Book: 20210817 to 20210924, "The Nurture Assumption" by Judith Rich Harris

20210818 - Preface to the First Edition xxvii

This book is against most of the other books: our destiny is decided by peer/environment and gene, instead of parenting and education and habit? What's the relationship between gene, environment and habit? Is it possible to push some child who don't like reading to read everyday?

20210819 - Chapter 1. "Nurture" Is Not the Same as "Environment" 1

Nurture is important, but not as important as we thought. Children are not under their parents' control.

There are too many thing that children cannot do following their parents, and there are too many words only the parents can say. Instead, the restriction is much less if children want to copy their peers' behavior or speaking.

Nurture is a small part of environment.

Parents' effect on children could be split into two categories. One is actually depends on children's effect on parents. We may not be able of doing on that, but the other categories is not related to children's gene. We can and we should work on that.

20210820 - Chapter 2. The Nature (and Nurture) of the Evidence 13

Why identical twins grew up in same family have different personalities? This comply with gene revolution theory. Gene has better survival chance if all offspring have different personalities, even for twins.

Opinion is subjective. We can always look for data to support our opinion, but that doesn't mean our opinion is correct.

20210824 - Chapter 3. Nature, Nurture, and None o f the Above 31

Statistical data is objective. Explanation is more or less subjective. We need to be very careful of finding explanation of the data. There are so many factors may affect the statistical data.

There is no obvious pattern regarding family composition affects children's personalities. No matter the first or the last born, single mother or not, gay or lesbian parents, housewife or working mother, too hard or too soft parenting style, etc.

Apart from gene, the other parts of environment affect children more.

20210827 - Chapter 4. Separate Worlds 51

Almost everyone has multiple personalities. So it's not the correct way to survey people's personalities through questionnaire. The correlation between different the cause and result could be wrong, because the result only tells us one of the person's personality.

Parents can change what their children say and do, but parents don't have much control of what their children outside. And this outside world is where their children will spend the rest of their lives.

How about good habit? If someone have good habit at home, will he/she persist the same good habit in the future? I think it's useless for parents to force their children to make good habit. The habit needs to be something their children agree or love.

20210829 - Chapter 5. Other Times, Other Places 73

People follow experts to do things. Is that good or bad?

From one end, parenting is not physics. The experts' opinions are quite often wrong.

From the other end, if the guidelines are correct, the whole society would be improved quickly.

So, what should we do? Try our best, and take it easy. The sky is not falling if we make mistakes or don't  follow the suggestions.

If there is no expert, things would still be all right. Children develop multiple personalities to prevent themselves being affected too much by their parents' wrong behavior. But it takes (maybe 10 times) longer time for children to learn.

Trees grow by itself. But they grow much faster with the help of fertilizer. But no matter what fertilizer we use, we cannot turn a pine tree into a gum tree. Children need fertilizer, and we should not force them to grow as we planned.

20210901 - Chapter 6. Human Nature 91

Our personalities come from 6 million years of training. Parents cannot change it as they want. For the selfish gene to survival, it has to utilize all major external factors to increase the probability of survival.

At gene level, we are just like another Homo Sapien lived in one million year ago. Our gene must be confused with modern society, and it has to rely on Meme to adapt to it. Habit and Meme is not part of our gene, which is the parts that parents may affect their children. Good books are the shortcut of all habits and Memes.

20210905 - Chapter 7. Us and Them 115

We recognize the world through abstract concept. It's called category/group/labeling.

To understand other people, we have to put them into a number of categories, and use those categories to understand the specific person. However, there is always conflicts among different groups. This is how discrimination generated.

Not just human, all animals with brain have this problem.

This helps us to understand others quickly, but it also means that we can only perceive the illusion of other creatures. Those categorizations are part of Meme.

How to see the real world?

1. Keep in mind that they are just abstract concepts.

2. Think about it. Don't just follow our instinct.

3. Read. The more we know about something, the easier to see more real details.

To intelligent animal, diversity is not always caused by gene. 

20210909 - Chapter 8. In the Company of Children 136

People are always in groups. Group means cooperation, which improve the probability of survival for individuals.

Joining a group could be good and could be bad. The good group encourage all members to improve themselves, and the bad group let all members to focus on wrong things. It's much better to stay alone than joining a bad group.

Family is not a group but relationship. Relationship doesn't reflect our competence in society. Relationship basically is zero sum game, and cooperation can make bigger pie. Our gene is fully aware of that. That's why groups affect children more than their parents.

