[goblin89]

Maybe ‘lifestyle’ isn't an appropriate word. I wanted to find an umbrella term for all the small stuff that may look irrelevant, but actually is not.

I remember a study not long ago that found sedentary lifestyle drastically affecting chances of death from cardiovascular disease. It does seem plausible to me that there could be many more things that affect us in more subtle and unexpected ways. Posture, thinking patterns—those little habits. Two apparently similar lifestyles may actually turn out to be very different when analyzed to such fine detail.

And since children from early age imitate their parents, it's natural to expect those things to get passed (with certain variance) from generation to generation.

Now the above is very unscientific, of course. I don't deny that genetics matter—just that there might be other things that matter as well.

Analogies from software engineering world are often flawed, but I'll draw one: a shallow fix of an annoying bug without full understanding of a complex system (and decent test coverage) leading to perplexing problems down the line—I think it's a familiar situation.