at taxpayer-funded Florida home and says: ‘I’m the one-woman wrecking team.’
She was six-months pregnant with Nikolas when cops in Fort Lauderdale busted her for possession of crack cocaine
had a long arrest record. Nicholas has a half sister now in prison.
Danielle is currently a 32-year-old inmate at Lowell Annex prison in Ocala, Florida where she is serving eight years for credit card fraud, cocaine possession and the attempted second degree murder of a police officer.
She, Zachary and Nikolas Cruz are believed to have three different fathers and there’s no evidence that the two brothers have ever communicated with their sister or their mother.
It’s interesting how Nazi-like the Israelites are.
If a musicologist were to carefully study and compare this work (and others by the black Mozart) with a Mozart work he might come up with reasons why Mozart was superior. Little things that only a music-expert could see but you don’t. You don’t just go by a purty-sounding tune. Also, you have to go by a composer’s entire body of work. And don’t forget he had a lot of white genes. Same as Louis Farrakhan, who is or was a classical violinist.
And then Daily Mail has to show photographs of all the “victims” all over again.
I don’t know what happened in Parkland, but I certainly don’t believe the story we are being told, especially since Parkland is Schlomo-town with about 70% New York jews living there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevalier_de_Saint-Georges
He was a mulatto.
As usual, you bozos can’t read. You know nothing about Boulogne. And I knew you bozos would give me the “half-white” crap. The problem is, it’s the black part that was superhuman.
You are such a fatuous idiot.
I knew you assholes would pull out the ol’ “he’s half-white” routine.
Yeah, but the black part was the super-part.
It never occurs to you types that most of the American blacks you hate so much are half-white, and it’s the white part that causes all the trouble.
And anyhow, Joseph Boulogne, a black man who you would call a black man if you met him, and thus denigrate him, is infinitely superior to YOU. That is my point. You couldn’t read it. Because you are inferior.
You are right about Parkland,official story hard to believe. 30% of the victims were Jewish.
A half-black man with musical and athletic talent. Will wonders never cease?
This review might really be helped by stills (screenshots) from the documentary.
Movie reviews across the Internet use ‘screenshots’ to reinforce points. Is this technically against copyright?
Visual media would help, picture or video. Here is an authorized “ten-minute preview” of Three Identical Strangers:
Video Link
As I’ve said before, if Fred wakes up and thinks he’s Napoleon, they’ll put him on psychosomatic drugs to bring his delusion back in line with reality.
If Fred wakes up and thinks he’s Josephine, they’ll cut and carve and hormone the crap out of him to provide the illusion that his delusion is reality.
Who are the real lunatics?
Jews love abortion and were certainly running all the clinics in town.
Is abortion common among Jewish women? It could be Jewish women are pro-abortion as policy but not so much in practice.
> the extremely obvious answer
Being what? They’re stolen children? Abused ’til three then given up for adoption? Cloned from the Lindbergh baby?
The study is personal and they want their privacy, nitwit.
And we don’t really know if his mother was all black…
Why couldn’t the Jewish community have conspired to keep those those unfortunate boys together?
You could not more inaccurately describe my worldview than calling it “oprahesque”. I read articles around here all the time. On the other hand, I believe humans to be fundamentally spiritual beings temporarily occupying a material body, a common belief. Not to be argumentative, but I am genuinely curious; is anyone who believes in a soul disqualified from being interested in the nature/nurture question?
Wow, evidence of Wakanda!! Yuze wuz kangs. I will try to listen if I have time, but note that the notation is distinctly European.
Ah, but biology can be responsible for “random behavior”. In this reply, “random behavior” means behavior that at least appears to be picked from a specific distribution of outcomes. In effect, the animal’s decision making function is chaotic (in the sense of chaos theory [1], a function that gives unpredictable but limited results over the short term, see “chaotic pendulum” [2]) or is determined by the sum of a large number of neural inputs (has a Normal distribution), or some similar source of behavior that is best looked at from probability theory.
You can see why that would happen: predictability during interactions with other animals can lead to losses, perhaps severe losses.
So let’s suppose that the decision to commit suicide is random in the sense that it is determined by a large number of inputs, added together, that can be summarized as the probability of committing suicide during a depressive incident over a calendar year’s time. One of these is depression, another current health (nutrition, infectious diseases), other external events, and there are probably many more factors. In fact, I’m going to use a dice throwing model (a discrete distribution), and simply assume that all three brothers had the same chance of committing suicide every year. In the model, each brother threw thee dice once per year, and committed suicide if the dice rolled the wrong way. Sort of Russian Roulette without the revolver. The model is crude, but only intended to show the difficulties of interpreting experimental results when multi-factor causation pertains.
