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It is a tragedy of the commons issue, though. Few folks will vote for measures that could limit their own unfettered use of resources. We do see it in how climate change is playing out. The rhetoric minimizes their impact and if that stops working focus shifts to blaming folks, so that ultimately nothing gets done.

There is also globalization, which on the one hand puts great food on our tables, but often on the backs of those who produce them. It is a hugely complicated mess, but this is often the space where folks seek simple answers. I think a big driver is also that the industries are building for obsolescence and low cost (e.g. clothing) in order to maximize profit. It is often cheaper to buy rather than to repair (not to mention more convenient). And considering that it is also often cheaper to ship things to different countries to assemble and/or process things, the cost savings add up to a lot of environmental cost that we offload to future generations. And I know that a lot of hypocrisy is involved here as I am sitting in a AC-cooled environment in front of a computer and surrounded by affordable electronics (not to mention coffee).

I will just state that in the 80s with a far lower population smog warnings and weekend driving bans or restrictions were more common than nowadays. And this is with fewer people and cars on the road. Ultimately, this was achieved by implementing air quality standards and forcing folks to implement technology to mitigate these issues. Again, it is not to say that population does not exert pressure, but I do think that folks overfocus on this part (for a wide range of reasons, some justified, some rather dubious). And this is mostly because it seems to be the low-hanging fruit to blame things on. The real issue in my mind is the underlying structure or system. High housing prices is not just caused by population pressure. Some countries are better at dealing with it by having a more established renting vs home ownership market with different economic incentives. However, changing that system is more disruptive so often we only look for simple solution where we do not have to sacrifice anything. Unfortunately, we have likely moved past that point, because we have been overconsuming for many generations. But we'd rather have others pay the price, of course. Unless the goal is to kill of people (and again, based on that logic, we should first get rid of folks in NA, Western Europe and the ME), the first thing we need to do is to figure out what the balance of standard of living and consumption is with existing technologies and practices. From there we could figure out what the population limit should or can be. If our standard of living depends on massive habitat destruction, well, then even a much smaller population would be destructive.

While both are correlated to some degree, consumption is a multiplier. Obviously, a population that only consumes a tenth in terms of resources (especially habitat use, if we are talking about extinctions) can sustain a higher population. Moreover, it should also be noted that a lot of destruction in developing countries, especially of habitats, is driven by consumption by richer countries (key products here include coffee, rubber, cocoa, palm oil). Key culprits here are Western Europe, North America and the Middle East which create the largest impact on biodiversity outside of their own country. The footprint then also varies by the cultivation technology and often, due to economic pressures, it is not worthwhile or even feasible for poorer countries to implement sustainable practices. There are discussions underway to think about a fair-share use of available land use. That is not to say that population increases exacerbate issues, but too frequently the population argument is weaponized against population-rich countries, while we are sipping coffee and discuss how the other folks are ruining everything for us. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2020.106981 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-022-01138-7

The issue is often that folks do not clearly define what overpopulation is. Some refer to the concept of carrying capacity, but folks disagree what the measures of it are or should be. And a big part of it is of course not the number of folks, but what folks consume. And rather obviously, folks in highly industrialized countries with high standard of living consume way more than those in developing countries. I.e. just looking at population numbers is only a part of the story. That being said, we keep repeating the same arguments, and without really adding more information/knowledge (because that obviously requires some time and reading).

Just to be clear, mitochondrial DNA is found within, well, mitochondria, as they have their own, separate DNA (look up endosymbiont hypothesis if interested in more details). Almost all our mitochondria are from the mother (present in eggs, though there are actually cases were some sperm mitochondria survive, so it is not 100% black and white). Also with the XY chromosome, most of the translation happens from the X chromosome, the Y chromosomes has roughly 1/10th of protein coding genes compared to the X chromsome, if memory serves. In isolation, the Y chromosome is a bit of an odd beast, with a lot of repetitive regions, but as they carry less essential information, their loss is not necessarily lethal (but you cannot lose the X).

