Re:Crime is a Family Affair
by PeterisP on Wednesday October 24, 2018 @06:26AM
(#18291127)
The (c) is not colloquial question-begging (or at least not intended so), these aspects (risk-seeking behavior and impulse control) are very specific personality traits that are measurable and have been studied quite much, as they are important for sociology, behavioral economics, etc.
These personality traits (like most personality traits, really) have a clear genetic component. I would consider this as settled science. For a single example, studies show that varieties of dopamine receptor D4 gene (DRD4) influence financial risk-taking propensity, impulsivity (e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1781951/), and pathological gambling. As far as we assume causal relationship from impulsivity and pathological gambling to risk of crime (likely there are studies for that, but I'm not going to look now, this seems a reasonable assumption), this implies that this is one more (of many!) genetic factors that have some (small) influence on the likelihood of committing crimes.
Coming back to your specific objections, can you elaborate the what your issue is with "broad claims about genetic determinism" here? I'm not seeing any serious claims of actual genetic determinism (i.e. that it's "all nature") in this thread, I'm only seeing objections to a "no nature" argument, claims that there is no genetic component. The current established scientific opinion is that the vast majority of personality traits are determined by genetic factors (including e.g. epigenetics) and environmental/social factors and individual variation, with all of these influences being intertwined and each of them constituting a major part of the influence. And this is not limited to extreme cases (i.e. particular genetic disorders), but to all the normal variation of human behavior.
These personality traits (like most personality traits, really) have a clear genetic component. I would consider this as settled science. For a single example, studies show that varieties of dopamine receptor D4 gene (DRD4) influence financial risk-taking propensity, impulsivity (e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1781951/), and pathological gambling. As far as we assume causal relationship from impulsivity and pathological gambling to risk of crime (likely there are studies for that, but I'm not going to look now, this seems a reasonable assumption), this implies that this is one more (of many!) genetic factors that have some (small) influence on the likelihood of committing crimes.
Coming back to your specific objections, can you elaborate the what your issue is with "broad claims about genetic determinism" here? I'm not seeing any serious claims of actual genetic determinism (i.e. that it's "all nature") in this thread, I'm only seeing objections to a "no nature" argument, claims that there is no genetic component. The current established scientific opinion is that the vast majority of personality traits are determined by genetic factors (including e.g. epigenetics) and environmental/social factors and individual variation, with all of these influences being intertwined and each of them constituting a major part of the influence. And this is not limited to extreme cases (i.e. particular genetic disorders), but to all the normal variation of human behavior.