A lot of hard wiring

I am sure seeing a lot of articles about how we're "hard-wired". Not the standard baby reflexes, but a whole raft of human behaviors. Thanks to the power of Google, we can create a little compilation:

• We're hardwired to create art,
• forgive others,
• be fair,
• be political,
• focus on the short term,
• believe in inaccurate stereotypes,
• collect junk,
• avoid risks when seriously threatened,
  
• ...and see chocolate Virgin Marys.

Enough already. Tabula rasa's bullshit, but this stuff represents no improvement at all.

We're walking biological neural nets, and we're highly adaptive. Our identities and behaviors are profoundly contingent on our environments and surrounding communities. The hard wiring is by no means running the show. Hungarians and Inuit have a lot in common (hearts, brains, blood, a taste for fatty foods, and various cultural universals), but I don't know a lot of Hungarians who'd last three days in the Arctic, and I don't know many Inuit who can sing Madarka madarka (lest we forget).

All this talk of hardwiring lends legitimacy to two despicable premises. First, it's a trojan horse for outright determinism, and fuck that. Worse, it denies free will, which is the only fucking reason I get up in the morning anymore. Universe without free will? You can have it.

There are more things in heaven and earth. One of those things, I learned today, is Erika Miklosa. She refutes determinism outright. More Erika here and here.