CharonY

Are you suggesting that Xmas trees got popular because it gets people to procreate....?

I didn't say that female suicide, especially of vets had anything to do with it . Rather that only among females the vet suicide rate is much higher compared to the population, but not so much make vet suicide. Thus it won't affect make mortality much.

Well following that thought an animal would just have to be vastly disproportionately stronger than whatever they are interacting with. A friendly pounce could be deadly.

I do not understand your point. Which is fair, I guess as you do not seem to understand mine. Associating Christmas time with a tree is a meme. Many people do it because, well everyone is doing it. It typically does not get anyone laid. Therefore it is an example of a meme that is successfully propagating, yet does not have any effect reproduction. Other memes may include chance of reproduction. This is not optional for selection of genes, which was what the original comparison was about. Or in other words, if you do not have a tree you are unlikely to have less kids.

The suicide rate for male vets is slightly higher than of the average US population (32.1 vs 28.7 per 100,000), but much higher for females (28.7 vs 5.2 per 100,000). At least for male mortality it is unlikely to be driving factor.

I think we should dispense with the slavery-job-serfdom comparison as it does not serve any purpose. Rather the question is about moral objectivism. The issue is that with the given premise the answer Ophiolite gave is pretty much on point. If we use subjective metrics such as good and bad, obviously we cannot assign these attributes objectively and the whole conversation becomes moot. I.e. OP creates a circular argument by defining morals as subjective ("perceived as wrong") and then conclude that there fore they cannot be objective. However, there are branches in philosophy that deal with this issue. My knowledge is obviously very limited but from what I recall we got deontological theories, much promoted by Kant and his categorical imperative: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law". The second formulation also includes: " Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end but always at the same time as an end." That, would obviously make slavery non-moral. A second large branch of moral objectivism is teleolotical, i.e. the morality of an act is not based on the act itself, but based on the consequences. A general argument is obviously that at one point or another a value judgement is being made. This is a subject that requires more knowledge than I have to fully explore. However, one of the things that I think about is this: "Is an action that measurably reduces suffering in society moral/immoral?". This is more akin to moral realism, but I would also see whether there is disagreement in the opposite "are actions that measurably increase suffering in society moral/immoral?".

That is quite far fetched, isn't it? You can have a celebration without having a tree in the house, and as a matter of fact people did. People are not likely to come to you just because you happen to have a tree. What is interesting about that tradition is that it probably originated from a different tradition and had its role changed of the years. You also see variation in decorations etc if you want to see them as mutations. But again, the main principle behind a meme is that it spreads and that it is independent to the benefit of the one doing it. A lone person may put up a Christmas tree, for example. You can extend it to any sorts of other spreading trends. Mind you, it does not mean that they do not confer an advantage, but that it can be independent on one. Which is the part which you were confused about.

Enough for what? If you want to have a really sterile surface it certainly is not. But just to have it cleaned up a bit, sure. In either case transmission of disease is not terribly likely, unless the surfaces were handled by a sick person.

Or putting up a Christmas tree. It is a very successful meme, yet those with trees do not have any significant advantage to those that do not have one.

I do not know specifics, but I assume it scales with the time required to hit puberty or equivalent.

Yes, though it is not really correct to say that the connections "fail". Rather pruning certain connections by favoring others is a way to optimize signal processing. I.e. it is part of brain maturation and referred to as synaptic pruning. It is common in mammals but I am not sure to what extent it exists in other animals.

