TheVat

Please define in clear language what you mean by "the logic of DNA." Are you somehow trying to map the coding of protein synthesis by base pairs onto something other than making proteins? What is meant by "reflecting the logic" ? This is vague and unscientific - sounds a bit like dorm philosophizing. Who is "we"? Not everyone thinks symbols are reality, nor that maps are the territory. I think a fair number of people understand that categories are ways of mentally organizing perceptions or emotions or imaginings and not the things or patterns or feelings themselves. Words denote, connote, refer. We understand that abstraction is compression, in information science. I can say "the wild street dogs of Istanbul" without having to compose a lengthy string which points to every single wild dog within the city limits..."there's Abdul, there's Jeff, there's Old One-Eye, there's Monseigneur Tripod...." We know they're all being referred to. We grasp that the category reference is not actually the furry butt sniffers themselves - it's a verbal act (please see Saul Kripke's causal theory of reference) of denotation passed through a community.

If we have a thread here in the philosophy forum, wouldn't we use definitions proper to that domain? In philosophy, when it's done well, hammers and screwdrivers have their specific purpose. The sentence "I believe X to be true" is true as a statement of belief, i.e. when the speaker isn't lying, it's an honest report of one's state of mind. X itself, however, is true only when it is a proposition which aligns with reality.

Emily's friend, Deirdre R. Dried, runs a motel which only allows travelers with cats and has mystical beliefs about them. Dog woe, motel cat's bonus: a sun obstacle to meow God?

Grusch again? The same Grusch who had no direct knowledge of anything but "knew people"? And can't say everything in open session? My bs meter is also whipping like a flagella glued to a puppy's tail glued to a paint shaker. Har!

One doesn't rule out the other, as I understand it. Changes in gene expression (epigenetics, in this case centered on mRNA - enzymes in the octopus's cells swap out specific molecular letters in the RNA, essentially changing the instructions used to build proteins) don't mean there can't be separately changes in gene frequencies and structure as well. I should also note that epigenetics in this instance of mRNA and IncRNA modification can't pass from a parent to a child, since this example is just a short term response as @CharonY notes. RNA mods are a different layer of epigenetics from DNA methylation etc.

Chomsky's distinction between syntax and semantics (meaning ) may be helpful here. "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."

I asked because biologists tend to distinguish between language and calls. Calls (vocal or chemical or gestural) communicate, yes, but I can see how it is that many question if this rises to the level of language. Calls are innate, fixed signals triggered by immediate environmental stimuli (like food or danger or announcing presence to rivals). In contrast, language is a flexible, rule-based system of arbitrary symbols. They don't just signal basic responses. We can combine discrete sounds to express abstract ideas, discuss the past or future or things far removed, and create entirely novel meanings. IOW, some say that just being procedural, and not symbolic, doesn't qualify as language. And I question that pyramid builders who could use written codes were being merely procedural. It has the earmarks of a symbol system. Are you suggesting that "staff eyeball bird woman man with arms held up Ankh snake wiggling" is to be taken literally?

Wait, pheromones are a language?

Mined Stibnite - antimony? No MIT, nae! Tin bits, denim. Meanwhile, Emily, learns of a link between sadness in Shakespeare's hometown and Brazilian sixties pop... Diagnose Avon as sobs arise, sir, as Bossa Nova e-song aid.

Been time traveling musically and realizing it's important we never let bossa nova die. Here's a hit people my age heard everywhere (radio, records, muzak) in the late sixties. Move over, Ipanema girl.

Scientists, educators, farmers and the broader public now have a new website for climate information in the United States. The site, Climate.us, launched this week and fills a void left when a government-run climate information website was shut down last year by the Trump administration. The new site was created by former employees of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — the government's lead scientific agency for climate, weather and ocean monitoring — who worked on Climate.gov until they were laid off last year as part of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cutbacks. Climate.gov had long been a trusted source for official government climate data. Nearly 1 million visitors came to the site each month, according to 2021 numbers. Most of the data remains technically accessible on government servers, but it is difficult to find, according to Rebecca Lindsey, a former program director for Climate.gov who now heads the Climate.us project. In August 2025, she and two other former NOAA employees who helped run the government site began to re-create it.... NPREx-NOAA employees re-create a valuable climate data site...Former NOAA staffers have launched a new website that provides climate information. It replaces a government site that was shut down when the Trump administration took office.

