Nature, Nurture, and Identical Twins (with David Bessis)
1/19/20261 hr 5 min
Are your genes your destiny? Despite famous studies of identical twins that seem to answer in the affirmative, mathematician David Bessis says: Not so fast. He and EconTalk's Russ Roberts take a deep dive into the "twins reared apart" literature, showing how multiple flaws in those studies undercut their claims about heritability. Bessis demonstrates why the natural experiments are never perfect, and why differences across people in a particular time and place are no guarantee of what will happen to any one human being. They also discuss psychologist Eric Turkheimer's three laws of behavior genetics, emphasizing the role of unique experiences in shaping who we become.
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First 90 secondsRuss Roberts· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Welcome to EconTalk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host, Russ Roberts, of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Go to econtalk.org, where you can subscribe, comment on this episode, and find links and other information related to today's conversation. You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done going back to two thousand and six. Our email address is mail@econtalk.org. We'd love to hear from you. [upbeat music] Today is December twenty-second, twenty twenty-five. Before introducing today's guest, I want to remind listeners to go to econtalk.org and vote on your favorite episodes of twenty twenty-five. And now for today's guest, mathematician and author David Bessis. He was last here in October of twenty twenty-five, discussing his marvelous book, Mathematica. Our topic for today is a provocative essay from his Substack that we will link to. Title of that essay, Twins Reared Apart Do Not Exist: The Shaky Science of Genetic Determinism. David, welcome back to EconTalk.
David Bessis· Guest1:16
Hello, Russ. Delighted to be back.
Russ Roberts· Host1:18
Now, your book, Mathematica, takes what is, for some people, a contro- controversial view of mathematics. Uh, unlike, uh, Poincaré's quip that, quote, "Mathematicians are born, not made,"