[HN Gopher] Good genes are nice, but joy is better (2017)
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Good genes are nice, but joy is better (2017)
Author : sizzle
Score : 86 points
Date : 2023-11-03 19:58 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.harvard.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.harvard.edu)
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| One of the biggest takeaways I got from 'Behave' is it isn't
| really nature vs nurture. Often one's 'nurture' (upbringing, and
| experiences) can change your epigenetics, and those with abusive
| childhoods have higher risks for all sorts of things including
| cardiovascular disease, cancer, autoimmune conditions and anxiety
| and depression.
|
| I'm not really sure everyone can chose 'joy'. Some simply don't
| have the innate temperament required to build strong
| relationships, and some have it literally beat out of them. Some
| folks are dealt a bad hand of both nature and nurture, and it
| makes me wonder the extent to which we 'choose' anything, or if
| we're all destined to mostly follow the ruts we're born into.
| nextos wrote:
| Genetics is great, but a bitter lesson from the last decade for
| those who believed it was the major driver of disease is that
| the environment has a stronger effect.
|
| If we ignore Mendelian traits, i.e. rare diseases, ankylosing
| spondylitis and type 1 diabetes appear to have the largest
| contribution from genetics. Yet, penetrance is tiny. Genetics
| hardly explains more than 30-40% of phenotypic variance in
| those two.
|
| Most traits are largely determined by our nutrient supply,
| infections, eubiosis / dysbiosis, etc. The first year of life
| is particularly important.
| nyssos wrote:
| > but a bitter lesson from the last decade for those who
| believed it was the major driver of disease is that the
| environment has a stronger effect.
|
| It doesn't make sense to talk about whether genes or
| environmental factors have stronger effects in general:
| they're very very very strongly interacting. It's not
| phenotype = genes + environment, it's phenotype = stupidly_co
| mplicated_function_we've_only_just_begun_to_understand(genes,
| environment). You can talk about the effects of genetic
| variation in a particular environment, or of environmental
| variation given fixed genetics, but "the contribution from
| [genetics/the environment]" without any further qualification
| is not a thing that exists.
| nextos wrote:
| I know, but the dominant trend was to (try to) predict
| diseases by calculating genetic risk scores, ignoring any
| environmental contributions.
|
| This trend is even known as genetic determinism. There is a
| whole generation of senior academics who are fiercely
| attached to this line of thought.
| klipt wrote:
| How much better could you predict if you sequence both
| DNA _and_ samples of expressed RNA from various parts of
| the body?
| dekhn wrote:
| Personally I think nyssos's explanation (that disease is
| a complex function of the joint distribution of genotype
| and environment) is still more convincing, and that the
| reason environment temporarily got more attention is
| simply that our ability to understand causality of
| disease in non-mendelian contexts is still very limited
| (it being an _extremely_ complex function).
|
| I've worked in this field for a while and continuously
| get into arguments with geneticists, part of that is
| because I simply don't understand the explanations
| genetics gives (I'm a molecular biologist and computer
| scientist; the difference is that genenticists treat
| genotype to phenotype as a black box, while molecular
| biologists see it as an event system), but another part
| of it is that most scientists are highly susceptible to
| the streelight effect, and genetics is something tangible
| you can easily measure in the lab, while environment
| is... much more complicated.
| chongli wrote:
| Yes, exactly. Genetics is the difference between humans and
| fruit flies. All the radical reshaping we've done to the
| environment over the history of civilization would not have
| been possible without the intelligence given to us by our
| genes.
|
| When people talk about genetic factors in life outcomes
| they always point to these very simple Mendelian diseases.
| They don't point to more subtle traits that are caused by a
| wide variety of genes interacting. Just because we don't
| fully understand these genetic mechanisms doesn't mean
| they're not there.
|
| And as far as "nurture" goes, genes play a big role in that
| too. If a parent has a greater predisposition towards
| impulsivity or violence or substance abuse then that's
| going to affect their fitness as a parent. It's the Anna
| Karenina principle: everything has to go right if you want
| the best outcome.
| molsongolden wrote:
| I haven't read Behave and childhood trauma can definitely have
| lasting impacts but I am also inspired by some of the older
| folks I have known with what seem like bottomless wells of joy.
|
| There's a cynical broken person out there for every one of
| them, they aren't the norm, but some of these people went
| through terrible shit as children or throughout their lives but
| they're still happy and grateful for what they did end up
| having.
|
| Also, some of the happiest people I know come from some of the
| worst starting environments. This is definitely survivorship
| bias because these people made it out to become happy but
| there's some thread between the two around grit and
| expectations then finding joy in the most basic things.
