Paralith

I'm kind of a mix - most of my work experience is in genetics, but I'm going to grad school for behavioral ecology. That's why I like to rant about "humans as social creatures!!"

This sounds like a homework question to me. If examples are so plentiful, I think you should be able to research this yourself. Here's a suggestion - even recent articles will usually begin with a paragraph or two of introductory background knowledge of the issue at hand, with references to earlier papers. I don't know if you'll be able to find THE FIRST known gene that effects multiple traits, (if there even is a single example - issues like these often are discovered via several examples, not just one) but it will point you in the right direction.

My apologies - it just seemed that you were saying that financial well-being and fertility/health weren't closely related.

Not necessarily - not if financial well-being effects your fertility. If you're wealthier you can get more and better food, better health care, you can contribute more to your offspring after they're born, etc. Resources make a big difference when it comes to female fertility. Those principles have probably become somewhat twisted these days, but that's what they're based on.

To add to SkepticLance's statement, even the apparent changes in the "ideal" woman can potentially be explained without resorting to conditioning. In non-industrialized times, excessively thin women were probably undernourished. It was a sign of low resources, of poverty. Fuller figured women, on the other hand, were probably wealthier, had plenty of resources. A desirable characteristic, to be sure. But in modern cultures in industrialized nations, fattening fast food is some of the cheapest food around. It's relatively easy to be fat. Now the sign of wealth is the thinner woman, who can afford to buy reduced fat foods and a gym membership.

Or better yet, the Exponentially Elongating Eel.

He's trying to make a theoretical model to completely explain and predict everything that happens in a cell without having to actually go and observe that cell. Which is a mighty tall order.

There's a difference between your own, personal feelings and motivations, and the genetic predispositions evolutionary history has given you. What lucaspa is saying that males, on average, are more motivated to stick around if the female is willing to have pleasureful sex with them often, and since this benefits the female and her offspring, human females evolved to enjoy sex at all times, even when they're not in estrus and unable to get pregnant. This motivation is just one of many ways and one of many factors that that a female could use to keep her mate's resources monopolized on herself and her offspring. As I said in a response to lucaspa, I don't think this is a major reason that males stick around, and that caring for the offspring is probably the big determining factor - but it can help. But this is all as far as the genes are concerned. How you choose to interpret the emotions and sensations you experience in your family relationships can be entirely different, and are not what lucaspa was talking about. Both, however, are reality.

Pioneer, your needle model is an interesting one, but it's weak because it doesn't take into consideration very much of human evolution and biology, except for the basic fact that sex = reproduction therefore sex = good. There is the overall goal of reproduction which is supplemented by shorter term goals of getting a mate, keeping a mate, raising the offspring, etc. But you have to keep in mind that these goals are not conscious decisions. Because these goals lead to reproduction, genes have evolved that give us positive emotions or sensations that are associated with accomplishing these goals. But the individual is not consciously thinking about it in the same way that a student consciously keeps in mind that the whole point of this college thing is to have an overall positive grade performance. When it comes to raising kids, the "distant north" is not just fuzzy, it's not necessarily even in mind. Mothers think that they love their children for their children's sake, even though the genetic basis for this love probably came about in order to encourage the continued investment that usually leads to more reproductively successful children. And males aren't more likely to stray just because the "distant north" is fuzzy either. Let's look at animals with simpler mating systems as a start. No parental investment, just have the babies and they're good to go. Man fish, for example, mate, lay the eggs, and that's that. Even in this simple of a system, there is a difference in the amount of investment each sex puts in. Eggs are larger and more complex than sperm. A male puts in less resources to his offspring than a female. A female's reproductive output is limited by her resources - she needs enough food etc to be able to produce rich eggs, or if any type of pregnancy is involved, to carry the offspring to term. A male's reproductive output, on the other hand, is basically limited by how many females he can impregnate, since sperm are pretty cheap to make. Thus we have the classic model of choosy females, who are careful about where and with who they allocate their limited resources, and promiscuous males, who simply try to mate as often with as many females as they can. This model changes and varies largely depending on how much investment the females and males put in respectively. Sometimes it switches around, sometimes the investment ends up roughly equaling out. Human males do put in a lot more investment in their offspring than most other sexually reproducing animals, but their overall reproductive output can still be substantially increased by mating with multiple females. In fact, polygamy was fairly common in traditional human societies, further favoring the genes that can encourage men to sleep around, as it were. So they don't stray because the far north is fuzzy. In fact, straying is probably well within the overall north-pointing range. When it comes to homosexuals, it's as though you're doubling the straying urge. You have a group of individuals that are sexually attracted to each other, all with a genetic nudge towards sleeping with many different individuals. This may not serve the overall northwards purpose, but it doesn't matter because the northwards goal is not conscious, the genes are not aware that all the sperm is going towards a reproductive dead-end. As far as the individuals involved are concerned, they feel urges within them towards sexual activity, and they are fulfilling those urges. I highly doubt that the idea of raising each other's inner child comes into play.

