Culture may be encoded in DNA

POSTED BY: kpo
UPDATED: Saturday, September 5, 2026 00:24
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WULFENSTAR

Thursday, July 1, 2010 5:14 PM

"Wulf: now we're on to beating people, re: the billy club statement?"

It was a joke. Whya re people so unfamiliar with sarcasm?

What I meant was... Do I need a soapbox, and a microphone to make people listen? If so, will I need abilly-club to fight off my detractors?

I realize that words on a screen don't always convey the snark I mena to imply.

Humor, sarcasm and the rest are best left to face-to-face interaction. As that is the only way some can get it.

BYTEMITE

Thursday, July 1, 2010 5:17 PM

"Wulf: now we're on to beating people, re: the billy club statement?"

Quote:
Do I need a soapbox, and a microphone to make people listen? If so, will I need a billy-club to fight off my detractors?

So... Yes, then.

WULFENSTAR

Thursday, July 1, 2010 5:23 PM

lol

SIGNYM

Thursday, July 1, 2010 5:58 PM

Quote:
But does a culture of nothing produce nothing?

Yes.

Does a culture of violence, hate, and victimization produce people who are violent, hatefilled and with a chip on their shoulder?

Yes.

Does a culture of materialism produce those that care nothing but for the "paper"?

Yes.

Does a culture that promotes misogyny, while also promoting feminism produce illigitimate families and a downward spiral that serves only to circle in on itself?

Yes.

This goes for ANY culture that has imploded. Any group that has decided to become dependant on others.

Wow. How can you have so much insight and not realize that it applies to YOU too???? Because you are, indeed, the product of such a culture.

WULFENSTAR

Thursday, July 1, 2010 6:00 PM

"Because you are, indeed, the product of such a culture."

Duh.

KPO

Thursday, July 1, 2010 6:14 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
There's a few signs that environmental stresses can affect genetic expression, but this works by changing what genes and therefore chemicals are expressed, not the genetic code itself.

They can't even demonstrate this is what's at work here. I find it unconvincing and really, honestly poor science if they're trying to claim these changes over generations are "genetic."

You've lost me I'm afraid. But this study was about showing that although songbirds may learn their song, there's also an innate inner sense in them that tells them how it should sound. You raise hatchlings in sound isolation, so that they get no chance to learn how to sing properly from their elders. Their song becomes warped. But sucessive generations of these birds, raised in the same isolation will gradually tweak the warped song, and evolve it back to the 'proper' song that is sung in the wild - even though not one of the birds has ever heard it. It's like the birds have an inner compass, that tell them how the song is supposed to sound.

It's a mirror of this theoretical experiment at the bottom of the article:

"...if you isolate human babies from culture, put them on an island and come back after a few generations, what would their culture be like? What sort of language would they have? What sort of politics would evolve?”

The study shows how both learning and innate sense combine to produce the bird's song, with possibly similar implications for human culture.

Heads should roll

HKCAVALIER

Thursday, July 1, 2010 6:29 PM

I'm with Bytemite on this one.

Another factor scientists seem to absolutely LOVE discounting is mental/emotional health in determining behavior. I mean, what kind of sounds would you produce if some scientist raised you in a sound proof box? What if the "cacophony" of the isolated bird isn't an "emergent culture" but rather the ravings of tortured lunatic? Then when he trains the youngsters who have not suffered torture, they take his teachings but express them in a healthier, more pleasing way? Kinda like saying that an appreciation of sunsets is cultural and genetic because people all over the world appreciate sunsets. But then you lock a man in a windowless box for most of his life and when he's released the scientists note that every time he sees a sunset he shows signs of distress and produces lacrimal fluid in excessive amounts. Hmmm, an emergent culture that does not enjoy sunsets!

Exuse me while I

Then there's the issue of racial memory, the idea that experiences are recorded, y'know, somewhere and generations later are expressed--Jung's archetypes, that type o' thing. Or, and this is of course something scientists simply are not going to take into account, we could be dealing with past life memory--oh no, who let him in? If such a phenomenon does exist, then it would have innumerable subtle effects on "the genome," but no scientist who didn't want to be laughed out of the profession would touch that with a ten foot pole.

As to black people in this country and incarceration rates and the like, seems to me that American style slavery over the course of 400 years might damage anyone, just a li'l bit--not just the slaves but the masters--particularly when it comes to issues of comfort and expectation. White people in this country expect certain things of black people; are comfortable with certain behavior from black people and extremely uncomfortable with other behavior. Black people, likewise, learned to expect certain things and accommodated themselves to certain "realities" of living in the part of the world. Prison life is an awful lot like slavery--a lot of expectations are being met on a culture-wide basis. No other slave population in world history has been so thoroughly removed from that populations natural environment, taken to a far distant continent and had their natural culture and language systematically "bred" out of them. America was like one giant sound proof/skinner box for the African peoples brought over here.

Yeah, but, by all means, Wulf, blame the descendants of the slaves--good call!

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

BYTEMITE

Thursday, July 1, 2010 6:40 PM

Quote:
If such a phenomenon does exist, then it would have innumerable subtle effects on "the genome," but no scientist who didn't want to be laughed out of the profession would touch that with a ten foot pole.

Actually... I'd agree with this, but I don't think Jungian is the way to describe it, or past life experience or racial memory.

I think this happens, and I think it's from controls on gene expression arising from environment stressors. This could theoretically go all the way up to the brain, and hardwire certain responses to common ideas, or archetypes, as Jung would say. As sig said, some of these responses can come from very primitive forms, and successive evolution has carried them through.

As for sunsets, a number of higher animals seem to share this appreciation. I suspect it's a social adaption, "the tribe gathers to sleep for the night" or "the pack gathers to go hunting." Wolves, dogs, coyotes and etc., are noted to sing most at sunset, and this seems to be the reason.

Kpo: Oops, when I saw "tweaked" I thought it meant the scientists tweaked this. Still, I think HK's on to something, though rather than it being a crazy guy, it's a deaf guy who's taught all his kids to yell so he can hear them. As they grow up, and have kids, they realize the effort to be that loud is not necessary for the function of speaking (or singing, in this case).

You might be able to argue birdsong is innate, but this is hardly proof for that. Basically, without multiple groups and without a control group, this study doesn't necessarily rule out any explanations. It only shows that this phenomenon happens. So making a claim off of this, about genetics or anything else, is jumping to a conclusion.

MALACHITE

Thursday, July 1, 2010 6:55 PM

I'm not sure I understand what the procedure was in this study. First, they raised a bunch of birds in a soundproof box so that they never heard the proper mating song? Then, another generation was created? How did that happen? Do they mean that males and females were able to find eachother as desirable mates even if noone was singing properly? Or did they have to introduce some artificial means of getting the birds to reproduce? I'm confused... Bkok!!

Also, as far as the whole "nature vs nurture debate", isn't "nature loads the gun and nurture pulls the trigger" the acknowledged case in most scenarios?

CITIZEN

Thursday, July 1, 2010 6:58 PM

Someone needed a study to come up with this?

For the record I saw this study ages ago and it seemed fairly obvious to me. Nature/Nurture always seems an odd debate to me, both sides seem to say it's all one or the other, when it's obviously both.

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