One of the biggest takeaways I got from 'Behave' is it isn't really nature vs nurture. Often one's 'nurture' (upbringing, and experiences) can change your epigenetics, and those with abusive childhoods have higher risks for all sorts of things including cardiovascular disease, cancer, autoimmune conditions and anxiety and depression.
I'm not really sure everyone can chose 'joy'. Some simply don't have the innate temperament required to build strong relationships, and some have it literally beat out of them. Some folks are dealt a bad hand of both nature and nurture, and it makes me wonder the extent to which we 'choose' anything, or if we're all destined to mostly follow the ruts we're born into.
I haven't read Behave and childhood trauma can definitely have lasting impacts but I am also inspired by some of the older folks I have known with what seem like bottomless wells of joy.
There's a cynical broken person out there for every one of them, they aren't the norm, but some of these people went through terrible shit as children or throughout their lives but they're still happy and grateful for what they did end up having.
Also, some of the happiest people I know come from some of the worst starting environments. This is definitely survivorship bias because these people made it out to become happy but there's some thread between the two around grit and expectations then finding joy in the most basic things.
It’s one of the reason I appreciate Dabo Swinney’s life story so much. He had an awful childhood, broken home, poor as dirt, his mom shared his bed in college because they were so poor.
And yet, he’s one of the most optimistic and successful leaders out there determined to show people that their conditions do not define them.
Survivorship bias is strong. We only hear about the ones who 'make it'. Little more than footnotes for the countless who don't. Normies believe some people don't deserve a good life.
Genetics is great, but a bitter lesson from the last decade for those who believed it was the major driver of disease is that the environment has a stronger effect.
If we ignore Mendelian traits, i.e. rare diseases, ankylosing spondylitis and type 1 diabetes appear to have the largest contribution from genetics. Yet, penetrance is tiny. Genetics hardly explains more than 30-40% of phenotypic variance in those two.
Most traits are largely determined by our nutrient supply, infections, eubiosis / dysbiosis, etc. The first year of life is particularly important.
> but a bitter lesson from the last decade for those who believed it was the major driver of disease is that the environment has a stronger effect.
It doesn't make sense to talk about whether genes or environmental factors have stronger effects in general: they're very very very strongly interacting. It's not phenotype = genes + environment, it's phenotype = stupidly_complicated_function_we've_only_just_begun_to_understand(genes, environment). You can talk about the effects of genetic variation in a particular environment, or of environmental variation given fixed genetics, but "the contribution from [genetics/the environment]" without any further qualification is not a thing that exists.
Yes, exactly. Genetics is the difference between humans and fruit flies. All the radical reshaping we’ve done to the environment over the history of civilization would not have been possible without the intelligence given to us by our genes.
When people talk about genetic factors in life outcomes they always point to these very simple Mendelian diseases. They don’t point to more subtle traits that are caused by a wide variety of genes interacting. Just because we don’t fully understand these genetic mechanisms doesn’t mean they’re not there.
And as far as “nurture” goes, genes play a big role in that too. If a parent has a greater predisposition towards impulsivity or violence or substance abuse then that’s going to affect their fitness as a parent. It’s the Anna Karenina principle: everything has to go right if you want the best outcome.
Personally I think nyssos's explanation (that disease is a complex function of the joint distribution of genotype and environment) is still more convincing, and that the reason environment temporarily got more attention is simply that our ability to understand causality of disease in non-mendelian contexts is still very limited (it being an extremely complex function).
I've worked in this field for a while and continuously get into arguments with geneticists, part of that is because I simply don't understand the explanations genetics gives (I'm a molecular biologist and computer scientist; the difference is that genenticists treat genotype to phenotype as a black box, while molecular biologists see it as an event system), but another part of it is that most scientists are highly susceptible to the streelight effect, and genetics is something tangible you can easily measure in the lab, while environment is... much more complicated.
Do you work as a computational biologist? I think the problems these scientists are trying to solve with computing power is fascinating. I’m working on human biomolecular data viz tools in a consortium of academic labs (Harvard, CMU, etc.) funded by the NIH. I really enjoy working with computational biologist.
More info here if anyone is interested to collab or learn more, please reach out:
I agree with your perspective, but would add a little nuance. I think the molecularly-mediated version of genetics is promising (e.g., Transcriptome Wide Association Studies, or TWAS). It breaks out of the black box a little, but still enriches for causal associations that purely mechanistic approaches miss. Pure molecular mechanism has a hard time tracing from cells to organismal phenotype at age 60 in a varied environment.
I would very much doubt that. Joy is in how you engage with the life you have. You can have a Harvard education and (for example) be envious of the guy next door, or let topics-of-the-day drive you crazy (eg: "I don't have kids because it's bad for the environment" or "I never got married, too busy with my career")
And vice a versa, plenty of poor people find a way to be at peace with what they have (and even strive to do better w/o being resentful) , have families, etc.