Yes, the evolution of rDNAs is a huge topic. A lot is known from bacterial sequences (as the ones you posted) , though the amount of eukaryotes is also increasing. Just looking at the structure will tell you quite a bit. E.g. look at the stem removing one base will automatically result in an unpaired base pair. That has immediate consequences on the structure. Even exchanging the base at 1110 may change the size of the bulge (although that would be harder to predict). As the function of rRNA is very structural minor structural changes can affect the overall performance of the ribosome and its regulation. The literature is incredibly rich, there are whole textbooks on this topic, heck there are whole journals dedicated to RNAs and their structure. Here just a few random papers: Ali et al Nucl. Acids Res. (1999) 27 (14): 2825-2831 Smit et al. Nucl. Acids Res. 2007 May; 35(10): 3339–3354. Kuo et al. Nucl. Acids Res. 1996 Dec 1;24(23):4817-24

It means that is actually independent of biological reproduction (in contrast to selective pressures working on genes/alleles). Examples include rituals that have absolutely no function but are handed down from generation to generation.

No nothing like this at all. It is meant to say that people are spreading ideas. Similar to people spreading genes.

That is clearly not the case. In contrast to many proteins the function is extremely conserved and as consequence they have large conserved sequences (which is why they are so useful for phylogeny). If you think about it, structural RNA has less degrees of freedom than mRNA. Mutations in the mRNA may not alter the peptide sequence at all, whereas changes in the rRNA especially in unpaired regions are likely to cause alterations of the structure. In fact, analyses have shown that the various regions (loops, stems, bulges) evolve at different rates.

There have been quite a few studies out there and there seems to be somewhat expected link between gut biota and food usage. However, one would still need to take other factors of the individual into account (genetic and developmental). There shifts in metabolism as we age that are under hormonal control, for example and there are marked differences between individuals at same age. As usual we are looking at many factors and many studies were not able to account for that. Having a larger sample size will help, obviously, although it would also depend on having relevant medical data for corrections.

Yes, states can have stricter laws than the federal ones, which are unified in the "Common rule" among the agencies. I would assume that a number of circumstances will be considered to establish whether something is indeed a research project or just pure entertainment (including based on who is doing it and how consent is sought).

One weird thing is that in politics it is taboo to admit being wrong. Considering the complexity of matters one would expect that there will always be uncertainty and more often than not the outcome will be sub optimal. Yet it appears that one needs to put a positive spin on things, which basically means that it will be harder identify or even learn from mistakes. In such a situation traceable facts are not only irrelevant, but outright undesirable as admitting their existence would mean that the is a limit to the spin.

That is correct. And again, it will depend on how precise your measurements need to be.

Think about the following conditions: - measure low concentrated sample then one with high concentration - measure samples with relatively close concentrations - measure high then low concentrated samples. How would you rank these situations in terms of potential measurement errors?

Actually, that it is a bit vague and to make that claim one would have to compare the same community with and without religion, which is pretty much impossible. Another way would be indirectly compare the effects on overall suicide rates on different levels but that is going to be tricky. Some studies suggest that in depression patients the rate is lower for religious people, for example. But if the effect size is noticeable is a different matter altogether. The amount of confouding factors is just too complicated for strong statements, I think.

Concentrating cultures typically increases the error, so measurements below the detection limit typically are not terribly useful. For other measurements it depends largely on how precise your measurements need to be. Again, cultures are typically not that accurate so that re-using the cuvette is normally not an issue, if you go from the low to the high concentrated sample. That all being said, typically labs are using standard methods in order to ensure reproducibility and I would advise you to talk to your supervisor what the standard protocol is.

Actually the microbiome refers to the enumeration of microbes plus their genome whereas the microbiota just refers to the taxa. I.e. the "biome" has a slightly different definition than in ecological use (though environmental microbiologists may use it different again). Due to technological changes it has become more muddled up, especially with the rise of metagenomics (which, in turn has two uses, one of which I consider silly). I.e. looking at literature you may see that newer publications they use the terms interchangeable, wheras in older they are more likely to be different.

I apologize for misrepresenting your argument, then. I would say that social cohesion exists in many forms in nature while religiosity seems to be a far more limited. Social bonding, for example does involve a number of behavioral as well as biochemical cues.

Well, it is somewhat to be expected. Religions typically provide some sort of community structure.