Are people born with their beliefs or does environment and culture shape one's views?

[CmdrShep2154]

I am a child of the 2000s. I was a daily reader of GamePolitics. I had a front row seat to all the crazy culture war stuff.


Why were cultural conservatives so crazy in the 2000s?


I remember listening to this and they had this old guy on who called gamers "voyeurs".


I also went to church every Sunday but only to make my family happy. I never cared about anything they said there. Sex is a sin? Well I don't care!

Yet I was spiritual. I believed in ghosts, monsters, and UFOs. My spiritual side seemed to die out as I got older. Science and technology interests me more now.

In HS I only cared about becoming rich and I was a typical CoD brodude. I never cared about any issues back then that I care about now such as environmentalism, science, and sexual freedom. I only said I supported gay marriage to make my friends happy and annoy my parents. It was only until after a few of my friends came out of the closet shortly before the 2015 ruling on gay marriage that I became fully supportive of LGBT rights.

Despite being exposed to porn during my middle school years I never got fully comfortable with sexuality in media until I played Mass Effect 1 and watched a few episodes of Game of Thrones during my college years. And I loved seeing two hot chicks kiss each other in Sims 4.

I am no fan of the SJWs but I never got sucked into the alt right. I had "SJW" teachers but I never really got into social justice.

After I got out of HS I found liberalism to be exciting and refreshing.

My liberalism dealt with science and sexual freedom. I think a future full of spaceships, aliens, freedom, and hot women would be more awesome than a future decided by an ancient religious text that demands slavery to an "antichrist" and an apocalyptic final battle.

Is my liberalism shallow and superficial?

Does culture or genetics influence a person's worldview?

[Viikkis]

No. When we are born our brains are like a blank HDD.

[Templar 331]

Are people born with their beliefs or does environment and culture shape one's views?

Yes.

People are born with a general disposition for or against things. Culture can influence this leaning as well. There isn't a clear "one or the other."

[PC2]

Does culture or genetics influence a person's worldview?

By the time you're an adult it's overwhelming caused by your cultural atmosphere.

No. When we are born our brains are like a blank HDD.

Sort of. When you're a fetus starting at around 22 weeks in all your neuron connections and signalling comes from a long chain of genetic transmissions. As well as how healthy your mom is, an unhealthy mom could hurt early brain development. As you age culture *re-writes* over your genetic (mental) dispositions. So yes we can be blank slates but the brain can't start with nothing otherwise there can't be a smooth transition from genetic instincts to memetic infuences.

[Drusin]

Does culture or genetics influence a person's worldview?

I believe culture

Though I have thought on occasion what a person would be like if they were locked in a room since birth and had 0 human contact. No books, no TV, no conversation, just a cell, bed and some form of access to sunlight.

[Daedius]

Born with our beliefs...? The very implication of that idea is fucking retarded...

Strip a child of being raised in any environment, they'd be a wild man essentially. And their thoughts would be survival, not faith or politics... -.-;

[Malkiah]

Does culture or genetics influence a person's worldview?

culture, 100%. nothing but instinct is genetic.

[shadowmouse]

You might give this a read: https://www.amazon.com/Geography-Tho.../dp/0743216466

Here's Amazon's blurb from Scientific American:

From Scientific American

Nisbett, a psychologist and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, used to believe that "all human groups perceive and reason in the same way." A series of events and studies led him gradually to quite another view, that Asians and Westerners "have maintained very different systems of thought for thousands of years." Different how? "The collective or interdependent nature of Asian society is consistent with Asians' broad, contextual view of the world and their belief that events are highly complex and determined by many factors. The individualistic or independent nature of Western society seems consistent with the Western focus on particular objects in isolation from their context and with Westerners' belief that they can know the rules governing objects and therefore can control the objects' behavior." Nisbett explores areas that manifest these different approaches--among them medicine, law, science, human rights and international relations. Are the societal differences so great that they will lead to conflict? Nisbett thinks not. "I believe the twain shall meet by virtue of each moving in the direction of the other."

