Paralith

quick, bust out the biological weapons! hit 'em with a megavirus before they reach the atomic bomb button.

There sure are a lot of physicists in these here parts. 0_o

Your caution is well taken, but many of the trends that I mention have a high likelihood of being genetically based; there is a lot of research and theory that describes how they may have evolved. But these traits are most certainly highly variable and highly subject to change based on environmental learning. The genes influence the behavior, not completely dictate it.

That's a good point. In this sense I'm using the term "politeness" pretty loosely, I guess. Let me try to put it in context. Men are usually more likely to maintain a relationship with another person, even if they don't get along very well with that person, if they share a common purpose or goal. Maybe they work together, are on a sports team together, etc. Women, however, are less likely to keep up the relationship if they don't get along with the person, even if the purpose is common. Good emotional connections are usually more important with women when it comes to their friendships, so they'll go to greater lengths to get along. By this reasoning, whatever rules your particular culture or age group have that dictate what's polite or what isn't offensive etc, women will be more likely to follow them, at least with people they want to maintain good relationships with. (And to prove that I'm not just pulling all this out of my butt and that I've actually researched some of this relationship stuff, here's a reference: Seeley, E. A., Gardner, W. L., Pennington, G., & Gabriel, S. (2003). Circle of Friends or Members of a Group? Sex and Collective Attachment to Groups. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 6, 3, 251-263. ) And just to reiterate, these patterns are just average ones that are evolutionary predispositions, but are most certainly not 100% true of every woman out there, especially in modern cultures.

That's why I say "on average." As far as evolved genetics goes, women on average have a predisposition towards being more polite, or at least trying not to offend. But there will always be variation in this trait, and especially in today's modern industrial cultures, many a woman's upbringing outweighs any such predisposition. You're right, what the statement means can depend on who is saying it. But pioneer established it as being said by a man trying to "get something" from a woman, by which case I assumed he meant an intimate relationship, so that's the situation I was addressing. I'll concede to you on this point - I don't actually know much of the history, I was mostly speculating. But, regardless of how it evolved, I think PC-ness does have a place in the world for the reasons I described. Lots of people use it for other than its intended purposes, I do agree. But used correctly, I think it does have a reason to be implemented. Unfortunately, there's always going to be people out there willing to twist a well-intentioned thing for their own reasons.

PC-ness definitely sacrifices objectiveness to some degree for the sake of being polite. But you do have to remember that people are - well, people. Someone is always going to be sensitive about something. And if you want to be able to broach the subject at all without losing the person to a fit of insulted anger, sometimes you have to at least begin with the polite version. Not as efficient logically speaking, but in terms of the reality of dealing with human nature, sometimes it's necessary to keep discussions from turning into fights. As with most things, I think it's knowing where to draw the line that really matters. This is an interesting idea, only you have not included another important aspect in human relationships. Males are trying to get something from the females, this is certainly true - they want to mate. But females are also trying to get something from the males - the commitment of the male's energy and resources on the female and her offspring. So when women hear "I will love you forever," this doesn't make them happy because it's a nice little dream that is separate from a sad reality. It makes them happy because they think it is an indication of reality - of the male saying, I will commit my energy and resources to you and your offspring, and not to other females and their offspring. It gives them nice feelings not because love is a warm and fuzzy idea, but because love represents real life commitment. Now, if the male means something entirely different when he says "I will love you forever," that is simply false signalling and is a different matter than political correctness. That being said, I think it is true that women, on average, try to be more polite than men. A friend of mine once said, men can get frustrated when women seem to sidestep or not directly address a certain issue, but the reason women do it is that they're trying to be polite. In general, women tend to place more importance on the emotional substance of a relationships than men, and because of this go to more efforts to be polite and avoid hurting anyone's feelings. Men, who in general are more goal oriented in their relationships, don't see the same need for being so careful about feelings. This may have been where something like political correctness started, but I think that in a world with more and more people of different creeds and kinds, with all sorts of potential for inter-group violence, being careful to maintain the substance of relationships is more important than it used to be. Again, it's all about finding the appropriate middle path.

