What women/men want

[Ankesh]

Originally Posted by -TW

Nature -- nurture -- yes, it's some of both.

But when you say we have control over nurture, that's not quite right, imo.

Of course you can control nurture. You may not be able to control how you were raised up. But you have a lot of control on how you will raise your own kid.

Where. What schooling. What kind of friends. What food. A lot of it you can control.

You can't control the history. But you can control how your kid perceives that history. That is why many 2nd generation Chinese and Indian kids don't have the same hangups in USA.

Even though they are born and bought up in USA - they go on to get higher grades and better jobs than the public - on average.

Originally Posted by -TW

Culture moves as culture moves. It evolves on its own, pretty much. It's not controllable. Evolution cannot be controlled, really. If you cut off the tail of each lab mouse that's born, that doesn't cause later mice to be born with no tails.

There was actually an experiment done. A bunch of monkeys were put in a big cage. A banana was dangled from the top of the cage. Whenever a monkey went to get the banana - all the other monkeys were given a small electrical shock.

Pretty soon - whenever a monkey from the group attempted to go after the banana - all the other monkeys got together and pounced on him.

So pretty soon - no monkey went for the banana.

Then the researchers removed one monkey from the group and added a new monkey. When this new monkey tried going for the bananna - all the other monkeys pounced on him. Soon he learned not to go after the banana too - but not why.

The researchers repeated the switch - removed one monkey and put up a new monkey in its place. The new monkey went for the banana and got pounced upon. And soon learnt the ways.

After a few switches - no monkeys from the old original group who were given electrical shocks remained in the cage. But yet - when a new monkey went for the banana - all the other monkeys went after him.

Behavior can be conditioned TW.