I don't like the idea of using humans as guinea pigs. Any other animal for that matter
This is a dilemma ... and yet there is no easy way out ... I personally do not object to humans as 'guinea pigs' because in situations such as these experiments there was no coercion & the volunteers were adult ... we participate in 'psychological' experiments on a routine basis ... furthermore, at some point, we do need human participation in other areas - that's where, as an example, the double-blind method of determining a medicine's efficacy comes into play .... in contrast, while 'laboratory animals' have no say in the matter, a fair amount of regulation has been put in place to ensure that their treatment is 'humane'. A goodly portion of what we know today would have been completely unknowable without them.
However, like you, I still find it difficult to reconcile the use of other animals at all and if ever there were an intractable problem, surely this is one.
The genes that we're born with are self-regulating.
What do you mean 'self-regulating'? They too are subject to the environment ... too much radiation? Poof ... knock out a nucleotide or two and you're probably headed down unknown paths ... no corrective mechanism ...
They're designed to respond to different environments in different manners.
Over the course of millenia, yes ... were I to go live on the North Pole for the rest of my life, I'm not going to end up melanin-poor or hirsute before I die ... BTW, 'design' is not how we should be characterizing things (largely because of the 'intelligent design' group of loonies that are running amok in this country) ... natural selection is what dictates which genes are propagated ...
I believe that no one's born evil.
This is absolutely not true ... all psychopaths are not the product of only their environment ... but the operative word here is 'believe' ... we can believe (and do) all manner of 'stuff' to our's 'heart's content' without a shred of supporting evidence ... human brains are excellent confabulatory organs ... as an example, only until 2 days ago I had subscribed to the notion that testosterone is uniquely the cause behind aggression ... I now stand firmly disabused of that 'belief'
('The trouble with Testosterone' by Sapolsky) ... from the eponymous essay:
" ... high levels of testosterone and high levels of aggression still tend to go hand in hand. This would seem to seal the case - interindividual differences in levels of aggression among normal individuals are probably driven by differences in testosterone. But this turns out to be wrong. Okay, suppose you note a correlation between levels of aggression & levels of testosterone among normal males. This could be because (a) testosterone elevates aggression; (b) aggression elevates testosterone levels; (c) neither causes the other. There's a huge bias to assume option (a), while (b) is the answer.
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Look at our confusing state: normal levels of testosterone are a prerequisite for normal levels of aggression, yet changing the amount of testosterone in someone's bloodstream withing the normal range doesn't alter his subsequent levels of aggressive behavior ... you need some amount of testosterone around for normal aggressive behavior - zero levels after castration, and down it usually goes; quadruple it and aggression typically increases.
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We seem to have figured out a couple of things by now. First, knowing the differences in the levels of 't'. in the circulation of a bunch of males will not help you much figure out who is going to be aggressive. Second, the subtraction & reinstatement data seem to indicate that, nevertheless, in a broad sort of way, t causes aggressive behavior. But that turns out not to be true either, and the implications of this are lost on most people the first thirty times you tell them about it. Which is why yo had better tell them thirty-one times (😊)
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There's a part of your brain that probably has lots to do with aggression, a region called the amygdala. Sitting right near it is the Grand Central Station of emotion-related activity in your brain, the hypothalamus by way of a cable of neuronal connections called the stria terminalis .... the amygdala has its influence on aggression via that pathway, with bursts of electrical excitation called action potentials that ripple down the stria terminalis, putting the hypothalamus in a pissy mood.
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flood the area with t. ... the key thing is what doesn't happen next. Does t. now cause action potentials surging down the stria terminalis? Does it turn on that pathway? Not at all. If and only if the amygdala is already sending an aggression-provoking volley of action potentials down the stria terminalis, t. increases the rate of such action potentials by shortening the time between them. It's not turning on the pathway, it's increasing the volume of signaling if it is already turned on. It's not causing aggression, it's exaggerating the prexisiting pattern of it, exaggerating the response to environmental triggers of aggression'
the remaining essays are just as riveting ... I highly recommend him ... here's a video that is out-of-this-world (if you want to get a better feel for life in general and humans in particular):
Sure they work together but I doubt if genes and environment operate on a half-and-half ratio in everyone's body in the same darn manner.
Nobody claimed there was a 50/50 ratio ... or that the behavior was indistinguishable across any 2 humans (not even in identical twins) ...
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
Anupamaa