| brightball wrote:
| It's one of the reason I appreciate Dabo Swinney's life story
| so much. He had an awful childhood, broken home, poor as
| dirt, his mom shared his bed in college because they were so
| poor.
|
| And yet, he's one of the most optimistic and successful
| leaders out there determined to show people that their
| conditions do not define them.
| noitamroftuo wrote:
| sapolsky has a new book, check it out on this pod
| https://www.econtalk.org/robert-sapolsky-on-determinism-free...
| zeteo wrote:
| Yes this seems backwards for at least some of the variables in
| the study. If you're in great health you're more likely to be
| joyful and to have good relationships with those around you.
| Saying that you should choose joy is like saying that you can
| avoid the worst health problems if you never go to hospital.
| temp0826 wrote:
| I think Harvard students would likely have more opportunities
| to choose joy so I'd take this all with some boulders of salt
| anyways.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I would very much doubt that. Joy is in how you engage with
| the life you have. You can have a Harvard education and (for
| example) be envious of the guy next door, or let topics-of-
| the-day drive you crazy (eg: "I don't have kids because it's
| bad for the environment" or "I never got married, too busy
| with my career")
|
| And vice a versa, plenty of poor people find a way to be at
| peace with what they have (and even strive to do better w/o
| being resentful) , have families, etc.
| digging wrote:
| > let topics-of-the-day drive you crazy
|
| Oh yeah, chasing fads and news cycles is miserable -
|
| > "I don't have kids because it's bad for the environment"
| or "I never got married, too busy with my career"
|
| There are, uh, extremely _not_ "being driven crazy by
| topics-of-the-day." Let alone even being joyless choices.
| notShabu wrote:
| sometimes it's not even clearly good or bad. E.g. "sensitivity"
| as a trait can be useful in nurturing environments to develop
| it into talent, but also a way-in for trauma that would have
| otherwise bounced off of someone with less sensitivity.
| Eunoia12 wrote:
| True.
|
| I think people need more exposure to society. Maybe school
| implementation- social clubs, more sports incoporated, who
| knows.
|
| People in general should try, even at their jobs, to join in
| on events. Exposure helps people with being able to balance,
| as well as find themselves, on what works, and what doesn't
| work within their bubble.
|
| Bodies, as well as stress can be alleviated when you're
| surrounded by people. Even when you're in solitude, working
| in a public coffee shop can help too.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I totally agree. My mum left when I was 2, and my dad struggled
| to care for me well. I have been totally depressed from age 9
| to today (age 29). My scientific career has failed due to it. I
| am totally unable to control it, no matter how much I try to
| change my circumstances or push through it
| akira2501 wrote:
| Yes.. Harvard. Your actions matter more than your inheritance. I
| would love to see a study into the types of people who generate
| these studies.
| kubb wrote:
| People often forget that belonging to a community and being able
| to connect with people is a privilege itself.
| mp05 wrote:
| Spot on.
|
| I grew up without real community thanks to a mother ashamed of
| her heritage in a pretty backwards part of America, so I missed
| out on a lot of critical interactions. I didn't realize how
| fundamentally, socially broken I was until my mid-late 20s.
| HPsquared wrote:
| This is the primary issue of the last 50 years.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I think this is going to "prove religious people right" in
| the next generation because I find that folks of faith are
| immune from this!
| escapedmoose wrote:
| Churchgoing/practicing folks of faith, maybe. There are
| plenty of religious folks who don't partake in communal
| practice and who are generally miserable people.
|
| (By "religious folks" I mean "people who have spiritual
| beliefs aligning with a major religion")
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I believe this research project (an older instance of
| publishing follow-up results) was the subject of an Achewood
| comic to this effect.
|
| https://achewood.com/2016/04/15/title.html
|
| On the one hand: sure, it's useful to have some scientific,
| controlled grounding in the value of building community. On the
| other hand, any sad and lonely soul on the planet could
| probably have told us this without commissioning a nearly
| century-long research project.
| PreachSoup wrote:
| With the current trend of no child left behind style of policy,
| we might start to break the community to reduce the privilege
| /s
| bumby wrote:
| Can you explain further? I assume by privilege, you mean a
| privilege to a specific class. I'm just not sure what class
| you'd be referring to because the one's I immediately thought
| of would seem to have a lot of counterpoints.
|
| E.g., lower socio-economic classes often have a strong sense of
| community, sometimes by the nature of being more dependent on
| one another. So wealth class doesn't seem to fit. But maybe you
| were thinking of some other class.
| digging wrote:
| > I assume by privilege, you mean a privilege to a specific
| class
|
| I think you started with a misstep. It's not class-specific.
