On the Film 'Three Identical Strangers' (Column 198)
With God's help
A few days ago I watched the film 'Three Identical Strangers' (Three Identical Strangers), by the British director Tim Wardle. The film is one of the most successful documentaries worldwide. It has received rave reviews, appeared at festivals all over the world, and won numerous prizes. It was selected as one of the five best documentary films of the year by the critics' association in the United States. And indeed, it is very rare for a documentary to be distributed in commercial movie theaters and even break—or at least crack—the box office. I understood from some report on the radio that they are now working on a fiction film inspired by this story, which apparently means they see commercial potential in it.
For the sake of the discussion below, I will have to go into the plot, and I apologize in advance for the spoiler. Anyone intending to watch the film and who does not like spoilers (I know some people who are not bothered by them) is invited not to read on.
Three Components
Let me begin by saying that the film has three components: the central one is the exceptional human story it reveals. The second component is the ethical and psychological discussion regarding the actions taken there. And the third is the scientific questions in the background and their implications. Virtually Kierkegaard's aesthetic, ethical, and religious.
In general, to the best of my judgment, the human story is fairly interesting, the ethical questions are not very dramatic in my view, and the scientific aspect is simply a joke: empty intellectual pretension devoid of content and meaning.
The Story
In 1980, three nineteen-year-old young men discover by chance that they are identical triplet brothers who were born on the same day (July 12, 1961) and were given up for adoption to three different families. In retrospect they learn that their mother was a young girl who became pregnant unintentionally and therefore gave them up for adoption through a well-known adoption agency with extensive connections in New York. The children were given to three different families who knew nothing of the story: one to a blue-collar family, the second to a middle-class family, and the third to an upper-class family. It later became clear that all this was part of an experiment whose purpose was unclear. There were claims that its purpose was to examine parenting and relations between adoptive parents and adoptees, but in the end it seems the purpose was to examine the perennial question of heredity versus environment (nature or nurture)—that is, who influences a person's personality and tendencies, and to what extent: his genetics or the environment in which he grows up and lives.
Researchers followed each of the children, filmed them, and questioned them and their families. The researchers told the families that they were studying the development of adopted children. Neither the children nor the families knew that the child had identical siblings and that the experiment was based on the separation carried out between them. It turns out that the decision to give them to those three families was made because of the goals of the research (they wanted families of different character). It also emerged that in each such family there was already an adopted daughter of about two years old, apparently so that the researchers could make comparisons among the three adoptees both regarding their attitude to the adopted sister and in order to examine the families' attitude toward an adopted child as background for the experiment with the trio in question.
The experiment was kept secret until some journalist discovers it by chance. It turns out the experiment apparently included quite a few pairs of twins and triplets as well. Some of them were found by the journalist, and thus they came to know one another, but there are other adopted twins who participated in this experiment and whose number is unknown. Throughout the process, the researchers and the organizations responsible for the study refused to provide the adoptees and the adoptive families with any details whatsoever about the study and its participants. After the film was released (almost sixty years after the adoption, and more than thirty years after the brothers came to know one another), the study material was handed over to the journalist and the families, and even then it was censored, with quite a few sections blacked out with black marker. The claim is that the study material is supposed to remain confidential for one hundred years (until 2066).
When they meet, the brothers are very happy to meet one another. They bond with each other immediately, open a restaurant together, rent a bachelor apartment, go wild in clubs, and live it up in the best spirit of the exuberant 1980s. The similarity between them is very striking. They speak in the same style. They have the same hobbies, the same tastes in food, sports, music, and even women. All three have the same physical mannerisms, and their external resemblance is very great (that is how they discovered one another). Of course the identity is not perfect (after all, there is nurture and not only nature), and there are also differences between them in character and tendencies. It is no wonder that the story made headlines across the United States, in all the major newspapers and on talk shows on the major television networks.
Toward the end of the film it becomes clear that one of the brothers, who suffered from severe bipolar disorder (manic depression), committed suicide. The feeling is that the suicide was part of the results of the unethical experiment conducted on them. The film presents several phenomena (for example, the children used to bang their heads against the bed until they lost consciousness) that are explained as symptoms of abandonment anxiety. One of the interviewees (a relative) explains that a child who until the age of six months was in a crib with two additional brothers and suddenly finds himself alone would certainly (!?) suffer from such anxiety.
