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You're not born programmed to feel that 1+1=0 is wrong, so you don't have the instinct.

The only reason 1+1 = 2, is because there is something like a half-bit adder in the brain. If the human mind reflects the universe (to a rough approximation), then it is no accident that such an adder would exist. You might say that there exists a culture somewhere that doesn't know about larger numbers. Well perhaps. (The social sciences have manufactured a lot of "evidence" like this.) But even if it were true, you would find it impossible to tell someone these people that 2 apples is not the same as 1 apple and 1 apple.

There are also intuitive notions of biology, which gives us much of our understanding of race. You can tell this from cross-cultural studies of young children. They see an "essence" in living creatures that is unique to their "class". Plays very well in to creationist populism. Much learning is actually about seeing that such naive notions exist, and much political populism is playing to those naive notions that are embedded in our minds. (Every mind is different though.) We never leave our naivety behind. It is part of every thought.

If that sounds distressing, Kant wrote: "The light dove, cleaving the air in her free flight, and feeling its resistance, might imagine that its flight would be still easier in empty space." The limitations of the mind *is* the air that makes the resistance to knowledge.

Regarding homosexuality: if one identical twin is gay, then the concordance rate for the other twin is only about 50%. Keep in mind that that says next to nothing about the amounts of nature and nurture. It does say that homosexuality is not purely genetic in origin. If you are interested, I summarised a lot of research in a short essay about two years ago.

As for the biological basis of homophobia, we have no reason to believe that it is purely cultural, but there sure is a lot of wishful thinking on the issue. Yet we see every culture in all times engage in persecution of gay men in particular. We also see adolescents reliably engage in homophobic harassment. We also know from the three laws of behavioural genetics that genetics (not just biology) probably has a large role in homophobic behaviour.

With these culture war issues, it really is just an issue of choosing the "evidence" for what is "natural" for whatever position you want to take, all the while ignoring the very problems with any notion of "natural", and all the while surreptitiously asserting that if it is "natural" it must be good. It is a fraught exercise through and through.

But just to make sure we're on the same page, when you say "structure of the mind" you are also considering our mental tools (e.g. language) right?

Language is couched in mentalese. The structure of mentalese determines the types of thoughts that we can have as much as the limitations of memory and other such factors. Language comes later.

"morons that hold public office has been linked to aggressive behavior"

It's not the ones in public office driving this, but pseudo-science social constructionist ideologues in the soft sciences at universities. They have tunnel vision for purely cultural explanations of behaviour, and so therefore, any violence in society /must/ have been taught to children who "internalised" it. Then, looking around, it seems obvious that violent media /must/ be the the cause. So... given they know that violent media is the cause, they then study it "scientifically", and jump up an down when they produce results that -- lo and behold -- validate their preconceptions.

Criticism of this research is never taken seriously in large part because it challenges a greater world-view that is behind radical views on gender roles. So if you look at "scientific review" articles in the literature, you will find criticism and alternative views conspicuously absent. This, of course, find, since these people often promote the post-modern criticism of science: there are not facts anyway.

It is all rather sad an pathetic -- esp. when you have to get the supreme court to label the "science" speculative. I wrote an essay analysing the discourse surrounding violence and the media which contains plenty of references to both sides of the story.

So what if it were a choice?

What if it were? lol!

Well, firstly, homosexuality really isn't a choice, although this isn't a purely black and white matter.

Secondly, although there is a vast preponderance of evidence for the biological basis of homosexuality (and sexuality in general), this fact does nothing to affirm the place of gays within society.

Thirdly, even if it were a choice, what is it to you? Do you /really/ think gay people are harming you in some way? Do you /really/ think that you or your children could "catch" gayness from someone? There is ridiculous amounts of evidence that this is impossible. Teens are absolutely /not/ recruited into a gay lifestyle, but quite clearly the opposite. Every gay person tries not to be gay, and only acts long after they have acknowledged their feelings, and cultivated the gall to accept that some people will hate them and harass them and treat them like inferior shit.

And finally, if it were a choice, then it could be "cured", but nobody has /ever/ shown a reliable way to cure gayness, despite a century of pig-headed research. All we can do is push people around, and try to convince them their life will be better if they accept our choices.

Are you really that person?

Look no further then social constructionist for liberal "consciousness raised" moralistic, busy-body, self-defeating madness. This includes things like the war on violence in the media, which I wrote an essay on, or anything in the nature-nurture debate, which includes the feminist war on boys. (See Susan Pinker's The Sexual Paradox, or Christina Sommers' Who Stole Feminism.

When you start studying the political left under a critical eye, you will see all sorts of bizarre ignorance, which is protected with the same bloody-mindedness that we see from the far Right.

Lets actually find out how few in number it is.

Your sentiment is noble, but unfortunately, media violence researchers are not interested in their own numbers -- just a political agenda. Objectively speaking, the burden of proof is on media violence researchers to show any type of causal link at all. They have failed for eighty years. (Going back to the Payne Fund Studies.) See here for more information on what is going on.