That is true. It's also true that truly happy people live in places in Africa with actually the bare minimum calories, barely functioning shelter, and not the best prospects for medicine.
Either way, the conditions/makeup of your conception, prenatal environment and first 3 years of your life are simultaneously the most consequential part of your life and the part of your life over which you have the least control. At least 80% of life outcomes, in terms of objective quality and mental health is determined by those factors.
This sounds like such a cop out. I've lived in low socioeconomic areas my whole life, went to school in them, played sports in them, been in communities in them. How many of these people have I met? 5? 10?
The majority of people can, and should try and embrace good habits. Some structure, sleep, sunshine, exercise, community, etc.
To some extent, yeah, we have 'free will'. I can chose my diet. I can chose to exercise. I can't chose my immune system or whether or not my temperament is predisposed to depression or asociality. Even if you try to fight against it, sometimes you're simply going to be swimming upstream your entire life. That's admirable, but tiring.
Yes this seems backwards for at least some of the variables in the study. If you're in great health you're more likely to be joyful and to have good relationships with those around you. Saying that you should choose joy is like saying that you can avoid the worst health problems if you never go to hospital.
I totally agree. My mum left when I was 2, and my dad struggled to care for me well. I have been totally depressed from age 9 to today (age 29). My scientific career has failed due to it. I am totally unable to control it, no matter how much I try to change my circumstances or push through it
sometimes it's not even clearly good or bad. E.g. "sensitivity" as a trait can be useful in nurturing environments to develop it into talent, but also a way-in for trauma that would have otherwise bounced off of someone with less sensitivity.
I think people need more exposure to society. Maybe school implementation- social clubs, more sports incoporated, who knows.
People in general should try, even at their jobs, to join in on events. Exposure helps people with being able to balance, as well as find themselves, on what works, and what doesn't work within their bubble.
Bodies, as well as stress can be alleviated when you're surrounded by people. Even when you're in solitude, working in a public coffee shop can help too.
My social experiences all trend negative, even when I gave my all and tried my best to fit in. At the end of the day, society demands we fit in a mold and be replaceable, and not everyone fits into that mold.
People who are like that, do not have a community and would have to be completely different people to be accepted in a community in a healthy way.
I grew up without real community thanks to a mother ashamed of her heritage in a pretty backwards part of America, so I missed out on a lot of critical interactions. I didn't realize how fundamentally, socially broken I was until my mid-late 20s.
Can you explain further? I assume by privilege, you mean a privilege to a specific class. I'm just not sure what class you'd be referring to because the one's I immediately thought of would seem to have a lot of counterpoints.
E.g., lower socio-economic classes often have a strong sense of community, sometimes by the nature of being more dependent on one another. So wealth class doesn't seem to fit. But maybe you were thinking of some other class.
> I assume by privilege, you mean a privilege to a specific class
I think you started with a misstep. It's not class-specific. In some ways the middle class is most vulnerable due to the isolation of sprawling, car-dependent suburbs. But it's also tied to the inability of many young people to remain rooted in one place for economic, social, and other issues. How many people from your high school still live in the same town? There are other causes, but one's level of wealth isn't necessarily a direct cause.
Right, but I wasn't limiting the idea to class, I was just using it as a counter-example. So, where does the privilege reside if not socio-economic class? There are many other classes, I just don't know which (if any) was intended. The US has defined a number of protected classes, such as:
Despite your matter-of-fact proclamation, privilege is quite often defined by class.
>A special advantage, immunity, permission, right, or benefit granted to or enjoyed by an individual, class, or caste.
>So, where does the privilege reside
Considering the OP connected it to a social group (ie community), I don't think class is a misstep, considering 'class' is literally a collection of individuals. I was pointing out that classifying people by income didn't seem to make sense and asking what classification they had in mind. While you're not the OP, maybe you have a different thought. But you haven't clued any of us in as to what that is, just that 'it's not class'. Without any clarification, it comes across like you're just bristling at the idea of class privilege rather than giving it much substantive thought.
I don't know how to classify this group and focusing on how to classify those affected and not affected doesn't feel like the most useful topic. What I'll call "acommunality" is rampant in the US and directly related to the epidemic of loneliness. It affects people of all social classes, perhaps not equally. It has many causes, investigate those instead of trying to pick a predefined class to attach this to.
Of course. I'm not saying a simplified model that groups into socio-economic class is the end-all-be-all of measuring privilege. (My first comment said quite the opposite). This borders on bad-faith interpretation.
You claimed class is a misstep in logic. But classification is how we make sense of the world. Case and point: you just classified into "lonely" and "not lonely". Those are two classifications (ie classes) of social orientation. I get that "class" and 'privilege' are loaded words in todays parlance, but it's really just grouping individuals who are alike in some feature. What you seem to be saying is that the term 'wealth' isn't a useful classification feature, not that classification isn't useful.