Let me see if I understand your situation, pioneer. You don't like theories etc based off of experimental/observational data - aka, what you disparagingly call "empiricism" - because that data by it's very nature is almost never exact, especially in the life sciences. So you have come up with a theory based on an armchair model involving hydrogen, that is supposed to revolutionize the way life science is understood, but that has never been tested experimentally because you don't like experimental data. And the life sciences community in general has insofar rejected your theory until it has been backed up by experimental data. Thus you started a thread talking about how this experimental "empiricism" is an inferior way of going about science. Let me offer you a bit of advice, if I may be so bold. It's not very easy to change people's opinions about something if you approach them in the manner of: "Your opinion is inferior and wrong. My opinion is better and right and the only reason that I stand alone is that no one with a vision as great as mine has yet to come forward." Especially if you're talking about revolutionizing a huge branch of science. Life science as it is today depends on testing theories against empirical, experimental/observational data. Because biological systems are so complex and variable, usually this data results in percentages and correlations, but at least it usually leads us in the right direction if we carry out our experiments with good science. It's not as though all the biological knowledge gathered in the last several hundred years is completely useless because much of it was based on empirical observations. So if your theory is as illuminating as you say it is, then it should be able to explain/predict a lot of observable biological phenomena. And when you show that it does, people WILL sit up and pay attention. And once you show the merit of your theory in a way that is understood by the science minds of today, then those people will begin to change if change is in fact what is best. After all, the National Academy of Science was clearly interested in your theory if they asked for a paper about it, but they know that experimental data is required if they want the papers they publish to be taken seriously by the scientists who read them.

I would think that making sure your offspring actually survive is a good selfish reason to stick around as well. Human males are different from most other animals in the large amount of investment that they are required put in, to ensure the healthy survival of each of their offspring. This is largely why traditional human society is male dominated, because if a male is going to put that much investment in a child, he'd better make sure it's his and not someone else's. Therefore it's in his interest to closely control his mate and make sure she doesn't take part in extra-pair copulations, shall we say, and possibly cuckold him into raising another man's child. I think female sexual desire would be more important when it comes to actually getting a mate in the first place. Since males do put in so much investment in their offspring, they themselves become valuable resources that women will compete for. Then there's also the situation of polygamy, which was probably very common in more traditional human cultures. In that case multiple females are consistently competing to get the majority of their mates' attention for themselves and not for the other wives. Sex is definitely an incentive for investment, but I wouldn't say it's the only/primary incentive. BTW, thanks for mentioning that article, I'm definitely going to look it up! Sounds really interesting.

