Reddit reviews Blank Slate, The

> The way I see it, people who have children with surrogate mothers are just as naive -using very light terms here- as intentional single mothers.

Interesting analysis. The data does not support it however: children raised by single fathers are roughly twice better off financially (less likely to suffer poverty) and suffer 1/2 the abuse. Those are arguably the most important predictors of the future success of a child. The children of single fathers are better off than those of single mothers. All the more astounding when you consider that most single fathers are actually from the lowest socio-economic background.

>You'd do that to your child?

Yes, yes I would.

> Knowingly denying it a (biological) mother before it is even born?

As opposed to what? A 50% chance that it gets a mother who will then divorce me and take the child away? How much do you care about your child to find those acceptable odds to lose children?

>Hell, only denying breastfeeding will already fuck up its immune system.

No, it won't "fuck up" the child's immune system. It's immune system will probably be weaker, but with modern medicine always available this can be dealt with in the early years until the child catches up. With the number of modern women giving up on breastfeeding anyway to keep their boobs, your theory of "fucked up" immune systems is weak. Men who use surrogate mothers (straight and gay) deal with this effectively.

>do you really think cutting out the mother straight after birth will have any less of an effect?

Yes I do. The children of single mothers are not worse off simply because they don't have a father. There are many other factors such as their mothers being much more poor, low IQ, abusive, compulsive, unable/uninterested to participate in the child's education etc...

Listen, if I ever go the route, I will not be having baby I cannot support with a chad I couldn't close my legs for before he ran away, or a husband I got bored with. I will be starting from a very comfortable position, with enough wealth to provide anything the child could need and much, much more. Not having a mother will be an handicap, but it can be overcome; much more easily than a typical single motherhood.

Not that mothers are that important. As research shows (twin studies in particular), parents influence little to nothing of who their child will become. So long as you provide decently for them, show emotional support and do not abuse them, almost everything your child becomes will be genetically inherited. The best you can do is find kickass genes for your child (easier with surrogacy) and the correct peer groups. It is human hubris which makes parents think that their children are pets they need to teach tricks to instead of fully independent human beings with their own natures.

>There are single parents out there who didn't choose for it, and I applaud them for their great efforts at making the best out of this situation. But knowingly, willingly denying your child a parent, just so you can have a mini-me is beyond my comprehension, and I don't have a good word for it.

Do you have a good word for people who throw a coin in the air to find out if they'll get to keep their children? I thought people on this sub would understand this shit: hate the game, not the player. The US family court system changed the rules of the game by denying men guaranteed equal custody (except in the case of the child's refusal or physical abuse);I am just adapting. If you can change the laws, I will change my strategy. But that will never happen so keep your good word for men who gamble their children away, I don't need it.

Brilliant minds have been attempting to answer this question for centuries, and there doesn't seem to be a clear-cut answer yet. It remains to be seen whether there ever will be.

If you'd like to do some research, check out the book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker. Pinker has challenged the idea that humans are essentially a blank slate, and in turn, he has been challenged by those who disagree with him. There's a big debate that rages on the subject --- you might find it interesting.

What I would say is that human nature is a mixture of good and evil. We're both a product of our external environment and of our internal choices and characteristics. The dividing line between those two things can be difficult to determine.

We can definitely rule out the Christian (specifically the Calvinist) understanding of human nature, however. The idea that human beings are inherently completely evil, save for the intervention of a deity and the existence of civil governments and laws, is largely at odds with large portions of human history.

Despite what we hear on the evening news, the world today is far better than it ever has been, and it is only continuing to improve in many ways. I think it's safe for you to err on the side of taking a positive view of humanity.

And there is no such thing like disregarding the effects that biology have on the gender role.

No, they are not vague statements.

read this if you want to learn more:

https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/1501264338

Not sure why you're being downvoted. Just a reminder that a post shouldn't be downvoted if you merely disagree with the point of view, but only if it doesn't contribute to the discussion.

I'm politically Left (for the US), and I'm often frustrated by my camp's love for social scientists and thinkers who still insist on a tabula rasa model for human nature, in which the mind is a blank slate, decoupled from biology.

Stephen Pinker has written a popular book - The Blank Slate on the topic, in which he traces this model's roots to fears of inequality, imperfectibility, determinism, and nihilism.

I think the fear of inequality, in particular, influences current discussions. Talk of innate (or un-fixable) differences in mental ability is still tainted in most people's minds with the scientific racism of the Eugenics movement, and accusations of racism can be a career-killer, so scholars seem to avoid the topic, despite the solid research describing the heritability of IQ.

You should read "The Blank Slate" by Steven Pinker.

https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/1501264338

ACTUALLY! This is something that I have recently becoming intrigued about as well.

So, basically, everyone that is born will fall somewhere on the bell curve. Obviously someone like this will fall somewhere on the far right, so, high IQ.

Ok, but that's a really incomplete answer, of course he's got a high IQ. What causes this high IQ is what you're asking.
IQ is driven in large part by genes and is highly heritable (something on the order of 0.4 or 0.5). So, odds are his parents are above average intelligence as well.

read this book, it will blow your mind http://www.amazon.com/The-Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial/dp/1501264338

Because IQ is driven in large part by genes, his race plays an important factor as well. This book goes over that http://www.amazon.com/Bell-Curve-Intelligence-Structure-Paperbacks/dp/0684824299

Then, there's a good chance that he has some level of Asperger's. They don't call it "the engineer's disease" for nothing. People make jokes about this but it really does have an effect on how an individual spends their waking hours. Google about aspergers and engineering and you'll find articles like this

http://www.wired.com/2001/12/aspergers/

There's a pbs documentary and some really good articles out there, but I don't care to track them down right now.