Given that all POTUS projects are (in some sense) vanity projects, devoid of expert oversight and involve corrupt contracting, the LMRP project would have been a black swan event if it had actually worked as hyped. An interesting spinoff thread might be: name one thing the POTUS initiated which has shown any benefit to this country or the world, or at least been implemented as was promised. Aside from elimination of the penny, I'd be hard put to name something...(and even the penny elimination has stumbled - some merchants haven't gone along with the official request for rounding, and I still get pennies in my change, as they keep circulating).

A null model is a baseline statistical or pattern-generating model that assumes no meaningful relationships, external forces, or non-random processes are acting on a system. It serves as a benchmark or point of comparison to test whether observed data differs significantly from pure chance. It's not a theory that there's no natural selection or other evolutionary mechanisms. Indeed it's purpose is to make clear that there are non-random processes being revealed by the data. Four of the mechanisms I listed earlier are the most relevant, and considered key to understanding how a population might exhibit a change in allele frequency from one generation to the next. Those are evolution, right? The big four are mutation, genetic drift, natural selection, and gene flow. (We should also add non-random mating, so call it five) The reason they are all important to your question is that we have to discern which of these (or two working together, like mutation and NS e.g.) is the mechanism of changes in allele frequency. You can't just fixate on NS as if that's the whole story.

Haha! Knew there was a joke built into that example. You might be onto a new and groundbreaking (or ground-shaking, at least?) evolutionary theory. Call it the MigL-Eastwood Gas/Romance Equilibrium. Too little gas means insufficient complementary protein and lowered fertility, too much gas means diminished mating behavior. Expressed as a pair of nonlinear differential equations...

Another point I saw neglected was the way certain equilibria are beneficial not to a species but rather species that prey on them ("prey" used in the broad sense of feeding upon). In a world with many large predators, an environment change and adaptive response which caused (low tech) humans to proliferate could invoke a Lotka-Volterra modeling where it was the big predators (call them "manflesh-loving supertigers") which had a better environment for themselves but the humans not so much. Humans would suffer more and their numbers fall back to previous densities. And every cycle their adaption caused their numbers to rise, the larger predator population would come pouncing to bring them down. This has actually happened with iron fertilization experiments where the hypothesis was that increased phytoplankton would sequester more carbon: there was a short bloom in phytoplankton, which was quickly consumed by other organisms (such as small fish or zooplankton) and that limited the effect of Fe enrichment mainly to increased predator density, which in turn limited the carbon sequestration. This is as predicted by the equilibrium population densities of the Lotka–Volterra predator-prey model. (my super tiger scenario, of course, could also bring in the Dual Inheritance theory, where you have a human gene-culture coevolutionary response where our particular species would have a benefit from being able to culturally develop novel adaptations... moving away from a Lotka-Volterra equilibrium model to some unique set of cultural innovations which turns the table on the super tigers and erases the "free buffet!" benefit they were enjoying.)

From what training I've had in this area, I would say there is a minimum bar to reach on several concepts. If someone started looking at this 12 years ago (as the OP did, per @swansont ) then I would see them as needing to reach that bar. Start with Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium: it's a null model for evo bio. A baseline with which to compare RW data. Its principle is stating that a population's allele and genotype frequencies will remain constant from generation to generation in the absence of evolutionary influences. There are five assumptions of HW, and in the RW at least one is always violated - the OP can look these up. Then you move on to what evolutionary influences will violate the null model. A basic awareness of these ones -- genetic drift, mate choice, assortative mating, natural selection, sexual selection, mutation, gene flow, meiotic drive, genetic hitchhiking, population bottleneck, founder effect, inbreeding and outbreeding depression -- is very helpful. So... it's complicated. And each species violates HW in different ways. As several members are striving to point out. ( I find meiotic drive to be especially subversive of ordinary assumptions about how the mechanism of evolution is working ) And with humans, you have so many of those "violators" at work, and some rippling down through complex economic pathways you don't find in other species. One can imagine scenarios where, say, meat/dairy becomes so expensive to produce (feed crop degradation, mass spread of prions, arable land loss, cultural changes on acceptable livestock practices, etc) that large human populations must switch to beans. So this could change selective pressures on those with strong genetic predispositions to intolerance of legumes like soy, other beans, and peanuts. It wouldn't necessarily kill people (we're good at improvising and adapting), but it could cause sufficient "failures to thrive" to reduce fertility levels in the most susceptible subpopulations.

