Do Parents Make a Difference? — A Public Debate in London
Plomin made it clear he wasn’t claiming genetic differences accounted for all the differences in how children turn out.
Toby Young
· 10 min read
Evolution & Human Nature
Quillette's coverage of evolution, evolutionary biology, and evolutionary psychology, examining human nature, sex differences, behavioural genetics, and the science of what makes us who we are.
Narrow Roads of Bozo Land — How We Came to Be Governed by Online Mobs
Visionaries may be moody, obsessive loners but without them to provide a good idea in the first place, implementers end up working diligently to implement a faulty vision, like clockwork toys set off in the wrong direction.
Adam Perkins
· 10 min read
Romanticising the Hunter-Gatherer
It is important to note that this does not take into account the difficulty or danger involved in the types of tasks undertaken by hunter-gatherers.
William Buckner
· 14 min read
The Biological Case for Criminal Justice Reform
“We’ve successfully banished the notion of punishment in that realm,” Sapolsky writes. “It may take centuries, but we can do the same in all our current arenas of punishment.”
Hal Conick
· 6 min read
How Animal Genes Go to Battle to Dominate Offspring
One consequence of these genetic battles is the effect on reproductive compatibility within a species.
Epigenetics Has Become Dangerously Fashionable
“Many of our expert epigenetics research colleagues are deeply embarrassed by the warm, uncritical response their work has attracted from the social sciences,”
Brian Boutwell, Conor Barnes
· 6 min read
Not Everything Is an Interaction
Despite strong genetic influences on IQ (and there are strong genetic influences on IQ), we can’t calculate the proportion of credit for Einstein’s intellect that is owed solely to his genes.
Brian Boutwell
· 4 min read
If You’re Reading This Essay, You Should Probably Have (More) Children
A number of popular articles (and books) have implored people to have fewer children as a way of minimizing anthropogenic global warming.
Jonathan Anomaly, Brian Boutwell
· 6 min read
Why Did Humans Evolve Big Penises but Small Testicles?
Somewhere in our evolutionary past how smart and social we are became the major control on our access to sexual partners — not how big or fancy a male’s penis is.
Mark Maslin
· 5 min read
Giving Genes Their Due, but Not More
To go from noticing that genetic differences were making a difference to knowing which genetic differences were making a difference, geneticists had to move from the classical twin methods to the modern “molecular” methods.
Erik Parens
· 16 min read
Evolutionary Conflict and the Family
We should start at the beginning, which is to say, conception. That magical moment when sperm meets egg holds an important insight.
Brian Boutwell
· 10 min read
Gossip Is a Social Skill—Not a Character Flaw
Gossip can actually be thought of not as a character flaw, but as a highly evolved social skill.
Frank T McAndrew
· 6 min read
Heritability and Why Parents (but Not Parenting) Matter
Non-additive effects don’t breed true with the same degree of fidelity—in fact these effects bust up the clean transmission of traits from parents to children (to use a sports analogy, it’s a bit like a cornerback in football deflecting the quarterback’s perfect spiral aimed at the receiver).
Brian Boutwell, Razib Khan
· 13 min read