It may be a mistake to consider genes as only a "millions of years" timescale. After all, the human species hasn't been around a fraction of that, and there is a lot of behavior that is genetic which we otherwise wouldn't consider to be so. Pinker's "The Blank Slate" has a useful discussion on such. If half of personality is genetic and half random (and the genetic part is itself a somewhat random combination of two other people's genes and randomness), then genes are possibly the largest tentpole.
Hey Jeff, good point. The tidy metaphor of zooming out in timescales can only go so far. I've recently heard some pretty convincing arguments from behavior geneticists like Robert Plomin about how genes likely play a large role than we think (or are comfortable talking about). I'll have to dig into that Pinker book
It may be a mistake to consider genes as only a "millions of years" timescale. After all, the human species hasn't been around a fraction of that, and there is a lot of behavior that is genetic which we otherwise wouldn't consider to be so. Pinker's "The Blank Slate" has a useful discussion on such. If half of personality is genetic and half random (and the genetic part is itself a somewhat random combination of two other people's genes and randomness), then genes are possibly the largest tentpole.
Hey Jeff, good point. The tidy metaphor of zooming out in timescales can only go so far. I've recently heard some pretty convincing arguments from behavior geneticists like Robert Plomin about how genes likely play a large role than we think (or are comfortable talking about). I'll have to dig into that Pinker book