20210912 - Chapter 9. The Transmission of Culture 171

Is Culture transferred through peers? This reminds me of Meme and "The Crowd". There is always something prevent us from using rationality and just follow habit and instinct.

Why we always want to stay in a group? It's like a herd of cattle: it's always dangerous to stand at the edge of the herd. Only the one stay inside of the herd have much better chance to survive. From the other side, there is not much food in the center of a herd. Only the one stay at edge have much more food. So, it's gene let the culture transferred through peer's group?

What shall we do? Stay strong, stay at the edge of the group, but not too faraway. Strong means good perception and the capability of actions. Staying at edge means creativity. Think ahead, think hard.

Groupness is everywhere. We always want to stay in the center of the group, no matter what our parents say, and what the teachers tell us.

This is the reason of Latte Line of education in Sydney. Leave kids in a better environment, then they get much better chance to thrive. Don't stay in poor country/area. Let the environment helps you. Better the Rump of a Bull than the Beak of a Rooster.

What is Meme? Meme is the one that get accepted by most of the members of a group. For example, law, cash, etc.

20210912 - Chapter 10. Gender Rules 204

Gender is about identity. Because this identity is decided directly by gene, it's not normal groupness, and it's very powerful.

But it's not critical for children under 12. They don't mind playing games together if there is no enough playmates can attend the game. This means Boys high school and Girls high schools make the lives simpler than mixed school. But, is it really better? Is less distraction always better? At the moment, I think it's just a minor factor.

20210915 - Chapter 11. Schools of Children 225

If we cannot join a good group, it's better to stay alone. Bad group will enforce bad habit to us in unconscious.

Many factors affect children. Which one affect more? Based on "Selfish Gene", children always want to get better chance of survival. To them, it's better to stay in a group, and follow the rules there, if they want to survive.

But modern society is quite different from one million years ago, and our gene doesn't understand that.

With the help of Internet and books, we can join almost any group we want.

"Starts with why" actually suggest the CEO to unite all employees as a group, and strive for a common goal. If that works, then peer pressure encourages everyone to try their best to contribute to the final goal. This group give all group members the same identity. They do everything they can to reach that goal.

Identity is at higher level than perception.

20210917 - Chapter 12. Growing Up 248

People don't get pushed into a group. They choose to join a group. But after than, they will resonant with peers in the group. Good personality/habit will better, and bad personality/habit will get worse.

Group always want to be different from other groups. That's why some tribes put rings on their nose. They need group identity, they want to be different.

Teenagers are a group. To make themselves different from adult group, they need to do something that adult don't do. Sometimes this means breaking laws.

The personality/habit teenagers got from their peer group will last across their whole life. Maybe that's why adults always feel that they are less than 25 years old.

20210920 - Chapter 13. Dysfunctional Families and Problem Kids 272

Parents can bring good or bad effects to their children. But normally it's not permanent, and it's not critical. How much can parents change their children? It depends on both sides.

I think it's mainly about habit. Wether eat health, wether keep the TV set on, wether encourage kids to read, wether drink a lot or eat a lot of sweets, etc. Habit and Compound Effects are powerful.

But children can control their lives eventually. When they grow up, they get more and more time to stay outside of home, which give them the oppotunities to control their destiny.

It's easier for children to blame their parents than study/work hard, and it's easier for psychologists to blame parents than finding the real reason of the troubled children/adults.

It's hard to do a good research. Bias is everywhere.

20210922 - Chapter 14. What Parents Can Do 309

If my understanding is correct, gene takes over 50% of the factors of the children's development, external environment takes over 40%, parenting takes over the remaining 10%.

The cruel reality is, most of the families don't have the capability to choose the external environment for their children, and of course they also cannot improve the gene of their children. So what they can do is limited: give their children some good habits, and try to minimize the negative impact to their children from the external environment.

Even in good environment, there are still many subgroups. Gene decides which subgroup a child would join. It could be the best one, but it also could be the worst one.

Our gene is not changed much compare to the gene one million years ago. By that time, there is no Nurture Assumption (parenting decides everything of the children), and kids are still turned into normal adults. Parents can help their children's development, but really not that much.

20210924 - Chapter 15. The Nurture Assumption on Trial 330

The nurture assumption is Meme. Most of people believe it, include those experts.

Can we fight again Meme? Yes, if we can avoid instinct reaction.

At least we can choose external environment, to some extent.