To our sorrow, and to the delight of antisemites, everyone involved in the story was Jewish. The biological mother, the children themselves (and likewise all the children who participated in the experiment), the adoption agency, the organizers and initiators of the study (some Jewish organization), the chief psychiatrist (Dr. Neubauer, himself a Holocaust survivor, one of the most important psychiatrists in the United States, a student of Freud who was also in contact with Freud's daughter), and of course the three adoptive families. The Holocaust is constantly in the background, which raises the question of how Jews who had been through the Holocaust less than twenty years earlier themselves carry out an experiment on human beings (who are also Jews).
Throughout the film the ethical questions arise: how is it possible to perform an experiment on human beings without their knowledge and at their expense, and not tell the children and the families that they have identical siblings, nor even reveal the purpose of the study. In real time, the brothers themselves do not seem very troubled by this, but in an interview shown in the film (when they are already nearly sixty years old) they appear very hurt by it. Their feeling is that a great wrong was done to them (and to the adoptive families as well).
In addition, throughout the film and especially at its end, the scientific question in the background—heredity or environment—comes up more and more. Various people who were part of the process (family members and the adoptees themselves) are interviewed for the film and express firm views on the matter in light of their experiences in this case. The journalist himself is very curious to know the results of the study. He presents the matter as though there is cardinal information here that could shed light on and solve the heredity-environment problem. It seems that in his view there is also a scientific duty to reveal the findings of the study. He assumes that the information was not exposed (even when the material collected was exposed, it was without findings and conclusions) because of the desire to protect the unethical actions and the people and organizations involved in them. I have a different suspicion on this matter, and I will explain it below. But already here I leave a will to my descendants (children and grandchildren): when the full material is revealed (in 2066, when I will probably no longer be around), test my hypotheses. And don't forget to give credit, children.
The Ethical Component
The ethical questions are indeed troubling, but the connection to the Holocaust is astonishingly exaggerated. With all due respect to Mengele, giving identical siblings up for adoption without telling them that they have identical siblings is not really Nazi abuse. These were good and reasonable families, and the adoption seems overall to have worked out well. I wonder what happens with a child who is simply given up for adoption, not as part of an experiment: do they tell him that he has siblings (not necessarily twins)? As far as I know, he does not know anything at all about his original family unless he decides to open the adoption file at age eighteen and with the consent of the biological family. I am not even sure one is obliged to tell him that he is adopted (I have heard of cases in which children grew up without ever knowing that they were adopted at all). So why is the situation different when the siblings are twins? I did not really understand the ethical scandal the film made out of this step.
True, there was a problem in that the children were given to the three families according to the considerations of the study and not necessarily according to the child's best interest, but even that is not necessarily an ethical disaster. All in all, the families were reasonable, and if for the researchers' reasons those were the families they preferred, I do not see this as an especially serious problem, so long as the families themselves were suitable. The expression 'experiment on human beings' gives us chills, but my feeling is that this was somewhat exaggerated. Especially since this was the 1960s, when awareness of the ethical problems was not yet so developed (and perhaps rightly so). To look at it through today's lenses is anachronistic judgment.
As stated, the film describes disorders and distresses of the children, and for some reason it was decided that they stemmed from feelings of abandonment created by the separation. I was not convinced at all. The learned explanations of one of the aunts, who attributed it to the fact that they were separated from one another at the age of six months (’empty crib syndrome', apparently invented for the film), did not strike me as a particularly professional expert opinion. In my no less unprofessional assessment, a six-month-old infant is not supposed to remember that he had two brothers lying next to him in the crib. For some reason not even one professional opinion was brought there (though, as is well known, I do not place excessive trust in them either).
It was hard not to come away with the impression that the suicide too was a result of that same placement for adoption and the ethical transgressions that accompanied it. Here too this sounded very strange to me, since the young man suffered from bipolar disorder. How did they arrive at the conclusion that his decision was the result of the adoption and the events rather than simply of mental distress? The director presumably knows. Throughout the film there are no interviews with experts, but there are plenty of learned and emphatic opinions from the adoptees, and even more so from their family members. This is really cheap charlatanism (even more than that of a professional psychologist).
The Scientific Component
I have already mentioned the problems with the film's psychological statements and messages. But the main scientific problem in the background is the question of heredity versus environment (nature or nurture). This is repeated several times, both in the film and in the reviews, and here too we hear learned opinion from some aunt who claims very emphatically that the environment can overcome almost any genetics.
