Ringer

I didn't read very thoroughly, but a couple questions that jumped out at me pretty quickly: 1.) What specific aspects of the human mind does your model explain 2.) What does your model bring that others do not 3.) How would you test your model 4.) What tests have been done that support your model

I don't what you mean, are you talking about episodic memory vs. semantic memory?

I agree, but if it doesn't attack the other reservoir species and uses a different transmission vector it's plausible. Not to say it wouldn't take a suspension of disbelief, but any sort alternate history book like this would have some difficulty being perfectly accurate.

I only know of trypanosomes that are harmful, such as the one that causes sleeping sickness. So having a species within within that phyla become harmful to another species isn't unbelievable.

It's not that simple. Epigenetic factors such as those, IIRC, are genetic switches that may be turned on or off dependent on environmental factors. This is very different from changes in phenotype directly affecting genotype. Yes, so? This has been known this for over a decade. Keep in mind saltational evolution is not a couple generations, it's still an extremely long time, there is just some stability thrown in there. Again, things that have been known for decades, what's your point? Certain types of mutations are more common than others, but some mutations are, very nearly, completely random. Even Crick said that he did not know the definition of dogma when he named that, so don't take the name at face value. No, the central dogma was never dogma. There is no dogma in science, you have brought nothing to the discussion that hasn't been discussed in the previous threads that have been linked. You have brought nothing to the discussion that the people here do not know. In short you have brought nothing to the discussion. What you seem to be arguing is a name change, if so get over it. There is no reason to change a name that works well enough, the modern synthesis is exactly what the name implies. It is a synthesis of Darwinian and other macroevolutionary factors as well as information from molecular biology and other areas of biology. A name change is unnecessary and arguing over a name is meaningless. If one wants to make a contribution, collect data. If you want to argue over what something's name should be have a child.

As a general rule, all of your memories are wrong. They are a vague construction of what you may have experienced as well as what you have heard/seen since that memory was first formed. Think about it this way: any experience you have is your brain putting together what it believes is relevant information and guesses it makes based on context. Basically your experience is a puzzle put together with pieces missing, a memory is when some of those pieces are lost or replaced by pieces from someone else's puzzle later on.

A virtually nonsensical non sequitur doesn't help your analogy make sense, nor does it help you make a case of anything other than willful ignorance.

Just because you stick a seed in the ground doesn't mean you will get a plant either. And gardening isn't necessarily botany, so your analogy doesn't really make sense.

He means that UV light is a mutagen and could cause mutations of the base pairs. Even if this did stretch the gene (I have never heard of this)the bonds would break before you even got them to 1 mm, let alone a meter. The scissors are many orders of magnitude larger than what you are trying to cut and not nearly precise enough. It's like saying you are going to use a couple of sticks of TNT to cut a single hair off of a baby. The teacher was wrong. You could theoretically introduce a mutation in your finger to make it grow, but there is no way you would succeed practically. You would have to mutate every cell in your skin, muscle, tendon, bone, etc. And since much of growth is determined by nutrition you wouldn't know if the mutation would even do anything. Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine, Guanine for DNA Adenine, Uracil, Cytosine, Guanine for RNA So IN REAL LIFE WOULD I EXPECT THE COLOR OF THE BASE PAIRS the same on the website? Use a computer program or restriction agents for whatever base pattern you are looking for.

Pretty interesting, oligodendrocytes (a type of glial cell) sending vesicles containing various proteins that are absorbed by neighboring neurons. Glial cells are generally understudied, but they are extremely interesting. http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001604#s4

From a quick look through the author seems to be way behind the times, seems to be misunderstanding some things about excitatory cells, and his only reference to his claims is himself(so far as I've seen). For example he describes the heart as a mini-brain due to its neuro-myo-cyte functionality (it can function with or without nervous system excitation). But on that standard any smooth muscle system is its own nervous system. Just because cells can be stimulated without the nervous system doesn't make them their own nervous system, nor does it make them nerves. He also makes a claim that our vision is tetrachromatic in origin, this is based solely on what wavelengths pass through the retinae. Somehow the evidence that our trichromatic vision evolved from dichromatic vision somehow slipped passed him. He also has a habit of redefining words, which is one of the biggest red flags one can have.

You may want to cite the sources of those images, the information you have is good and it would be unfortunate for the post to be deleted for plagiarism.

I think there are two things to take into account when looking at any massive undertaking in science, but brain research tends to be the focus right now. One is that we never know what the effects will be when we get the information, but we can assume that getting massive amounts of new information will massively change the way research can and will be done. The revolution will not be seen for a long time from a layman's perspective, but for the research it will change a lot. This means the connectome projects will probably not directly change anything for most people, but it can be used by researchers to test ideas that can revolutionize things for normal people. Second, and most important for most people, almost all science coverage and communication cannot rationalize the spending in ways most people can understand. Not that people are stupid, it's just they don't understand what science entails. Projects such as these help scientific revolutions the same way other projects do, by small increments; they just cost more, but are somewhat necessary to go in the direction research wants to go. To explain it like this would massively undermine support for the spending because people want immediate results for their investments. So you have overestimates of how revolutionary that data will be. tl:dr version: Sometimes scientific endeavors are overhyped, but they are still extremely important in the long run

Selection does take that long. I wasn't arguing that inheritance doesn't happen, but using one individual doesn't mean selection is happening. Even if you have children who were equally quick to aggression you have to take into account the frequency of aggressiveness vs. non-aggressiveness in the entire population, not in a single family. How do you not talk about societal/political dislike of homosexuals when you haven't showed evidence that there is any other kind?