This study mixes cause and effect, and pays not even lip service to the fact that there may be a biological interaction at play. This is the story with the vast majority of media research, and research on childhood development. The reason why researchers do this, is because it is considered unconscionable that the environment may not be the ultimate cause, and therefore solution, to all our "problems". This may seem odd, but consider positing a biological basis to patriarchy to an academic feminist. Such a theory would be "morally" wrong. Same goes for media violence. In fact, it is usually the very same ideologues promoting both cases.

It is all very unscientific. I wrote an essay on the politics of media violence research, called The Utopian Pseudo-Science of Media Effects. Freedman (2002), and Trend (2007) (in references) wrote the best scholarly rebuttals of media violence research, but it has fallen on deaf (ideological) ears.

For more information on the ideologies behind the debate, see Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature", and Judith Rich Harris' "The Nurture Assumption". These books expose a lot of "save-the-children" academic research as flap-doodle. I wrote a short essay on the ideologies behind modern academia child research, called Regarding Turkheimer’s Proclamation.

It will take the fall of Margaret Mead-esk feminism before we can put the media violence debate behind us. (I am an old-school feminist -- we want equality, not some naive social re-engineering.) The media violence debate is just one example of how environmental determinism and moral rectitude have produced a kind of race-condition. Don't hold your breath for this heady bubble to burst: social constructionists decry "masculinist" objectivity -- a required point of view if you are going to close your ears to all of the empirical evidence that just says....

There is little to no evidence that media violence is of any cause for concern.

See:
Trend, D. (2007). The myth of media violence: A critical introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing
Freedman, J., L. (2002). Media violence and its effects on aggression: Assessing the scientific evidence. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.

This study mixes cause and effect, and pays not even lip service to the fact that there may be a biological interaction at play. This is the story with the vast majority of media research, and research on childhood development. The reason why researchers do this, is because it is considered unconscionable that the environment may not be the ultimate cause, and therefore solution, to all our "problems". This may seem odd, but consider positing a biological basis to patriarchy to an academic feminist. Such a theory would be "morally" wrong. Same goes for media violence. In fact, it is usually the very same ideologues promoting both cases.

It is all very unscientific. I wrote an essay on the politics of media violence research, called The Utopian Pseudo-Science of Media Effects. Freedman (2002), and Trend (2007) (in references) wrote the best scholarly rebuttals of media violence research, but it has fallen on deaf (ideological) ears.

For more information on the ideologies behind the debate, see Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature", and Judith Rich Harris' "The Nurture Assumption". These books expose a lot of "save-the-children" academic research as flap-doodle. I wrote a short essay on the ideologies behind modern academia child research, called Regarding Turkheimer’s Proclamation.

It will take the fall of Margaret Mead-esk feminism before we can put the media violence debate behind us. (I am an old-school feminist -- we want equality, not some naive social re-engineering.) The media violence debate is just one example of how environmental determinism and moral rectitude have produced a kind of race-condition. Don't hold your breath for this heady bubble to burst: social constructionists decry "masculinist" objectivity -- a required point of view if you are going to close your ears to all of the empirical evidence that just says....

There is little to no evidence that media violence is of any cause for concern.

See:
Trend, D. (2007). The myth of media violence: A critical introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing
Freedman, J., L. (2002). Media violence and its effects on aggression: Assessing the scientific evidence. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.

The supreme court will rule in favour of the media companies, because most media violence researchers don't have a leg to stand on. I published an essay online on the topic here: The Utopian Pseudo-Science of Media Effects.

They're combining DNA, not teaching mice to appreciate musical theatre.

How do you know that appreciating musical theatre does not come from special combinations of DNA? Where do you think your personality comes from? Ask any parent, and they'll tell you that their infant come into this world with their own individual personality -- what them Christian folk call a soul. behavioural geneticists have well established the strong genetic influence on personality and behaviour.

• Homophobes and the religious-right want to change peoples "immoral" behaviour, and therefore cannot stand the thought that biology (God?) created certain people as homos
• Feminists/post-modernists/social-constructionists cannot stand the thought that biology has any substantial role in anything, and therefore rail against any suggest of biological essentialism

In both cases, the nature-nurture debate is confounded with moral issues. Whether fundamentalist christian, or feminist, the moralist believes that they are right and must somehow change society. Facts are too threatening to a mind that constructs its identity in such a way.

• Homophobes and the religious-right want to change peoples "immoral" behaviour, and therefore cannot stand the thought that biology (God?) created certain people as homos
• Feminists/post-modernists/social-constructionists cannot stand the thought that biology has any substantial role in anything, and therefore rail against any suggest of biological essentialism

In both cases, the nature-nurture debate is confounded with moral issues. Whether fundamentalist christian, or feminist, the moralist believes that they are right and must somehow change society. Facts are too threatening to a mind that constructs its identity in such a way.