It's amusing to live in a world where instinct in animals is readily accepted as heritable, and yet whether or not humans can inherit behaviors is hotly contested.
Almost seems like another round of people looking to maintain the illusion that humans are separate from animals. What was the last one we had, tool use?
I'm on the opposite side of that. I find it amusing when people try to justify certain actions with corollaries found in animals. The amazing thing about being human is that we can overcome instinct, and it doesn't even require superhuman effort. Regular old human effort will do.
I wasn't arguing that it was uniquely human (I don't think I was arguing anything at all, really).
That said, what is the cutoff for determining if a behavior is instinctual or not? There's a lot of variables in play. For example, I would imagine my dog's instinct is to just jump up and snatch the treat from my hand. Does she sit, shake, lay down, roll over, high-five, whatever else I tell her to do because she knows it will get her the treat and earn favor? Couldn't this also be explained as instinct?
That is, how exactly do we determine what is "overcoming" instinct in a dog, and what is merely more complex expression of what is also instinctual behavior? We could question this equally with humans as well, except we're absolutely confident that humans have the ability of introspection, even if it's not necessarily put to good use all the time.
Edit:
Let me just state I wasn't trying to be argumentative in my original response above. My "I'm on the opposite side of that" was apparently poorly-worded. I wasn't disagreeing with you, I was trying to say something orthogonal to your comment. That is, I felt like my starting assumption was that human behavior could be heritable, while the context of your comment was that some felt that is even up for debate.
I'm sorry if I'm not making this very clear, I'm frankly taken aback by the amount of furor over my comment, which I meant not as a direct response or argument to yours, but as an aside.
This very fact means that the two of you are operating on the wrong definition of "instinct."
"Instinct" simply means anything that is inborn. There's nothing in the animal manual that says that instincts can't contradict each other in an animal. Hate is instinctive, as is love. It's not that humans defeat their instincts, it's that some of our instincts defeat other instincts.
sliverstorm's point is valuable and it is annoying to see it ignored. Dogs and other pets routinely overcome instinct to win favour by their human masters. And what are humans but pets of society?
It pisses me off when people don't concede that they were wrong and promise to do better next time. jordan0day, admit that your simplistic argument was flawed, and vow to re-examine your assumptions.
Damn but 99% of arguments need a moderator. Startup opportunity?
"It pisses me off when people don't concede that they were wrong"
In this case, we have saturn exemplifying a pure animalistic instinct of rage. You being pissed off is not an argument that helps the conversation.
Humans are not pets of society because humans are a part of society. You're trying to personalize society, in a similar way that religious freaks try to personalize the universe.
In reality, society is better understood as an emergence of many tribes working together in an economic model. Let me dumb it down:
There is a tribe of programmers. They have their own rituals, their own ceremonies, even their own drugs that they like to take (yay Mountain Dew). They are very good at controlling computers.
Then there is a tribe of people who make pizza. They are good at making pizza, really good. Well, better than most programmers anyway. They eat pizza a lot, and their life revolves around making pizza, eating pizza, talking about how different pizzas are awesome or how they suck.
Now first tribe is all like "hey, we need pizza" so they go to the second tribe and ask that tribe to make them some pizza in return for herding pizzamen's freaky computers that just get out of control all the time.
What was I wrong about? I shouldn't expect humans to be capable of overcoming instinct? I don't think I can ever apologize for having that sort of expectation. I wasn't disagreeing with silverstorm's comment, in fact my comment implies that I agree with silverstorm's point (that human behavior can be heritable). I'd really like you to tell me what I am "that" wrong about. (Not sure why "that" is quoted?)
Additionally, is your second comment directed at me as well? I guess maybe you'll say it applies after what I just wrote above, but it's not like I came back and responded to these other comments wit "NO UR WRONG IM RIGHT!" I haven't been on hn for a few days, so I haven't even had a chance to respond. When I haven't made any additional comments, why is your first instinct (relevant!) to presume I'm refusing to "own up", rather than "given that jordan0day hasn't had any additional activity in this thread, perhaps they haven't read these responses yet?"
"The amazing thing about being human is that we can overcome instinct"
That's not unique to humans, which is fairly obvious to anyone who thinks about it for a minute. I'd even argue that it is, in itself, an instinct.