Cheating is when you commit an act with another person that you originally agreed to do only with your significant other. It doesn't matter with who, it doesn't matter what the original agreement was - only that it has been broken, and the trust that came with it is now compromised. To argue otherwise is, in my opinion, not a very good sign. As pioneer says, sexual pleasure is an evolved encouragement towards reproduction. However, once pleasureful sensations resulting from sex have been established, that "lure" can be re-purposed to lead towards different things. Take bonobos, for example. Female sexual interactions, called G-G rubbing, are important and frequently used methods of forming and maintaining alliances with other females. It feels good, and it takes two to do it. Obviously there is no reproduction as a direct result - but there is increased reproductive success as an indirect result. Alliances with the right females take you to the top of your social group, where you will get prime access to the resources the group finds, and the support and friendship of the members of your group besides. All the better for you and your offspring. Even sexual relations between males and females isn't always for reproduction - it can be in trade for food, it can be to form social bonds. However, as far as social structure goes, there is one important difference between bonobos and humans. In bonobos, females are the dominant gender. In traditional human society, males are the dominant gender. If bonobo females have sexual relationships with each other to cement their alliances and maintain their power - couldn't male humans do the same? Homosexuality has gotten a bad rap in most modern cultures, but it is prevalent throughout history. The Spartans, for instance, were rampant homosexuals. They believed too much contact with women made them weak, and thus formed bonds with each other instead. I think it's a definite possibility that these strong relationships may have contributed to their effectiveness as an army. But obviously they knew that you still need and man and a woman if you want to make more little soldiers, so they did have sex with women for that purpose (though often through the legs of their male lovers anyway). Therefore, in the same way that sex evolved to be pleasurable to encourage reproduction, homosexuality could have evolved to encourage the formation of alliances among human men. I think there is definitely a genetic component involved with homosexuality - but like most complex behavioral traits, genetics aren't always the whole story, and even if they are, it's multiple genes interacting together in various complex ways. Again like most complex behavioral traits, homosexuality as a trait has variety, is on a continuum of some kind. After all, if homosexuality as a trait is going to be maintained in a population, it has to result in some amount of reproduction of the individuals involved. I would say that there's also probably some antagonistic sexual selection going on as well - basically a trait that might benefit one gender, but not necessarily the other. In a male dominated society, homosexuality in men can contribute to male alliances and male control. On the flipside, even though homosexuality obviously expresses in females as well, female alliances are not what men in power want to see. So, they may have evolved a dislike for homosexual women, which put those women at a reproductive disadvantage. But modern culture tends to play havoc on traits that evolved in a very different context, so the views today are very different. Long story short, I think that sexuality is definitely a continuum, at least in humans, and I even think that it has a natural basis. Marriages and domestic partnerships and all those things are more or less arbitrary social constructs, and are under our power to change if we choose.

The Endlessly Evolving Eel! Sorry. Couldn't resist.

You can come up with all the logical reasons you want for legalizing existing child porn, but you will never, and I mean never get past the visceral gut reaction of the vast majority of people who despise the very idea of it. These people don't want to satiate potential child molesters, they want to punish them. They don't want to live side by side with these people, they want them removed from society. And whether or not the porn is old, whether or not the victim consented to it's use, no one will like the idea of saying, "It's ok to watch children being abused - in fact, it's good to watch children being abused." It might be an interesting idea in some aspects, but it will never ever happen.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that you resist the idea that one day all the complexities of life and human experience might be explainable by science - that perhaps one day, when we completely understand the workings of genes, the effect of the environment, the mechanisms of our bodies, etc - that one day it can all be explained with these concepts. I know that life is monstrously complex. I know that the evolution of life must be even more so. I would say that today we are only a small fraction of the way towards explaining it all, but I still think it is possible. The natural world does follow basic rules, beginning at the atomic level and building up from there. Like I said, we are very far away from this goal yet, but even though many people may not like the idea that we can be explainable, it's most likely true. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, in my view. I don't think it's insulting, I think it's amazing. Atoms that once were bouncing around inside a star have come together over billions of years to create beings as complicated as we are. And I think life is complex enough that once it is all explained, it's not going to somehow negate the truth and value of human experience and individuality. It will just show us how it happens. As for the question posed in your thread - that's the very reason why we keep talking about technology so much. Technology is the main way that humans are able "to conduct such widespread change to the environment in general." During our evolution something in our biology changed that enabled us to create and use tools, and something in our environment changed that made the use of tools advantageous, and then our biology began to change more in response to this advantage, in response to tool use, and both the biology and the technology influenced each other. No, not every animal that ever picked up a stick and used it as a club became like we did - because something in their evolutionary path was not the same as ours, be it the biology or the environment. And once we had the tools, we were able to change the environment itself to suit the needs of our biology. I'm sure that if elephants were able to use chainsaws to knock down even the biggest trees and have access to the delicious leaves at their tops, they probably would. But they don't. Big as they are, they can still only knock down trees of a certain size. Thus they create a plains ecology, but don't have the ability to convert large-treed forests into plains. If they had the tools they would probably be more destructive than they are. They don't, we do. We have the chainsaws and the bulldozers, we can make fire to raze a forest and turn it into plains on which we grow our crops or our livestock. It's not so much a question of why we do it, it's the fact that we can, so we do.

