Otto Kretschmer

What is it? I am personally (and have been since my teen years) an atheist though not a militant atheist. I respect people with different worldviews even if they sre irrational (religious folks Economically - left wing. Socially centre. I can't describe myself in more terms.

What are your thoughts on Anton Petrov, a YouTube science popularizer?

Is it a valid theory? It was invented by Simon Baron Cohen and states that there are two main modes of cognition in humans - empathizing and systemizing. They're distributed normally in the population but since males are on average higher on systemizing, their right tail of the curve reaches further and hence there are more autistic males than females. What do researchers think of it?

Which ones do you like and why? Personally I like Carl Sagan the most obviously. From modern ones I like Brian Cox (he's apparently more popular in the UK now than Carl Sagan ever was even in the US) and Neil deGrasse Tyson. I have mixed feelings about Michio Kaku - he started out genuine but jumped on the "will say anything for the money and fame" bandwagon a long time ago.

Perhaps. Let's see if there's any more discussion.

(A spin-off from the thread about Neil deGrasse Tyson.) Is it? This has been the predominant hypothesis about the pathophysiology of depression for several decades and has been heavily promoted by the pharmaceutical industry - but there's now a rival theory, namely the glutamate theory of depression that says neuroinflammation and glutamate dysregulation are to blame for depression. Is there any scientific consensus regarding this matter?

Bump.

Bump Regarding Neil deGrasse Tyson - why does a part of the internet have such a beef with him? It looks to me that a certain small percentage of people on the web dislike him. Can any legitimate criticism be levied against him or do they just hate him for the sake of hating? Personally the only criticism I can levy against is the inaccurate portrayal of Giordano Bruno's trial in Cosmos.

@CharonY Anything to say here?

Let's say we have a small, genetically limited population due to bottleneck/founder effect - is there a way for such a population to increase it's genetic diversity other than by introducing new DNA from the outside? I am talking about small, genetically limited populations like the Amish.

By the way I've never said that NdGT is not a scientist. I had doubts as to whether he can be called a scientist but @swansont arguments convinced me that he is indeed a scientist.

Here you have some criticism of the serotonin hypothesis of depression , from two profs of psychiatry: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2022/jul/analysis-depression-probably-not-caused-chemical-imbalance-brain-new-study Neil deGrasse Tyson clearly said "we know which chemicals make you depressed and which don't and why" - which I guess isn't the case at all.

@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.