Here I really lose my patience. First, the question of heredity versus environment assumes determinism without any justification for this being offered. At the beginning of my book The Science of Freedom I explained that there are scientists who identify determinism with genetics, while environmental influences (such as the plasticity of the brain) are, for them, associated with freedom and libertarianism about free will. But this is of course a mistake. Both environment and heredity are factors that belong to the deterministic forces that act on a person. Beyond that, at least according to libertarianism, there is yet a third component in the equation: the person himself and his decisions. Together, these three create the human being and his personality. When one formulates the question as heredity or environment, for some reason one ignores the third factor (which is also the most important on the essential plane).
But perhaps one can formulate a heredity-or-environment problem even in a libertarian world, in the following way. In my book The Science of Freedom (and also in the abridged article here on the site) I present the libertarian conception as follows. Think of some topographical outline, with mountains and hills, ravines and valleys, saddles, and the like. A small ball or a stream of water moving across the terrain would move according to the topographical dictates. But a person moving through the terrain feels those same forces (since he too is a physical creature), except that in his case there is another component that affects his movement: free will and the decisions he makes. Therefore, even if there is a mountain in one direction and a valley in another, the person is not condemned to roll down into the valley as would happen to the ball or the water. He can decide to climb the mountain.
That topographical outline is a metaphor for the collection of forces that act on a person and try to push him in one direction or another, or prevent him from acting in one way or another. They can be described as his tendencies, emotions, character, and impulses. Generally speaking, this entire set of forces (the topographical outline) is a product of genetics and environment. Within that outline the person makes decisions, with those forces or against them. In such a libertarian picture, one can still ask where those forces come from (the mountains and valleys in the outline): from the environment or from heredity. This is not a question about what the person does but about what he is pushed or drawn to do.
Of course, actual behavior is not a particularly good indication for examining this, since actual behavior is determined jointly by the outline (heredity + environment) and by the person's free decision. It is difficult to separate the components, and therefore difficult to isolate from a person's behavior the component determined by the drives that move him. But in my book I explained that, surprisingly, with statistical tools one can do even this with some degree of reliability (far from certainty, of course). There is a miracle behind this phenomenon, namely that statistics works even when we are dealing with a deterministic system.
But this brings me to the most central point here: how can one seriously examine the environment-heredity question in this kind of experiment at all? Suppose we follow these three children (and several other twins), and document every behavior, illness, tendency, or hobby they have. Nobody denies the fact that both environment and heredity have an influence. So how can we make any statement that is even slightly more serious than saying that heredity has an influence and not only environment, or vice versa? I cannot understand what the purpose of such a study could be, or what findings one could possibly expect to reach. Statements like 'everything is heredity' or 'everything is environment' are nonsense. But even the statement that there is a 'mixture of heredity and environment' is banal, because we know that in advance even before the study.
Scientific research is supposed to try to formulate some quantitative conclusions, so as not to fall back on merely banal or mistaken statements like those quoted above. But how does one quantify the level of environmental influence as against hereditary influence from observing the behavior and functioning of some person? Did the researchers count how many traits these guys have and check how many of them are similar and how many different? What can one even do with such findings? Here I am not talking about the declarations of laypeople heard in the film. Those are simply baseless nonsense. But the mysterious study conducted there also raises questions for me. Perhaps I am missing something, but I do not see how such a study could yield non-trivial conclusions.
One can approach non-trivial conclusions if one focuses on a particular trait, physical or mental, and examines a large number of twins in order to reach reasonable statistical significance. For example, despite the genetic identity, it is clear that manic depression appeared in only one of the three, the one who committed suicide at the end. There you have a possible finding: manic depression is not determined by heredity. But a genetic influence cannot be ruled out. To determine something quantitative and scientifically meaningful, we would have to examine a far larger number of cases, in the specific phenomenon of manic depression, and likewise with additional specific phenomena. But that apparently was not done here.
Posing a general question of nature or nurture sounds to me, on its face, like pompous nonsense. In the Wikipedia entry you can see different models concerning the relations between heredity and environment, but it seems to me that a study of this sort cannot advance us toward understanding them. The researchers can hope to arrive at general impressions roughly like those expressed by the aunts in the film.