Obviously, events will depend in large part on the actual probability of committing suicide. I wrote and executed a Monte Carlo simulation [3] that gives some idea of what could happen, and how likely it is to happen. The results are shown in this plot:
https://www.wolframcloud.com/objects/95a83eda-2a6c-4975-8b61-06c378e4230b
See technical description [4].
As you can see, results varied quite a bit, even given the same annual probability of suicide. Each dot represents the odds that of the three identical twins will commit suicide while the other does not. If the odds are 0.25 (1 to 4), then in in 50 of the lives one twin died and two lived, and in the other 200 cases, some other balance of life and death occurred. Odds were 1 to 1 for a p(suicide/year) of about 0.025. For higher risks, the observed case (1 suicide, 2 non-suicides) had better than 1 to 1 odds. For lower risks, the observed case (1 suicide, 2 non-suicides) had worse than 1 to 1 odds.
You can deduce several other things of interest, but let’s not, and pay attention to the above.
The point here is that simply looking at the physical observation (only one case) doesn’t tell you as much as you’d think. Sure, it’s compatible with biological differences of inborn behavior. It’s also compatible with biological identity of inborn behavior. In fact, odds are still 1 to 10 for an annual suicide risk of 0.01, and the observation could, plausibly, be the observation of a somewhat improbable event.
The evidence you’ve presented for biological difference is not determinative, in fact, it isn’t even close.
Counterinsurgency
1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Theory
2] “Triple Pendulum Chaotic Acrobatics”,
Video Link
3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_method
4] Three men, genetically almost identical, were observed for their lifetime (estimated at 50 years past puberty). One of the three committed suicide, the other two did not (this is called “the observed case”). The above plot shows the result a Monte Carlo simulation that assumed all three men had the same fixed annual probability of suicide. The simulation was run 5 times for each fixed probability (shown on x axis), each run represented by a differently colored dot. Some dot clusters appear to have fewer than 5 dots because the visible dots cover other dots. Each run simulates the number of suicides for one man and also for the other two, and computes the fraction of cases in which one man commits suicide and the other two do not. The y axis represents the fraction of cases in each simulation for which one man commits suicide and the other two do not. Different runs of the simulation with identical suicide probabilities give different y axis values because a Monte Carlo simulation uses random numbers to simulate real processes.
Note that the observed case matches the simulated more often as annual suicide risk increases, and reaches a mean match probability of about .5 at a suicide probability of about .025 per year.
Mathematica V11 code is available to anybody who wants it, just post a reply with an e-mail address.
“[B]ut I am genuinely curious; is anyone who believes in a soul disqualified from being interested in the nature/nurture question?”
No, I think’s ok to be interested in the N v N question no matter what you believe in. But since you believe that people are “fundamentally spiritual” rather than “material” entities, I’m not sure why you’d be interested. The N v N question and the course of the debate turns on direction of empirical research and conclusions (such as the measurement of intelligence) that have no application, as far as I know, to spiritual beings.
This would be true only if the entirety of what we call the person’s “nature” is described by either his genetic endowment or his circumstances and upbringing (nurture). But if the main part of a person’s “nature” is really his spiritual core, where free will and true volition reside, as well as virtues which are eternal, then trying to ascribe all of the various life outcomes, choices and decisions to some combination of genes or circumstances is leaving out the single most powerful element and will ultimately be an exercise in futility.
I personally am of the view that genetics determines all those aspects which could be described as being of the material or animal nature, up to and including the temperament. Any quality more refined and pure (urge toward perfection, beauty, virtue, art, development, etc) must be ascribed to a higher substance than the material, and I call that the soul.
Materialists have grappled with noticing the same problem, and by and large their solution has been to gravely diminish these spiritual urges by assigning them to the realm of lower values such as sexual conquest (he paints the painting in order to get the most desireable woman to produce the most healthy offspring, etc). It’s a tragic and disintegrating urge, but entirely understandable within the confines of materialism.
Anyway I posed my original comment because I thought there must be some people out there who care about these questions but are left empty at the thought that they are just wet computers, determined by genetic coding and circumstances, but in no way by them “selves” in the eternal sense. I’m okay being dead wrong on this. Thanks for the chat.
