Epigenetics & socionics

[Delilah]

I read an article on it a long time ago and can't find it to link it (it was on some journal). It's basically this theory that expression of genes changes based on your environment. I wonder how it might possibly tie in with socionics (? if it does).

[niffer]

Can of worms AF

[Bertrand]

peterson talks about this a bit when he says you don't know what you're capable of... the self entails all the functions and thus all the possible personalities, so when you expose yourself to the unknown its possible new genes and adaptations switch on and the personality develops and changes as a consequence. personality in that sense is used more loosely, its not like you change from SLE to ESI in some hard sense, but its more like you incorporate information you had repressed in a characteristic fashion. in a certain sense a SLE could "fill" its functions with information an ESI more readily attends to, but its not impossible for either to absorb information from the others "territory" in other words, no type has a monopoly on anything. what happens to you on a genetic level as a consequence no one knows exactly, but they do know it follow suit, it doesn't just sit there inert and freeze your capabilities, it develops along with them

[Lao Tzunami]

We would need to correlate type with gene expression before even thinking about epigenetics.

[Delilah]

We would need to correlate type with gene expression before even thinking about epigenetics.

True, yet even just the idea that gene expression changes based on environment gives us a pointer.

[Bertrand]

this is a good example of Ti v Te. if you flip it around and ask "can type influence genetics" the question becomes not whether you can think about correlating type to gene expression, but ask whether or not its worth it to correlate the two if you answer the first question in the affirmative. you might say how can you know without a correlation in place, and you simply posit the existence of a correlation in principle albiet unspecified and test for it. this is precisely how you can determine the relationship working backward, rather than a priori

[Singu]

I think Epigenetics is more applied to do researches on things like cancer, diseases and developmental disorders, so I don't think that it's much useful for this purpose.

Epigenetics is also about the study of "heritable changes in gene function" that do not involve changes in the DNA sequence, so I think it's more of a study of the long-term changes, rather than the short-term like how the environment can suddenly activate or deactivate certain genes. I think what they're talking about is short-term gene regulatory mechanisms, not epigenetics, which are heritable, or at least potentially heritable.

Of course, the quackery and mysticism is more than happy to take off on this idea, completely misinterpret it, abuse it and turn it into something else based on hype.


https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/epi...hink-it-means/

[Sanguine Miasma]

Look into something higher level stuff like 4 types that come in various forms aka subtypes etc.

Behavioural and thinking are not in direct relation.

[Delilah]

Interesting article: https://www.economist.com/science-an...he-generations

[Aramas]

I read an article on it a long time ago and can't find it to link it (it was on some journal). It's basically this theory that expression of genes changes based on your environment. I wonder how it might possibly tie in with socionics (? if it does).

If type influences people, then type must have some physical component. That's assuming you're a materialist who believes that Socionics is true. It might be in epigenetics, genetics, some undiscovered form of information storage related to the structure of DNA rather than specific genes or epigenes, or it might be something entirely different. I think there must be some physical aspect to type, but I don't know what it is.

[niffer]

If type influences people, then type must have some physical component. That's assuming you're a materialist who believes that Socionics is true. It might be in epigenetics, genetics, some undiscovered form of information storage related to the structure of DNA rather than specific genes or epigenes, or it might be something entirely different. I think there must be some physical aspect to type, but I don't know what it is.

Well yeah of course. There's just no way around it; the common acceptance of V.I. as a thing in formal socionics schools makes this indisputable.


The thing about personality is that a lot of it is based upon phenotype-- the end outward result of the genetic expression, rather than genotype-- pertaining to the DNA sequence itself. So multiple types of different genes can generate similar outcomes, and of course this applies when it comes to epigenetics and further complicates things as well.

The theory in socionics itself complicates this as well, because you could have multiple sociotypes that should technically be very similar trait-wise (say all SF types, or quasi-identicals more specifically), but they do turn out to have different sociotypes. ESI to SEI is a huge jump actually based on the specifics of how these two types process things. So what genetically (or epigenetically) comes in here that spurs the differentiation and solidification of the personality when it comes to sociotype specifically? Probably it works based on approximation, especially since socionics is so theoretical and kind of vague itself, just IMO though mind you.

[Singu]

As a personality is a cognitive, psychological and sociological phenomenon, I would think that the influence of genetics is pretty low.

The current prevailing genetic evidence seems to suggest that we actually don't have genes for personality. And this conclusion doesn't come from a lack of trying: The US government has spent billions on genetic research. Billions. BILLIONS!!! When I think about all the money that went into this "gene for" research, I want to throw myself out the second floor window of the psychology building. The fall wouldn't kill me, but I imagine it would hurt just as bad as it does to realize that much of our research funding was flushed down the "gene for" toilet.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/b...ce-personality

Generally I think, finding causality between genes and something is still going to be difficult. A lot of the current "research" seems to be about finding correlation between genes and the Big Five traits.