You are surely in suspense to hear why, in my opinion, they do not publish the results of this study. As stated, the film conveys an atmosphere of conspiracy and concealment. This is greatly intensified in light of the sensitivity of the question investigated there (what is a human being: heredity or environment). A real study out of the basements of the KGB. But, as I said, in my humble opinion the question is neither cardinal nor sensitive, and to the best of my estimation it is also unlikely that there would be real findings on it in a study of this kind. Therefore my suspicion is that the talk of concealment stems mainly from the pursuit of sensations.[1] It seems more reasonable to me that the findings of the study were simply not published because there are no findings. Friends, in 2066 check me. If I was right, please make a film about the fact that they are hiding from the public the absence of findings from an insignificant study under the pretext of social sensitivity and the like. That is a real conspiracy (on the director's part) worth investigating.
Bottom line: this is a pleasant film, with a fairly interesting story, but contrary to its pretensions the film lacks significance from any principled standpoint. Ethically, it consists mainly of mistaken and hysterical connotations to fateful ethical dilemmas and even to the Holocaust, and scientifically it is simply populist nonsense.
[1] This reminds me of the film Sallah, Here Is the Land of Israel, which also featured talk of conspiracies involving mysterious files and classified information. In the end it turned out that all the relevant information had already been public even before the film, and what is classified is simply so because of bureaucracy that applies to all files and not specifically to especially sensitive ones. By law, such files are disclosed only after some amount of time has passed. Once the relevant time had passed, all the files were indeed disclosed, and nothing there was really new as a result of the film. See the responses of my friend Avi Picard (a historian who participated in the film) to my Column 103, which dealt with the film. It turns out that documentary films suffer from the shortcomings of journalism (the pursuit of sensations and the manufacture of dramas) no less than fiction films.
Discussion
They say that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you. The fact that something belongs to the politically correct doesn’t mean it isn’t true either (even a stopped clock…)
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen racism this distilled, with so much stupidity and prejudice, and on my own site no less. Maybe I should rend my garments.
It really is a shame that one has to argue about such simple things. 🙁
A prejudice is also not necessarily untrue…
Don’t you think one can forgo statistical significance with a very large number of twins if an identical tendency is discovered among the twins that is uncommon in the general population? For example, if it were discovered that all three chose to study physics at university (a field only a small minority of the population chooses), and on the face of it there seems to be nothing in the adoptive families that would lead to this, I would say that we’ve learned from this (quite plausibly, of course there is no certainty) that the tendency toward physics stems from their identical genetics, no?
I didn’t get into the criteria here. I argued that such a study should be done on a specific aspect and with a large number of subjects. Of course, the required number depends on the significance of the case and the aspect under discussion. If twins went on to study physics, that does indeed provide some indication, but it is far from being a meaningful scientific statement. After all, it is obvious that there are tendencies that depend on genes. What have we learned from this finding in itself? Note that I gave in my remarks an example from manic-depression that one had and the others did not. Here too it is not unequivocal, and when examined in large groups we may discover that there is a correlation at some level, even if not 1.
A prejudice is not necessarily mistaken, but rather an opinion devoid of significance (that is, it has no correlation with the truth. Even if it is true, that is accidental). This is exactly the other side of the stopped-clock argument.
When I say about someone standing in front of me that he looks to me like a resident of Kfar Vradim in the Galilee without having a drop of relevant information (that is what is called a prejudice), that is not necessarily false. But it is a meaningless statement because there is no correlation between it and the truth. Even if by chance I was right, that is only by chance. That is the meaning of prejudices.
Even before I read the post, because of spoiler concerns. (I’m stringent not to go near even a possible spoiler, even if I definitely won’t see the movie—who knows?).. but already the opening, from the mouth of a rabbi and Torah scholar saying he saw a movie, reminded me of the well-known saying from the yeshiva-ketana days: "Anyone who walks around with a kippah without a band will end up going to a movie without a kippah." Years have passed. But the fact that Your Honor has no band on his kippah indeed proves that it protects against the decree
In our time they used to say: "Anyone who walks around with a kippah without a band will end up going to a movie without a kippah.." A black kippah without a band was then a symbol of modernity. The rabbi watches a movie with a kippah, and from this it follows that he has a kippah without a band
Forgive me. It got sent twice because on mobile the first comment didn’t appear (happens quite often), and only when I wrote the second did the first also pop up. And since I’m here, I’ll mention two more nice sayings from yeshiva ketana. About the graduated haircut at the back, known as a “mushroom” (this was a fashion among the gentiles some decades before it reached the yeshivot, and since then has passed, surely, from the world), the mashgiach would lament: "Like mushrooms after the rain." And I personally had an incident where the rosh yeshiva once turned to me and said: "Why does everyone who sees you have to recite ‘Who creates the fruit of the ground’?" Me:??. The rosh yeshiva: "You have a mushroom on your head!" May we merit it
As it is said: Vizhnitz ribbon.