No – not at all.
After teaching a unit on personal identity in my intro philosophy class for years, now, I’ve finally concluded that the only possible solution is an indivisible, perhaps indissoluble, soul.
But nature/nurture remains a big open question for me.
I am going to acknowledge that we are n ow talking about a completely different issue. I never stated that or even suggested that suicide was random. And again, I want to express that in my opinion the incident is tragic and I have no doubt painful.
But I am going to hold a very tough line here on genetics as the foundation for all behavior as advanced by those who claim genetics over, beyond and in spite of environment. If one claims that the genetic code is the primary or the sole factor. Then one must abide by the rules they establish. In this case the genetic code. The genetic code to biology cannot and is not random — it’s the formula and the biology will not deviate from said formula. The human animal will respond according to their code and there is nothing random about coding in this line of argument. It is for lack of a more precise term, predestination. In that respect, biology then cannot be in any way random. There can be unknowns and as any hardened behaviorist will tell you, if I know the unknowns of the biology, I can predict the outcomes. There simply is no subjectivity. The body will do as the body instructions say do. It is biomechanics at its most pure. Randomness just does not enter into it – not the biology.
A simple comment about your chaos, random application — that is not how genetics operates. What have included are a series of subjective environmental factors — that alone invalidates that genetics is the primary influencer. And to use a mechanical the chaotic pendulum would be the incorrect because if one knows the forces at play, the movements would not be random, but predictable and measureable – that’s physics. In other words, if one knows the mechanics, then the behavior of the mechanical device would be predictable, unless some number of unexpected (note the use of unexepected as opposed to random) environmental aspect is introduced to interfere with the process. And every time you use the term “random” you are talking impacts on the mechanics, not the mechanics itself. The very interjection of random is to environment because, biology in this case genetics is to a very specific code. Even if that coding is amiss or changed, one can if they know the process of cause to effect predict what even a erred or changed code do.
I need to correct your assignment to me that I pressed for evidence of biological difference. My query was to whether the said differences might be caused some slight variation in genetics. And that based on the argument that genetics over rules environment. If so we should be seeing identical twins identical in every way – regardless of environment. The pendulum operating mechanically is not going to behave in any random manner – given a consistent environment and forces in a any given space. It will not deviate unless the conditions change. Why look at a pendulum when there are live and actual mechanical forces operating in real time. The mechanics of the universe are entirely mechanical and predictable because we know the forces and the mechanisms.
What the small sample indicates , and I acknowledge that the sample size is probably to small to explain anything beyond this particular family, is that despite the genetics – environment matters. And genetics cannot control for environment, and when those environmental factors are subjective, it amounts to even less control and thereby less predictability. The impacts on the mechanics are unpredictable, unexpected and often unmeasurable as constructs and impacts. The genetic mechanics only gets you so far.
And applying that mechanical model of random operations to the lives of three human beings is in my view a bridge too far by way useful comparison. The lives of the men are static as is any mechanical device. And unless the device mimics the variables that reflect the men individually, their relationship to each other individually and then in relationship to them in every possible pairing, the myriad of immediate family interactions, the trillions of responses via minding in response to self and others and events individually, as a group, in pairings, with others . . . then it simply serves little in explaining the potential or cause for suicide. But what it does reinforce is that the interaction to environment outweighs the genetic code, and in this case not only the code as it applies to self, but to human beings. The very act itself is counter to our basic biological code to survive. Even when human beings do things to their body that is damaging, the body is constantly seeking a means of balancing to survive. Suicide may be the ultimate rejection of the genetic deterministic advance.
Minding can override the genetics on the subjective, including IQ.
The chaos application would actually suggest that in what appears to be chaos there’s a pattern. But minding can and does override said patterns of human subjective rationale, in my view.
I appreciated the pendulum and the discussion.
OK, good discussion. My last sentence was a mistake, far too blunt, and I apologize for that. I have a couple of things to say that you might find interesting and / or useful.
You’ve pointed out several areas in which I was claiming to know something I don’t know (as it turns out). I’m approaching the phenomenon under discussion from a computer science / distributive system / operations research background, one involving at least some hardware experience. I tend to see analogies between that and brain function.
