Monday, December 29, 2008 - Marathon Motel & RV Park, Marathon TX
< previous day | archives | next day >
A walk in the park, Marathon Motel & RV Park, Marathon TX, December 29, 2008
Todays RV maintenance
It was a a beautiful clear sunny day today and I decided to take another crack at writing the conclusion to A Tale of Two Leaks. There are only two items up there that haven't been resealed - the air conditioner and the awning. Today I removed and resealed the air conditioner.
Night camp
Marathon Motel & RV Park in Marathon TX
Marathon Motel & RV Park, Marathon TX
- This is a nice, modest Mom & Pop Motel and RV Park complex with full hookups and a bath house and laundry.
- Verizon cell phone and Broadband service are available with strong the signal on Verizon's Extended Network. Internet access is at dial-up speed. They do have free WiFi which worked fine at the the front of the dry camping area where I was parked.
- Find other references to Marathon Motel
- Go to the Marathon Motel & RV Park website
- List the nights I've camped here
- Get a Google Street View and map of the motel
- Check the weather
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.