This is a weak spot among liberals:
Indeed, what if much of what we know about the causes of crime is either deeply flawed or flat out wrong?…
Yet these studies will never achieve the accuracy of a randomized controlled trial, because all of those factors, like self-control, delinquent peer affiliation, etc., are also, to some degree, heritable.
Ah, heritability. A term that is much maligned in disciplines like criminology and often serves as a wellspring of confusion. Humans differ in height, weight, personality style, and behavioral tendencies — not everyone is nice and outgoing, just like not everyone is as tall as a professional basketball player. But here’s the important part, heritability has to do with the origins of these differences. To say that something is heritable is to say that genetic differences play a role in creating observable differences.
Variety in our gene pool matters when we seek to understand why some people can dunk a basketball or compose a sonnet, and why some people persistently break the law. The effects of genetic differences make some people more impulsive and shortsighted than others, some people more healthy or infirm than others, and, despite how uncomfortable it might be to admit, genes also make some folks more likely to break the law than others…
Most of the evidence about the causes of crime overlooks genetic transmission. Yet, some research has found that once you account for genetic influences on self-control, previously identified social transmission effects (read: parenting) on the child’s self-control become unstable. In other words, when you control for genetic transmission (the alternative explanation that most criminologists overlook), the effect of parenting on self-control diminishes or goes away entirely…
A remarkable study in Sweden recently found that highly disadvantaged neighborhoods had more crime. Yet that neighborhood effect disappeared when risk factors concentrated within certain families were taken into account. Once again, social transmission effects weakened (and, in this case disappeared) when other factors like genetic transmission were controlled for. Does this finding guarantee that similar results will emerge in other samples around the world? No. But criminologists rarely consider the possibility that their own studies could be polluted by hidden genetic effects.
The more technical term for this phenomenon is genetic confounding, and there is reason to believe that it is endemic to much of the research coming out of the social sciences in general, and criminology in particular. Our own research into the issue suggests that even a modest amount of unmeasured genetic influence can pollute and infect your findings. As a result, much of what we think we know about the causes of crime could be overstated or just flat wrong…
If criminology and the social sciences wish to continue maturing into powerful scientific enterprises, we must stop conducting studies like they are bad drug trials.
Of course a lot of this is also r/K related. Criminals choose crime because it is similar to the environment they are designed for, namely the r-selected environment. To a criminal they can work hard all day long, or they can wander into a house somewhere, and pick up free resources to pawn for cash.
I increasingly suspect that criminals like burglars are not so much committing crime in their mind, as seeking out an environment of free resource availability like that they were programmed for. You can’t train a rabbit to hunt mice, so can you blame a human r-strategist for seeking out a savannah of free resources to graze upon?
It might speak to reforming criminals being better performed by using amygdala-developing programs like boot camps, as opposed to more amygdala-atrophying programs like simply being placed in a room with free food, free cable, and free books for a few years.
This is great material for liberal amygdala hijacks, though. Liberals have trained themselves to see science as the ultimate authority, and being called anti-science is seen as the ultimate kill-shot in debate. This is one area where that can be thrown in their face to elicit an amygdala hijack quite effectively.
I suspect part of the effectiveness of the genetic argument for traits lies in leftist insecurity over their own abilities. Leftists need to believe that the only reason they are not perfect in every area is because they have never made the effort. In the leftist mind, they could be a cop, or a heroic soldier, or a genius scientist, or a world leader, or anything else, if they just jumped in. When you imply abilities are genetic, then they have to confront that maybe they aren’t those things because they couldn’t be those things due to some innate inferiority they are powerless to change. Suddenly any area in which they are inferior to others is immediately set in stone. Add in the subconscious aura of Darwinian selection, and K-selection, and they will instinctively freak out at any talk of genetics and traits such as pro-sociality and IQ.
Tell everyone about r/K Theory, because hearing the truth is not genetic
[…] Is Crime Genetic? […]
I was watching an old clip of Gavin McInnes on Kennedy’s late night FBN show, and he was debating some lefty, and he brought up the inbreeding of Arab Muslims. The lefty asked him, “are you trying to argue eugenics?” Gavin said no, and the lefty interjected, “Good, because that’s bad science!”
