TheVat

Ok, cool. Possible I may have misunderstood the intent there. It is odd that it's a necropost in that it replies to a post that's 14 years old today. Also going to say I was unaware that cows came with guns. And that IS a joke. (Using my standard formula of taking ambiguous sentence structure the most obtuse way possible)

Social cognitive theory has had some success. Also Piagetian development theory. Behavioral economics seems to do better with large groups - not so well in predictions of individual behavior.

I feel my defense of Mr Mack's right to post a transgressive joke was misunderstood. I am NOT supporting a political view, but rather that we not downvote on such subjective matters as to whether we find something funny or whether we disagree. Down voting on dubious logic or evidence in a science forum, yes that makes more sense. But here? Could the person downvoting please just say what's got you riled up here and I will be glad to listen to you.

In the realm of ethics, it would seem that caring is of lesser importance than what actions we take or facilitate others in taking. I can virtuously broadcast how much I care about ecological and climatic changes over the next couple generations, but if I keep serving beef or pork at every meal and driving an Escalade everywhere I go and sitting with my wife in a 2500 square foot propane-heated house with a heavily irrigated quarter acre of bluegrass lawn, then my caring has minimal ethical component. The duty of care is to implement those worthy concerns I have in remedial actions. This action would also mean that passing on wealth to the next generation is more likely to succeed, since ecological and climatic catastrophes seem likely to destroy wealth. Ergo, joining in on a beneficial approach at the societal level can also yield benefit at the familial level. For some, the latter motivates the former.

I don't think homophobia enters the behavioral picture if a mere distaste remains a privately held one. Distaste is a matter of aesthetics, and active dislikes and ensuing hostile action may not follow from that. There are forms of sexual play that are not my cup of tea, but I'm content to just not do them without malice or prejudice towards those who do. So I don't think you or I would qualify as phobes of any stripe. I think this chat is more focused on behaviors that evidence something more than distaste of the "ewwww" variety. Like aggression and prejudicial treatment. As for Italian food, our family moved to a predominantly Italian community when I was eleven, and my bland prairie palate was introduced to the cuisine in a big way. Been crazy about Italian food ever since. And though I may find the American fast food eaters disgusting, I would still rent an apartment to them. Poor pitiful creatures!

An ISRAELI CORPORATION You have two cows. They come with guns. Move you to a dusty cowshed and take your cows. Then they bulldoze your cowshed and when you protest, they shoot you for being a terrorist. Then American taxpayers pay to replace the bullets. Then end times. https://www.scienceforums.net/topic/35130-political-humor/page/17/#comment-1228505 (post content from other thread added by moderator for context) The joke takes a swipe at Israeli hardline policy, seems like. Maybe not the greatest joke, but I would not want to start downvoting jokes. Am counteracting the DV, not because I agree with all the premise of the joke but because I like this thread being one thread where people feel accepted to make weird or even smelly transgressive attempts at political humor. (one can also Google "Palestinian olive trees destroyed" for further research on what triggers such jokes - quite the eye opener!)

I don't see just one cause, but globalization is one factor when you have large corporations based in wealthy nations who buy up land in developing countries and then "strip mine" agriculturally speaking, for a quick burst of capital. Faraway owners, hiring locals, are not always on top of stewardship as it works in that local bioregion. (We actually have the Saudis doing that in Arizona now, where a good friend of mine lives, abusing fragile desert land and draining the aquifer there to grow cattle feed they ship back to their herds in SA. I think some major paper did a big expose on this recently and now there are finally rumblings in DC and Phoenix, as it sinks in that scarce water is being siphoned off by foreigners who can't raise feed for their own beef herds.) A similar problem exists with rainforests in Indonesia. Big U.S. corporation muscles in and levels rainforest for palm oil plantations. I am short of time, but there's a crap-ton of examples of globalization run amuck these days.

I appreciate you taking time to point this out. I have wondered about the concept, but am fairly rusty on trends in evolutionary biology, so I'm going to look at some recent critiques of the GS idea. And yes, I can see how selection at the individual level can direct social animals towards behaviors that promote group cohesion and cooperation. (IIRC, there were studies of the amygdala in domesticated animals, which mediates fear responses. Domestication seems to be partly a selective process for shrinkage of the amygdala so that humans can be approached and interacted with more easily)

Group selection is also part of NS. From Brit Tanica... group selection, in biology, a type of natural selection that acts collectively on all members of a given group. Group selection may also be defined as selection in which traits evolve according to the fitness (survival and reproductive success) of groups or, mathematically, as selection in which overall group fitness is higher or lower than the mean of the individual members’ fitness values. Typically the group under selection is a small cohesive social unit, and members’ interactions are of an altruistic nature. Examples of behaviours that appear to influence group selection include cooperative hunting, such as among lions and other social carnivores; cooperative raising of young, such as in elephants; and systems of predatory warning, such as those used by prairie dogs and ground squirrels. Homophobia, given its potential effect on the cohesion of, say, hunting parties, could have some negative group selection effect. When social humans divide up by gender so that male groups go off to hunt or trade or make war with other tribes, some tolerance of homosexual play (recreation, relaxation, bonding) might improve stability and effectiveness of that group. Given the constant fertility of human males, it seems unlikely that nonreproductive acts, be it blowing, wanking or buggering, would put much dent in overall pregnancy rates. We're like bonobos - lots of nonreproductive sex done for bonding.

