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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 29, 2024

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"Vices" is maybe too vague to be productive but physiological addiction is something we have to some extent genetically tracked. Here's a government link suggesting that half of alcoholism is genetic (https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohol-use-disorder/genetics-alcohol-use-disorder). Some estimates suggest higher numbers.

Unlike "I like math" or "I'm a nervous person" which both may be genetic but are much more complicated, addiction tends to be associated with clearer markers for things like genes that increase or decrease metabolism for something, or established enhanced response from such and such neurotransmitter.

Addiction is (slowly) starting to move into the realm of personalized medicine where we give people recommendations like "you need more vitamin B6" or "this chemotherapy drug/psychotropic/blood pressure medication is going to work worse for you."

That's not to say I agree with OP however, I figure cultural tendencies (see: Irish drinking stereotypes) are doing just as much or more of the work.

I find bias towards alcoholism (or addiction, or whatever) plausible. I don’t think there’s such good evidence that it applies to Puritans, let alone caused the teetotaler movement. There are several obvious candidates for a cultural mechanism, but the OP just kind of skims over them in favor of an HBD explanation.

Yeah again saying I don't really agree with OP, but I do find it very plausible that American culture is significantly informed by immigrant communities that had a problematic relationship with addiction (ex: Irish, Borderers, Puritans (in the sense they hated that shit, would need evidence that such things were for cause)) and that generated and informed our toxic attitudes.

As an example, American pain and discomfort tolerance is overall pretty low with respect to seeking pharmacological intervention (notoriously noted in the opioid crisis but you can also see it with our OTC pain killer usage).