Kathryn Paige Harden

Why do you think a person would do this?

What makes a child go bad, nature or nurture?

And I found that letter so compelling for several reasons.

One is that it shows that we can be strangers to ourselves even when we've done something really horrific.

That's an extreme example, but I think we've all had a situation where we've done something

And then later we're like, what was I thinking there?

Why did I do that?

How could I have done this thing that I've come to regret?

And also the letter was really compelling to me because on the one hand, I could give him a scientific answer.

We know as scientists that science.

If you have a certain set of genes, if you're raised in certain sorts of environments, you are much more likely to behave in ways that are aggressive and antisocial.

But does that take away his responsibility for the harm that he's caused?

That was the question that he was asking me.

And I think that's a question for which we don't really have answers.

a settled answer, we're still trying to make sense of, we walk around thinking that, well, I seem to be making choices, you must be making choices.

But we know scientifically that the person making those choices has been constructed by a set of genes and a set of environments that are obviously beyond their control.

These are things from childhood.

So I don't think that your agency begins where your genetics ends.

But I do think that when we're assessing someone's how much they deserve to be punished, in this case, for a crime, it is important for us to remember that everyone who's making those choices was shaped by this luck that's beyond their control, including their genetic luck.

Well, his theory was very much a theory about maybe I inherited this.