lucaspa

I would agree that we need caution when looking at evolutionary psychology. However, that is caution, not dismissal. Extinction of species is not germane here. We can do in evolutionary psychology what is done in evolutionary morphology and molecular biology: look at living related species. Thus we can see what behaviors are present in increasingly distant evolutionary cousins (ever more distant common ancestors) to see the roots of our own behavior/psychology. Some papers doing this approach are: 1. N Williams, Evolutionary psychologists look for roots of cognition. Science 275 (3 Jan): 29-30, 1997. 2. R Plomin and JC DeFries, The genetics of cognitive abilities and disabilities. Scientific American, 278: 62-69, May 1998. 8. MD Hauser, Games primates play. Discover 19: 48-57, Sept. 1998. 11. CD Frith and U Frith, Interacting minds -- a biological basis, Science 286:1692-1695, Nov. 26, 1999. 12. DS Woodruff and NG Jablonski and G Chaplin, Chimp cultural diversity. Science 285: 836-837, Aug. 6, 1999. Social tolerance evolved among hominids. 12a. A Whiten C Boesch, The cultures of chimpanzees. Scientific American 284: 60-67, Jan. 2001.

As an aside, you have Punctuated Equilibrium wrong here. What is "abrupt" in PE is abrupt in geological terms. It is still gradual and involves thousands of generations. But an average bedding plane in geology is 60,000 years. At 20 years per generation in humans, this still works out to 3,000 generations.

Let's look at your answer: "1, I am capable of lifting and removing him/her. 2, the old one`s already had some life and is incapable of breeding safely. 3, the 10 year old should know better. 4, the 10 year old also stand the best chance of survival of all 3 if impacted." 2, 3, and 4 are all part of the evolutionary answer! No wonder you can "work out" that answer, when it is encoded in your genes!

Have you considered that the book simply had people write down the morality that is encoded in our genes? That the reason the authors wrote what they did is because they were verbally expressing the evolutionary imperative? Which is where evolution comes in. Evolution is responsible for the brain module that caused you to act before you "had time to think that through". No one is saying "single molecule". MMM tried to simplify the situation by using a single allele as an analogy, but behavior is much more complex and any behavior is the product of multiple genes. But the point is that the decision pathway is genetically controlled, which is why you act before you think it through. Assertion without reason. WHY is the young child the "logically correct choice"? Without evolution, why save the child? In terms of knowledge and life experience and immediate contribution to society, the woman is the logical choice! After all, children are easy to replace. But the knowledge and skills the woman possesses took 50 years to obtain; the child has none of those. So you don't lose a skill set when the kid dies and you get a new kid by procreation and it will eventually acquire the skill set. In the meantime, you have that skill set continuing with the woman. So yes, I can argue, on economic grounds, that you should save the woman! So why don't we go with the logical, economic argument? As you said, we act before we think it thru. The evolutionary biology argument explains that.

My apologies, but I had just listened to the video when I wrote that and could swear that MMM made the generalization I said. I think you and I may have different parts of the talk. I said "morals" and you say "moral decisions". Those are very similar but not quite the same thing. After all, the "moral" can be one thing but our "decision" can be something else -- something that even goes against the moral. As I said, our cognitive abilities can override the predisposition of our genes.

Yes. Imp, this gets into issues other than science. GM crops do what Skeptic said. That's the science. How the economics of GM crops work and whether the economics is "good" or "bad" is outside of science. E. coli are NOT "intestinal waste". Instead, they are bacteria that live in our intestine -- but also live in lots of other places. A single gene from E. coli is not the same as E. coli itself. After all, we have many genes in common with E. coli anyway -- all the genes in basic metabolic pathways! We just have different forms of those genes. You are using an emotional argument here, not a scientific one. This is a social, economic, ethical issue, not a scientific one. Scientifically, the GM crops have "increased insect tolerance, lower pesticide need, larger yield, higher nutritional value". Now, should those crops also be sterile such that the farmer has to buy new seed each year? You can argue lots of sides to the issue. One side being that it cost Monsanto and other companies huge sums of money to make the GM crops. If they can only sell them once, they can never recoup their costs, much less make a profit. And, if they can't even break even economically, there goes any chance of them doing this again and making better crops. Another side is that we need family farmers in developing nations to raise the food to feed the people there. Such farmers are poor and simply can't afford to buy seeds every year. If the farmers have 1 or 2 bad years, then they go bankrupt and the large companies buy their land. As a society, do we want the means of producing food (and our survival) in the hands of a few large corporations? We, as members of the society, not as scientists, must balance these arguments and consequences and decide what we ought to do with the scientific capability. But that decision is not part of science.