** Topic 1: Existence of biological mechanisms that rely on low level probabilistic processes.
I know that at least some distributed networks rely on the emergent properties of random processes. You’re probably using one of them now: Ethernet. When two computers want to use the network at the same time, they (metaphorically) draw straws, and short straw gets to use the network. Same thing with Bitcoin miners who want to update the record of transaction: they search for a solution to a specified problem (that can only be solved by a highly laborious random search), and first one to find the solution gets to update the transaction record and get a crypto-coin. (The problem is inverting a hash function. To date, nobody can, so miners pick a random string, hand it to the hash, and check against the string they’ve been given by the coin awarding authority.)
It would surprise me considerably if vertebrate neural systems didn’t also rely on probabilistic low level mechanism [0]. _However, I don’t really know this to be true. It is a hypothesis, and maybe a research topic for somebody else.
** Topic 2: Chaotic systems are predictable.
Short answer: In theory, yes, in practice, no. “Chaos theory is a branch of mathematics focusing on the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions.”[1]. This sounds innocent enough, but isn’t. The kicker is the meaning of “initial conditions”. Chaotic systems are _far_ more sensitive to initial conditions than you would expect (or perhaps could believe! Very sensitive.) In fact, chaotic systems are so sensitive to initial conditions that _the initial conditions cannot be measured to the required accuracy_. This implies that system state also can never be measured to the required accuracy!! Newtonian theory can describe a chaotic pendulum, _but_ the theory cannot be applied because it needs an initial state, which cannot be measured!! [3]
In practice, this heuristic can be used: “Stochastic motion is random at all times and distances. Chaotic motion is predictable in the very short term, but appears random for longer periods”[2]. Flip a coin and you get an immediately unpredictable result. Start a chaotic pendulum and the result _becomes_ unpredictable as time passes.
Note that nowhere in the references does it say that chaotic system behavior is drawn from a probability distribution. I don’t think anybody knows. You can always fit some distribution to a data set, but that doesn’t mean future behavior will be drawn from the fitted distribution. “Unpredictable” doesn’t mean “probabilistic” in this interpretation, and that was another mistake I made.
**Topic 3: Genetics is deterministic.
Since the body is a self-assembling system, genetics determines what can be done with existing resources (food, parents, peer group, possible injury, possible medical care, etc.) rather than being solely determinative. If the genes aren’t there to do X, then the organism can’t do X. If they are there, than X is possible. Example: the genes for producing feathers are in eggs, but the eggs you ate for breakfast didn’t have feathers and never will develop into a feathered organism (“possible injury” case, above).
Topic 5: Time inversion: Reasoning back from observation to cause:
The simulation wasn’t supposed to catch real human behavior or to be predictive, although it was supposed to be close enough to be plausible. I was trying to show that, for a system that mimics a very simple application of suicide statistics (constant risk/year), reasoning backwards from a single observation to the underlying process is, ah, extremely error prone, and that (even when the suicide rate is identical for all three people) the case of “one person suicides, two don’t” crops up frequently, and is actually more common as suicide risk rises (up to .1 risk/year). This fits the diagnosis of all three people as having “depression”, which is related to suicide.
I guess, looking back on it, that part of what I was trying to say is that the positive assertion “parents caused the third person to suicide” is not necessarily so. However, the point is very weak, because my argument only asserts that “There may have been no elevation of annual suicide risk, as the simulation assumes that none of the three simulated people have an elevated suicide risk. Therefore, it is not known whether the parents actually caused the third person’s suicide.”
Counterinsurgency
0] Apparently this is a subject of active research:
https://www.physionet.org/challenge/chaos/
Note the sentence:
“Since many methods for characterizing the dynamics of time series are extremely sensitive to outliers, and since outlier detection in these time series is non-trivial, we have also provided a set of “filtered” time series from which almost all of the outliers have been removed” which means “We don’t understand it, so we’re going to ignore it.”
1] Chaos theory – Wikipedia.
Later, the article points out that “topological mixing” and “Density of periodic orbits” are sufficient conditions. The “topological mixing” comes, of course, from topology, and means that the system is something like mixing dye – any two particles in the initial system may end up adjacent after the mixing.
“Density of periodic orbits” comes from differential equations, which can produce plots of system state that look like “orbits” in that they are continuous curves with finite curvature, rather like the orbit of a planet. In a chaotic system (like our Solar System), every possible point in space will eventually be part of some object’s orbit, so “periodic orbits are dense”.
2] E. M. Tory, First comment.
Stack Exchange, 2012.
https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_difference_between_chaotic_systems_and_stochastic_systems
See subsequent discussion.
