CharonY

1 No some, such as chemical mutations are mostly random. Others, such as splicing are not. Some, such as recombination are slightly random, but follow somewhat predictable patterns. 3 solving a major challenge in a given scientific area usually sweeps through the community rapidly. After all, many many folks are working on it and the moment someone finds the smoking gun, everyone will know.

Yes of course they would. While splicing refers to RNA modification, it does not change ones genes. However, the mechanisms for splicing are inherited. Likewise, there are mechanisms that can change the genomic content, via e.g. recombination. You are talking about two things. One is summarizing (accurately) existing literature and the second is putting a spin on them to make their argument. The tricky bit is spotting where they are still sticking to lit and where they start their spin. It is fairly often that woo doctors start off with a reasonable interpretation of a finding and then somehow convince that doing just X will magically improve health, without actually having data to support that. I am, for example, skeptical that the literature he summarizes actually make a link between thoughts and recept subunit diversity. Relating molecular structures to something seemingly simple as cellular physiology is a challenge already. And then making the step towards higher-level functions is an almost insurmountable jump from the bottom up. If there was a basis for that, the work would be published in high-ranked papers, not on a random website. I will also add that based on the article the author is not taking a metaphysical stance. Quite to the contrary, he argumes mostly from a brain perspective- just being more certain about how it relates to thoughts than the evidence allows.

How would you know? Did you follow up the original papers to see whether he summarized them accurately? And if so, how, if he does not reference them? I can list any a virtually unlimited amount of data, but if you can interpret them any way you want, the data is worthless. You need the right experiments to guide discovery. I have not seen any convincing or coherent example how that would likely work. Why (and how) would you extrapolate from an unknown? But to put it simply, evolution is based on inheritance. If the magic thing is not inherited in any way, it would entail nothing for evolution. If it did, it might, but since we do not know how, it is useless to speculate.

I have not looked at the links but it looks like that the blog you are reading is an MD and not a research scientist. This by itself is not necessarily an issue but just skimming through one of the links I cannot find any references. So at least on the surface there is no way of telling whether whatever is written there is based on actual facts or just assumptions. Generally speaking, a blog is not a reliable source of information.

I have no idea what even theoretically the argument could be. Other than perhaps if we just make life harder for half of the population everything will be better?

That is an interesting point and incidentally something that I feel is happening in e.g. the area of microbiology. DNA sequencing has become so cheap and attractive that is has displaced traditional microbiology from many areas of research and very few younger scientist learn the many tricks you have to do to e.g. cultivate tricky organisms. As a consequence, we have vastly increased our knowledge regarding what is out there (or rather, whose DNA is out there) but our understanding of what they are actually doing is slowing down quite a bit. Somewhat strangely, this also seem to affect the literature. One would assume that once it is out there, knowledge would not be lost, but I do start to see a fair bit of newer publications that apparently ignore or are simply unaware of many older publications, resulting in repeating the same insights, just repeated with more sequencing. I suppose it is not unusual that the shiny next new thing can affect science and research directions but if putting things on backburner results in generational gaps, the impact seems indeed outsized.

I kind of doubt that. Obviously, I can only speculate, but there is no good reason to stick to a human design. There are quite a few solutions in terms of locomotion that can deal with stairs and navigate tight areas without having the difficulties of bipedal locomotion. Are two arms really the optimal solution to everything? How about five fingers? From the images it at least appears that most joints seem to mimic that of humans. Again, not sure whether it is really optimized or just a copy. There are simple remote-controlled service robots in Japan, which can to a range of choirs including cleaning, opening doors, doing laundry etc. but only copy the human shape mostly to appeal to their clients. That being said, there is a big branch in robotics that focuses on humanoid robots not necessarily because of functionality, but because we rather want to be surrounding by something that looks like us. Many older humanoid systems (famously the Asimo) were built specifically with the purpose to mimic human movement more than anything else. The Tesla robot is probably going that route and enhance it with their software (and power) capabilities. But from what I read- to make things general-purpose is still way off and Tesla has not demonstrated a clear path to that yet. I may get it wrong, but it looks to me that the goal was really to mimic human movement first (like Asimo) and then try to figure out how to make use the design to create the desired actions. So a bit like the opposite of a purpose built system, where you start with the desired list of actions and then create a system that can do that. While it does make sense conceptionally, the devil is in the details and which is where all-purpose systems often fail.

Also weird. It sounds like there would be no need for factories as there are too few people able to buy things. So why increase productivity by automation?

Exactly. If it wasn't able to do so, it is not multi-purpose to begin with. Are they actually at the point where the robot can do things without being remotely controlled? One should also point out, that beside the coolness factor, there is no real functional reason to make it look like a human, which would make it likely less functional for certain tasks. But being cool is probably a more important point for Tesla to catch up to competitors.

