Sure why not the more the merrier :)

Hmm..nooooo. not all of you lol at least not the crazies

Can i stay at your place?

I think that you may miss your home too much. lol

One can manipulate a study to show just about any cause and effect you want to.

Over the years people try to say that a disproportionate number of children that have had a traumatic child hood are dysfunctional but how do they account for the high number of these same kids who become helping professionals, military professionals , or successful business owners. And if the stats that as many as 1 and 4 children are sexually abused then how do you square the numbers of all those people who go on to be "normal".

Since there is rarely a child that is adopted now days that has not always known it and had to deal with the stigma and not all adoptive parents are nearly as normal as they appear how can one tell what is nurture or nature.

Also since prisoners have the grapevine to tell them what is going to get them the right drugs they are more than glad to quote chapter and verse what is the psychological symptoms that a researcher is looking for. Especially greenhorn Professionals working on a Master's thesis.

If you factor in that many of these second and third generation upper middle class researches are so prejudiced by their background they would not know if they were being played if someone stenciled stupid on their forehead .

You add in religious prejudice's also and the data is so tainted I would not take much of it on face value.

How do you do a double blind study or get access to data without the persons permission?

First of all...thank you so, so much for your comment and observation, PacStar.

One of the core studies cited states that the research is ongoing, so it is actually a prospective study covering a wide range of backgrounds.

The way i read it and the way it was presented, it did not aim to determine or predict outcome. It's purpose is to find an objective basis as to why certain people are predisposed to certain conditions compared to others, such that two concepts are presented...

1) undesired effects can be prevented thru specific intervention during specified times of highest neural and psychological development (executive function and neurophysiology) in children up to their teens.
2) presentation of traits (whether to the negative or the positive) are determined not only by psychic development, but thru activation of specific genetic sequences.

It basically says that humans are social creatures as well as biological ones and being such, can adapt to change, thru both, psyche and genetics. One as a process of choice and the other as a process of evolution.

The study itself does not propose this, but many do lobby the premise that sexual orientation is not a function of choice, but rather has a genetic reason. It has also been proposed that a criminal mind is not solely a function of psychologic reasoning but rather of arbitrary neural connections and biologic drives.

Since there is always a great divide between what constitutes as "moral" or "religion-based choices", vs what is "scientific fact" of life, the premise of the post is one that removes moral boundaries and leaves all reasoning to science. Hence, the mention of epigenetics as the reasoning and justification behind people's primary mental processes.

Science vs philosophy.

I think it is about 50/50. Many are aware of the "bad egg", the child that does not follow the upbringing and goes rogue.

yes, it depends on both external interactions as well as internal dialogue. not only in the familial upbringing, but also in peer group interactions.
i didn't follow my upbringing(hence i am the "bad egg" ), and as far removed from it that i am, i am still very much affected by it.

Ha ha. I was referring to the "anti-social" bad egg. The one who has difficulty coping with society... not "extreme goody two shoes".

heehee....oh the things you do not know about people

I remember how interesting I found this thread to be when you wrote it.

But I came across it when it was time to go home from work.

I made a mental note to write my thoughts, and events overtook me and I completely forgot about it. Then I remembered it again today...

I feel that the primary cause of the "black sheep child" (black sheep not bad egg) is poor parenting. I always think that educating your children properly is a major point, like sex education for example.

I would say most parents want the best for their children and educate them as to the dangers of getting involved in risky activities.

And then for the major part, I blame the media, which sexes up dubious or questionable things, almost everything, to make them look glamorous and sexy and the "in-thing" like tattoo's (they are for life not just for a weekend party) and soldiering, war is a dirty messy and traumatic thing, yet the media adverts that want you to join the military/navy/airforce sex it up to look glamorous and inviting, making no mention that you can lose an arm, leg eye not to mention your head and life too!

What really and truly frightens the life out of me if GM stuff being studied, like plants and animals. Like for example the MITS created "Spider Goat" A goat spliced with a gene from a spider....

Spider Goat (source BBC)

This is merely the tip of the iceberg

holy cow! spider goat

and i thought spider-pig was bad enough...




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thank you for your comment on this Jaan
i wrote this post exactly to provoke thought into the subject

there is no question that parenting is a major factor in the lives of children...as well as the environment they are placed in.

media is a platform for a lot of agendas, and media is already the environment that kids are in today. and the fact is, it is already a global phenomenon and electronic media grows exponentially every second.
this can highly affect kids thru exposure to different "ideals". it is also a fact that advertising and marketing do use sexualized and violent images as well as fantasy/too-good-to-be-true ideas to sell a commodity or service.

the question now:
is media a good experience or an adverse experience for kids?
again this will boil down to both external dialogue and internal dialogue of the child/adolescent/teen, as well as the body's reaction to the media images presented.
On one hand, it exposes them to a variety of different cultures, learnings and ways of life.
On the other hand, it can promote the wrong ideas and fanaticism and rebelliousness.
it has been my observation that "bad eggs" and "black sheeps" emerge because of children's internal feelings of un-reciprocated or under-reciprocated love from parents, regardless what the parents do or don't.
Media becomes a sort of gratifying experience to lessen the pain of "feeling not loved enough"...just like substance ab/use and sexual promiscuity.

to bring it back to topic, we all know that kids at a certain age do pass thru stages of rebelliousness and will actively seek for like-minded individuals and ideals to feed and justify that feeling of rebellion. the developing brain, constantly exposed to certain images and ideals put forth by media will cause permanent fixations into adulthood without proper intervention. and eventually, it could become a patterned behavior passed down from parent to child.

the question now:
what if the idea of epigenetics will eventually be used as a means to that end?

on one hand, it seems to be an emerging "devil-made-me-do-it" reason for choosing one thing over another, therefore lessening personal accountability for choices made.
on the other hand, it can supposedly assist in understanding and treating or preventing certain "unwanted" predispositions.

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use and development of GM products and preservatives will definitely affect us all. but then again, it has already become a necessity to sustain global needs and wants.