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Genes, Environment, and Luck – What We Can and Cannot Control
from Part IV - Scientia Humanitatis: Reflections on Scientific Humanism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2020
Long-time readers of my work will note a shift in my political orientation in earlier essays in this volume, from libertarian to classical liberal. The differences are not huge, but neither are they trivial, especially when it comes to fiscal issues. As I’ve gown older, and especially since the Great Recession of 2008/2009, it has become abundantly clear to me that human nature is darker than I previously realized. As well, there is the issue of what moral obligation we have to help those who cannot help themselves, most notably as it relates to social spending. I’ve come to realize just how unfortunate life can be for a sufficiently large number of people that I no longer think that private charity alone can do the job of shoring up a social safety net for the unlucky. The deeper I looked into the matter of how lives turn out, the more I realized how much is out of our control. This essay, an expansion of that Scientific American column that was originally published in Quillette January, 2019, is a result of my continued research on the subject of, as the above title notes, how lives turn out.
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