It does look like starting with a solution and working backward. Also, isn't Tesla kind of way behind with their robotic solutions? This is probably even more problematic as they want to have a general-purpose solution, which probably does not help to get a workable product out.

Didn't stop Watson to propagate the alternate version. Obviously, the idea was important at that point as until then, the idea of gene expression and protein biosynthesis was not coherent. But if anything, our understanding of biology tends to change rapidly (though at the moment it feels that several areas are slowing down, but that might be just weird gut feeling and the consequence of getting old). Things are also fun if watched from the molecular perspective only. Many aspects, such as how the DNA is twisted and/or wrapped around proteins also influence gene expression and there might be other spatial effects related to protein crowding and so on.

In case you are referring to the central dogma of molecular biology, in its original and slightly more accurate form it mostly refers to the information flow from nucleic acids (DNA or RNA) to proteins. Basically it just states that you can derive the protein sequence from the nucleic acid sequence but not the reverse. The issue is that it RNA processing breaks the "dogma" a bit. The alternate version, which is more commonly taught in school refers to DNA->RNA->Protein information flow (usually replication is not part of it but at least in principle could be). But that is also not accurate as there are processes such as reverse transcription that break that rule and if one considers the process itself rather than just the information in form of sequence, the involvement of proteins (and RNA) in synthesis, regulation and so on, it is fair bit more complicated. I am not a big fan (anymore) of calling the process a dogma or paradigm as it is a bit pompous and overinflates what we knew at that time point. Of course that was in the 50s, but there is a reason why we tend not to name things like that in bio that often anymore. It is hard to hold on to specific paradigms when biology tends to do very unexpected things, if you look closely enough. There is a reason why the more I worked in the field, the less I am inclined to assume a certain state of normalcy in biological systems. They are all just different kinds of weird.

There is a lot of signaling going on, but not all (or even most) originates in the brain. Roughly speaking, any metabolite has some potential to influence directly or indirectly gene expression (and thereby protein production). Generally, the signal gets circulated via blood to the various tissues in which the responses are generated. Signals also end up in the brain where it can trigger responses to release signals that goes into the blood and so on. I.e. there is a constant back and forth and not really a hierarchical, central control (in most cases).

I should add that this is not how the current line of though is on that subject. What I hear more frequently is that consciousness (to put a more specific term than mind to it), arises from distributed activities, which are predominantly neural in nature. This is not limited to the brain, but that is where signal across the body accumulates. There are multiple hypotheses regarding how the integration of these signals might arise in consciousness. A problem goes back to the definition of consciousness and how we can empirically measure them to test predictions. Competing theories focus on slightly different aspects, but there is now increasing calls to either unify them and/or test exactly where their predictions diverge. But in order for that to work they need to be measurable outcomes (e.g. brain activities and predictions on which areas should be active upon a given stimulus and for how long given the context). Thus, the strength of all these hypotheses, as opposed to a vague distinction, is that we can actually predict what should happen, design an experiment where the conditions should be valid and then test if it happens. If we claim that there is an unmeasurable metaphysical component, it is akin to stating that we can only keep speculating but never figure it out. Here is a nice perspective paper that provides suggestions how to systematically evaluate competing theories on that matter: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abj3259

To be fair, research funding is typically limited, though different areas work with vastly varying funding envelopes. Fusion research does get a fair bit, because a) it is expensive and b) the practical reward is immense. It is more akin to an applied research/engineering approach than many other initiatives. It is not ideal, but you would be surprised how much academic researchers need to pivot to keep their labs open. Research involving large and highly specific infrastructure would have more challenges in that regard, though.

It does not really matter whether you looked at the matter for a long or short time. What is lacking is a true synthesis that a) highlights short-comings (which is the easy part) but also b) find evidence how a different viewpoint, in practice provides a better understanding of the matter. A big issue is that the links you provided are a bit disjointed and at times contradictory. A secondary issue is that often the language is vague, e.g. mixing up philosophic criticism on materialism with specific research questions. Most importantly though, most offer a criticism of current thinking at best, but provide basically not information on how things would improve by taking another approach. Most importantly, while imperfect, the assumption of the brain has the center for cognitive processes is well supported. It is consistent with common and a wide range of observation (e.g. related to intoxication, things affecting memory, brain activity measurements, lesions, and so on). Science is never perfect, nor does it claim to be so. But in all the links there was virtually only one (shaky) report on one near-death experience that might contradict it. So we have huge body of evidence on the one side, and basically one narrative (with virtually no consistent replication) on the other. Thus looking at all the evidence holistically the preponderance of evidence clearly points to the relevance of the brain. So far, none of the various linke really provided even a bit of the explanatory power that modern neurobiology has provided. Questioning or criticizing limits of knowledge is the easy part. Building up useful knowledge is where the real challenge is.