3] “But I was thinking of a plan
To dye one’s whiskers green,
And always use so large a fan
That they could not be seen.”
Lewis Carroll.
Poem in_Through the Looking Glass_
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-aged-aged-man/
Poem is recited by the White Kinight, often thought to be Caroll’s representation of himself.
I am fine with the choice of comparison. But my use of the computer was to demonstrate why the brain doesn’t function as one. It is not deterministic. in fact, the brain looks for ways around, and over deterministic barriers. The computer does not and cannot. Dr. Turing’s views go to this goal — that of an intelligence that is not mere computational or informational, but one that actually engages in minding, not limited by its mechanical structure and processes.
I think I fully get the advance here. but a computer does not develop a sense of itself in relation to its environment. It cannot turn itself on by will. There is no Collusses. No self expression as an independent identity.
That is why the field of psychiatry often gets diagnosis incorrect, and the application of medications is always a very dicey proposition that has no definitive standard from patient to patient — even those with same diagnosis – the mind does not operate like a computer.
“If the genes aren’t there to do X, then the organism can’t do X.”
I am not going to argue that if a particular gene is missing or is anyway impaired , that is an activce gene, there will not be issues. However,
here is where the brain baffles the medical community. Because biological processes are supposed to prevent X, because said biological mechanisms aren’t there and yet people overcome, override, bypass, biology all the time. I think this especially true for our brains and cognition. I am going to walk carefully, here. Because I have not attended to these examples as I perhaps should in which the brain rewires or the body reconfigures to make up for some defect, including genetic defects. I going to venture with the below, not as anything definitive —-
Autism — is a condition that can be related to genetic disorder, yet people with autism are with increasing frequency demonstrating that missing code, or damaged code, are able to do activities including thinking and feeling said coded error should prevent.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/113/5/e472
https://autismtherapies.com/
https://autism.lovetoknow.com/Occupational_Therapy_for_Autism
http://therapysu.com/
People have had portions of their brains damaged or removed and the brain just rewires itself. but what we know and we know this definitively is that we can retrain brains, even damaged brains, from accidents, genetics, etc. by changing the environments and the variables that impact cognition. What the lives of the other two triplets tells us is that genetics as powerful as it is is not the final arbiter of our cognitive outcomes. Granted there may be limitations, suicide can be thwarted by environment. IQ can be improved by way of environment. Expose a community to said environments long enough, persistent enough and it will adapt to the same in expectations. we are not computers and while our generic code lays a foundation — that end is not absolute.
According to most I should have died two years ago. Clearly my brain was really damaged. It was scary. But by virtue of hardwork, hard work, persistence, it managed to rework or repair whatever trauma threw it our of whack. I remain deeply light sensitive, but my brain has reworked its bugs without drugs, or surgery . . . The components of my biology hands, knees and mouth have not healed, they remain physically damaged – noticeably so.
Genetics does not have to be destiny. And history makes it clear what trails us more than anything else is environment. Family, school, community, organizational and others . . . those factors that press in physically, emotionally, and intellectually, more than genes it’s the repetitve exposure to stimuli, i.e. family that forms us. There may be rare cases of extremes — no doubt. And unfortunately, for conservatives such as myself, we handed the reins of environment over in favor of easier more simplistic assails — like color and then reinforced the gift to liberals staking an entire polity on the same. All the while extolling the cognitive virtues of Jesus — it’s embarrassing.
There’s a reason why we have suicide hotlines — they improve the psycopathy and relieve the stressers – environment. It’s why we listen to music, it won’t change our genes, but it can change our cognition.
http://howourbrainswork.com/
I don’t subscribe to any particular of the above, but I do rest on the proposition that our brains do operate as computers.
Correction:
I don’t subscribe to any particular of the above, but I do rest on the proposition that our brains do do not operate in the same manner as computers.
Priss,
Good to see you back as other than anon.
There was a recent thread where someone was asking Talha abt. Islamic thoughts on abortion.
An apparently Jewish person joined the thread, saying that anywhere short of birth is O.K. (with references to back that up), and that the recent N.Y. decision (to make third-trimester abortions a matter of choice) was based on Talmudic law.
An apparently Jewish person joined the thread, saying that anywhere short of birth is O.K. (with references to back that up), and that the recent N.Y. decision (to make third-trimester abortions a matter of choice) was based on Talmudic law.
I don’t think it has anything to do with Talmudic laws or whatever. They are just pulling stuff out of their ass.
