Over twenty

Over twenty will ruin your life if you let her. You have been warned.

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

Nature vs. Nurture

So I was sneak-reading over this guy's shoulder on the bus home from the pub last night and we read this article on a kitten cloned. But I thought, what's the point? A beloved family pet's clone won't remember you being their owner, neither will they react the same to you as your pet did, it wouldn't know who you are and it's different experiences will mean it might grow up with a different personality.

Then I stopped myself. I am of course arguing on the 'nurture' side of the nature vs. nurture argument. Yes, I do believe that experiences heavily influence the personality of a person (or, I suppose, more generally an animal), moreso than nature. Yes, nature does play a part, but not as big a part.

Then I thought, perhaps the biggest and best test of this would be for someone to clone Adolf Hitler (not telling anyone, of course) and raise him as their kid (nicely). Of course they'd have to name him something else and not let him grow that awful mustache. I would be willing to take that risk, for someone to clone Hitler, because I do believe that if he was raised in the right environment, he would feel no extreme hatred of certain races of people and not feel the need to exterminate the lives of human beings. I wonder if it's acutally happening?


1 Comments:

At 11:30 AM, Blogger NLi10 said...

Read 'The Lost World' by Micheal Crichton. It's about similar things really. You might resurect dinosaur DNA but you can't teach them to BE dinosaurs.

Rx

 

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