Yep. While there is an argument to be made in which areas of research to invest, it is dangerous to only focus on low hanging fruits. Perhaps even more problematic is that fundamental research is often not considered very fundable as the goals can be a bit fuzzy. On the other hand, these types of research also have the largest potential to explore completely new areas of science.

I probably should add that the side discussion and research I shared regarding the incel-culture (which was a response to a comment by another member) was targeted to discuss the broader movement, and not a specific characterization of anyone specific. Individuals who adhere to various tenets of this ideology may have arrived there from very different areas. However, overall research into that matter does suggest that on outsized role of internet influencers on the mostly young men. I will also add that folks in that corner might benefit from authentic interactions with real folks (and therapists, if possible) as there have been suggestions that quite a few might have some unaddressed issues that they often are not aware of. And those influencers not only prey on those issues but are making bank on misery, fear and rage.

Look, he certainly had interesting hypotheses, but I will add that some of his arguments are questionable from a scientific standpoint. There is a strong "supernatural" undertone including invoking "Black Magic" in some of his earlier works.

Strange, the first mention of reddit was your post. The article I linked only referred to reddit (which was banned), 4chan and an unnamed forum they did the survey on. You do seem to be well informed on the broader internet ecosystem surrounding the incel community (suggesting that it is not quite as obscure as I thought it is?). That being said the article is specific to one forum- but there are more articles out there looking at different aspects, if you are interested.

Not sure why you (as the only one) keep referring to reddit. Unless you are assuming that there is only one or two relevant internet fora. And not, say wikis and other resources that reinforce that ideology?

These are different discussions, unless you mean that sexually rejected folks all fall under the same category (and throughout history). And this is not so. Obviously there are folks who are, for a wide range of reasons unable to find a sexual partner (and again, the person who coined the phrase is a woman). But incel is not (anymore) a term that refers to folks who are unable to find sexual partners. It is a mostly internet-based movement and folks referring to themselves as incels are more often than not are part of the sub-culture (as opposed to either being part of the original 2000's movement or using the term literally). And the subtext in their argument is not precisely subtle.

What does that have to do with anything?

All the while failing to recognize that the six-pack is neither part of the issue or the solution. And for the reason mentioned above. While trying to claim that their issues is comparable to that of homeless or other marginalized groups is despicable, there is at least some overlap in the broadest sense. Both groups frequently have mental issues and there are aspects which prevents them from seeking or implementing help. There is some push to be more compassionate and figure out ways where they learn to identify their issues and work on ways to address them. I am fairly certain that significant one-on-one work can improve issues. Otoh, an online forum is probably the worst place trying to address that. Usually, that space is used to validate themselves, which obviously won't address the issue at large.

The (current) incel culture seems to be an internet phenomenon and in its current form is highly aligned with misogyny. Because of the recency of this movement, most publicants are quite new, but I believe some have drawn connections to other misogynist movements. Interestingly, the term itself was originally coined by a woman but as all things internet, things eventually moved to a very different place (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45284455). A common theme with this research seems to be that the extreme (and sometimes violent) outcrops of this movement are associated with internet-based reinforcement of grievances, coupled with a strong rejections to address underlying psychological issues (see e.g. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27026635). It is obvious that these are self-reinforcing vicious cycles. Misogyny is a bit of a connecting tissue where all the related grievances are connected and cemented. As we also see here, affected men arrive with certain misogynist preconceptions into these communities. There are more detailed investigations into how these tendencies are expressed and one way to look at that is in how incels express masculinity. From what I understand, some common concepts include hegemonic masculinity, in which society is seen as hierarchic with (certain) men on top whereas women and other forms of masculinity are assumed to be naturally subordinate (to whatever ideal they have in mind). A related concept is that of hybrid masculinity in which masculinity is constructed from different bits and pieces and create hegemonies that are less traditional. In the context of incel, this is interesting as the hegemonic tendencies are usually front and center. But interestingly, they also see themselves as victim of... something. The something can differ between individuals and sub-groups, but ultimately, hegemonic masculinity is then perpetuated by proclaiming a type of hybrid masculinity. Common examples include that they are victim of feminism (despite being the stronger men) but they can also adopt subjugated position related to e.g. (perceived or real) mental issues, looks, socioeconomic status and so on. The discrepancy between where they think they should be in society (due to the hegemonic perspective) and where they are, allows (or forces) them to adopt this incongruent stance in order to be both, perpetuator and victim at the same time. A potential reason of not wanting to improve their situation is possible that any improvement would clash with their deeply ingrained worldview. After all, if the world is crazy, lack of success is not their fault. Yet if they get partial success by improving things, it might suggest that they have been wrong after all. And that is a tough pill to swallow.