Monday, April 18, 2011 - Capitol Reef National Park, Torrey UT
< previous day | archives | next day >
Ridgetop View, Escalante UT, April 17, 2011
Time to move out
I've been here long enough. I need a new view fix. Today I drove out into that scene on UT 12 and made my way up to Torrey UT and Capitol Reef National Park, where I ended up at Fruita Campground. I'll stay here a few days, out of contact (there's no cell service here).
Night camp
Site 7 - Fruita Campground, Capitol Reef National Park, Torrey UT
- No Verizon cell phone service is available here - and no broadband.
- Locate 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.