There is no gene for tongue rolling. In 1940, the prominent geneticist Alfred Sturtevant published a paper saying the ability to roll one’s tongue is based on a dominant gene. In 1952, Philip Matlock disproved Sturtevant’s findings, demonstrating that seven out of 33 identical twins didn’t share their sibling’s gift. If rolling the tongue was genetic, then identical twins would share the trait. Sturtevant later acknowledged his mistake.

Less absurd to an American. We have quite the smorgasbord of legislation and Supreme Court decisions that run counter to what a majority of constituents want. This seems true in one sense but not in another. It's true that a proportionally smaller working age population shrinks the tax base, but it also raises the value of labor especially for those on the lower rungs of the scale, who would be in high demand for assisting the elderly. Unemployment would be (unless massive robotic replacement becomes reality) near zero. And an older population has fewer young couples with children, who are the most costly segment of population in terms of government services. Those schools and soccer fields cost a ton of shekels. Also running counter is the trend in medicine to push back the age of infirmity. Also the "top-heavy" effect of the first couple generations of Big Shrink will be reduced somewhat as following generations won't be from baby booms.

All depends on the level of concern a person has for their larger community. A long time frame requires an imaginative leap and thinking about many trends that are fairly abstract. Reincarnation believers, thinking they might appear in a womb in a distant future, might be more concerned in that regard. Or someone very invested in a longterm legacy, like an environmental activist or a social reformer, who spends time thinking about future generations and what lives they will have. Others, as they get old, are very family oriented and care about the world of their grandchildren, so maybe will think ahead a century at most. For many, the century is a reasonable time frame in which to look at policies that make a livable world and good quality of life. (there is also the short-term problem: where we should be thinking about right now because something terrible is happening, and we ignore it because we feel we're in one of the "safe" places or because we believe nothing can be done so why bother) I would be thrilled to see more politicians who see more than 5-10 years ahead.

I would find it difficult to discern what is "natural, unprimed" in my own experience especially at that age. Children are often not aware of all that influences them. The fact that you were (a) in a Catholic family, and (b) had an older brother who was likely trying to present matters in a way to gross you out (had he described heterosexual sex to you, he might have gotten a similar response?), suggests that your reaction was not as "natural" as you saw it.

Yes that thought has crossed my mind, too. Once you reach a generation that forgets the crowded and dirty old days, then they may restart a cycle of overpopulation. Or maybe the smaller family by then will be part of society's basic ethos. But who knows how long any ethos lasts?

Excellent news! Eight billion is not sustainable if everyone seems to want a western lifestyle. And there are clear quality of life benefits (open green spaces and wilderness preserves and uncut tropical forests producing oxygen and so on) in having population drop back to 2-3 billion. (A plus one to @mistermack for noting the need for reduced population, with a slow decline.) Economic systems that depend on endless growth must be reformed. Endless growth is the doctrine of a cancer cell. I would think so. It will also help free up resources to aid countries that are still struggling to reach their demographic shift.

I think it reflects some personal insecurity about their own sexuality. And conformity (as @swansont referred to) is often felt more strongly by those harbor doubts about themselves. Forming a harsh response to someone else's sexuality gives them a way to minimize their own anxiety and perhaps direct self-loathing outward to others. I've noticed Putin, who is quite homophobic, does other things that show adequacy issues. Maybe it was hard for him growing up and being a short and delicately-chinned man. I doubt anyone is 100% anything. Though seeming straight myself, I remember seeing Robert Redford in "The Sting" and thinking okay I get what the fuss is about, the dude is hot. I wasn't going to switch from AC to DC or anything, but I could see the potential for a man-crush. Ditto Paul Newman.

You probably shouldn't extrapolate from the single data point of yourself.

Not really, no. Natural selection turned out to be eminently testable. Nope. Last sentence doesn't logically follow. First, it assumes other hypotheses (which were provable) are equivalent in their overbroad structure and unsupported assumptions, which is not at all the case. Second, it's a logic error of the form: My tile roof leaks. Therefore, other tile roofs must leak, too. However, it can be reasonably argued that the savannah hypothesis is ALSO a weak umbrella, on its own particular lack of merits, The fact that the SH remains problematic in no way automatically lends support to the AAH, because there is a universe of other hypothetical choices - it's not a binary thing, where one being wrong means the other must then be correct. You really need to stop shouting and swearing and take time to think through these issues, calmly.

