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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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What's the argument on the percentage of observed behavioral differences that can be attributed to genetics versus culture/upbringing?

Even IQ (and general related intelligence/ability-based measurements), one of the most, if not the most robust things that can be measured to come out of the social sciences puts its predictive power on something like job performance at around 50% on the most positive studies on the topic. On something like salary, I think it's like 20% depending on the study.

I don't doubt there is an underlying genetical factor on behavior, but I believe the effect to be less than culture and environmental upbringing in influencing an individual's behaviors as an adult. I base this on the fact that even psychopaths can be conditioned to be less violent through therapy and behavioral training, especially if done in childhood. Single-family black households are at record highs compared to decades ago but there was a point in time when the amount of two-parent black households was higher than the percentage of two-parent white households today. This is more due to culture and less due to genetics. If genetics was a primary factor we would never see big shifts in behaviors across genetic populations.