I’ve generally supported abortions on ground of ‘what do I care if libs and blacks kill their own kids?’ Also, a woman who wants to kill her own kid shouldn’t be a mother.
But the new NY law that says abortion is okay up to birth is creepy as hell. It’s almost like Child Sacrifice to the Altar of Orgasm. Orgasm over Organism. Vagina(or Clitoris) over Womb. Orgasm is like meth to these women. Sex isn’t for love, family, and children but endless highs.
I can see how abortions in the past were used to avoid hardship or social shame. Maybe the family couldn’t afford to feed another mouth. Many communities practiced infanticide when times were tough. Also, as society was more conservative in the past, a woman with unwanted pregnancy could be shunned or shamed. Though abortion was always ugly, there was an element of tragedy or sadness.
But why do people have abortions now? Some say rape, but most abortions are not about coping with rape. It’s all about the primacy of Orgasm. Some lowlife whore wants to sleep around without repercussions to ease of life and pleasure. She and her partners are too lazy or reckless to take precautions. So, she gets knocked up, and there is new life growing inside of her. But that means no more fun for her or being inconvenienced with child and responsibilities. So, she just has the child killed or ‘sacrificed’ so she could have more fun with the fellas. It’s all about the orgasm. Orgasm is so central to the meaning of life in the globo-homo era that organisms, even at 9 months in the womb, can be sacrificed. Sacrificed to the god of orgasm and endless pleasure. It’s almost like withcraft in the movie THE WITCH. Those addicted to meth are methheads. Those addicted to abortions are deathheads.
Video Link
OK, let’s drop the “brains as computers” idea. Until a computer acts like a brain (should that ever happen), the question won’t be settled.
My basic point remains: when you’re dealing with a single observation, one out of three doesn’t really prove anything, nor does two out of three, nor (although the simulation does not show this) does three out of three. It’s suggestive, sure thing, but the research it suggests has not yet been conducted.
That the triplets should have acted so similarly is much more important, since such such similarities between people are very rare, and because the triplet study gave results similar to the twins studies.
OK, back to the conversation. I’m very happy that you’re recovering from whatever did that to you. Closest I’ve come to anything serious was a back injury from a 20 foot (equivalent) fall and a hip replacement, neither of which injuries were as severe as yours. You’ve clearly been through a lot. Moreover, it’s clear that you don’t have the specialized background as a computer engineer, so discussing that particular area of specialized knowledge isn’t a good idea.
As to your ideas of brain functioning, they are roughly similar to mine. It’s clear that brains can adapt, in many cases even after severe injuries to the brain. BTW, I find it hard to reconcile that with evolution — no clear mechanism for such a capability, unless it is a byproduct of initial fetal development. I mean, how many organisms would be able to sustain and then recover from brain injury in a state of nature? If the answer is “very few”, then the capability would have very little effect on reproductive fitness.
Concerning “soul” and the like — I’ve seen this before. The “origin of life” studies after WW II stated conclusively that life was easy to synthesize — _despite what turned out to be no understanding whatsoever about how genes worked_ and _no understanding whatsoever about internal cell structure on the micro level_. The current view of a cell as being a loosely linked network of semi-autonomous micro-structures (vacuoles, mitochondria, a structured transport system, etc.) was simply absent. Cells were “a bag of chemicals”, and thus easy to synthesize. The statement of easy synthesis was clearly not justified by contemporary knowledge. It was almost as bad as the claim that economies could be centrally managed.
“Soul” is, at the _least_, an emergent property of an extremely competent (and highly complex) nervous system. Nobody understands it; MRI studies are just starting to peck away at it structure, and a good deal of it appears to be self-referential _and_ semi-autonomous non-hierarchical networks. Spaghetti programming on a large scale, that makes a Big Ball of Mud [1] look like clarity itself. It is possible (with our limited knowledge) that soul is a byproduct of this complexity, that one day the mammalian mind reached some threshold of complexity and “just woke up”.
In a universe composed of (by mass/energy, related by e=m*c*c) 23% “dark matter” and 73% “dark energy”, and 4% palpable matter (the stuff we can see and touch if it’s near enough), there is no particular reason to believe that neural function is restricted to palpable matter. In fact, as Fred Reed has pointed out, there is no obvious way to store the complex behavior of spider hunting wasps in the few neural cells that such wasps possess. A classic Christian soul is no more impossible than is such a high density of information storage (or its evolution).