Editors of Scientific American

And a broader context note also from Amazon:

From Publishers Weekly

This book may mark the beginning of a new front in the science wars. Nisbett, an eminent psychologist and co-author of a seminal Psychological Review paper on how people talk about their decision making, reports on some of his latest work in cultural psychology. He contends that "[h]uman cognition is not everywhere the same"-that those brought up in Western and East Asian cultures think differently from one another in scientifically measurable ways. Such a contention pits his work squarely against evolutionary psychology (as articulated by Steven Pinker and others) and cognitive science, which assume all appreciable human characteristics are "hard wired." Initial chapters lay out the traditional differences between Aristotle and Confucius, and the social practices that produced (and have grown out of) these differing "homeostatic approaches" to the world: Westerners tend to inculcate individualism and choice (40 breakfast cereals at the supermarket), while East Asians are oriented toward group relations and obligations ("the tall poppy is cut down" remains a popular Chinese aphorism). Next, Nisbett presents his actual experiments and data, many of which measure reaction times in recalling previously shown objects. They seem to show East Asians (a term Nisbett uses as a catch-all for Chinese, Koreans, Japanese and others) measurably more holistic in their perceptions (taking in whole scenes rather than a few stand-out objects). Westerners, or those brought up in Northern European and Anglo-Saxon-descended cultures, have a "tunnel-vision perceptual style" that focuses much more on identifying what's prominent in certain scenes and remembering it. Writing dispassionately yet with engagement, Nisbett explains the differences as "an inevitable consequence of using different tools to understand the world." If his explanation turns out to be generally accepted, it means a big victory for memes in their struggle with genes.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

[Dethxx]

culture, 100%. nothing but instinct is genetic.

thats true just look at all those soy boy's they have 0 instinct so their teachers could easily get them believing the leftist propaganda.

[Santti]

thats true just look at all those soy boy's they have 0 instinct so their teachers could easily get them believing the leftist propaganda.

How come it's always those teachers and professors and such that are leftists and "spreading propaganda?

[Has lost its way]

Yes and no it varies based on what we are taking about. This is a topic with a million shades of gray and mmo champ only sees in black and hitler.

[dacoolist]

It’s a choice to be a piece of shit - so yeah: nobody’s born a piece of shit: you’re groomed into it by shitty family, shitty friends, or shitty people you’re surrounded by lol

[ipaq]

Says the white nationalist.

thats true just look at all those soy boy's they have 0 instinct so their teachers could easily get them believing the leftist propaganda.

[eoyeffteedubz]

Belief requires cognisance of ones existence which a newborn baby doesn’t consciously have. And for one to have their own views (opinion/feelings/etc.) they must have some level of consciousness which will have been extrinsically influenced to a degree. So beliefs and views are shaped by your surroundings and are never something your born having. With that being said, your ability to process the influencing factors during your development can be effected by genetics, i.e dumb people will stay dumb and never learn how to think for themselves.

[Synros]

Beliefs are 100% shaped and learned by culture and environment. No one is born already subscribed to an ideology.

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Says the white nationalist.

That doesn't make someone a "White Nationalist", you regressive ideologue...

[PC2]

Beliefs are 100% shaped and learned by culture and environment. No one is born already subscribed to an ideology.

Ideological beliefs yes, but what about other things like someone's view on aesthetics? Maybe a straight guy views woman as more attractive, a gay guy views men as more attractive. It's not clear to me that there are "gay genes" or if it's influenced by culture.

[Polly3685]

Ideological beliefs yes, but what about other things like someone's view on aesthetics? Maybe a straight guy views woman as more attractive, a gay guy views men as more attractive. It's not clear to me that there are "gay genes" or if it's influenced by culture.

It may not be clear to you but there are genetic markers for homosexuality.

The title of the thread is beliefs not if someone is viewed as attractive or not. With that said modern views of attractiveness and sexuality are largely dictated by media portrayal and have little to do with instinct.

Beliefs (systems) are 100% determined by environment and culture. People aren't born christian, democrat or anything else. That doesn't mean that someone can't decide to be different than others raised in that same environment. The choice is ultimately up to the individual but to suggest that someone is born or even could be born genetically predisposition to a particular belief system is fucking stupid.

[Sunseeker]

Of course people are born with all the knowledge they will ever know.

[PC2]

Of course people are born with all the knowledge they will ever know.

People gain knowledge by building up theories from scratch. It doesn't come from genes nor does it come from inferring empirical data.

[Neuroticaine]

thats true just look at all those soy boy's they have 0 instinct so their teachers could easily get them believing the leftist propaganda.

lol, "soyboy." You should invest in a science textbook, or is that, too, leftist propaganda to you?

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Beliefs are 100% shaped and learned by culture and environment. No one is born already subscribed to an ideology.

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That doesn't make someone a "White Nationalist", you regressive ideologue...

Well, if they believe in the "soyboy" narrative, then they've been listening to the verbal diarrhea of a white nationalist that created a bullshit "brain pill" (that incidentally actually contains soy), as a means to get money from idiots. That's the whole reason this hilarious concept of "soyboy" got any kind of traction in pop culture. If you put any weight into the "soyboy" concept, you're the regressive. Sure, you might not be a white nationalist directly, but you're still easily swayed by idiocy either way.