Saturday, December 06, 2008 - Tuscaloosa AL
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My overnight neighbors - Team Trails, Dec 06, 2008
What's wrong with this picture?
The Team Trails website indicates the bass tournament blast off is at "safe light" this morning. It's now long past safe light and their rig is still here. What am I missing?
Night Camp
Wal-Mart Parking Lot in Tuscaloosa AL
Wal-Mart Supercenter in Tuscaloosa AL
Wal-Mart Supercenter Store #715, 1501 Skyland Blvd E, Tuscaloosa, AL 35405 - (205) 750-0823
This Wal-Mart is one of my favorite parking lots for overnight dry camping. There is good, level parking and access to lots of shopping and services useful to the traveler.
- Good level parking, reasonably quiet
- Books-a-Million & Michaels Craft store across the road
- U-Haul propane nearby, Lowe's and Home Depot 1 mile
- Major shopping centers nearby
- Verizon cell phone service is excellent
- Verizon EVDO Broadband service is excellent
- Find other Wal-Marts in the area
- 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.