dreemernj said:
Just to cut through the bull shit of Kombat Veteran's post:
1. The "some people" he is referring to is me because I chewed him out for the baseless, ignorant claims he made in a previous thread.
great, someone who wants to argue with me..again. And DreemerNJ of all people! I mean, why couldnt it be someone else? theres plenty of readers of this thread! what are the chances of that, the one guy who wants tp pick my post apart has to be DReemerNJ! still hodling a grudge over my last thread maybe?
When I said "some people" I wasnt neccesarily refering to you, dont get excited. Its very common for people to be against the idea that our behavior is partly dictated by genetics. Ive been in arguments over this in the past, and was anticipating resistance that seems to be ubiquitous especially among uneducated peope on the subject. Some people just dont want to beleive it, its unattractive to them. Somepeople dont want to beleive that its possible to be born with a behavioral disadvantage that nothing can really be done about it, or it might go against their religious beleifs (harcore christians hate the idea that being gay may be genetic), others see it as reminiscant of eugenics used by the nazis. Theres many reason people resist the idea, I was anticipating resistance, its common actually
Saying that our behavior in general is based on genetics and environmental influences is mostly correct
mostly correct? try totally correct. Our behavior is a product of both genetic and environmental influences. a 100% true statement.
but "Aptitude is basically determined largly by a genetic component" is not. That's asserting that genetics play a huge role in how people apply multiple combinations of high level thought processes towards abstract problem solving. That's also asserting that a person's aptitude towards playing a game is based on where they lie on a single imaginary axis. Everybody processes and stores information about video games differently. Genetics would probably play a noticeable role in how people process and store information about video games, but not in their aptitude for them, since their aptitude for them is based on so many different aspects of how they solve problems.
So why is it that some people can play a game for years passionetly and get only so good, yet some others plays the game very little, hardly cares about being good at it, yet they are way better than the other guys? So if genetics play no role in ones actual aptitude for playing games (just one task out of many that involve aptitude) then why is it that observations like this are common place? If it was all environmental, I would expect the guy who has more experience and more exposure to be far better, and guys with little experience and exposure to suck at it. Yet, it has been observed that sometimes the guy with little experience is actually better than a person with far more experience. yeah, sounds to me like environment aint the only factor here...theres something else. Hmmm, what could it be?
Genetic predispositions may influence how they learn to play the game, but not whether or not they can. That's the great thing about the human mind. Genetics get it started, but what its actually capable of is based on how it is trained. That's why someone with ~60% of their brain destroyed by disease can still function in normal society and perform complex, high level thought processes. Because if a person is in an environment that raises them to value completing a task they can find a way to complete it regardless of genetic make up.
So your saying if someone is raised to complete a task, no matter their genetic makeup, they will infact complete that task? Okay, if that is the case, then explain why humans are the only orgnisms that have language, before you say "oh its becuase we are highly intelligent with high IQs" look at people with Williams syndrome, they have low IQs avergaing at 60, yet they learn language pretty well. Also, think about the fact that babies pick up on language just by being around other people speaking language, ie the parent wont even have to try and teach their child words or how to speak, they still will pick it up including the complicated grammar involved. Yet a household pet such as a dog, being around people speaking language cannot pick up on this and learn to understand human language yet an human infant can under the exact same conditions. Also note that despite all the different languages among all the different cultures on this planet, all languages follow a common grammar. Also note that as people get older, learning languages becomes more difficult. young children pickup on language very fast, yet adults who try to learn spanish can take a course and get lots of training on it, ans still struggle. its as if a critcal period for learning was there during childhood, but got destroyed somewhere along growth and development. I doubt one will be able to argue that environemtn was responsible for creating this critical period. It also shows that exposure aint enough, otherwise adults would be picking up on learning a new language just as fast as children; there has to be something else involved here. hmmm, it all seems to be pointing to genetics in this learning task. Perhaps if one werent born with the right brain mechanisms, they wont pick up on language. ie, genetics are a huge factor in language learning; they dictate if we will be capable of learning language or not. Obviously 99.99% of humans have this genetic component, were all speaking language.
Besides language, you look at other tasks, such as pattern regognition and distinction. I dont think its a coincidence that zebras perform far better on distinction between striped patterns than monkeys in experiments that have been done on this task.
I dont think its a coincidence that different bird species all learn their own species specific bird song, experiments have even been done on naive birds and they found they learn songs faster from tape recordings that are of their species specific bird song as opposed to a bird song from a specifies different than theres. god, I have a boat load of examples that all point to the fact that alot of learning tasks we do are actually genetically influenced.
Our genes dictate how well we can learn something or even if its possible to learn a task. and we have genetic variance among the population, so I would expect some people to be learing to play video games at different rates under equal experience, and this is infact what I see!! The "no genes for aptitude" theory you present doesnt seem to be holding water.
and hey, some of my best paths to truth have been from someone who made me made. so if this argument is making you mad, dont let it.
3. If anybody disagrees with Kombat Veteran it is because they are uneducated even though he makes false claims about aspects of the human development he doesn't understand, can't communicate clearly, and is all around an arrogant person, most likely to cover his own shortcomings.
yep, I never understand anything I type do I? I didnt understand my last thread, but you did, even though Im the only one with advanced math skills on this board where the discussion was basically about logic and strategy. math is the lagnauge of logic my friend. but i of all people sure as hell didnt know what I was talking about right? and here, I dont know shit either right?
The last time I heard this much ignorant, wrongful application of genetics was talking to racists explaining their claim to be a master race.
so your trying to discredit my post by equating it to an idea that a really hated person in history praised,
who people would of course hate to agree with? comparing it to an idea of Adolf Hitler. I got to give it to you though, good tactic.
But thats not the case. Im not trying to argue eugenics here. Im arguing facts here, Im not trying to advocate some kind of intervention to exterminate people with "bad UMK3 playing genes".