| In some ways the middle class is most vulnerable due to the
| isolation of sprawling, car-dependent suburbs. But it's also
| tied to the inability of many young people to remain rooted
| in one place for economic, social, and other issues. How many
| people from your high school still live in the same town?
| There are other causes, but one's level of wealth isn't
| necessarily a direct cause.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| If you are lonely, your body is being harmed as if you were an
| alcoholic.
|
| Surprising claim if true.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| what is "lonely"? I think one problem in our society is how
| binary we are, everything is on a ]0, 1[ scale instead of {0,
| 1}. We are all more or less schizophrenic, all more or less
| lonely. It's just finding the right cursor
| detourdog wrote:
| What I'm starting to notice is that personality disorders
| represent normal traits used inappropriately. Once one
| notices they are reacting in a pattern instead of responding
| to actual events it becomes a disorder.
| otteromkram wrote:
| Lonely is being single and needing someone else (eg -
| friends, family, significant other) to quell the feeling of
| helplessness or disorder.
|
| Alone is being single and loving it.
|
| (I'm part of the latter group.)
| goatlover wrote:
| And what of people who prefer solitude and limited social
| contact? Not everyone is an outgoing socialite. Some people
| gain energy by being alone.
| awelxtr wrote:
| Lonely != Alone
|
| People who prefer solitude normally don't feel lonely
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I think it's more complicated than that, I prefer solitude
| but I still get lonely too.
| wanderingstan wrote:
| Loneliness != Solitude, and this is clear in the research.
|
| For example:
|
| > Loneliness is the feeling of being alone, regardless of the
| amount of social contact.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/aging/publications/features/lonely-
| older...
| m0llusk wrote:
| This is from 2017. It would be nice if the title indicated that.
| There are ongoing results still coming out of this study.
| davidgerard wrote:
| Fake title
| mjfl wrote:
| Happiness is a false idol. The key to happiness is to lower your
| standards for what you expect out of life. This leads to an
| uncreative state of being - because why would you create
| anything, the world is good as it is. And creating is just too
| hard. But this uncreative "last man" is someone that I certainly
| would not hold in esteem. Give me a tortured artist instead.
| escapedmoose wrote:
| The "tortured artist" trope is overplayed in media vs. the
| reality. I don't have the sources on hand, but you might enjoy
| looking into it: truly prolific and influential artists tend to
| be those who had stable/comfortable/long enough lives to
| sustain an art practice. One good book related to this is
| _Daily Rituals_ by Mason Currey.
|
| I also _highly_ recommend the book _Six Myths About the Good
| Life_ by Joel Kupperman, which has an accessible explanation of
| some of the philosophy behind the pursuit of "happiness" vs
| deeper long-term joy. It's a book I find myself revisiting
| every few years because it really makes you think.
|
| Edit: Kupperman's book specifically analyzes the common
| assumption you mentioned that "the key is to lower your
| standards." ..."Better Socrates dissatisfied than a pig
| satisfied" is a common related saying
| elromulous wrote:
| @dang could you "(2017)" to the title?
| Eunoia12 wrote:
| I'm noticing a lot of cynical people in society. People that just
| sneer, look down, and just think on terms that are just so
| malevolent- he/she attitude.
|
| I think a healthier generation of people- being rooted from
| education, are much more prone to being a better counterpart.
| Such as maintaining peace, as well as just having healthy
| boundaries.
|
| But in longer stretches, I believe that people should be more
| understanding. Steven Pinker mentions in his books that optimism
| as well as just awareness that society will continue on- despite
| a lot of evils, life will continue, and choosing to be positive
| is a better approach than being pessimistic.
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| Joy is too expensive. A lot of joys actually trace back to gene
| so eventually it's a fateful world.
| paganel wrote:
| > The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships
| at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80
|
| Most probably the people who were already sick at age 50 were in
| a "less" satisfied relationship, on account of the fact that
| sickness is never a good conduit for having a happy love life.
|
| So of course that those people most probably went on to have a
| worse health at age 80 (because they were already sick by age 50)
| compared to people who had had been healthier (and happier,
| partly because healthier) at age 50.
| waterhouse wrote:
| The question is always: does the study show causality?
|
| "The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at
| age 50 were the healthiest at age 80". Can we think of ways that,
| for example, health problems at ages 45-50 cause (a)
| dissatisfaction in relationships at age 50 and (b) worse health
| problems at age 80? Did they control for that? (Is it _possible_
| to control for that? Even if they have their full clinical
| history, is it possible that problems that, at age 50, were
| subclinical--or "not reported to the doctor"--would have
| significant effects?)
| giantg2 wrote:
| I've previously wondered how this affects nuerodiverse
| individuals. After all, relationships and social interactions
| tend to be different, limited, or both.
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