ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that most of the reasons why people believed the nature/nurture controversy to be important are wrong. Birds do not need to be taught how to build nests. The behavior is largely instinctual. It considers the mistaken policy inferences that people drawn from evidence of genetic influences on behavior. It shows if actors behaving according to the rules of constrained optimization engage in trade so as to exhaust all possibilities for individual welfare improvement, the resulting distribution of goods is Pareto efficient is no one can made better off without making someone else worse off. It suggests that knowledge of how group differences arises influence reasonable judgments about social justice, if the differences are genetic in origin. The suspect the view exists because it confuses genetic origins with inevitability. Rational Choice model is unique of human behavior in providing a positive description of behavior is quite analytically powerful and a normative standard by which to evaluate social choices.
