Why Blameworthiness Is the Wrong Question?

 Why Blameworthiness Is the Wrong Question?

From the book Incognito-David Eagleman PHd.

 

Who you even have the possibility to be starts well before your childhood—it starts at conception.If you think genes don’t matter for how people behave, consider this amazing fact: if you are acarrier of a particular set of genes, your probability of committing a violent crime goes up by eighthundred and eighty-two percent. Here are statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice, which I’vebroken down into two groups: crimes committed by the population that carries this specific set ofgenes and by the population that does not:

 

 

Average Number of Violent Crimes Committed Annually in the United States

Offense                                     Carrying the genes                           Not carrying the genes

Aggravated Assault                     3,419,000                                          435,000

Homicide                                   14,196                                               1,468

Armed robbery                           2,051,000                                          157,000

Sexual assault                            442,000                                             10,000

 

In other words, if you carry these genes, you’re eight times more likely to commit aggravated assault, ten times more likely to commit murder, thirteentimes more likely to commit armed robbery,and forty-four times more likely to commit sexual assault.

 

About one-half of the human population carries these genes, while the other half does not, makingthe first half much more dangerous indeed. It’s not even a contest. The overwhelming majority ofprisoners carry these genes, as do 98.4 percent of those on death row. It seems clear enough thatthe carriers are strongly predisposed toward a different type of behavior—and these statistics aloneindicate that we cannot presume that everyone is coming to the table equally equipped in terms ofdrives and behaviors.We’ll return to these genes in a moment, but first I want to tie the issue back to the main pointwe’ve seen throughout the book: we are not the ones driving the boat of our behavior, at least notnearly as much as we believe. Who we are runs well below the surface of our conscious access, andthe details reach back in time before our birth, when the meeting of a sperm and egg granted uswith certain attributes and not others. Who we can be begins with our molecular blueprints—a seriesof alien codes penned in invisibly small strings of acids—well before we have anything to do with it.We are a product of our inaccessible, microscopic history.

 

By the way, as regards that dangerous set of genes, you’ve probably heard of them. They aresummarized as the Y chromosome. If you’re a carrier, we call you a male.