Sub-minarets, a master, a nimbus. ETs at EU granola salon argue taste. "Mood," a sign I soldered. Losing is a doom.

It would help if you could reply to the posts responding to your question about lactase persistence. And do the homework that's needed to really engage with this topic.

Clearly a missed opportunity when it wasn't named "nano babbler." In other news, I see they've finally caught the pool vandals ringleader....

Plus one for that. Driving a ten ton limo across a newly painted pool sounds like something from one of those satirical movies with a clownish dictator. Not sure the Marx brothers or Mel Brooks could have come up with anything better. I'm also reminded of the quote from the other Marx -- "....all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice....the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." Turnip it seems starts right off with farce.

Research is good. Wikipedia or other free web sources provide a wealth of information on the nature of the LP gene, and consulting them would quickly make clear that it wasn't about people dying from milk consumption. Roughly 5 billion people in the world still lack the LP gene, and before 8-12000 years ago, almost no one had it. People who tried milk before then didn't die of flatulence and diarrhea, they just felt sick and decided milk wasn't a viable protein source. As do billions still. (Unless having access to lactose free diary products, as is common now in developed countries) Look up the topic and learn how selective advantage might have arisen for those having the LP phenotype - I gave you a strong hint a couple sentences back there. Also note that at least six mutations (single-nucleotide polymorphisms – SNPs) have been associated with lactase expression. Can you see how these mutations might shift from being neutral to beneficial in certain environments? Look back through the thread and I think you can put this together. And also, a courtesy of replying to posts is appreciated. Several here are going to some trouble to help the learning process.

You need to cite some evidence for these sorts of claims. And it's "do well in school" not "do good in school." Adverb not adjective.

Thanks, I had wondered how that could work with still retaining some forward thrust. And I still am not clear about research on embrittlement of sail materials from ionizing radiation. Both polymers and metals are subject to embrittlement. This could be fatal for a structure like a sail. I don't have access to the full paper here but it may have some cited results that address materials such as sails could be composed of. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/chapter/edited-volume/abs/pii/B9780323524728000290

From the Rocheworld article in wiki: To catch the energy, Forward uses a 1,000-km-diameter circular aluminum sail. The sail resembles a flattened disk with a 300-km-diameter removable center portion. When traveling to Rocheworld, the entire sail is used. When the ship needs to decelerate, the smaller sail is separated from the larger outer sail. The large sail is used as a reflecting lens, focusing light onto the smaller sail, slowing the craft. (end quote) Aside from the absorptive heating issues, I am unclear how this double-reflection gimmick would be sufficient delta-v. I recall Forward as the sort of SF writer to really thrash out all the RW science issues, so maybe reading the novel would tell me more. Maybe there's other shipboard mass that gets dumped.

@CharonY filled out some points I and a couple others tried to make earlier about how selective pressures shift with civilization and dispersal into varied biomes. The shift to livestock agriculture and urban life had a selective effect on the immune systems, one might say "smartening" them to wider ranges of pathogens and viral loads (though now the germophobe practices are sort of a step backwards from that, with overly sterile living spaces in some nations) Some selective pressures, however, are minimal due to not asserting until past childbearing years. We might have Type II diabetes for a long time, or at least the associated alleles, because the effects don't present until mostly after 35, and don't much prevent fertility except in extreme cases.