We never said technology was the WHOLE issue - a major driving force to be sure, but obviously within the overall picture of human evolution, which involves just as many physiological and ecological factors as the evolution of other animals. We tend to talk about the technological aspect a lot because no other animal has been as influenced by their technology as much as we have. Foodchain, I notice that you often say things like the sentence I bolded in the quote above - saying that you don't think one certain theory or subject can be enough to completely explain the things we see in the natural world. And you're right - you can't isolate one factor in living organisms and use it to explain everything. Genes can't tell you everything - you have to consider environmental effects as well. Technology won't give you all the answers to why humans are the way they are - you have to look at their evolutionary history, at the environmental context in which they evolved, at the genetic mechanisms of change and adaptation, etc. Everything has to be taken in context, and all in all the picture of life is a hugely complex one. We discuss it in bits and pieces because we have to - there's no way to address every single influencing factor at once.

It's not always "food needs" as much as it is being able to take advantage of a new kind of food source, in a way that overall gives you more energy than the food you used to eat. By adapting to eat meat, humans were able to use a food source that is much richer in nutrients and calories per pound than most any plant. This gave those individuals who were able to eat meat an advantage over those who ate plants - providing, of course, that we had a way of getting meat that wasn't so incredibly difficult or rare that it was hardly worth the effort. And developing the ability to use tools to hunt could have been that way. There's still a lot of debate over the exact sequence and timing that these things developed, of course, but regardless, somewhere along the way we were able to take advantage of a food source (or sources) that gave us an edge over our competitors. As already stated, intelligence and technology were most likely key components of this change.

whoops - that must be what I was thinking of. Early human ancestors. My mistake!

Quartile is right in pointing out that evolution does not occur at a constant rate. Different environmental factors can speed it up or slow it down. Still, even "speedy" in evolutionary terms for animals can be several hundred thousand years, or maybe even millions, especially if we're talking about speciation. But you shouldn't take length of time the process takes as support for the theory, because as I said the rate of change is not always constant. Also, generation time will vary alot across a group as large as primates - humans technically become sexually reproductive around 12-13, chimps around 8-10, baboons around 7-8, capuchin monkeys around 4, etc. It isn't easy to generalize for such a big group. Also, if you're only interested in human evolution, you should focus on hominid species, and not just all primates in general. For example, we split from chimpanzees, our closest relatives, about 3 million years ago.

That's another good point I forgot to mention. My boyfriend is a software programmer, and he has this book called The Mythical Man Month. Basically the book describes why having only one person work on a project will actually get the work done faster than it will by throwing five people on the project. Simply adding more people does not necessarily reduce the time needed, and can even prolong it as each person who makes progress has to stop and make sure the other people involved understand and are up to speed, decisions take more time, etc. This book focuses on the software industry, but obviously this phenomenon is not just limited to computers.

well like i said, maybe the primers aren't very specific and don't match up with the sequences from the deer sample very well. Try lowering the melting temp if you don't think the DNA is the problem.

