res

Genetics is our way of playing God, and we do suck at it.

Genetics is load of crap and I'm a living proof of that. I cannot explain to you how, what or where and neither can I convince you that what I'm saying is true. But it is.

Our science has failed us and will keep destroying us. What is modern day religion? - Science. It has every characteristic of a religion, we're only too blind to see it. One day it will change.

Human behavior is nothing more than development of behavior already seen and accepted by a person (human being). It is thought and it is changed with a whim. It's a habit. The only question in the universe that you need to answer in your life is - What kind of habits do you want to have? That's all. Your health, fortune, wealth, all kinds of abilities will change the way you want them to, the way your habits are.

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caffeine

Genetics is just the study of heritable traits in lifeforms.

You're going to have to try and elaborate, or this just looks silly. What exactly are you objecting to? Do you not think we inherit characteristics from our parents? Do you believe heritable traits are carried by something other than DNA? Do you think the current model of the chromosone is faulty? What are you actually trying to say?

Getting vaguer by the paragraph.

There are a lot more things I want to know in the universe than that. And the idea that people's health and wealth changes the way people want them to seems to contradict experience.

Behaviour clearly isn't just changed on a whim, or there would be much fewer smokers in the world. But even if it was, this doesn't answer the question of where our drives and desires come from; of what caused our brain to be shaped in such a way that particular behaviours appeal to us.

CHiKA

What's the genetic reason that i have such low self-esteem?

res

Your physical appearance is the only thing genetic in you. Heritable traits are carried by something other than DNA, it's called the people you live with.
My genetic "content" or whatever you call it differs to your by mere 0.002 or 0.0002%. We are physically the same and yet we are completely different as persons.
Our perception of our own impact on ourselves and others is faulty. That's what I'm trying to say.



Not necessarily.



of course you want to know more than that. I'm just saying that when it comes to your and other people's behavior that is what you need to know, nothing else.

Those smokers who cannot give up smoking are not doing it completely out of habit. It's actually addictive, smoking. Tobacco by itself is not addictive or harmful, it is tar, and other shit they put into cigaretts that kills and makes junkies out of people.

Our drives and desires come from ourselves, not some genetic code that makes you act the way you do.
When a person says that he's genetically predestined to act the way he's acting he's actually looking for an excuse to do the things he does even though he thinks they are doing harm to him.

caffeine

No idea - that's not really a behaviour though.

I very much doubt that we're physically the same. Tiny, fractional differences in DNA can mean big phenotypical differences. This chap shares the vast majority of his DNA with this young woman, but they don't look too similar to me. Don't we share something like 60-70% of our DNA with carrots?

Nicotine is the addictive component, and it's part of tobacco naturally - they don't add it in to make it addictive. And, if you've accepted the existence of addiction, then you've accepted that our drives are not purely the result of some sort of conscious thought distinct from the physical processes of our brain - they are shaped by physical factors. And the brain which produced our conscious thought evolved under selective pressures, just like everything else. If our brain is structured differently, then we're going to tend to think and act in different ways; and so brain structures which bring about tendencies to act in reproductively beneficial ways are more likely to be passed on to the next generation.

res

To be honest I know nothing or very little about genetics.

I don't like it because it takes away power of my will that I do believe is the driving force of my life. It makes me feel like I have no saying in the decision making process. I know this will sound arrogant, but I simply cannot accept that. I cannot and will not accept that I'm predisposed to do things this way or feel about other things that way.
If what you're saying is the truth then, in my opinion, life is not life but a mere journey on auto-pilot. I refuse to believe that.

This makes sense to me. The only question is, is it making sense to anyone else?

caffeine

It makes sense; but the problem is the you can't argue about how the world is based around how you'd like it to be. And predispositions and tendencies don't need to do away with free will. We've also evolved the capacity for rational conscious thought - even if we're not very good at it - and people are perfectly capable of behaving in ways at odds both with our gut instincts and our reproductive success. So you can study evolutionary psychology without talking about automatons if it makes you happier.