You just made MC's point: "The whole point of my first post was that our method of agriculture is not sustainable. Yes our intelligence and technology has enabled us to more efficiently grow lots of food, but our current methods are destroying our environment and wasting lots of resources, many of which are non-renewable. " You are saying that we must change our methods in order to make agriculture sustainable. Skeptic, this is 2 posts in a row where you have not looked at exactly what has been said but responded to something different. First with the switch from "food crops" to percent calories and now trying to say that agriculture can be made sustainable without realizing that such a change means that the original point was valid: with our current methods agriculture is NOT sustainable. For the sake of reasonable discussion, please read the posts more carefully to recognize the points being made. Then you can agree with those points but ADD additional information. It makes the whole process much less confrontational. All your further points on how we can change agriculture to be sustainable and sufficient -- hydroponics, making artificial topsoil, GM herbicide resistant crops -- are very useful additional information, but they are NOT the methods we are using now. Also, eventually, population growth can outstrip ANY technology. It's the old Malthusian equations: resources increase arithmetically but population increases geometrically. So, while I admire your perpetual optimism in technology, the basics of biology say that technology will ultimately be overwhelmed. We need to think about the consumer side -- the number of humans -- instead of only the technology side. If we can't stabilize the population ...

The data I have heard is that the population is crashing and there are fears of extinction. If you have different data, you can of course share it. I said "food crops". That was the information I got from an NPR story. You have changed this to "nutrition". What you are saying is that 30% of our food crops are threatened but only 5% of the kilograms or calories. We both need to check up on the numbers more. I agree. After all, a farmer's field is no longer a "natural" ecology. It is an artificial one made by humans. But can we sustain 6 billion people in biodomes? This gets back to saving the species vs saving civlization. The biodomes you envision can save the species. They can perhaps even sustain a technical but limited civlization. However, they cannot sustain 6 billion people, can they? Technically, these can be done. Politically? There are a lot of imponderables here, including just how violent the people left out of the habitats and starving on earth become. If the technical civilization crashes before the space habitats can be built, then the technical/manufacturing base to build the habitats won't exist. To build them right now means preserving a small fraction of the human population. Will those inevitably left out allow that? Destruction becomes unlikely. But "depletion" is still very likely. Is there enough easily obtained metal on the earth to build the habitats, much less the energy to lift the material to orbit?

There is no "beyond" in the frame we are discussing. Since matter and energy are 2 different forms of the same thing (E=mc^2), the "vacuum energy" simply means that energy > 0 where there is no matter (vacuum). This energy can be "borrowed" to have some of the energy expressed as matter by Einstein's famous formula. As long as the energy is "paid back" in a short time. Looked at another way, the energy in space can fluctuate between energy and matter over very short time frames. If energy is added to the system -- say by a particle accelerator colliding particles together -- then the virtual particles can become permanent. You may be thinking of spacetime, which is a "permanent substance" (altho not matter) that is part of the universe. Remember, without spacetime, there is no universe. No. Think of this as an analogy: you are driving from New York to Pittsburgh at 65 mph. Along the way you decide to go to Cleveleand instead. You are still going 65 mph but the distance (space) that you must cover has increased. Same with the expanding universe. c remains constant but the length and shape of the path changes. Preliminary results are in and on the web: http://einstein.stanford.edu/ "Everitt and his team are poised to share what they have found so far — namely that the data from the GP-B gyroscopes clearly confirm Einstein's predicted geodetic effect to a precision of better than 1 percent. However, the frame-dragging effect is 170 times smaller than the geodetic effect, and Stanford scientists are still extracting its signature from the spacecraft data. The GP-B instrument has ample resolution to measure the frame-dragging effect precisely, but the team has discovered small torque and sensor effects that must be accurately modeled and removed from the result. "

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD=search&DB=pubmed

Yes. Do a PubMed or Google search on "site specific mutation".

