Friday, November 12, 2010 - Hazlet State Park, Carlyle IL
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Virginia Creeper, Red Rock, East Chatham NY, August 23, 2010
Distractions
My plan was to hit the road early this morning and beat feet for the Mississippi. But it didn't work out that way. It seems I got distracted by the iPad display at the Frankfort KY Walmart I stayed at last night and decided to buy one before I left {insert grin here}.
Nope - the 16GB WiFi model I wanted was not in stock. Ah, well. A quick check of the Walmart website showed some in stock at a Louisville store on the way to St Louis.
So I stopped by. Nope. Won't be in until next week. It seems Walmart's website includes merchandise on it's way - not just what is on hand. Go figure. Ah, well.
But wait. Maybe there is an Apple store in Louisville. Yup.
Night camp
Site 141 - Hazlet State Park, Carlyle IL
- One of the largest campgrounds in the Illinois state park system, Hazlet State Park is located on the largest manmade lake in Illinois. Eldon Hazlet State Recreation Area is a 3,000-acre site on the west shore of Carlyle Lake, a Kaskaskia River impoundment. The site is located 3 miles north of Carlyle and 2 miles east of Illinois Route 127 in Clinton County.
- Verizon cell phone and Broadband service are available here with a strong signal.
- Locate Hazlet 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.