Human cultural behavior does indeed change very fast, thanks to our high intelligence. However, the intelligence that allows us to culturally develop is based on genes, and therefore determined by our evolution. Things like emotions and other basal drives are also largely affected by our genes and therefore our evolution - and that's what evolutionary psychologists study, those influences on modern human behavior. They're not saying that genes are the sole component of behavior. Now, social environments can act as a selective agent on our genes. After all, high social status gives you greater reproductive success. But I don't think that's quite the same as "the mind evolving genetics," as social structures are also heavily influenced by the environment in which they evolved. I think I should tell you that the term social Darwinism is actually a political one; it more or less amounts to people twisting evolutionary theory to meet political ends - like the Nazis using it to justify the killing of Jews. You seem to be using the term with a different meaning in mind, which is going to confuse people. I also think it's incorrect to say that the human mind is "exceeding" nature. The mind is rooted in nature. The structure and functioning of our brains is rooted in our genes and our evolution. We are rapidly changing the environment in which we function, both environmentally and socially, so that many of the previously evolved basic motivations don't necessarily apply anymore - but, they are still present, and still affect people. Just because the law says we're not allowed to kill people in cold blood doesn't mean we don't still want to do it sometimes. After all, why would we need the law if no one wanted to do it? Our intelligence allows us to control our own behavior to a greater extent than other animals, but the influences are still there. And, uh, boo to spammers! I know a guy who did this for a living. The company required their employees to make at least 100 neutral posts in a forum to establish themselves before they attempted to sway the members' opinions about a certain video game or movie or tv show - depending on who the client was, of course.

and that's why you didn't contribute anything new or particularly interesting to the discussion. don't worry CD, you're not being combative - just a little irritated. As am I. Dichotomy appears to think that the thread participants would benefit from his input, but assumed that reading what we had already wrote would not benefit him at all.

Ugh, tell me about it. I know women who are convinced that being on birth control for too long will give you cancer (because of the hormones). And they think I'm crazy for disagreeing with their doctors. I can't help it that I want a little more proof than that before I'll believe it.

This is not a place where you come and have other people do your homework for you. Devise your own hypothesis and experiment, and we can give you advice on it.

I can't deny that you do have your asshole pro-evolutionists who delight in simply being mean to IDers on principle. Which is a practice I definitely don't agree with. But this thread is about corruption/dogmatism in science in general, and this is not a general trend when it comes to evolutionary scientists. You are exactly right. Science can't say for sure whether there is or is not a designer. That's why we simply don't bring it into the equation, that's why we don't consider ID to be science. But that's the point of "Even if it were 100% true that everything we see was the result of a design, science would not be able to tell us that." You can't use scientific, material tests to justify the existence of a non-material, untestable entity, that could be deliberately messing with the material data just to confuse us, only there's no way for us to tell - most certainly not with science. And natural selection is most certainly not the only method through which evolution can happen. There's sexual selection, genetic drift, and those are just the usual alternatives. There are probably others out there that we haven't really figured out yet. And what dogma is that? The "dogma" that we can't use material knowledge to test for the existence of a supernatural unknowable entity? I would say that out of all the things science may say, this is one thing that is kind of undeniable. And scientists shouldn't get a bad rap for defending that point.

Again, see my reply to pioneer. Just increasing one thing that a plant uses to grow will not necessarily make plants grow more. Plants need enough water, enough nutrients, enough sun, and enough CO2. If you increase one of these things but not the others, there is little to no guarantee that a plant will actually be able to use the surplus to grow more.

I can't just forget that ID was ever mentioned, because I think you are misunderstanding exactly why evolutionary biologists get all revved up during a "debate" with an IDer. You can point out problems with current models of mechanisms of evolution as much as you like - but creationists and IDers aren't just attacking the mechanisms. They attack the very basis of the idea itself, that such a thing as evolution can possibly occur naturally, without outside assistance, and they use mechanistic issues as if this proves the point, and it does not. And then we are criticized for being dogmatic and close-minded. Whether multicellularity occurred via endosymbiosis or not does not change the fact that evolution happens in nature, even though some IDers may think that it does. I will happily discuss endosymbiosis as long as you don't try to make it mean something that it doesn't, and that's what IDers do. And that's probably why some biologists immediately get defensive when you appear to be with the ID camp - they assume you're trying to prove what IDers are trying to prove, and from what I can tell, you're not. You're actually trying to discuss issues in the science itself, and I think in a different setting, you might get different reactions.

I think you are right, they're talking more about the building blocks of life on comets than organisms themselves. As you say, scientists are having difficulty figuring out how the first organic molecules of appreciable complexity to have some form of reproduction first formed on Earth (and that definitely would be a "required chemistry" ). Once you have those, figuring out the path to organisms isn't quite as difficult.

Ah, but what if the warmer and wetter weather brings more frequent and larger storms that destroy our crops, negating their increased growth? Besides, more heat + more water does not necessarily equal more growth. You need enough nutrients in the soil for plants to grow, and excess rain will begin to leech out the nutrients. The global biosphere is not that simple. I don't know if this will happen, but I most certainly can't say with certainty that it won't. But I digress. This is not a global warming thread, this is a thread for reducing carbon emissions for other reasons. There are already plenty of global warming threads in this forum - go participate in one of them, and you'll get all the argument you could ever want.