I do wish that administration would include more folks who have a background in the services they provide (i.e. healthcare, education, research etc.). The few I met ran an incredibly tight ship, whereas the career managers don't seem to be certain what they supposed to do (except to get another VP on board to figure that one out).

This is often due to a mismatch of skills. What I have heard from health professionals is that health administrators typically have no medical skills, and increasingly try to force health workers to work like office workers (e.g. just use SOP, check lists instead of medical judgment to limit spending, etc.). I.e. folks who are managers and admins, tend to think that they can run all orgs the same (or at least similarly) regardless of what the mission is.

I don't want to pull it too much off topic, but we can open up a new thread to explore it further. But in short, the dark ages has fallen into disfavour among historians since around the 19th century. I could probably rattle off a couple of points off the top of my head (the historian I know is specialized in European medieval history). The origin of the term is often attributed to Petrarch in the 14th century who basically equated the decline of the Roman empire with overall cultural decline, but does not refer to technological decline as such (though again, something we could explore in a separate thread). One of the most basic criticism is the timeline. The time referred to as Dark Ages has changed but most commonly applies to the early medieval times (500-1000 AD). It covered a larger time period but especially the accomplishments in the 10th century have pushed it back by folks maybe around the 18th century or something like that. The issue is that some markers of decline (e.g. trade, surviving literary works, and son) happened either already hundreds years before (around 200 AD) and the second part is that it kind of ignores the continuation of the Roman culture in the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) empire. Besides formal issues, there is a whole host of other issues- I was looking for a source besides books and this one seems to be somewhat reasonable (but not very in-depth) Just How Dark Were the Dark Ages? | Discover Magazine But functionally, historians have largely abandoned the term as it is rather imprecise and has connotations that do not align with what is understood now for the time period.

I know it is off-topic, but a historian friend of mine is going to be cross with me if I do not mention that the Dark Ages are a serious misnomer, based on misunderstandings.

Also, polls just before the invasion: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2022/02/europe/russia-ukraine-crisis-poll-intl/index.html Given the committed atrocities against Ukrainian civilians it is of little surprise that the support for NATO has only grown.

I am not sure how it is in this case, but often long-haul truckers also have to pay for maintenance and fuel. Also they are often only paid for the time driving (similar to flight crews). I.e. delays the loading docks eats severely into their salary. And while there is connection between inflation and salary, the connection is complicated and there is a different discussion to be had on that matter. But blaming things on a particular group is usually not the answer to any question. Against a background of rising cost and lower salaries it becomes simply unsustainable. This is where a Marxist view can make sense. I.e. a situation where all you have is your labour and the relative value of labour decreases, alienation is inevitable. Don't get me wrong, I am quite familiar with brute forcing ones way out of poverty (which includes sacrificing health by forgoing sleep), but increasingly, this is not possible anymore.

Also, that is not even what is commonly used. AFAIK karyotyping is really only done when indicated (such as in cases of IVF). Ultrasound is usually the first point of assigning sex (i.e. genital development).

Only partially. As we discussed many times before, it was always the case that some folks fell through the cracks. Sex was typically assigned at birth based on external sex organs, which sometimes misaligns with the karyotype, for example. The societal change really is not the definition, it is the desire not to ignore these people anymore.

I think there are some different interpretations of Grimm's folktale where basically Rapunzel's mother wanted to eat the plant from the neighboring garden (which belonged to a sorceress). The plant in question could have been either Feldsalat (Valerianella locusta) or the mentioned Campanula rapunculus. Often folks that it may refer to the former, as it likely was more commonly available, but I think it has never been really clear as "Rapunzel" could have referred to a range of salad plants.

It goes back to the issue that many categories we have are post-hoc. We make kind of groups and then define them based on the differences we see in each category. The key element really is not whether a category is "real" but whether it is useful. It is the same as the all models are wrong situation.