13.4 ul of DNA? that's a lot of DNA, my friend. Unless your samples are at a VERY low concentration, you shouldn't need that much. I typically use 1 uL of DNA sample (which is usually at a concentration between 80 and 200 ng/ul) in my PCRs. Using too much DNA can actually prevent the PCR from working correctly, so I would use less template DNA if I were you. It's also possible that the primers aren't very specific for deer 16s, though I think that's unlikely. If all else fails try lowering the melting temperature.

Wow, I'm glad to see that you weren't just shooting off your mouth and have actually thought about this. Though if you've been thinking about it for 20 years, I would think that you should have made this the real subject for your thread! However, I do have to admit I'm a little confused. Are you saying that hydrogen atoms, of their own accord with no outside force, communicate with each other in order to coordinate their movements within a cell? You can't be suggesting that atoms are communicating with each other. They can most certainly interact with each other, but one atom sending a radio wave to another atom and giving it directions? If I misunderstand, please clarify what you mean.

I think a very large stumbling block to this approach would be deciding on the subject which is to be focused on. Especially if you're talking about an entire industry - getting all the people involved, even if you only focus on the leaders of the various groups, to agree on the one thing that is most important to work on would be very difficult. Many people will have different preferences and views on what exactly should get top priority. Not to mention the complexity of the sciences themselves and narrowing them down to finite subcategories. I can't speak for too many other disciplines, but I work in biomedical research - and I can't imagine looking at the vast depth and breadth of subjects that are currently being researched, and either trying to lump them together in various awkward groups or picking just one of them. Even if you focused on, say, heritable diseases. There are TONS of them, and they all work in different ways. And of the many inherited diseases that afflict humans, which deserves to be cured first? What group of people with these diseases will be given respite while the other group waits, and suffers and dies, for their disease's turn? I understand that with your method we might at least be able to knock down a disease or two right away, as opposed to waiting several years for all the diseases - but the difficulty of making the choice of where to start remains. Then there's the issue of researchers who specialize in different fields. What will they do when their field of expertise is not the one chosen? Will we have any specialists when all the researchers have to change what they focus on every couple of years? And is it practical for every researcher out there to stop and learn all the necessary concepts every time a new subject is assigned? I think there's a lot we might loose with your proposed method, that may or may not outweigh what we would gain.

It does sound awful harsh when you say it that way, but yes, in a manner of speaking I do consider humans in general to be naturally "greedy for power." Because in the days of our evolution, the most powerful individual, the one with the highest social status in the group, was the most desirable mate, and enjoyed reproductive success. In modern days power translates into many different things - social influence, amount of resources, etc. But we do have a genetic predisposition to seek some sort of dominant position in our social group. Notice I say predisposition, not a determinant - some people are more driven in this manner than others, and the manifestation of this drive can vary and change. (In fact, it's my personal feeling that this constant complex social challenge might be a continuing selective force that favors the maintenance of a certain degree of intelligence for most people. Just a thought, though.) The nice thing about being human, though, is that you can choose to go against your behavioral predispositions, or still use them but assign a different meaning to them during your lifetime. I never said that anyone who seeks power must necessarily be doing it for greedy purposes, but there is always an element of selfishness involved. Yes, you may be seeking it because you wish only the best for the people you intend to govern - but what makes you think you're really the best person for the job? I disagree that farmers are necessarily not as smart as people working in government. What they have is a different knowledge set - I'm sure farmers know a lot more about their plants and animals than your average government flunkie ever will. But then your government flunkie will probably have a more detailed understanding of politics and the various systems of government. That doesn't mean that the intellectual mechanisms behind these different sets of knowledge are themselves inferior or superior. They can be, but not necessarily. I also think it's a little unfair that you assign all the greediness in the world to Westerners. Asian rulers also had palaces and gold and lived at much higher standards than the commoners that they ruled. They fought wars and attempted to conquer each other. And on the flipside, even during the dark ages in Europe, a king or lord's job was to protect his realm and the people in it from attackers and marauders, the likes of which were common during those times. I'm sure some of them were greedy gold hoarders, but I'm sure some Asian rulers were also this way. And both regions have their share of benevolent rulers.