Why “nature plus nurture” is sometimes the wrong way to think

April 28, 2021

People who sit here and then chat with someone might get happier…but whether they sit here in the first place probably also depends on their personality and their baseline mood. Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash.

It's common to try to explain things as either due to nature OR nurture. Or, at best, we say: some percentage of the variation in outcome is due to genes, and some percentage is due to the environment. It's important to remember, though, that outcomes can be a complex interaction between the two. Consider this: Our genetically-influenced traits impact what environments we seek out and find ourselves in. For instance, risk-taking seems to have moderate heritability, and it in...

The many possible causes of large, positive changes in the world

February 24, 2018

I’ve noticed that people start with different assumptions about what usually causes large, positive changes in the world. It is rare for us to directly address these differences in worldview, even though they may contribute to difficulties seeing eye-to-eye on how we can make things better. For instance, I think some people believe that large, positive change usually comes about due to one or more of the following: (1) Progress - technological and scientific advancement causing a ris...

There’s a simple way to estimate confidence intervals that most people don’t know about

April 25, 2017

This is the range that you'd expect the true mean to fall within 95% of the time if you did the same study repeatedly. Almost always, people in conversation don't report their 95% CI . People will often tell you that the only way you can calculate the 95% CI is if you know the standard deviation of the data. Unfortunately, this is almost always information that you will never know. But thankfully, as long as certain assumptions about the data and population are met,...