Blueprint
Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are is a book by behavioral geneticist Robert Plomin, first published in 2018 by the MIT Press and Allen Lane. The book argues that genetic factors, and specifically variations in individuals' DNA, have a large effect on human psychological traits, accounting for approximately half of all variation in such traits. The book also claims that genes play a more important role in people's personalities than does the environment. In Blueprint, Plomin argues that environmental effects on human psychological differences, although they exist, are "...mostly random – unsystematic and unstable – which means that we cannot do much about them."
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What Hacker News says
- I recently read the book "Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are" by Robert Plomin and it it was quite the eye opener as to how much the nature vs nurture debate seems to have been overtaken by genetic findings.
According to the book genetics seems to be the single biggest factor for a ton of things in our psychology. Including various measures of intelligence and achievement. As a layman the evidence presented seemed quite convincing. The book mostly refers to big studies with thousands of twins. To separate nature and nurture studies can do things like tracking twins given up shortly after birth into two different foster families who never had any contact to their birth parents later (correlated nature), track the development twins in the same family (correlated nurture) and so on.
According to Plomin the effects are huge (especially compared to what usually would be a significant result in a psychology study looking at nurture) and the controversial nature of such findings made the field extremely rigorous to the point where it is hard to imagine these results turning out to be wrong. Apparently it has all been replicated quite a bit by now.
To be honest I found the book quite shocking because it runs counter to so much that is "common knowledge" and "common sense". It basically mostly discards influenceable "nurture" as a defining influence at the population level. Once certain basics are met, relevant environmental influences are mostly too random to control and much of the rest is indirectly caused by "nature". "Nature" basically creates its preferred environment (called "nature of nurture" in the book).
As I am not in the field my ability to verify what the book says is limited. As far as I can tell Plomin is a very well regarded Psychologist and mostly know for his involvement in twin studies. If anyone in the field has better insight on how to evaluate what the book says I would be very interested.
- I don‘t disagree with you. This is basically Eric Turkheimer’s position and he has done an excellent job, and amazing science working within the field of Behavioral Genetics expelling and debunking all the racist pseudo-science of the likes of Plomin (see e.g. his review of Blueprint, 2019).
If you want to see where the tide is turning though, I do recommend e.g. Jay Jospeph. He recently reviewed Turkheimer’s latest book[1]. He is more attacking Behavioral Genetics as a whole (in particular heritability of schizophrenia) and debunking twin studies, and as such doesn’t write too much about doing away with IQ entirely. Despite the difference in opinion Joseph still cites Turkheimer extensively in good light in his own review of Plomin’s Blueprint[2].
I think these debates around the philosophy of science are important and worth following, at some point these meta-debates and book review somebody is going to declare the death of the IQ (or more likely of psychometrics), just like Jay Joseph is declaring the death of Behavioral Genetics today. But I think in the next 10-20 years we will be seeing more and more of neuroscientists who very casually (almost as if it is a non-importance) that the whole notion of IQ is a myth.
1: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/u35nj_v1
2: https://jayjoseph.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/2022-jay-jo...
- Two at around 40Y: has worked out well. Partly because I was/am more grown up and financially secure than I would have been earlier. It does mean that I'm back at uni while both my kids will be starting at theirs... B^>
(Edit: for full disclosure I am not a "helicopter parent" or hugely sentimental, and in Blueprint, Robert Plomin licenses benign neglect to get good outcomes!)
- If you provide a stable supportive home environment and encourage curiousity then evidence suggests [1] that their life outcomes will likely be optimal. Helicopter parenting, cramming, etc, only briefly push up the metrics. (My two are teens.)
And that, your hono[u]r is the justification for my parenting style!
[1] Blueprint, Robert Plomin, 2018
- > Originally proposed by Judith Rich Harris in The Nurture Assumption, and promoted by popsci big shots like Matt Ridley and Stephen Pinker, the idea got another push from Robert Plomin in his 2018 book Blueprint. The latest proponent is economist Bryan Caplan on the 80,000 Hours podcast. Their argument is backed by heavyweight research, but simple at heart.
I'm just outlining the arguments related to this discussion from most of those author's works.
This podcast "Final Thoughts on Free Will" by Sam Harris presents some compelling arguments, if you're interested.
https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/241...
- Relevant to the topic of personality and choice in the article. Robert Plomin in his book Blueprint cites the pretty astonishing finding that the weight of adopted children is pretty much not at all correlated to the weight of the adopted parents, whereas the weight of the birth parents is a strong indicator for weight in adulthood, even if separated at birth.
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