The issue I see here is that many folks conflate the various issues. And suddenly somehow everything is being explained by evolution, like a magic theory for everything. "I am being an arse because evolution made me to do so, please come to my TED talk."

There is a lot of speculation in this thread, but fundamentally these types of research involving humans in any form are addressed by ethics review boards following guidelines set up by major research funding agencies in a given country. The overall guidelines are pretty much the same. First, you have to assess whether there is any potential for harm of the participants. This can include things like distress, ostracization, physical harm and so on. If so, the next thing to assess is whether the harm is beyond minimal (basically more than one expects to encounter in their daily life). For example, if you interview surgeons and want to show them surgery pictures, that should not be distressing as it is part of their jobs. Showing them to non-surgeons or medical professionals could be disturbing. Then, you have to show how you mitigate harm. For example, if you interview folks regarding drug abuse, the knowledge that they participated could be harmful to them. One could mitigate that by ensuring that participation is fully anonymous, or if not, at least confidential. Mild distress could be mitigated by having a counsellor on call and so on. Generally, you need to inform folks of potential harm (e.g. distress), but if necessary, there are guidelines for the use of partial disclosure or deception. Here, the researcher has to demonstrate why deception is necessary and that it does not cause undue harm. Generally you are also required to report back to the participants what the study was really about (i.e. debriefing). At this stage typically participants have to be able to withdraw their consent. However, direct risks associated with the study have to still to be disclosed beforehand.

Also, I have mentioned that many pages back, in paralympics folks have established a many scoring systems for impairments to ensure that in a given categories equivalent athletes compete. This includes team sports which have to have certain compositions in order to compete (e.g. based on available range of motions). In other words, there are already examples for finer and more detailed categories in sports and question is not really whether it is feasible, but more what measures could be used for each athletic activity.

yo.

I think this is one of the many cases where folks misinterpret what evolution is. Evolution is fundamentally the change of the gene pool in a population over time. What individuals do on a day-to-day basis really has little to do with evolution or evolutionary benefits. For example, the ability to vocalize can have evolutionary advantages, but the details of what is being said, is not genetically encoded. Well, there is also slang within areas where jargon is used. In labs, for example we often use informal short hand (or sometimes lab-specific invented words) to refer to stuff which never translates into formal jargon. Scientists, especially when talking informally amongst themselves rarely uses stilted high-brow language. That is mostly for papers and lectures (depending on your style). I think that is just a weird perception folks have.

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There are many (good) classic books also in other sciences, and it is interesting to see that quite a few are not in English (which is almost unthinkable today). Biology has changed a fair bit, but on some of the more complex topics, quite a few old microbiology books still absolutely brilliant (and in many ways surpass modern ones). While most are in English, some have sentence structures that are quite clearly written by a German, which amuses me to no end. Well, until I read my own writing that is. Another funny story is that I learned all of my basic chemistry and physics in Germany, so while I am fluent in biology-English, I sometimes have to convert basic chemistry and physics in my mind from German to English.

No doubt about that. It was really just a niggling thought at the back of my mind in terms of accuracy. But regarding impact and persecution it is of course not relevant. And luckily Germany lost all that talent! If they had been mindful about the way they expressed their ideology (as folks do nowadays), it could have ended way worse.

Not that it is important and (luckily) Germany lost a lot of Jewish scientists, but for some on the list, I am not sure whether they were really Jewish. Most did have some some connection to Judaism, and I may be misremembering stuff (as my infatuation with individual scientists faded a fair bit after high school) but: Niels Bohr had a Jewish mother, but the father was Lutheran, Erwin Schroedinger was in my memory had a somewhat pantheist view (not sure about household religion), Wolfgang Pauli had Jewish heritage but was raised catholic. Again, these are really just nitpicks without real relevance as they did face persecution because of their connections, regardless whether they were practicing Judaism or not.