Remix.run Logo
somenameforme 11 hours ago

Consider evolution because it's something similar on an even more gradual scale. Species tend to be very much like the things they came from, yet we have obviously a wide array of species over time because small differences can accumulate on their own 'branch' and eventually diverge to the point of creating entirely new species. But if a species chose to just stop having children, it's not going to have anywhere near the numbers it once did, anytime soon. In extreme cases, it just goes extinct.

It's similar with most views and values. Your children will mostly share all of them with you once they reach a certain age. It's something I can even feel happening with my own parents as I age, rather to my distaste. hahah. Anyhow, yeah - there's about a zillion studies on this topic and you can find that parents values are most predictive of those of their children.

And of course with values and other characteristics, even if parental views/values are highly predictive, there's going to be some variance. But you still end up with the fact that if a bunch of people remove themselves from the gene pool, any definingly common characteristics of those individuals are also going to be disproportionately removed from society as well.

card_zero 7 hours ago | parent [-]

You're saying it again! It's still not true. People think about the values that they're handed.

somenameforme 6 hours ago | parent [-]

This isn't generally the sort of thing that calls for citations since you're presumably a human, and you presumably know plenty of other humans. And once you compare people to their parents, well - the apple doesn't fall far from the tree on average. There are of course plenty of exceptions, but it's also completely fair to call them exceptions.

In looking up some literature on it, it turns out that some studies have even studied and found what I alluded to of people trending ever more towards their parents values as they age. [1] They call it 'delayed activation'. But anyhow, yeah they found the exact same thing where our values become even more alike as we age. Pretty interesting stuff! And I think it makes the age aspect quite critical. I assumed I was one of those exceptions referenced above, yet reality had other plans in mind, in spite of my protestations.

[1] - https://sci-hub.si/https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...