Wednesday, October 26, 2011 - Walmart, Jackson OH
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Mallards, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio NM, January 24, 2011
Hint hint
I stopped in Marietta OH to get Bob Wark's take on what I'm dragging along in the trailer. Bob knows a wee bit about it and the story behind it and If it ever stops raining I'll open the trailer and show you what I'm up to.
Night camp
Wal-Mart Supercenter in Jackson OH
Walmart Supercenter Store #1519, 100 Walmart Dr, Jackson, OH 45640 - (740) 288-2700
- Good level parking - request you park to the far right along the grass
- Verizon cell phone service - good signal
- Verizon EVDO service - good signal
- Locate this Walmart on my Night Camps map
- Find other Wal-Marts in the area
- Check the weather here
Genetic Determinism and Human Nature
The "implication" that seems to worry people the most is so-called genetic determinism - the notion that if human nature was shaped by evolution, then it's fixed and we're simply stuck with it; there's nothing we can do about it. We can never change the world to be the way we want; we can never institute fairer societies - policy-making and politics are pointless.
Now, that's a complete misunderstanding. It doesn't distinguish between human nature - our evolved psychology - and the behavior that results from it. Certainly, human nature is fixed. It's universal and unchanging, common to every baby that's born, down through the history of our species.But human behavior, which is generated by that nature, is endlessly variable and diverse. After all, fixed rules can give rise to an inexhaustible range of outcomes. Natural selection equipped us with the fixed rules - the rules that constitute our human nature. And it designed those rules to generate behavior that's sensitive to the environment. So the answer to genetic determinism is simple. If you want to change behavior, just change the environment.