There are very many things that are not understood. Like Newton, who said that he thought of himself as a child playing with shells on the seashore while ignoring the entire ocean in front of him, we don’t know very much.
Here’s a the cleaned up version of a popular video on the subject of limited human knowledge. (WARNING: it’s made by a modern Britisher, and contains the sort of language one can expect from somebody for whom everything is going wrong. NSFW).
Non-cleaned up version: ht-tps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EH-z9gE2uGY (remove hyphen to view)
So, I’m in general agreement that we can’t set limits with confidence, because we don’t know very much. However, I also believe that, when one leaves a room, one should strongly consider exiting through the doorway rather than through a wall [3]. It’s a balancing act.
Counterinsurgency
1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_ball_of_mud
2] https://www.space.com/11642-dark-matter-dark-energy-4-percent-universe-panek.html
Percentages vary depending on the study, but in all cases baryonic matter is less than 10% or so.
3] Not always, though. If you have to escape from one of those little shop cubicles on a mall because of a threat to your life that blocks the only exit, consider that you can usually kick down the partitions between the shops, and escape through the hole. That’s a bit showy, of course, and not for casual use.
We have no idea on a reductionist level whence self awareness. Self awareness may be some non-matter “soul”: perhaps (a) just an emergent property, perhaps (b) dependent on a non-material substrate, but in any case (a, b, or something else) unknown
We have clear empirical evidence that environment can affect children (bad effects of child care [1]), and people may have souls (as above), there is no particular reason to say that a “soul” isn’t affected by environment.
Some things we know, others we don’t. May God someday give us the ability to tell the difference, because clearly God hasn’t done so yet.
Counterinsurgency
1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/14/AR2010051400043.html
Uhhh we can drop the comparison because it just has very little value. If one understand that computers and brains function very differently, then one doesn’t need and computer engineering or programming degree to make that case. Computers are locked to their mechanics. The brain and the human body can and have jumped biological deificts to accomplish certain tasks. So the comparisons have limited value and only get one so far to any discussion of genetics (biological engineering) and environmental relational dynamic to subjective accomplishment or capacity.
I think your are contradicting the very point of the study. Genetics to environment based on identical triplets or twins. The key factor is that here the genetics (the programming) is exactly the same in all three men. In all three the basic code is exactly the same (so it is contended) and like the computer ought to yield similar results based on the coding, inspite of the environmental factors. And it’s that reality that despite the biological (genetic code) the three do not have similar outcomes. The suicide to code of basic survival coding indicates that the minding, intellectual functioning is not bound by biology. In this case, despite a nonthreatening biological environment. In fact, the environment shared by the three gentleman was in fact conducive to thriving in the physical world — the genetic code to that end, survival was over ridden by the mind.
I am not sure we ventured into the existential arena of the soul, nor I am sure it would be in any manner helpful here. Because soul existence is one of transcendence even above minding. There is little in the way of genetics or biology that explains it. It’s an odd turn. Soul is to that which is free from ant biological or environmental constraints, such that something like intelligence is mooted. I think all of the research on biological reasons for “souling” are speculative. It is a discussion related to beyond the natural. In that area reserved for “supernatural or “supranatural” existence. I am not convinced of the chemical or neurological euphoria as an explanation of the soul. Though the medical community in larger and larger numbers is finally coming around to the idea that just maybe there is a realm out of their reach – and in relationship to the triplet and twin studies – not even broached, in my view. Spiritual reality in my view hold s little in terms of any constraint of ny kind of the physical.
I will hold out that the “scientific” explication of the soul is further out of reach that the research concerning comprehending black holes or wormholes and what possibilities await if one could survive entering them. But in the case of these three men we don know something, that our genetics are not as determinant as is made out to be the case by the genetic IQ determinists.
And that is my ultimate understanding. And that the researchers found even this singular triplet construction valauable in coming to some understanding of that one way or the other.
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I have no way of knowing how physically traumatizing your fall was. The closest I could come to that shared experienced are cracked ribs when I was hit by a car many years ago while riding. In neither accident, did I have to have anything replaced. Hip replacement, that’s a severe surgical procedure, even if routine. I can’t imagine.
I think I would prefer hip damage to brain damage — but now we sound like two old guys complaining and comparing.
Laugh.
Studies done on twins separated at birth are truly treasure-troves of information:
https://www.amren.com/news/2018/08/nurture-nature-twin-studies-intelligence-heredity-environmental/