

Why is Everyone like Their Parents? - senorstumps
http://www.trevormckendrick.com/why-is-everyone-like-their-parents/

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tokenadult
This remarkably thin personal blog post seems to be getting some traction, so
I will remark (subject to editing in a moment) that the classic way to figure
out "why is everyone like their parents?" was to do a study with a
"genetically sensitive design." The ways to do that include studying identical
(monozygotic, or "MZ") twins brought up in differing households, usually the
result of adoptions splitting up twin pairs, sometimes from each parent of a
twin pair bringing up one child after a divorce. More modern studies include
designs such as studying the children of co-twins, that is studying first
cousins who each have an uncle or aunt who is an MZ twin with one of their
parents. There are many variations of studies like these.

Professor Eric Turkheimer, who I think is the current president of the
Behavior Genetic Association (certainly he is very active in the association)
does the scholarly community a favor by putting direct links to most of his
papers on behavior genetics on his faculty webpage.

<http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/vita1_turkheimer.htm>

You can learn a lot about what makes children similar to--and different from--
their parents by reading those papers. Another author who puts many of his
papers on behavior genetics up on the Web is the younger researcher Lars
Penke,

<http://www.larspenke.eu/en/publications.html>

who has published as a co-author with some of the leading researchers on human
behavior genetics.

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robotresearcher
> It’s the same with being raised by parents who got rich. You saw what they
> did, you know it can be done.

Also, you are already rich without doing a damn thing. The post seems to
ignore this fine point.

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glhaynes
_People thought the human body could not run a mile in less than four minutes
until Roger Bannister did it in 1954. Once he had shown it was possible, two
months later two other runners did it in the same race._

I've heard this a million times, but is it true? Nearly every athletic record
from that era that was feasible to break has been broken since — usually
multiple times — but we tend to ascribe _those_ new records to better
nutrition and medical/physiological/kinesiological progress [and steroids]
rather than a psychological cause. Why would this one be any different?

And that's kind of how the rest of the article goes… a just-so story about why
children of adults of low socioeconomic status often end up in low
socioeconomic strata. It seems like lack of availability of similar
educational opportunities (for one) at least warrants a mention.

~~~
senorstumps
Fair enough about the 4 minute mile.

But substitute any big feat done for the first time: iPhone taking control
from the carriers, or Y Combinator being successful by funding a bunch a
little companies. The point is it was harder to do because they were the
first.

And educational opportunities are abundant in the US, regardless of where you
live. The limiting factor is more likely you don't know how to access them.
Which would change if you were around people who did.

~~~
glhaynes
Suppose we were to send in people to help everyone in the US to access all the
educational opportunities that are available to them. This would still be a
USA in which public schools are funded by regional property taxes — and thus a
USA in which the schools in the poorest neighborhoods get a small fraction of
the funding of the schools in the richest neighborhoods. Surely, then, average
outcomes would still differ radically by region.

I think you've got a very good point at its core — people are heavily
influenced by what they see around them; and, even keeping education
expenditure distributed as-is, people can make a huge difference in others'
lives by showing a good example and by passing on information on how to
achieve in spite of circumstances. _A_ limiting factor is lack of
understanding on how to get ahead, yes — but, statistically, that seems likely
to be only a small part of the story.