So back to my original ask to the OP, I said wealth doesn't seem to be the most useful feature and I was asking them what they thought was the best classification scheme.
On the one hand: sure, it's useful to have some scientific, controlled grounding in the value of building community. On the other hand, any sad and lonely soul on the planet could probably have told us this without commissioning a nearly century-long research project.
Churchgoing/practicing folks of faith, maybe. There are plenty of religious folks who don’t partake in communal practice and who are generally miserable people.
(By “religious folks” I mean “people who have spiritual beliefs aligning with a major religion”)
Indeed. The privilege of community has been found to disproportionally impact historically marginalized people, and must be dismantled to ensure proper equity.
The question is always: does the study show causality?
"The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80". Can we think of ways that, for example, health problems at ages 45-50 cause (a) dissatisfaction in relationships at age 50 and (b) worse health problems at age 80? Did they control for that? (Is it possible to control for that? Even if they have their full clinical history, is it possible that problems that, at age 50, were subclinical—or "not reported to the doctor"—would have significant effects?)
I'm noticing a lot of cynical people in society. People that just sneer, look down, and just think on terms that are just so malevolent- he/she attitude.
I think a healthier generation of people- being rooted from education, are much more prone to being a better counterpart. Such as maintaining peace, as well as just having healthy boundaries.
But in longer stretches, I believe that people should be more understanding. Steven Pinker mentions in his books that optimism as well as just awareness that society will continue on- despite a lot of evils, life will continue, and choosing to be positive is a better approach than being pessimistic.
> The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80
Most probably the people who were already sick at age 50 were in a "less" satisfied relationship, on account of the fact that sickness is never a good conduit for having a happy love life.
So of course that those people most probably went on to have a worse health at age 80 (because they were already sick by age 50) compared to people who had had been healthier (and happier, partly because healthier) at age 50.
Not everyone has a community, nor will they be able to find one. The conventional wisdom is 'just be yourself' or 'fake it till you make it' but that's all BS and self delusion.
Sometimes, there really isn't anyone out there to connect with in a way that's going to be good for you. That's humanity for you.
what is "lonely"? I think one problem in our society is how binary we are, everything is on a ]0, 1[ scale instead of {0, 1}. We are all more or less schizophrenic, all more or less lonely. It's just finding the right cursor
What I’m starting to notice is that personality disorders represent normal traits used inappropriately. Once one notices they are reacting in a pattern instead of responding to actual events it becomes a disorder.
I've previously wondered how this affects nuerodiverse individuals. After all, relationships and social interactions tend to be different, limited, or both.
Happiness is a false idol. The key to happiness is to lower your standards for what you expect out of life. This leads to an uncreative state of being - because why would you create anything, the world is good as it is. And creating is just too hard. But this uncreative "last man" is someone that I certainly would not hold in esteem. Give me a tortured artist instead.
The “tortured artist” trope is overplayed in media vs. the reality. I don’t have the sources on hand, but you might enjoy looking into it: truly prolific and influential artists tend to be those who had stable/comfortable/long enough lives to sustain an art practice. One good book related to this is Daily Rituals by Mason Currey.
I also highly recommend the book Six Myths About the Good Life by Joel Kupperman, which has an accessible explanation of some of the philosophy behind the pursuit of “happiness” vs deeper long-term joy. It’s a book I find myself revisiting every few years because it really makes you think.
Edit: Kupperman’s book specifically analyzes the common assumption you mentioned that “the key is to lower your standards.” …”Better Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied” is a common related saying
Thought experiments can lead wherever you want them to.
You can just as well think of happiness as a skill that one can hone and learn to practice in increasingly varied circumstances. Voila, it’s no longer part of some calculus of motivation at all. It’s just its own thing that one may or may not partake in.
And likewise, you can just as well think of creating as a casually chosen option among countless ways to spend time. You do it if you want to do it, when you want to do it, because you may as well do something. Voila, it’s no longer reliant on the state of things around you or you’re mood. It’s just its own thing that one may or may not partake in.
You can play the little thought experiment parlor trick to get you wherever you want to go. If you want to believe that artists only do what they do to escape suffering, that’s fine, but some of us opt for different thought experiments with different conclusions.
In this case, it turns out that if you want to believe it, one can be happy and make stuff with no contradiction at all. Many of us here know that from first hand experience.
I'm not really sure everyone can chose 'joy'. Some simply don't have the innate temperament required to build strong relationships, and some have it literally beat out of them. Some folks are dealt a bad hand of both nature and nurture, and it makes me wonder the extent to which we 'choose' anything, or if we're all destined to mostly follow the ruts we're born into.