When someone has no kippah, is that considered like someone who has no band, or is the law of a band only applicable when there is a kippah.
By the way, on a mushroom the blessing is "by whose word all things come to be."
As befits a mashgiach, he was an ignoramus and didn’t know that the blessing over mushrooms is “by whose word all things come to be”
Think of a situation in which there are a hundred sets of triplets and only in one of them all three went to study physics. You will of course hear דווקא about that one because it is unusual and interesting, make a film about it, and draw conclusions from it—but it has no statistical significance whatsoever. It is like rolling a die a thousand times and filming the segment in which you get five sixes in a row, and concluding from this that the die is unfair.
By the way, the connection in areas of interest and talent can and should also be examined among twins and triplets who were not separated.
It seems to me that the identical twins were given up for adoption because the mother found it hard to choose which of them she would love more 🙂
With the blessing, ‘Wine and life to the rabbis and their students,’ signed, Eizel Buridansky, Paris
With God’s help, the 18th of Shevat, 5779
To Itai – greetings,
The story of Mr. Gil happened with the rosh yeshiva, from whom certainly an explicit Gemara in tractate Berakhot did not escape, that over mushrooms one recites ‘by whose word all things come to be,’
However, go after the reason. The reason one recites ‘by whose word all things come to be’ over a mushroom is because ‘it grows from the air.’ If so, a mushroom growing on a person’s head—about whom it is said, ‘for man is the tree of the field’—should be considered as growing on a tree. One should therefore apparently recite over it ‘Who creates the fruit of the tree.’
And nevertheless the blessing is ‘fruit of the ground,’ since a mushroom on the head of a yeshiva student is not considered ‘fruit,’ and ‘one did not plant him with that in mind’—and therefore its blessing is lowered one rank, from ‘fruit of the tree’ to ‘fruit of the ground.’
And this is needed only for a blessing to the yeshiva students, ‘the pastures of the wilderness’ that restore the spirit of the nation, that they should produce glorious fruit, and that there be fulfilled in them: ‘The pastures of the wilderness drip; the hills gird themselves with joy’ (Psalms 65).
With blessings, Eid al-Fitr
I don’t know whether the mashgiach/rosh yeshiva there was an ignoramus, but if he rules on the basis of such little homiletic quips—then apparently he was. 🙂
This Buridan-style joke stirred an interesting thought in me. When there are two children on the two sides of the mother in a symmetrical arrangement, is loving one of them more than the other a breaking of symmetry or not? This is not a physical action, so the laws of physics do not apply to it.
Forgive me, Rabbi, but the second paragraph of your response here to Moishe VaChetzi is a bit emotional. Indeed, it is not at all simple (in my opinion) whether a child from the Congo under Einstein-like education would never become a genius (I don’t think genius can be produced by any sort of education at all. Genius is soul and depth. At most it can be expressed better under good education, but by its nature it is revolutionary and therefore will always have an element of rebellion, and one cannot educate toward rebelliousness…), but the opposite is also not clear to me (I haven’t researched the matter). The rabbi does not need to activate the “racism” reflex (and even “distilled.” The rabbi got there from one sentence he wrote. If so, what is “undistilled” racism according to him? And what “so much stupidity and prejudice” is the rabbi talking about? He wrote a sentence and a half. That is one stupidity and one prejudice at most) in theoretical discussions. The rabbi’s outcry is out of place. Good thing the rabbi didn’t cry “heretic” and “apikores.” Morality does not belong in thoughts and worldviews outside the moral sphere. He made a claim in the realm of natural facts, not morality. He is not “out of line” because of what he thinks (if indeed he thought it and didn’t just shoot from the hip). From the rabbi’s response it seems he is under pressure from the possibility that maybe he is accidentally right (as the rabbi put it). It is indeed a prejudice, but prejudice has value as a starting point for research and for observing reality. There is a reason why specific prejudices are what they are and why those in particular arose. The fact is that not all opinions that exist in the world are prejudices. They are only a subset. The only problem (morally) that exists is only if a person forcefully clings to a prejudice and consistently refuses to test it against reality, or denies what reality does show him, or alternatively is negligent in examining it from the outset (in which case he is a fool), and certainly when that opinion has moral implications. That is the classic question whether stupidity is also wickedness.
