Skeptic Project

Post 'em if you got 'em.

That humans are unique to all other mammals and are born with a "blank slate" and their personality is 100% dependent on their environment. The idea was the rejection that humans have any instincts at all.

It's a pseudo-science debunked in the 1970s, as we know now there are many factors that create sociopaths, gays, and conspiracy theorists. Plus genetic predispositions to types of personalities, hell even identical twins separated at birth often end up being almost the same type of people.

The last one, about the twins, is especially interesting because I recall in the 1980s reading a lot about the "mystery" as to why such cases exist, there must be a psychic link. People jumped to "psychic link" because the idea humans could have genetically-based attributes to their personality, or similar instincts, was just ludicrous, so of course the most logical assumption is ESP.

Blank slate is something that is still believed by a lot of people, especially people on the extreme left and people on the religious right. That nurture alone is responsible for how people act. Fresco in particular is a great example of obsolete thinking, where he believes that absolutely all violence is motivated by people growing up in a violent society. Frankly, the idea is just stupid. Yes, a hell of a lot of violence happens because of environment, but all? There are no sociopaths? There are no psychopaths? Come on.

Since so much of the TZM/TVP dogma relies on the blank slate theory, it would be good to have some scientific evidence that its a load of bunk.

Because, you know, TZM loves science.

Someone had posted a really interesting TED video on the topic at some point. Stuff like that would be good.

Going with blank slate or entirely nature is an easy black & white out.

I hope we figure how genes and environment impact humans in my life time. I'm getting rather tired of these sorts of debates.

"He's gay because his mommy gave him tight jeans."

"No, he's gay because his mommy gave him tight genes!"