I immediately shouted at my screen, “no it isn’t! It’s great science, it’s bad morals.” That is how their mythology works. Science can’t have a fault, so if something has a fault, it can’t be science.
I think it looks like DNA has a very pronounced effect on criminality.
I wrote a program that can predict (with mathematical certainty) the murder rate of “any city USA”
I based the factors and algorithm solely on the crime data collected from countries outside the USA and published by the UN.
My script works by entering what the percent of Hispanic, Asian, Caucasian and African
There have been many studies on identical twins and it shows that environment has much less influence on people than the Marxist sociologists wold have you believe.
Enjoy:
esnap.net/murder_rate_estimator.htm
Very cool.
Emmett Till’s father had been hanged during WWII for raping and murdering two Italian women.
It’s human pride again. Leftists know they’re inferior, and this causes mental pain. The only way to turn inferiority into superiority is to either invent causes that make the rabbits feel superior and “crimes”, such as intolerance, that make the wolves appear barbaric and inferior. The need to feel pride in oneself is assuaged through embracing these self-inflicted lies.
Since IQ pretty much determines propensity for criminality and the ability to comprehend negative rights, in the creepy immortal words of Major Toht “Oh…almost certainly.”
“o a criminal they can work hard all day long, or they can wander into a house somewhere, and pick up free resources to pawn for cash.”
Carrying that further, it would explain why some forms of military – raiding and piracy – are r behaviors, where others – conquest – ar K.
The raider just wants easy stuff. He will become a conqueror if he discovers it easy enough. the conqueror does the reverse. His first goal is to expand his territory, and then second it is to raid if he can’t.
Granted these activities are mixed in Armies ancient through modern, but usually one style is dominant based on the leader and what he can get his followers to do. And I think it has something to do with the availablity of slave labor.
I hope this crime-genetics link can really take off. Some claim that behavior is all environmental- this is obviously illogical- parenting has a huge genetic aspect- as does impulse control and IQ. Genetics create the environment. We can factor in random bad luck, but genetics are at least 75% of the equation, and I would argue probably more. There is risk though, liberals in New York state used arguments like these in the 70’s and 80’s to argue for vastly reduced sentencing for non-violent offenders- while arguing that there were “environmental” causes for the violent offenders- also with reduced sentencing. So if we “amygdala hijack” liberals with conflicting info too much they will begin to ignore it- or worse- silence the argument with propaganda or by other means. Liberals will always be two faced.
It seems to be related to where one’s ancestors come from – Africa / Mid East a lot of crime.
So Yes!
Crime may be adaptive.
Imagine a loser man – grown up, he more or less realizes he is too stupid or weak to reproduce, for he is not able to make much money and lacks the “looks”, physical appearance of high genetic quality.
On some level, he realizes he will never reproduce – if he stays course.
He has two options:
1)
Stay law-abiding and die out – reproduction chance 0%.
2)
Rape or try to get much money for to become interesting for women by robbing a bank or sth. like that; he may end in jail or get killed, but his chance of reproduction is >0%.
Simple choice: Die out 100% for sure, or only die out maybe or probably.
It should be logical and adaptive for loser men to favor option two.
Most/all offspring of loser men could/should come into existence by option 2, making the underlying
traits common in the population.
Loser men who passively accepted their fate and quietly died out not fighting back for a chance at
reproduction should have died out, their psychological trait with them?
“can you blame a human r-strategist for seeking out a savannah of free resources to graze upon?”
Yes. I can and I do blame them. The “let’s stop beating Basil’s Car” Richard Dawkins-type argument that humans shouldn’t be punished for wrongdoing because they’re just machines programmed with evolution is bullshit and always will be. Free will is real.
I would not confuse blame with requirement for punishment, or taking action to protect society. If they are designed that way, they are designed that way, and it pays to recognize it, and what it means for either rehabbing them, to locking them away permanently.
Perhaps this indicates that hard labor to pay off fines may be a good idea?
Someone ask the Rothschilds for a bit of DNA.
Just get it from one of the toddlers they raped.