What makes you who you are? Is it the decisions you make in life according to your own free will, or is your identity actually bound up in the DNA passed onto you from an ancient warlord?

According to Oxford geneticist Bryan Sykes, it is too deterministic to say "your genes determine everything you do." But they are "the deck of cards you are dealt at birth." It is your choice as to what to do with those cards. And yet, the DNA that you are made up of does come from somewhere.

For instance, if you are an African American you probably have European DNA. Some people don't like to hear this, as it changes their identity. And yet, according to Sykes, "I’m very proud of all of my ancestors that have got their DNA through to me, and I think everybody should be, particularly in America. Because all of you have ancestors that took a lot of trouble to get here, whether it was across the frozen wastes of Siberia or more recently on ships from Europe or, unfortunately, ships from Africa against your ancestors’ will."

I would say the bulk majority of it is biological. We gain what I would refer to as "capacity" from this.

The filling of that capacity is primarily from our environment. It's learned.

How much information you can take in, process, reinvent, and utilize is up to genetics.

I am not my parents

it's an interaction between your genes and the environment that makes you who you are.

What determines what you do hence are your genes, the environmental experiences you had, the actual situation you are in. Maybe smth else too but can't think of it.

This post was edited by YaC on May 15 2012 08:45am

Bump....your a negro haha.

This post was edited by undertow85 on May 21 2012 09:52pm

You pretty much said it all. Free-will is an illusion.