Reddit mentions of Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are (The MIT Press)

Yup. Modern education is a cargo cult. Especially when you consider robust analyses of educational outcomes in separately adopted twins demonstrating that ~50% of the difference in educational outcomes is predictable and genetic and the other ~50% isn’t predictable based on anything that people think makes a difference (ie school quality, income, parenting style etc are all confounders and not causal). Citation

Parents don't really have much influence on how their kids turn out. Read Robert Plomin's new book "Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are".

https://www.amazon.com/Blueprint-How-DNA-Makes-Press/dp/0262039168

Charles Murray @charlesmurray
Robert Plomin, one of the biggest names in behavioral genetics, has just published a book on recent developments in genetics and heritability. It's called Blueprint and is written for a general audience. Here are two early reviews:
https://twitter.com/charlesmurray/status/1044672142502170624

@QuilletteM published this one, by Greg Cochran, polymath and a curmudgeon's curmudgeon (I speak as an authority):
…. Hard to believe the two reviews are discussing the same book. Read Blueprint and decide for yourself.

Forget Nature Versus Nurture. Nature Has Won
written by Gregory Cochran
https://quillette.com/2018/09/25/forget-nature-versus-nurture-nature-has-won/

Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are Hardcover – Nov 13 2018
by Robert Plomin (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Blueprint-How-DNA-Makes-Who/dp/0262039168/

>Solitude is a wonderful thing, but each man has to find it on their own in their own terms.

This is a wonderful and powerful insight. Thanks for sharing it. I'll pick up the book!

>Going to a therapist and exploring the origins of your own childhood attachment trauma is very useful. Next to every borderline, there is a co-dependant willing to lay their life down. Behind every co-dependant, there are narcissistic parent(s) who has killed all self love in their child and convinced them that their worth is decided only by what they do for other people.

I've been thinking about this a lot, and I still wobble on whether the idea of co-dependency and childhood trauma caused by inept parents is a just-so story[1]. Freakin everything turns out to be heritable. The book Blueprint[2] is supposed to be a good summary of scientific consensus, but it isn't out yet. When I look at my parents and their siblings, I can clearly see how they've been suffering through the same problems I have their whole lives. It's very difficult to tell if they conditioned me to be the way I am, or if it's all genetic. It'd be amazing to see some twin studies on this specific phenomenon, but I haven't been able to find any.

I think without medication, the best I can hope for is to recognize the feelings and learn to cope with them. But I don't know if the notion of childhood trauma that I'm carrying around is a myth. Is this something I can "heal" such that the feelings themselves go away? Has anyone ever managed to heal this way? I'm seriously considering getting on SSRIs to see if I can eliminate the feelings themselves. I've been working on myself my whole life, and while this has propelled me very far in terms of self-awareness, all the same feelings I've always had are still there.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story

[2] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262039168/

Det här blir nog spännande läsning när den kommer;
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262039168/

"Plomin has been working on these issues for almost fifty years, conducting longitudinal studies of twins and adoptees. He reports that genetics explains more of the psychological differences among people than all other factors combined. Genetics accounts for fifty percent of psychological differences―not just mental health and school achievement but all psychological traits, from personality to intellectual abilities. Nature, not nurture is what makes us who we are."

It's weird how science is being used to promote the cause of "justice" over that of knowledge, and that very badly indeed.

For example, while Christakis is right in pointing out that humans share 99% of their DNA with each other, that does not make us significantly similar. We also share 92% of our DNA with a mouse. Small initial differences can add up to large outcome differentials; just ask any meteorologist.

Moreover, if the review is anything to go by, very important social adaptations are shrugged off here as anathema to a "better society", seemingly without much thought as to why they exist. The most important of these adaptations being in-group preference, which has been with us for a lot longer than any other of Christakis' social suite apart from parent-offspring bond, which is effectively the basis for the warm and fuzzy parts of the social suite--but also in-group preference. So it seems that what's at the bottom of the social suite is exactly what's holding "justice" back. This does not bode well for "justice", because traits don't persist for immense stretches of time for no reason at all; they do so because they are adaptive.

I haven't read the book though, so I can only base my impression off the review. And my impression is that it would be wise to pair this with the much more radical and controversial, though paradoxically, the utterly mainstream and impeccably sourced, book of the same name.