Their is plenty of research that shows your genes have as much, or more to do with your success later in life then your parents. This is especially true as long as your parents meet the minimum standard of raising you.
Edit was the post I was replying to:
"Considering he gave him up for adoption not sure why he would want to meet with him once he grew up. He is no more relevant than a stranger wanting to meet Jobs. And calling him his child is an insult to the parents that raised Steve Jobs."
There is plenty of research that shows that your environment has as much, or more to do with your success than your genes. Just look at kids in bad environments.
Steve's environment in this case was provided by his adoptive parents. The fact that they were willing to spend all their savings for Steve to go to a very expensive college tell us a lot about the type of environment that they wanted for their kid.
We will never know but I wonder if we would be talking about Jobs today had he not been raised by his adoptive parents.
> There is plenty of research that shows that your environment has as much, or more to do with your success than your genes. Just look at kids in bad environments.
That shows the effects that really poor environments have on children. I believe I have read the after a certain minimum level of care is reached the effects of childhood upbringing greatly diminish (ie. piling on those childhood activities is unlikely to result in long term gains vs. children who don't have them).
I've read that the unique interactions that parents have with their kids shape them profoundly throughout life all the way to adulthood and beyond. Their parents are their first role models and a lot of what will shape them into adults is learned from them. As long as your genes do not give you any learning disabilities and beyond a minimum level of intelligence your environment is more important than your genes. For one thing, he would never have met Woz. A genius whom designed the first Apple computer.
Imagine that Steve Jobs had been put into a different family in a different State, Province, Country and that the environment was good. i.e. Loved by his parents and received a good education. Would jobs have turned out the same? Would he be the founder of a multibillion dollar company? You seem to imply that the answer is yes, I've read plenty of literature that says no since the daily interactions in your environment have a great influence into what you become.
We are the sum of our experiences.
Finally, we could test if the genetic make up of Steve Jobs would make that much of a difference. Clone 100, or better yet, 1000 steve jobs, raise them, and see what happens.
Edit was the post I was replying to:
"Considering he gave him up for adoption not sure why he would want to meet with him once he grew up. He is no more relevant than a stranger wanting to meet Jobs. And calling him his child is an insult to the parents that raised Steve Jobs."