Taphonomic bias is the real problem with attempted analysis of hominin diets. Most hominin fossils occur in lake-side environments, and the presence of fish remains is therefore not proof of fish consumption. Really, the deeper problem with AAH is that it's an umbrella hypothesis that can't really be proved or disproved. You could form real hypotheses from pieces of the AAH, and really weigh them on evidence. Fish remains, for example, if one can get past taphonomic bias, could tell us something like they did catch fish and eat them. But that does not warrant a leap to an aquatic ape that's spending huge amounts of time immersed. Or a shore ape that must have ocean-derived iodine and omega-3. In its present form, AAH is a house of cards.

As was already pointed out, the agricultural revolution (which is an eyeblink in our evolutionary history) decreased the range and variety of dietary choices for many humans. The reason inland Indonesians are prone to goiter is due to the limited diet (and often iodine-depleted tropical soils, due to problematic farming practices) of modern developing countries. The contrast between coastal dwellers and inlanders is precisely because of what I'm trying to explain. With a modern limited diet, the addition of seafood (or provision of iodized salt) then becomes an important boost in iodine intake. It does not follow from this that the ancient land-based HG diet was also deficient in iodine, nor have you provided the slightest evidence that it was. This underscores the difficulty in deriving a theory of ancient hunter-gatherers from modern post-agrarian societies. HGs ate everything and lived in ecosystems which did not have depleted soils. I notice you wisely backed away from my further comments on omega 3 PUFAs and their prevalence in a variety of land-based sources. As a side note: as any nutrition scientist can tell you, it's not the quantity of O3 that matters but rather its ratio to O6 PUFAs. (humans actually need relatively little PUFA in the diet, with a greater benefit from MUFA) Because the western diet is so very high in O6 now, due to the heavy use of cooking oils like sunflower and canola in processed foods, the recommendations to bring the ratio closer to parity with O3 lead to largish figures for O3. Those figures would not be valid for an ancient HG.

Beef, lamb, eggs, venison, poultry, etc. all contain the more bioavailable forms of O3 PUFAs. And many plant sources of convertible ALA are out there for inland hunter-gatherers when the game is scarce. Iodine, similarly, is in terrestrial animal tissues and also in such plant foods as green beans, zucchinis, kale, spring greens, watercress, strawberries and potatoes. Your claim that seafood and kelp is necessary would suggest that extant inland H-G peoples are all suffering severe deficiency (or were never viable). Which is nonsensical. Iodine deficiency became more common after the advent of agriculture, when some settlements came to eat a diet less varied than the H-G diet. You have no evidence of rampant goiters and less-developed brains among Bedouins, aborigines, Navajos and Bushmen, do you?

argumentum ad veracundum - logical fallacy You have bupkes. Zilch. Nichts. Nada. BTW just ate some walnuts, yum. My body is busy converting the ALA into DHA, an ability which a land based ape needs, and a pescaterian aquatic ape doesn't. Oh, and I had a free range omelette which despite it's completely terrestrial origins seems to have DHA. Who knew?

Pretty much all the AAT claims made here, like the shoreside DHA theory, do not hold up to the null hypothesis test. And so may be dismissed. Meaningless ad hominem. You've got bupkes.

Seems like a garbled reporting of this paper, or one similar: https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.08430 where they propose shooting two entangled photons at each side of a retina, if it's sensitive enough (like a frog's or cat's?). The SciAm citation in the OP linked article has this explanation... The GRW model and its many variants posit wave functions collapse spontaneously; the more massive the object in superposition, the faster its collapse. One consequence of this would be that individual particles could remain in superposition for interminably long times whereas macroscopic objects could not. So, the infamous Schrödinger’s cat, in GRW, can never be in a superposition of being dead and alive. Rather it is always either dead or alive, and we only discover its state when we look. Such theories are said to be “observer-independent” models of reality. If a collapse theory such as GRW is the correct description of nature, it would upend almost a century of thought that has tried to argue observation and measurement are central to the making of reality. Crucially, when the superposed photon lands on an eye, GRW would predict ever-so-slightly different photon counts for the left and the right sides of the eye than does standard quantum mechanics. This is because differently sized systems in the various stages of the photon’s processing—such as two light-sensitive proteins in two rod cells versus two assemblies of rod cells and associated nerves in the retina—would exhibit different spontaneous collapse rates after interacting with a photon. Although both Kwiat and Holmes stress it is highly unlikely they will see a difference in their experiments, they acknowledge that any observed deviation would hint at GRW-like theories.

The pressure of a hot air balloon overall is equalized with the outside. The balloon rises due to buoyancy force only on the top hemispheric portion of the enclosure. I.e. the pressure differential is all in that portion as heated air convects up there, IIRC. With a standard teardrop balloon, the top hemispheric area is a cap that the hot gas pushes upwards against due to buoyancy, i.e. that inverted bowl of gas weighs less than the exterior gas being displaced. The tapering fabric of the balloon below that hemisphere of taut material is cut to match how the ropes will hang down during flight. The fabric in that tapering part of the balloon is not under any force (the ropes are taking the force and transferring to the gondola) and is not billowed out or inflated. At least this is what a balloonist in Albuquerque told me. My observation of that type of balloon seems to fit with this account. IOW, it ain't a party balloon.