Same number. Our biochemistry is so similar that we use the same 47 elements. In fact, that would apply to all vertebrates, nearly all invertebrates, and most microorganisms. You would have to get to the exotic thermophiles and extremophiles before you would find organisms that would have additional elements as part of their metabolism or bodies.

Foodchain, humans can use technology to modify their environment. This is the result of 2 adaptations: the ability to make tools to make tools and the ability to handle abstract concepts and language. This allows humans to 1) escape predation, either macro by large animals or micro by disease and 2) expand our resources faster than our population. Humans have done this by hunting, herding and farming. We still do hunting in terms of fishing, but not so much in terms of land animals. Our ancestors hunted to extinction most of the abundant prey animals: bison, mammoths, Irish elk, etc. We are doing so with a lot of fish and other sea life. But when humans domesticated plants and animals, we were really able to expand our resources by farming and herding. We have been doing that for longer than recorded history and, mostly, have kept ahead of population. In fact, we have been so efficient at it that now less than 10% of our population can provide food for the other 90%, leading to all the other tasks that make up our civilization. May we have to pay someday? Yes. In fact, right now agriculture is beginning to face a crisis because honeybee populations are crashing for unknown reasons. Fully 30% of our food crops depend on honeybees for fertilization. If honeybees go extinct or nearly extinct, then we lose 30% of our food and face our own crisis. So no, humans are not immune from the environment, but our technology does give us a huge buffer against changes in the environment. Such a huge buffer that we can ignore (at least for a while) many effects on the environment.

First, this is a reason that Wiki is only a place to START, not a place to finish your research! Wiki allows people with agendas to write the articles, and the author has an agenda -- which I quoted. Second, there are no "evolutionary processes" in the article. It is discussing carrying capacity of an ecosystem. This does relate to "struggle for existence" because an ecosystem has a finite amount of resources but potentially an infinite number of organisms to use those resources. Not enough resources to go around -- which is what is called the "carrying capacity". So there is struggle between individuals for the scarce resources. The question you have is about primary vs secondary vs tertiary consumers and the energy they use. But think about using data you have from outside Wiki. There are always more herbivores in an ecosystem than carnivores. So yes, a given ecosystem can support more herbivores than carnivores. It's "carrying capacity" for herbivores is greater. Our brains take up a huge amount of energy. The energy density of meat is a lot higher than the energy density of plants. So, turning carnivore to eat meat was a big driver in our evolutionary history. Now, of course, our technology and knowledge has made it possible for use to derive adequate nutrition as herbivores alone. 32. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?colID=1&articleID=0007B7DC-6738-1DC9-AF71809EC588EEDF WR Leonard, Food for thought, Scientific American, Dec. 2002. Role of diet in human evolution. Yes, natural selection is constantly happening and populations that cannot adapt to changing environments go extinct. Actually, the conflict is more complicated. Because for people, it is not only the survival of the species, but the survival of civilization. H. sapiens could survive in situations where our modern technological civilization won't. Define "positive future". What you are doing is moving into the field of ethics and morals and away from science. IOW, what ought to be -- as defined by "positive future". Science can tell you the consequences of various actions, but not whether you ought to do them.

http://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~otto/Reprints/Day2001.pdf "For example, Darwinian fitness (W) is measured over one organismal generation, while Malthusian fitness (m) is a measure of fitness over a very small period of time (‘instantaneous’)." "For example, consider a single locus at which there are two alleles, A and a, under natural selection. A diploid population consists of three types of individuals: AA, Aa and aa. Let us denote the absolute fitness of each of these types by W(AA), W(Aa), and W(aa), respectively. Relative fitnesses can be obtained in any number of ways. For example, one can divide the absolute fitness of each type by the average absolute fitness of all types. Alternatively, one can choose a reference genotype and divide the absolute fitness of each genotype by the absolute fitness of the reference type (Table 1). Relative fitnesses are often written as 1 for AA, 11hs for Aa, and 11s for aa individuals, where s and h are known as selection and dominance coefficients, respectively. The selection coeffi- cient measures the strength of selection favouring the a allele."

But in this case evolutionary biology provides an explanation -- in evolutionary terms -- for the "what is" of human behavior.