I understand the point you were trying to make about dogmatically defending what is accepted as the truth - but I still agree with foodchain that evolutionary biologists rejecting ID is a little different than mainstream scientists rejecting a radical but scientific idea. ID is simply not science, "holes" in various scientific theories aside. You can't fill a scientific hole with supernatural, untestable powers-that-be, and I don't think scientists can be blamed for a little dogmatism of their own when consistently being told otherwise. On the other hand, I do notice that foodchain tends to single out evolution as an area full of doubt, and it seems to me that he/she thinks that this is a discipline that could use some radical change. Yes, there are lots and lots of questions about the mechanisms of evolution - and rightly so. An organism is a complex thing, and discovering exactly how it came to be is even more complex. But I would think that the existence of so many questions, as opposed to a nice simple list of how this and that organism evolved, would go to show that evolutionary biologists are not just sticking to the status quo or accepted standards. However, there are of course some founding principles upon which evolution stands, and those are not questioned for good reason. Do scientists question the fact that molecules are made up of atoms? We may not yet know how they were first assembled, or what all the possible variations are, or what function every molecule serves - but that doesn't mean it's time to start doubting this whole atoms idea in the first place, or that it's time to worry if not doubting this idea is a serious problem.

I don't know much about this, but I can offer one tidbit of information. My current supervisor, Yi-Wen Chen, has done a lot of expression profile studies on muscles, and the gene expression profiles for flexed muscles are different than the profiles of the same muscles while relaxed. In other words, the process of physical movement involves active changes in gene expression. Judging by this if nothing else, I would say that genetics can most certainly have an effect on your inherent running ability.

Well I don't know about physical longevity, but it's definitely true that your cognitive abilities stay sharper if you continue to actively use your brain. Studies have been done on a lot of elderly people about this, since mental clarity is obviously something most people value. So the brain functions better the more it's used, but I don't know if that wears down the physical parts. I would guess no, but I don't know for sure.

I'm not sure where I stand on global warming, so I just never get into it - but I think there are PLENTY of good reasons to reduce carbon emissions and fossil fuel use even without global warming. That's my opinion. *shrugs*

Your point is true about the importance of different levels of analysis. But I think this kind of system already exists in science, pioneer. We have atomic physicists, chemists, microbiologists, organismal/physiological biologists, ecologists, evolutionary biologists, astronomers - from the tiniest particles to the structure of the universe at large. Tell me, what over-arching view are we missing? I have a feeling that this thread, like others you've started, is really about your hydrogen modeling theory, and how important you think it is, or at least will be. How much profound enlightenment do you think hydrogen potentials will bring to the study of broad evolutionary trends? Don't overstep yourself.

Could you maybe give us an example of this? As someone who does research on a genetic disease, I'd be interested to see if this is really a serious issue. One thing you have to understand is that research isn't cheap. On a routine supplies order I can very quickly rack up several thousand dollars worth of stuff that we need to keep our research project going. And I'll probably still need to order something else a week later. Researchers need facilities, supplies, and they need to make a living, so they have to get paid. Getting a research-grade education is also very expensive. And in the US it's been getting tougher every day to get funding. Even the National Institutes of Health have been getting their funding cut like mad recently, and if they're having funding difficulties, you can imagine what disciplines with less obviously practical applications are having to deal with. It may seem like science has "gone corporate," and is being restricted, but the fact of the matter is that there is a limited amount of money going around, and only the projects that hold up to rigorous standards are going to get approved. And yes, those standards are based on existing knowledge. And that's just the reality of it. It's not a happy situation for anybody - how would you like to be the resident "genius" of a given discipline and be tasked with the responsibility of looking at hundreds of thousands of grant proposals, and picking just a few that you think are worth paying for?

This male could definitely fertilize 9 to 11 babies every few hours, but whether or not they all survive to reproductive age themselves is the question at this point. Human babies in particular are more needy than most other animals.

It's not monogamy - it's investment. It's getting the male to invest in you and your offspring, and not those of another female. In some cultures that investment does translate to monogamy, but in others it doesn't. In fact, this is what I said in response to lucaspa: Besides, the whole "males try to mate as much as possible" rule can change depending on the amount of investment it takes to successfully raise a child. That's why many bird species are monogamous, because chicks are just damn hard to raise and it takes two parents (think of the emperor penguins of recent Hollywood fame). But other bird species have chicks with less stringent requirements, or live in more resource rich areas. In these cases the male doesn't have to put in much investment into his offspring to make them successful, so long as he has them in the first place. So in that case he just mates as much as possible. It's more of a continuum than a rule.

Since when does evolution require new genes? The technical definition of evolution is a change in the relative gene frequencies within a population. Women with no sexual desire outside of estrus don't get to breed, therefore as the new generation is born, it's more and more women with sexual desire and less and less women without it, until the ones without it are all no longer alive, and are no longer being born. That's evolution.

Hmmmm, sounds like evolution to me. Sexual selection, anyone? That counts too, you know.