[palmotea]

> The premise is flawed, humans learn from their environment and there's really no way to put a human in a coffin until they're 20 and see what they do then.

Yeah, but you can also find that rate if you remove the trigger (abuse) from the environment (society) and see how the rate changes.

You don't have to lock someone in a coffin, or something ridiculous like that (and that would be counterproductive anyway). You create a society, or a least a sub-society, where there's no abuse, and see how much abuse is invented by the people raised in that environment.

[stavros]

Right but then you don't need to change anything, simply measure how many people act the opposite way to what they were raised, and then you'll know.

[palmotea]

> Right but then you don't need to change anything, simply measure how many people act the opposite way to what they were raised, and then you'll know.

That's presuming the only influence on a child's development are the adults who are raising them, which is not true.

[stavros]

In that case, preventing abuse has the same issue (it only changes the adults).