Basically, MaskMan is reiterating the work of EO Wilson and others showing that apparently altruistic behavior is, in fact, selfish at the level of evolution. Yes, given the premise that humans lived in small family groups -- and there is a LOT of data to support that -- then saving a family member means saving your own alleles (forms of genes). Even at the risk to your own life. Save 2 siblings and you have saved your own genome. MaskMan is also correct in that evolution is going to select individuals who protect children rather than adults past the age at which they can have kids -- the woman who is 50. First, most predators go after children and for most of our evolutionary history, hominids were prey. So, it is the children that need to be protected, not the adult. Second, in terms of passing on our alleles, the woman cannot have more kids, but the kids can. So, in the long term an allele that instructs you to choose one of the kids (who is a relative that might have that same allele), then that is going to result in more individuals with that allele -- the offspring of the kid -- than saving the woman. And yes, MaskedMan is correct that the allele is not going to know that we now live in a society where people are NOT related. So in this different environment, risking your life for a stranger is not preferred in the direct evolutionary sense MaskedMan is talking about. It would still be beneficial in terms of reciprocal altruism -- where you do good things for others in anticipation that they will do good things for you. Now, MaskedMan is going too far when he says ALL morals are genetically and evolution based. Humans do have thinking skills to override our evolutionary history. But it is important to understand that SOME of our moral choices are rooted in evolutionary biology.

The question would need to be looked at in terms of whether the culture is selecting a particular phenotype or not. Is there any selection going on for violent phenotypes? IOW, are violent people producing more kids? If not, then the culture is having no effect on phenotype. No. I think the confusion you have is that you are thinking evolution applies to the individual. It doesn't. Evolution happens to populations. You are thinking that more individuals may decide to become more violent. There are several things you have to consider: 1. Reporting of violence compared to actual incidence. You can get an artifact of reporting where the phenomenon looks more prevalent because it is being reported more often. Since news organizations now report on violence all across the USA, it looks like there is more violence. But you need to look at EACH and EVERY locality over time. How many murders has Medina, OH had in the last 5 years? How many in the 5 years before that? 2. Normalize to numbers. If 0.01% of people will commit a murder, for instance, then that means as population increases the number of murders will increase. But the rate of murders or the frequency of murderers in the population remains the same. So, for 1 million people you have 100 murderers but for 100 million people you now have 10,000 murderers. No change in phenotype because the frequency of that phenotype in the populaton hasn't changed. 3. Reproductive success of the people who commit violence. This is the biggie. You have to look at birth rates. Are murderers more, or less, likely to have kids than pacifists? If less likely or the same, then culture has no effect on phenotype, because whatever genetic basis for violence is not being selected for. Ironically, this may be partly due to culture! We lock violent offenders away and prevent them from mating! A culture of bacteria is not the same thing as a culture of people! That seems to be a big problem: apples and oranges. A culture of bacteria is a population of bacteria in an isolated geographical and genetic area -- the petri dish. A human culture is a set of ideas and behaviors that has very fuzzy boundaries both geographical and genetic. There is gene flow between human cultures. There is not gene flow between 2 culture dishes of bacteria. But yes, the effect of culture on evolution has been and continues to be studied. One major reason is that you have to eliminate vagaries of culture when looking for evolution of brain and behavior modules. The modules are thought to have a genetic basis. Therefore, only those modules independent of culture -- universal in all cultures -- can be confidently identified as being the products of evolution. So the researchers have to look at culture and its possible effects on behavior -- if only as a negative control. A few papers are: 19. J De Heinzelin, JD Clark, T White, W Hart, P Renne, G WoldeGabriel, Y Beyene, E Vrba, Enviornment and behavior of 2.5 million year old Bouri hominids. Science 284: 625-629, 1999. 1. http://www.plosbiology.org Article on baboon culture shift after aggressive males killed 3. G Vogel, DNA suggests cultural traits affect whale's evolution.Science 282: 1616, Nov. 27, 1998. Primary article is H Whitehead,Cultural selection and genetic diversity in matrilineal whales. Science282: 1708-1710, Nov. 27, 1998 This one ties into your concern of "violence" in American culture: 6. M Roach, Why men kill. Discover 19: 100-108, Dec. 1998. Summarizes study of Amazon tribe where half the males are murdered. looking for the evolutionary roots of violence. 12. DS Woodruff and NG Jablonski and G Chaplin, Chimp cultural diversity. Science 285: 836-837, Aug. 6, 1999. Social tolerance evolved among hominids. 12a. A Whiten C Boesch, The cultures of chimpanzees. Scientific American 284: 60-67, Jan. 2001. Another "unique" feature of humans turns out not to be unique.