When anything overcomes instinct, it's never just for the fun of it. Animals (and we are animals, pure and simple) will often override their instinct to attack with their instinct to survive. I won't try to seduce the wife of a man twice my size, despite my primal urge to get laid because the risk outweighs the reward. Nor will a pack animal copulate with the Alpha Males females for the same reason.
There is nothing that separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. Humans may have superior intelligence, but we don't have a monopoly on intelligence, we just have the best kind. Arguing that humans are distinct because of our mental faculties hold as much water as saying birds are superior because they can fly. If we point to our dominance in the world as a distinguishing factor, we must then concede that we rank well below insects, bacteria, viruses etc.
Humans are pretty cool animals, but we're still animals.
Your example, though "dumbed down", makes no sense to me at all.
What is a pet? It's a subordinate part of a larger whole. I would submit that the vast majority of men meet this description, where society is the larger group. Society demands a man gets out of bed and goes to work; against his sleeping instinct, man complies.
> a pure animalistic instinct of rage
I would like to think that my annoyance that good arguments did not seem to be carrying the day is more than dumb animal rage? If you heard a group of people agreeing that 1 + 1 = 3 then surely you'd also be guilty of an instinctive opposition. Something has to be true.
>Society demands a man gets out of bed and goes to work; against his sleeping instinct, man complies.
The only case where society actually does demand a man to get out of bed is jail.
Usually, a man gets out of bed not because he is dragged out like a pet but because society offers something in return -- employment, company, money, food, purpose, etc. He can stay in his bed if he really wants to, or he can choose a more flexible schedule and wake up later, or wake up earlier.
It's a system of symbiosis; the man is making a fucking choice.
Regarding 1+1=3, there are several possibilities here:
a) The people are mathematicians, they redefined symbols and are playing around -- it would evoke curiosity in me.
b) The people are children and they're getting a rise out of you -- it would evoke amusement in me.
c) The people are deluded and insane -- it would evoke sympathy.
I don't see how these possibilities require anyone to get aggressive.
Why does the man find value in what work gives him in return? Because he feels he needs those things, he can still make the choice not to get them but why would have this choice in the first place, why do those things appeal to him?
The same as how a dog will choose to jump when you train him to expect treats, he could just ignore it but someone he'll do it because treats taste good. Why they taste good is I believe something that is honed by evolution. (Same as how we like things with Fat in it. Fatty stuff taste good for a reason.)
> It's a system of symbiosis; the man is making a fucking choice.
Ridiculous. A "choice" between working and eating, or not working and not eating, is no choice at all. Hey, how about you choose to give me all your money and live, or you choose to get shot with my gun and die? Wow, symbiosis!
Thanks for providing some creative explanations for why people might propose that 1+1=3 but you have entirely missed my point. My point was that some things are demonstrable, objectively false and when people state them - as did a great grandparent of this thread - and are then thoroughly demonstrated to be completely wrong, they should have the basic decency to admit it, and pledge to not waste the group's time with such nonsense in future.
There is of course one grim possibility, which is that the OP was actually category 2 - a child, knowingly stating misinformation to "get a rise" - in which case I would really like you to both leave HN; there are plenty of sites for your lulzy trolling, it's not appreciated here.
Wait, what? What was I wrong about? Finding something amusing? I really don't think I made a very controversial statement, and I certainly wasn't making an "argument". I never said I disagreed with silverstorm's point -- re-reading it, "I'm on the opposite side of that" could sound that way, but I meant "looking from the other direction". silverstorm's point was w.r.t. people thinking that "can behaviors be inherited" hasn't been settled. I presume that it has been.
We have a massive cortex bigger than the rest of the brain. The human cortex in fact can overrides some functions of the rest of the brain.
This is not true for most of other animals.
My point is this: overcoming instinct is possible because of the way our brain is organized (this however requires some training, as we actually do in order to survive into adulthood) and because it is a positive trait.
The fact that this is not more prevalent indicates that perhaps overcoming instinct is not really that positive (the limbic system with its feelings and hunches probably helps detect cheating in a more straightforward and efficient way than deep thinking about it).
Almost seems like another round of people looking to maintain the illusion that humans are separate from animals. What was the last one we had, tool use?