Wednesday, February 13, 2008 - Pancho Villa State Park, Columbus NM
< previous day | archives | next day >
Looking up-trail from the line cabin, Dog Canyon Trail, Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo, New Mexico, February 2, 2008
The trail up Dog Canyon is a bit steep above the line cabin
Too steep for me. I don't think I'm in shape to tackle this next section of trail up and out of the canyon. I've come far enough for these old bones today; 2.9 miles according to the trail brochure. It's time to head back down to the campground.
Night camp
Site 29 - Pancho Villa State Park, Columbus NM
- Verizon cell phone service - good signal
- Verizon EVDO service - good signal
- Go to the Pancho Villa State Park website
- Locate Pancho Villa State Park on my Night Camps map
- Check the weather here
Genetic Determinism and Human Nature
The "implication" that seems to worry people the most is so-called genetic determinism - the notion that if human nature was shaped by evolution, then it's fixed and we're simply stuck with it; there's nothing we can do about it. We can never change the world to be the way we want; we can never institute fairer societies - policy-making and politics are pointless.
Now, that's a complete misunderstanding. It doesn't distinguish between human nature - our evolved psychology - and the behavior that results from it. Certainly, human nature is fixed. It's universal and unchanging, common to every baby that's born, down through the history of our species.But human behavior, which is generated by that nature, is endlessly variable and diverse. After all, fixed rules can give rise to an inexhaustible range of outcomes. Natural selection equipped us with the fixed rules - the rules that constitute our human nature. And it designed those rules to generate behavior that's sensitive to the environment. So the answer to genetic determinism is simple. If you want to change behavior, just change the environment.