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Edgy Ideas's avatar

Hi Eric,

I have much respect for your work and thanks for the above. One comment:

TRUE

"Complex human behaviour emerges out of a hyper-complex developmental network into which individual genes and individual environmental events are inputs. The systematic causal effects of any of those inputs are lost in the developmental complexity of the network. "

NOT TRUE

"individual differences in complex human characteristics do not, in general, have causes, neither genetic nor environmental."

This, to me, is a non-sequitur and therefore a non-explanation of cause.

It confuses that which is cause and effect with that which is measurable due to complexity and random noise.

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Darius Valevicius's avatar

Doesn't it depend on where we look for causes? A recent study in JAMA psychiatry found two social variables (social support and childhood maltreatment) that explained 40% of the variance in MDD, while genes explained 3%, and quantitative MRI practically zero. It was a biological psychiatry paper so they didn't discuss the social variables in the discussion or conclusion. Some bits of that complex network have stronger influences than others and I think can be considered causal.

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