In any case, the response (its second paragraph) from the rabbi’s side somewhat shows the rabbi’s own wishful thinking no less than Moishe VaChetzi’s, if the rabbi suspects him of that. There is no such thing as it being improper for a certain reality to be as it is. Reality is reality, period.
In general, I can’t stand it when someone tells me what I am supposed to think and what is okay to think and what is not. And I assume the rabbi can’t stand that either.
Have a good day
As you know, I really do not like PC, and certainly do not like being told what to think, nor do I like telling others what they should think. I do accept that one should tell people to think. Long live the small difference.
What he wrote is racist nonsense, with no connection whatsoever to the PC instinct. That is why I prefaced by saying that although my remarks fit PC, that still doesn’t disqualify them (stopped clock…).
And here is the detailed critique, which I find astonishingly unnecessary in the first place:
1. He assumes that family upbringing leads to genius (and in particular that the Einstein family leads to an Einstein). First nonsense. At most it is more conducive to genius blossoming and appearing, and even of that I am not convinced, and certainly not always.
2. He assumes that the inheritance of genius traits is a function of geography, meaning that there are places that produce genetic geniuses and places that do not. This is nonsense. It seems to me akin to the claim that height is responsible for the inheritance of genius.
3. He assumes that the places that do not produce geniuses are African countries. Baseless racist nonsense.
4. He assumes that moving from Africa to Europe cannot change the matter of genius. Admittedly, this is only a consequence of the previous absurdities.
5. He assumes that a statistical average of a group, even if it exists (and I have seen no basis for that either), allows us to judge specific individuals. That is of course distilled racism.
6. He assumes that this collection of nonsense consists of simple things not worth arguing about. To that I will only note that I long ago thought there is one thing worse than a fool, and that is a fool with self-confidence.
It seems to me that these six assumptions, asserted within his two and a half sentences, are enough to justify my determination, which was stated with extreme restraint relative to what he deserved.
The researchers never interacted with them or with the family? Assessment? Questionnaires? Exposure to medical information?
In principle, one can derive something about traits from observing behavior, as is done in assessment (except that in assessment there is intervention that makes the examination easier), and then one can compare that. If you follow them for long enough, you can rate how irritable they are, for example. That of course requires constructing an appropriate test, and I don’t think there is any existing test like that (the tests used in assessment go through many examinations and validations before they enter use; here I don’t think that exists). And Wechsler I was first published in 1955, so the 1960s were probably not a time when psychologists had good tools for comparing traits even in the lab.
The very fact that the lead researcher is a student of Freud ostensibly already arouses suspicion that he won’t really have a scientific methodology (in Popper’s sense).
And the fact that it sounds like the question really was the general question, which cannot be answered—heredity or environment—and not specific questions about different traits and tendencies, indeed shows that you are probably right.
Indeed, the elaboration was not necessary. This elaboration is neither new nor specific to this commenter, and it is almost always the same elaboration in response to any criticism of a claim suspected of racism (at the same level of detail, because the “racists” will always assume the same assumptions—except for claim 1, which is irrelevant), and that is what I am discussing. But what troubles me is the rabbi’s emotionality on this subject.
If we go point by point (except for claim 1, which is irrelevant to the subject), it really seems that the rabbi is afraid or angry that reality might be different from what he thinks. And that is exactly the problem, because in that he somewhat shows that somewhere inside he also understands where these claims come from, and this is really anger at himself for the rabbi himself feeling this way (forgive me, Rabbi, for the psychology. I don’t know the rabbi that well, but this is a general claim and not necessarily about the rabbi). If the rabbi were truly absolutely convinced that reality is otherwise, he would think either that the commenter is mistaken or that he is crazy (and in that case he simply should not have responded). Anger (and certainly fear) has no place in this context. I understand anger at foolishness, but foolishness requires a more serious effort than a sentence and a half. It requires being a journalist.
In any case, I myself will address the rabbi’s claims in detail (they will be the detailed counterargument to my claim against the rabbi):
1. It seems to me that he was not speaking about genius but about talent or intelligence, and really not even about them but about achievement. Therefore there is no point discussing this, because it seems to me there is indeed a general connection between education and achievement.
2. Following the previous correction, here too he was certainly not speaking about geography but about culture, and I am astonished that this escaped the rabbi’s notice. The question of talent or intelligence in the context of heredity or culture (environment) is complicated if only because the concepts of talent and intelligence are not defined well enough, and therefore we have no good way (forgive me, IQ tests) to quantify them. Academic and other achievements can be quantified, and here there is room for research.