That was YOU mentioning that c was changing! And no, the discovery that lambda is positive does not affect c = speed of light in a vacuum. Look, that isn't cute. It's just juvenile. Just say "Einstein". That's his name, no need to do a literal translation to English. Non-sequitor. As you said, the curve of space affects the path of a photon, but not vacuum itself. If space is expanding, then that expansion affects the path of a photon. Aether and vacuum energy are 2 very different things. Vacuum energy is the term used as what is responsible for the Casimir effect. It is the idea that "vacuum" is not empty of matter, but instead has a constant "bubbling" of virtual particles. Virtual particles pop into existence for about 10^-21 seconds and then disappear again. This seems to happen at a uniform rate everywhere. Because the virtual particles disappear, they do not constitute a "medium" in the way aether was using the term -- a permanent substance that permeated the universe. Virtual particles are very discrete and VERY temporary.

WHOA! We have 2 problems: 1. The cause of lambda in general. 2. Why the magnitude does not correspond to that calculated from the Standard Model. BTW, I assume you mean "120 orders of magnitude higher than the measured lambda". That, of course, may be a problem for the Standard Model (theory). The post I was responding to seemed to think the cause of lambda was established. It isn't, and my response was limited to that. The magnitude of lambda is a related, but separate problem. Whatever is determined to be the cause, a test of that cause is going to be that it gives the value we observe. Altho, I have seen it mooted that lambda may not be a constant, but may vary as the universe ages. Robert Caldwell and Paul J. Steinhardt are 2 proponents of this hypothesis. But again, my caution to let the physicists fight it out remains. I am just noting the problem and listing a few of the possible solutions. I'm quite content to sit back, pop some popcorn, open a Coke, and watch the physicists figure it out. When they declare a winner, I'll accept that.

No. Phenotype as you are using it are the physical parameters of the population. Culture is the behavior of the population. In evolution, behavior can lead to genetic isolation of the population. This is happening now in several cultures, but is most pronounced in the !Kung in Africa. Their culture is such that individuals who marry outside the !Kung must leave the tribe. Thus, there is gene flow out of the !Kung but no gene flow into the !Kung. The !Kung do have some unique alleles not found in any other human population. So, depending on the behavior of the culture, human cultures could give rise to populations that, due to isolation, have unique phenotypes. Taken far enough, this could even lead to reproductive isolation and new species of Homo.

There are many different adult stem cells. Bone marrow contains several different populations of adult stem cells: 1. Hematopoietic stem cells: make new blood cells. 2. Mesenchymal stem cells: in the stroma (fibrous tissue) and can make mesenchymal phenotypes. 3. Multipotent adult progenitor cells (MAPCs): in the stroma and can differentiate into tissues from all 3 dermal layers -- such as nerve cells and liver cells. 4. Osteo-chrondral progenitor cells: in the stroma and can differentiate to cartilage or bone. I've never heard of an oral pill that would enhance stem cell growth or release of stem cells into the circulation. If you want to increase the number of stem cells, you harvest the bone marrow, isolate the stem cells, and expand them in culture. In short, Stemenhance is a scam! Whenever anyone says "stem cells", the first question out of your mouth should be "Which stem cells?"

AH! Yes, I missed that sentence. Now I'm even more confused about what Geoguy was trying to communicate. Just have to wait until he clarifies.

The experiment falsifying the aether was done in the 1880s, over 20 years before Einstein published Special Relativity. So, SR did not "confirm" the experimental data of no aether. Instead, SR is a theory that doesn't require a medium for light to move thru. The cosmological constant does not have anything to do with the speed of light in a vacuum. So getting a positive lambda doesn't affect c.

You have this backwards. The accelerating expansion of the universe tells us that lamda is not zero. However, the cause of the non-zero lambda is not known. I would refer you back to Martin here: "why there is a nonzero Lambda, and whether it really should be thought of as an energy density of some kind, is not very well understood." "Vacuum energy density" is one hypothesis for the cause of the non-zero lambda. But there are other hypotheses. Determining the cause of the non-zero lambda is where I urge caution and patience. Just wait and let the physicists fight it out until they reach consensus.