Saturday, April 30, 2011 - Sinclair WY
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Camped, Dugway Ramp Recreation Area, Sinclair WY, April 30, 2011
Snow
It snowed last night in Meeker CO and it's been a gray day with snow squalls off and on all day. Like yesterday, today took me much farther than I had hoped. I was on the lookout for a place to boondock all day and didn't see anything promising until I got here. This will do nicely for the night. It's not hugely picturesque but there is a river right outside my door. We like that.
North Platte River
Rand McNally tells me that's the North Platte River out there. That gives me an idea. I've been planning to follow the North Platte and Platte rivers across southern Nebraska on my way east. Why not start here and follow it as it makes its way up through Casper and around the bend to the east?
Birds
There are birds here. And a cliff with nests on it. I think I'll stay tomorrow, see what's here, get a few pictures, then head out Monday.
Night camp
Site 5 - Dugway Ramp Recreation Area, Sinclair WY
- Verizon cell phone and EVDO service - no service
- Locate Dugway Ramp Recreation Area 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.