3. As in 2, clearly he is talking about culture. I do not think one can deny that European cultures are more developed than African ones. The geographical discussion is interesting (why this difference arose), but it does not belong here. If the rabbi will call this racism, then there is nothing to talk about.
4. I think reality proves that the rabbi is right on this point at the individual level (a move of an individual from African culture to European culture, certainly one born into such a setting). However, at the general statistical level (an entire population from one culture being transferred into / absorbed by another culture), no research has been done on this and it is not clear at all. Evidence for this is the migration of Muslim immigrants to Europe. The cultural change that will occur will take decades if not centuries. I assume that with regard to Muslims the rabbi would respond differently than to innocent Congolese.
5. One should note that he said “quite reasonable to assume,” meaning that it is not certain. So racism drops out from here. I do not really think there is real racism in the West today, like there was in the 1950s or in previous centuries. It does not seem to me that anyone today would actually discriminate on the basis of skin color. Perhaps there is discrimination on a cultural basis, and it is indeed discrimination and injustice, but one should not activate the racism reflex in relation to it, but rather, if anything, the injustice reflex. (One should not activate reflexes at all. One should act with judgment.) For some reason today that one is weaker than the other. In any case, a statistical claim that is a generalization is supposed to have some implication for individuals. And it seems to me that the rabbi also discussed this in the debate about security checks at the airport. Especially in the context of culture there ought to be some reflection of the whole in each individual. True, I have no idea how to implement this in actual life, since it is obvious that this does not justify a lack of specific judgment regarding each individual person. But it should have some practical implication, otherwise it is a meaningless claim.
6. This is indeed the one stupidity I meant. A fool with self-confidence is what is called in the Bible a kesil (a stupid person who thinks he is wise). But the rabbi lost proportion in the intensity of the reaction (“with extreme restraint compared to what he deserved”). Perhaps the rabbi has prior acquaintance with this commenter; otherwise his anger is not understandable at all. Just like that, I would not have responded to him (if I thought he was crazy but did not know him at all), or I would have said that it is not at all simple, and that’s all. The rabbi is taking it too personally. He cannot pour out his anger (again, assuming he has no prior acquaintance with this commenter. And even then, it seems to me the other readers cannot know that unless they haunt the site) over the injustice in the world onto a comment of a sentence and a half.
I do not agree with any point, but with all due respect I don’t think this is worth such a detailed discussion. If the discussion is about my psychology, in my opinion that is even less worth discussing. I made arguments, and the psychology is beside the point. The anger that indeed was in me does not stem from anything within me, but simply because arrogant stupidity irritates me. That’s all. There is a difference between an ordinary mistake and a mistake that leads to a distorted view of people and drawing irrelevant conclusions about them.
With God’s help, the 21st of Shevat, 5779
And seriously
The halakhic discussion about the blessing over mushrooms is not really relevant when discussing a ‘witty saying’ of an educator about a “mushroom” haircut, for it would not occur to anyone that one actually recites over the haircut either “by whose word all things come to be” or “Who creates the fruit of the ground.”
And in general, the reality in which one recites a blessing over mushrooms is rather remote, since there is no way to eat them except as secondary to another food, and there is no deficiency in a Torah scholar if he does not remember the law in an uncommon detail, and therefore errs in a glaykh vertl.
In the Gemara (Berakhot 40, Nedarim 55) it is explained that mushrooms are considered ‘produce of the ground,’ and nevertheless their blessing is “by whose word all things come to be” because ‘they grow from the ground’ but do not ‘draw nourishment from the ground.’ Some of the Rishonim explained that they do not draw directly from the ground but through the air. The Ran on Nedarim explained that they do draw from the ground, but their main nourishment is from the air.
Be that as it may, it is agreed that mushrooms ‘grow from the ground,’ and from this the author of Arukh HaShulchan inferred (whose 190th birthday fell yesterday, the 20th of Shevat) that after the fact, if one recited over mushrooms “Who creates the fruit of the ground,” he has fulfilled his obligation, since they also draw nourishment from the ground (see Arukh HaShulchan, Orach Chaim 204:5).
