I just read "The Nurture Assumption" and I have to say it has opened my eyes to new possibilities. I just read it last night, so I would have to do more research before I feel comfortable giving it my endorsement (not that it matters). This book challenges the popular idea that your parents are the primary factor in how your personality develops, and instead argues that parents do play some role but the primary factors are your peer group/culture and the genes you inherit.

The reason I am so interested in this book is that it strikes at the very root of the FDR philosophy "it all starts in the family". If the information and studies in this book turn out to be correct, this base assumption would be false. If this is true, FDR will have to rethink a lot of their beliefs including many which relate to anarcho-capitalism and religion. Perhaps the answer to the question of why people choose to aggress against their neighbor or worship god is not as simple as "your family abused you".

If anyone is interested I would love to hear what you think about this book. You can find it on Audible if you are lazy like me and prefer an audio book.

As I may have pointed out elsewhere in this forum, the work of Steven Pinker, author of Blank Slate, points to the same idea, that much, if not most, of who we are is already imprinted on us before we hatch...

- NonE

Does Stefan really believe that the widespread acceptance of centralized government power is caused by people's relationships with their parents, to the exclusion of other influences? Or just that parents are in a position to bring their children up to reject state authority, and therefore one can indirectly blame parents for allowing the perpetuation of objectionable paradigms and not making sure that their children are brought up looking at the world properly?

nature/nurture is a tricky subject though. If for example the environment in which the embryo develops is different, the embryo will not develop at all or be completely malformed. So even there there is the environmental aspect.

it could for example also be that within the current family situations genes and the environment give rise to certain personalities but if the family situation was wholly different different personalities might emerge. I have no idea.

i think these days he's much involved in the psychohistory school of thought. Have no idea how credible or serious that school is though.

I'd think that one obvious counterexample for the model you're describing would be how many children whose parents are culturally different from the other people in the community come to see their parents as strange, backwards, or outdated. They sometimes become embarrassed by their strange families, and feel alienated from them on behalf of the social norms they embrace. If family structures were the sole determinants of one's worldview or cultural expectations, such a phenomenon would seem extremely puzzling. But I don't think it would surprise anyone to hear a story like that, because we all know that our families tell only part of the story of how we came to be the people we are today. An important part, sure, but not the only part!

Won't he just shift the deFooing from parents to everyone else? Surely most of the people in your peer group are abusive and corrupt, and willing to adopt the tactics of the authoritative state to control and manipulate each other while playing games. Won't your coach--who promotes the collective benefit of the baseball team over doing what's best for individual athletes--be the new villain?

Or are we getting rid of baseball now? Maybe it's a moot point. I read on FDR that teams don't actually exist. (OK, OK, I'm being snarky. I get that there's a complicated philosophical explanation for how individuals can come together in a common pursuit and form temporary alliances to pursue a shared goal which is behind the claim that the team doesn't exist.)

hey, doesnt that article also show in print Molyneux' true feelings about people who call themselves Christians? and so all that stuff in the Tyler thread and elsewhere was just sophisticated deception?