[niffer]

Personality traits are highly heritable actually, both in terms of more general temperament and slightly more specific Big Five traits. Genetic factors do play a big role. There are even specific genes that have been correlated with a higher chance of developing mental disorders. It's not merely speculative "research", these have been the outcomes of fully developed repeated studies backed with a huge pool of data over a period of many years, LOL.


I know this because I actually took a developmental psychology class a couple of years ago. In many less focused psych or genetics classes you would learn the same thing too.


If you really think a single psychologytoday pop psych article is going to be the best representation of the field's current accepted knowledge then you need to go back to school.

[Singu]

Personality traits are highly heritable actually, both in terms of more general temperament and slightly more specific Big Five traits. Genetic factors do play a big role. There are even specific genes that have been correlated with a higher chance of developing mental disorders. It's not merely speculative "research", these have been the outcomes of fully developed repeated studies backed with a huge pool of data over a period of many years, LOL.

"Personality" and "personality traits" are two different things.

LOL @ you.

[niffer]

"As a personality is a cognitive, psychological and sociological phenomenon, I would think that the influence of genetics is pretty low."

If you can explain how there's any effective difference between those two things taking into account what you've said here, you get a cookie.

Honestly, you are too dumb for this site. It's a miracle you can even use a keyboard.

[Aramas]

As a personality is a cognitive, psychological and sociological phenomenon, I would think that the influence of genetics is pretty low.



https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/b...ce-personality

Generally I think, finding causality between genes and something is still going to be difficult. A lot of the current "research" seems to be about finding correlation between genes and the Big Five traits.

It's possible to spend billions for research and not find the right answer, because one wasn't willing or able to ask the right questions. Individual genes by themselves do very little. They simply affect the manner in which a single protein is constructed. Given that, I wouldn't expect a single gene to produce aspects of personality. But patterns of genes and multiple genes in concert? Maybe!

So it's not necessarily the case IMO that personality isn't biologically based, it's more that we haven't yet found the mechanisms yet that determine it. You're mistaking the amount of money that the government has spent on a problem for an indicator that the government has found an answer.

It should be pretty obvious to anyone that personality is to some degree biological and based on inherent characteristics when you have multiple people raised by the same parents who end up doing different things in life and being essentially different people.

[Singu]

I don't think that it's such the case. For example, someone who grew up in the "wild" has nothing that is recognizable to us as a "personality" in our modern world. Or how a child who was raised in an abusive environment, in total isolation without any contacts of human beings, basically end up being an "empty shell".

It should be pretty obvious to anyone that personality is to some degree biological and based on inherent characteristics when you have multiple people raised by the same parents who end up doing different things in life and being essentially different people.

I think that there are some innate differences that could be genetic, which are more like differences in basic temperaments and personality traits. But I would think that personalities are something that happen on top of that, which are caused and influenced by multiple factors, like the environment and cognition.

So I would think that something like say, being "democratic" is not something that is "written on" genes, as democracy is a product of the culture. You don't automatically "grow up" to be a democratic person, like how an acorn grows into a tree, but rather you simply adopt such a belief, through either the culture that you grew up in, or perhaps you'd read about it and thought about it. So I would think that Socionics saying that a "type" determines either democracy or aristocracy is pretty nonsensical.

[Aramas]

I don't think that it's such the case. For example, someone who grew up in the "wild" has nothing that is recognizable to us as a "personality" in our modern world. Or how a child who was raised in an abusive environment, in total isolation without any contacts of human beings, basically end up being an "empty shell".



I think that there are some innate differences that could be genetic, which are more like differences in basic temperaments and personality traits. But I would think that personalities are something that happen on top of that, which are caused and influenced by multiple factors, like the environment and cognition.

So I would think that something like say, being "democratic" is not something that is "written on" genes, as democracy is a product of the culture. You don't automatically "grow up" to be a democratic person, like how an acorn grows into a tree, but rather you simply adopt such a belief, through either the culture that you grew up in, or perhaps you'd read about it and thought about it. So I would think that Socionics saying that a "type" determines either democracy or aristocracy is pretty nonsensical.

I don't know any feral people myself, so I can't accept your assertion that they have no personality.

[niffer]

Well yeah it’s not a secret that people who get no (positive) social interaction become braindead vegetables. That also explains the cognition of some people on here.

You can still be genetically predisposed one way or another. The point of this thread btw.