Except science does show evidence that consciousness exists since it exerts an effect. So making a false statement to support an argument doesn't really help you. Well it's the only one that seems to actually be able to get things done. It's not if it exists, it's that it doesn't matter. Again, what other sources of knowledge have caused species wide progress? Well, I guess that depends on how you define reality. I don't believe in the supernatural, you do. I rely on evidence to determine what is and isn't real, you don't. The method I use has consistently improved and is able to accurately predict things ranging from how to help treat diseases, how to give people clean water, generate electricity, allow food not to spoil, etc. What has yours done? See above. No, I say science excludes the supernatural because it hasn't made an impact on our ability to accurately predict or measure everything we know exists. Since it makes no impact on the natural world, and we are interested in explaining the natural world, the supernatural doesn't matter.

I think his statement was valid with the qualifiers he used. Although I would say that science ignores the supernatural realm (if there is one) how the discussion was going was that Dawkins was doing things that were not scientific. Since his entire premise in the book was to analyse religion scientifically God would be categorized as natural phenomena, else the book would have been just a couple of sentence saying, 'I can't write this book'. Since 'supernatural' was not a set characteristic of God in this discussion I think the argument was valid. Just my two cents.

I was making a statement about homosexual traits being passed on. When I said aversion to some sexual behavior I was implying an aversion to act in that manner, not being averse to those who engage in those behaviors. Since homosexuality was, and still is, strongly repressed in many areas of society the idea that homophobia would undergo such strong selective pressures in such a short amount of time is extremely far fetched. Also, one would need to explain why male homosexuals are hated on a far greater scale than female homosexuals, as well as why homophobia is a predominantly male trait. Here's some reading on some of the studies that have been done on homophobia: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/assault/roots/overview.html On another line of reasoning. Male homosexual behavior differs only in that there is no vaginal intercourse. If aversion to homosexual behavior was biological anal and oral would be a punishment not a reward.

The thing is since it seems that way to me, and others, it makes you writing style irritating to read. The reason being any information you're actually trying to convey gets lost in all the other stuff that doesn't lend anything to your point. Frankly, most of your posts seems passive aggressive, mildly insulting, and condescending. You may want to rethink how you're writing so you can actually get a point across without seeming like an ass. Science isn't about finding common ground, it's about explaining things based on evidence. It doesn't matter if it's helpful or beneficial, it matters if it fits evidence. I didn't see anyone saying anything about something being wrong with you, or you need to be forcefully changed. I may have missed it if someone did say that and I would disagree with that statement to a degree. What has been said is that homophobia and disgust toward homosexual acts is culturally adopted, and unfounded disgust or hatred toward a group that doesn't harm others should be discouraged. I support racial equality and interracial marriage. I do not feel that anyone who does not has something wrong with them or is racist because they do not support these issues. Agreed Many feel that it is important to undo culturally conditioned disgust of minorities. I would agree with this. Many find this sort of feeling tends to be correlated with misinformation about those minorities, ie ignorance, and I would agree to a degree. This is the type of thing I mean when I say condescending and passive aggressive. Well you're creating a false dichotomy of homosexuality and reproduction, and of homosexuality and heterosexuality. There is no reason to assume that some levels of homosexual behavior would not convey a selective advantage or be selectively neutral. Those traits can could epistatically cause "pure" homosexuality (meaning total aversion to heterosexual behavior) which may cause selective disadvantage. But since the alleles can 'hide' in the population due to total aversion needed specific allelic combinations.

SplitInfinity, I think you are taking all of this way too personally. That seems to be making almost all of your posts very long with little to no actual information on whatever it is you're arguing. Not to mention in your last post the very first thing you did was make a false equivalence between things that are both against the law and physically/mentally damaging with consensual attractions. Fallacious arguments like that are what people don't give two craps about, and they are the bulk of your posts with life details thrown in.

No it's not, it's not even defined well enough to be indicative of anything. It's not all that fast, at least not fast enough to need faster than light communication. Really? So, let's say, if we played a super computer programmed to play chess we should be able to dominate due to the faster processing speed? More than that, the brain isn't a computer so the comparison doesn't really work. What?

That link makes a whole lot of claims with no backing. There is next to no way the brain would be able to entangle and reentangle particles at a rate that would make it more efficient than just having things act at the macro level. Entanglement isn't something that is conserved forever.

But the brain isn't really a quantum computer. I can't think of something off the top of my head that would need a quantum explanation that we don't already have a macro explanation for that fits the data.

You could always just have the donor have Klinefelter's syndrome.

If organisms are designed it sure as hell wasn't intelligently