I mentioned a few weeks ago about epigenetics, the claim that your children can inherit your traumatic experiences. This Lamarckianism for (or at least from, SJWs) is spreading rapidly through the culture. A friend returned from a class about helping Christians overcome porn addiction spouting this. This is especially upsetting to me because it takes away one's responsibility for passing on bad patterns to your kids, and your responsibility for thoughtlessly following bad patterns in which you were raised.
It just occurred to me another reason this epigenetics nonsense is false: a woman is born with all her egg cells. Aside from the trauma of radiation, egg cell genetics are not going to change. At most, genetic changes would have to come from the fresh production of sperm cells.
Epigenetics is real - but SJWs and other cranks have no idea how it really works or what it can do.
ReplyDeleteYour recognition that the female's eggs shouldn't change make the more important point: there are two parents. Thus, by the logic of this new wave idea, you inherit not just the trauma of your mother, but those of your father. And of course, why stop there when you can add the traumas of your four grandparents. I inherited certain facial features of my grandfather, why not their traumas as well.
ReplyDeleteWhy does this just sound like an extension of the white privilege story line and the need for compensation for Slavery.
Epigenetics is real, even if people are making stupid claims about it.
ReplyDeleteDNA gets methylated which turns off genes. Other changes happen too, but I'm not knowledgeable enough about them to try to detail it.
Inheritance of your traumatic experience is just new-age nonsense, of course.
But without Lamarckian epigenetics, how can new Soviet -- excuse me -- new Democrat man be created?
ReplyDeleteEpigenetics is just like anything else that's new--Poorly understood, and liable to be used to make claims that are entirely unjustified.
ReplyDeleteHowever... This emerging aspect of biology does answer a lot of questions about precisely how environmental feedback makes its way into the genetic substrate, and provides a mechanism to explain precisely how we get some of the effects we observe.
My only beef with this whole thing is that, again, we're going off on a wild tangent in popular culture/usage, totally unjustified by the underlying science. Yes, there are things here that may possibly explain a lot of observed facts, but as to the odds that something like "porn addiction" is affected? Unlikely. That's probably too complex a behavior to have much in the way of a epigenetic or genetic foundation, but the underlying issue of obsessive sexual behavior might well have some kind of basis in the genes--There's a reason why some of these things tend to run in families, and why entire societies have the apparent counter-survival sexual behaviors that they do. Teasing out the root causes and mechanisms, however? A fool's game, at this stage of our knowledge.