Nature vs. Nurture

As with most ongoing debates, there are people who are 100% on one side or the other, and the answer is most likely right smack-dab in the middle.  But don’t tell anyone I said that.  It’s too easy.

The best way to study nature vs. nurture questions is to look at identical twins that were separated at birth.  If you look at genetically identical people who had different life experience (nurture) then you can tell just how much your DNA (nature) determines who you will become.

I will never forget the first twin study I read about.  These identical twin boys were adopted by different families.  They both grew up to be overweight firemen with beards, and they married blonde women with similar names.  Woah.

The problem is that there are also twin studies where identical twins raised in different circumstances turned out to be very different. So… where does this leave us?

The answer is that we don’t have the answer just yet, but we have been unraveling a lot of the information stored in DNA just in the last decade.  Someday we might be living in a GATTACA-esque time, where the moment a baby is born, her DNA can be read, and her genetic destiny can be foretold.  But even then, the thing about genetic destiny is that your genes say your predispositions, things you are likely to do or things that will probably happen to you in the future.  But your health choices, your life choices, and your experiences play a very big part as well.

Someone may be born a very intelligent person, but that doesn’t mean he will be successful in school or life.  He has a genetic predisposition to being smart, but without hard work and good choices, that genetic gift doesn’t mean anything.

Maybe someday we will entirely unravel the information in our DNA and we will be able to tell everything about our futures, from the disease we are prone to, to the choices we will make.  But in a way, I hope that our experiences and random behavior will always prove to be a significant part.  Because knowing your future isn’t really very much fun.

“Sometimes a man can meet his destiny on the path he took to avoid it.”