With blessings, S.Z. Lewinger
On the life, teachings, and work of the gaon Rabbi Yechiel Michel Epstein, author of the Arukh HaShulchan, Rabbi Eitam Henkin’s book, ‘Ta’arokh Lefanai Shulchan,’ was recently published
Researchers interested in examining the biological sources of crime currently turn to three main sources: population studies, brain scans, and genetic analyses. Population studies examine large samples of people in order to find significant links in them. For example, in 1984 the psychologist Sarnoff Mednick examined a Danish database of more than 14,000 adopted children, some of whom had been convicted of crimes. Mednick found that among offenders convicted of property crimes, such as burglary, the number of people whose biological father was a criminal was more than double the number of people whose adoptive father was a criminal. The gap was even larger among repeat offenders. He concluded that criminal parents pass on “some factor” to their biological children, and that this factor increases the likelihood that they will be criminals. However, he noted that a similar correlation was not found among offenders who committed violent crimes, such as murder or assault.
From: https://alaxon.co.il/article/%D7%90%D7%97%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%9C%D7%A4%D7%A9%D7%A2/
I haven’t read the report, but based on the description you gave here, several objections can be raised.
Three comments on the film, which I saw only recently:
A. Structure: One of the successful things done in this film is the sharp separation between its two parts: the first part, entirely optimistic, tells an unbelievable story of an emotional family reunion; the second part is made of completely different material—loss of innocence. We were deceived, they were deceived. Someone planned all this, as though we were in Communist Russia and not in free America, the land of civil rights. Even the death of one of the brothers was successfully and wisely concealed in the first part, so as not to spoil it, to keep it clean and happy—only so that the bomb would fall on our heads later.
B. Ethics: Would the ethical issue have been easier to digest had they approached the biological mother and asked her permission to conduct the experiment on her three babies (“You are giving them up anyway, they wouldn’t know who gave birth to them or under what circumstances until age eighteen anyway, so let’s make it official and orderly, and when they turn 18 we’ll reveal the study and everything will be clarified”)? The question of heredity and environment is a serious one. Concealment for the sake of research is very tempting, almost justified. What a pity there is no research. Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending whom you ask—what we have before us is a dramatic/documentary film and not documentation of a serious study. In a perfect world, they would have presented us with both.
C. Environment and heredity: So there are no answers, but perhaps there is a direction: one of the brothers developed severe mental illness and committed suicide. The other two—despite the astonishing similarity—did not. What does this mean? If we believe it, the film says that unlike the two brothers who had good, supportive families, Eddy, the third brother, lived in a stressful family under the regime of a strict father. He always felt alien, as though he had grown up in the wrong place. The fact that circumstances amplify genetic heredity and turn it from potential into reality is a fairly well-known fact that the film, in its way, reinforces. I liked the sentence one of the women in the film said—there is nothing in heredity that a good environment cannot fix. If only. That is a truly optimistic message. They say that a child can compensate for the loss of a parent if he has a benevolent adult figure in his life. In Eddy’s case, that did not happen.
Woe is me that I saw you in this way
1. Backwards, Guta, backwaaaards. He is not assuming that; on the contrary, that is exactly what he is coming to refute. His claim is that genetics leads to genius and not family education; if we place a child from the Congo/Ethiopia with the Einstein family to adopt him, he will not become a genius because he lacks that family’s genes, unlike Albert.
2-3,5. Presumably the basis for his assumption is that only a minority of the geniuses known to us—Nobel Prize winners, scientists, and mathematicians of various kinds—came from Africa, and therefore the population there indeed produces geniuses at a relatively low rate compared to Europe, for example. An innocent impression from the visible world. He also added a mild reservation, “quite reasonable to assume,” so section 5 of the rabbi’s remarks looks like looking for prey. A bit of “the principle of grace,” our rabbi…
I haven’t checked, but in my opinion it is quite reasonable to assume that if we conduct IQ tests in the Congo/Ethiopia and compare them with Germany/Austria, we will on average get a higher IQ in Europe… I am not claiming that 100 percent of Germans have a higher IQ than Ethiopians. At worst it’s a mistake, but come on… distilled racism?
I’m sure you know the book ‘The Bell Curve,’ which deals precisely with the connection between genetics and intelligence, and as far as I remember found that Ashkenazi Jewish, Chinese, and South Korean students have a higher IQ than Black students. On average.
Since there is not even one point in this message that has not already been answered, I see no point in responding. I very strongly recommend reading what I wrote before replying to it.
Obviously it’s not politically correct to say that heredity is the most dominant factor, but it’s quite reasonable to assume that if you take a child from the Congo or Ethiopia and have the Einstein family adopt him, he won’t turn into a genius. It’s a shame one has to argue about such simple things.