Basically, people with some level of Asperger's become obsessed or display a high level of interest to some thing that they latch on to https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=aspergers+obsession. This is important because it allows the individual to put abnormal and significant amounts of time toward a particular interest. This usually tends to come at a cost to other brain functions necessary for social functioning.

So, when you combine all those factors, you get an individual that is highly intelligent and able to spend abnormal amounts of time and energy on a particular interest.

Surprisingly, the "push from the parents" and the environment don't really matter that much. Obviously the individual will be able to achieve more with a good environment and resources, but, this won't really change how intelligent the individual is. Basically... they're born that way and there's really not much you can do to change them.

Dude... you just have no concept of the breadth of your ignorance. I did indeed get taught about the "complete insignificance of race" - which is a bald lie.

"Dark ages" art (from that period where you were taught Europeans were so desperately ignorant that they needed Islam to teach them civilization)

Racial IQ distribution(I did say Asia would probably be mostly okay)

Racial differences in criminality

Racial differences in skull shape 2

Do you think the sickle cell gives a shit about what you were taught in school? Race is real and race matters. The belief that it is not so is part of a widespread corruption of social science by postmodernists which began in the 1970s and continues today. Basically, lots of people will tell you the science of racial difference is corrupt, evil pseudo-science - but none of them will actually debunk it, because they can't, because it's fact. They may pretend to debunk it, for example by advancing an alternative explanation without proof (very common, such as the "poverty causes the IQ/crime rate" claim - which doesn't stand up to the slightest scrutiny when compared to eg impoverished Asian refugees) while trying to deter you with shaming tactics - but they never actually put a true dent in the credibility of the evidence.

Read Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate for more on how science came to be so corrupted. (This one is mainstream and uncontroversial.)

Read Professor Kevin MacDonald's Culture of Critique to understand why this came about. (This one is "forbidden knowledge", if you actually read it don't tell people about it.)

There is a correlation between income and IQ.

There is a correlation between success in life in many facets and IQ.

The way you are is mainly due to hereditary genetics, meaning if your parents had a high IQ, you will likely also have a high IQ.

There is a correlation between IQ and ethnicity.

IQ correlates with many things in life. Calling it useless is, well, wrong.

>No idea why this is downvoted ...

Because it's wrong?

You do need a plan to shoot someone. I'm talking from a reductionist image here. If you think about every single thought that occurred in the shooter up until the point of them pulling the trigger, lets say up to that point there is a collection of thoughts that gave rise to every action that culminated in the shooter pulling the trigger. Most of the thoughts in that collection, where did they come from? Where did the shooter get the idea to get the gun in the first place? While it's possible that thought might have been 100% created by the person, most likely the person was exposed to an environment containing some kind of information about guns, if not he/she will have had a direct influence by someone else. Basically, I can't picture someone who has never heard of a gun or doesn't even hold a concept of firearm, to spontaneously pull the trigger on a gun. All these thoughts came from somewhere. I think there's enough evidence in certain fields of sciences that say most behavior is learned, and we're only born with predispositions (or buttons and dials as an analogy), and these buttons and dials get set with our environment and experiences. Steven Pinker's book Blank Slate talks in depth about this.

I added the last part about religion because as a set of ideas, they are put on a pedestal as if they were special by having been conceived in some mystical setting the past. They're just a set of ideas that people actually do cherry-pick (if you're a good person), but then my point is why even bother cherry-picking? This set of ideas is actually claiming to be the one true set of ideas, yet we're here cherry-picking it? This is what I meant by "not accomplishing what it says". It's like following a blueprint for a house, and as your building it you realize it's a warehouse, but you keep building it trying to adapt the warehouse to a house because the blueprints says it is a house in the title.

Granted, i know nothing of how that world works im new to it, and i just read the books coming out of it(they are really good). I just thought it was an amazing paper and that if someone was going to convince the people who believe that gender is all a social construct, it would be someone who understands the subject better than i do, who had lived trough it, and who's has been within the community, but if you want a better one, how about all the one's cited by Steven Pinker on the Blank Slate https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/1501264338

there is also other books, like https://www.amazon.com/Why-Gender-Matters-Teachers-Differences/dp/0767916255

there is plenty of other's as a quick Amazon search will show, but i know mostly those 2.



But if citations is what you want, well so be it, here it is the most cited worked i could find on scholar.google.com
http://imgur.com/a/XXHEw

I investigated and it does delve into the average behavioral differences.

And here is a link to it:
http://doi.apa.org/PsycBOOKS/toc/10370

Anyways, im stepping back, it bothers me a lot that people ignore what i consider to be known as proven science, like evolution, but at the same time i understand to a degree that i don't understand everything, and that perhaps, im doing more wrong by trying to shove it down people throats... the memo didn't help, just another show of reactance[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactance_(psychology)], and it got me as well i realize that, i re read it again, and i did realize a few things were he could just have saved his commentary and just ask for a look small look at the biological component that is overlooked, soooo... believe what you want, you don't like the article or what i say you don't have to believe it, thanks for your time.

Readable

short youtube explanation

book recommendation: the blank slate

Paywall and boring: Polderman, T. J., Benyamin, B., De Leeuw, C. A., Sullivan, P. F., Van Bochoven, A., Visscher, P. M., & Posthuma, D. (2015). Meta-analysis of the heritability of human traits based on fifty years of twin studies. Nature genetics, 47(7), 702-709.

Edit: Another short easily understandable youtube video

https://www.amazon.com/Human-Nature-new-Preface-Revised/dp/0674016386

https://www.amazon.com/Sociobiology-New-Synthesis-Twenty-Fifth-Anniversary/dp/0674002350

https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/1501264338

https://www.amazon.com/Open-Society-Its-Enemies/dp/0691158134

Here's a start. All these were instrumental in dismantling communist ideology.