?

Log in

No account? Create an account

in a web of glass, pinned to the edges of vision

Writer's Block: Nature or nurture

I'd forgotten how often we saw Magritte

mucha mosaic
colubra's to-do list colubra's memories Tell a friend about colubra Search colubra Nudge colubra

Writer's Block: Nature or nurture

colubra
10/28/09 01:19 am
Previous Entry Share Next Entry
FAIL
abelincoln1864
Nature or nurture
Do you think your moods are controlled by your brain chemistry or that your brain chemistry dictates your moods? Do you believe people are born with particular emotional temperaments or that they are primarily shaped by environmental factors?
Reply 333


Jeez, what a crap question this is. 'Do you think that your feet define what shoes are most comfortable for you, or is it that the shoes that are most comfortable to you depends on the shape of your feet?'

Answering the question that IS a question: I do think people tend to follow nature and nurture in roughly equal percentages: I know I'd be a very different person if I'd been brought up by different parents and exposed to different stimuli by my parents. I frankly think I'd be worse off for it.
Previous Entry Share Next Entry

  • velvet_ropes
    10/28/09 08:33 am (UTC)
    Yeeeeah, I thought the question was phrased weird as well... I kept going back over it like 'wait, what?'.

    • colubra
      10/28/09 08:37 am (UTC)
      Yeah- given my english-speaking background, I just went 'this is a badly-framed question- so badly-framed, I can't even guess as to what the INTENDED question was'.

  • noveldevice
    10/28/09 09:12 am (UTC)
    I'm gonna guess that the first question is just a single question phrased in two (fairly identical) ways. I could be wrong though--I'm just going by the fact that I can't figure out a way to invert it into two questions suggesting radically different physiological processes that actually make sense.

    • colubra
      10/28/09 09:54 am (UTC)
      Yeah- given the grammatical structure, I'm inclined to assume that the initial question was intended to be 'is it A or is it B?'- but fucked if I can tell what B is supposed to be, based on how the query is framed.

  • andstillitmoves
    10/28/09 09:15 am (UTC)
    haven't nature v. nuture things sort of been bedded by now?

    • colubra
      10/28/09 09:51 am (UTC)
      Possibly in the enlightened world down under. I live in what one might nearly call JESUSISTAN, so Enlightenment-era thought is suspect, here.

      God, when are they gonna break down my front door and drag me off screaming. Because I frankly think it's not an 'if' but a 'when'.

      • andstillitmoves
        10/28/09 10:18 am (UTC)
        Is this going to turn out like V for Vendetta when it was all just a ruse to radicalise you?

        • colubra
          10/28/09 10:22 am (UTC)
          If that's what you got out of that movie, I really do understand, at long last, why Alan Moore disavowed it. :/

          • andstillitmoves
            10/28/09 10:23 am (UTC)
            No, I got MORE than that.

            • colubra
              10/28/09 10:33 am (UTC)
              yeah- but if that message is what came away from the movie with you, I do get why Alan Moore disavowed it violently. It wasn't about radicalizing the female lead, but instead confronting her with an existential crisis on a level with V's near-death experience, and thereby liberating her (via the only yardstick that V had).

  • sarakate
    10/28/09 03:05 pm (UTC)
    I think they got things flipped in one half or the other, and meant to ask something like, "Do you think you moods control your brain chemistry, or that your brain chemistry dictates your mood?" To be a bit more concrete, what they're getting it seems to be something like, do you think you can just "think positive" and thereby trigger the happy chemicals in your brain, or do depressive brain chemicals make you depressed no matter how "up" you try to be?
Powered by LiveJournal.com