Otto Kretschmer

@swansont I've just noticed that recently (2 months ago) NdGT did make a proper video about the neuroscience of depression:

@swansont I found the specific video He's mostly right except when he's saying "we're almost there". We are not IMO. We know little about what causes depression and the "chemical imbalance theory" was proven to be wrong since for example serotonin levels raise significantly within hours of taking antidepressants while it takes 6-8 weeks for them to fully work and they don't work for everyone. So it's not serotonin that is curing depression and it's not low serotonin which causes it.

Can NdGT be called a scientist in your opinion, given that he's hardly published anything in 30 years? He obviously trained as a scientist but an average practicing astrophysicist publishes more papers each year than he did in his entire career. What's your opinion on the matter? Also, should he be talking about stuff that is outside his area of expertise? I remember him in a YT video about depression saying something like "we already know which chemicals make you happy and which dont", which is wrong since we know very little about what causes depression. Do you know any other situations when he was wrong?

Guys, how do you think does Neil deGrasse Tyson compare to Carl Sagan?

NdGT is simply somewhat socially awkward, he doesn't realize that he's being insensitive. Hence his mass shooting comment.

What do you guys think of this comment of his?

What do you think of this guy? How does he compare to Carl Sagan in your opinion? Personally I like him. He did an awesome job in Cosmos: A Spacetime Oddysey. I am yet to watch Cosmos: Possible Worlds as it didn't air in my country. Although he's sometimes wrong when he talks about stuff that isn't space related. His remarks after a school shooting on the US were quite insensitive too. Any thoughts?

Are there? I wonder of any studies have been done on this.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41537-024-00460-6 Any thoughts on this? Abstract Schizophrenia (SCZ), as a neurodevelopmental disorder and devastating disease, affects approximately 1% of the world population. Although numerous studies have attempted to elucidate the causes of SCZ occurrence, it is not clearly understood. Recently, the emerging roles of the gut microbiota in a range of brain disorders, including SCZ, have attracted much attention. While the molecular mechanism of gut microbiota in regulating the pathogenesis of SCZ is still lacking. Here, we first confirmed the difference of gut microbiome between SCZ patients and healthy controls, and then, we performed fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) to clarify the roles of SCZ patients-derived microbiota in a specific pathogen free (SPF) mice model. 16 S rDNA sequencing confirmed that a significant difference of gut microbiome was present between two groups of FMT mice, which has a similar trend with the above human gut microbiome. Furthermore, we found that transplantation of fecal microbiota from SCZ patients into SPF mice was sufficient to induce schizophrenia-like (SCZ-like) symptoms, such as deficits in sociability and hyperactivity. Furthermore, the brains of mice colonized with SCZ microbiota displayed dysregulated transcript response and alternative splicing of SCZ-relevant genes. Moreover, 10 key genes were identified to be correlated with SCZ by an integrative transcriptome data analysis. Finally, 4 key genes were identified to be correlated with the 12 differential genera between two groups of FMT mice. Our results thus demonstrated that the gut microbiome might modify the transcriptomic profile in the brain, thereby modulating social behavior, and our present study can help better understand the link between gut microbiota and SCZ pathogenesis through the gut-brain axis

I am not that well versed in the evolution of cats.

Did large cats get larger over the course of evolution or did the small cats get smaller?

By the way, death penalty for adultery is not a part of Christianity because the Law of Moses is considered to be no longer in force by Christians - it was abrogated with the coming of Jesus. It does technically exist in Judaism but it's not used because Talmud sets an absurdally high requirements for implementing death penalty.

But it's the core of Islam. You really can't have Islam without Sharia.

Forum members, what's your opinion on Sharia law in general?

@MigL Aren't Patricia Crone's ideas rejected by majority of historians?

Muhammad did not travel much. IIRC he made a single trip to Damascus on behalf of his wife, selling her merchandise and buying what she requested. That's it.

I am not sure about this. Muhammad's life is no better documented than the life of Jesus - all information about him comes from sources written over a century after his death (the first biography of Muhammad comes from ca. 750 AD while he died in 632 AD). Confucius and Buddha aren't better documented either.

I wonder... Unlike say, autism which does have it's positive sides, psychopathy has none I can think of. It's existence seems to be a net loss to society. If that's the case, why haven't genes responsible for it been bred out of the gene pool yet? Should we use gene editong to eliminate potential psychopaths given the harm they cause, once the necessary technology becomes available?

Most discussion on this forum seems to be about Christianity. But what do you guys think of Islam? My thoughts about it are mixed. I appreciate parts of it like a strong emphasis on charity and support of free market but I dislike other parts of it like death penalty for adultsry, apostasy and blasphemy or a generally lower status of women. What are your thoughts?

BTW there are two kinds of empathy, emotional empathy and cognitive empathy. Psychopaths lack emotional empathy but not cognitive empathy which means they're perfectly aware of other people's feelings, they just don't "feel" their pain. Autistics are the other way around - they do feel the pain of others, they just don't have the capacity to read their feelings/thoughts. It's a bit tricky to understand but those two disorders are essentially polar opposites of each other.

What's the genetic mechanism behind this? It happens quite often. One mechanism is de novo mutations. Anything else?

Why do you think so many US universities make it to top ranks?

I often hear a claim that US universities are the best in the world, often backed up by lists like the Shanghai Ranking. So, are they? This claim gets my inner skeptic on for a simple reason - they are not free unlike universities in my.country (Poland)

Deprivation of what? Nutrition or information? Is this the case in developed countries?

Any evidence that his parents' methods were non standard? To my knowledge little is known about his early life other that he showed extraordinary mathematical ability from an early age. I'm not saying nurture did not contribute to his success. But my reasoning tells me that in his case nature was the dominant factor.