CharonY

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In that case, I think the timing is a bit off to be linked. For example, the number of a full-time mothers at home was the lowest around 2000 and then increased or kind of levelled off and even increased a bit in the US around 2012 (probably fluctuated since then, I don't have the latest numbers https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2014/04/08/after-decades-of-decline-a-rise-in-stay-at-home-mothers/). Some other data also suggest just some fluctuations around 2000, though there were also more stay-at-home fathers, to compensate. However, what we see in terms of education was most dramatic starting around 2010ish and only accelerated (so basically after decline had levelled off or even reversed). Some folks have suggested that the timing fits the increase in social media, but of course these are mostly correlations.

No, but I am unsure how it relates to the the observed drop in learning abilities. Could you elaborate?

I don't think there is so much a social change, but rather driven by practical change. The ubiquitous presence of cellphones/internet makes it easier just to type in the question verbatim and regurgitate the answer rather than thinking about the problem. But perhaps even worse, it is also a source of constant distraction and entertainment which reduces the mental capacity of kids to even want to tackle a challenge. The one social change that I might be seeing is that kids are less able to deal with challenges in general and do not like to uncomfortable. For example, they dislike being put in a position where they do not know the outcome and/or might fail a task (e.g. performing complicated experiments with uncertain outcomes). As a result, students are less able to fulfill even simpler tasks (even things like putting in homework in time), and because of that they are far more easily overwhelmed. Unfortunately, it seems that parents are heavily pushing teachers (and school boards) to address stressed out kids by making things easier, rather than focusing on building resilience. I am not entirely sure how feminism plays into that, though. Not only varied input sources, but learning how to process information in general, I think. I.e. processing vs regurgitating.

That is very much on topic. So much that it is in the OP

Sorry but these are just buzzwords lined after each other with no attempts to even describe how they relate to evolutionary theories. If that was the first time you did that, I would simply ask for clarification, but we are many pages into the discussion and I find it rather exhausting at this point. The most charitable interpretation is that you still do not understand the fundamentals of evolution and are unfortunately not able to able to integrate what posters are trying to tell you. But honestly, it really looks like a typical gish gallop at this point as instead of trying to figure out the misconceptions when pointed out, you keep bringing up other snippets (and in this case, nonsense) without even trying to link them together. In recent posts you bring up HGT and take incidence of HGT as a hit on evolutionary theories without ever explaining why. As you do keep weaving and bringing up additional topics without even trying to integrate that into your understanding. I always found that asking questions but not thinking about the answers to be an utter waste of time of everyone involved.

I think that is one aspect of the issue we are seeing. Low level answers are at everyone's fingertip. For a long time folks (including myself) thought that that would result in cutting down on wasted time and enable folks to perform on a higher level without the need to do all the legwork. However, increasingly it seems to me that doing the legwork teaches some less tangible skills that are actually required to develop the higher ones. Being able to read through longer text (vs someone giving you a summary) is an example. While getting summaries can help you regurgitate the gist of a text, it does not work if your goal is to apply your knowledge and use it to synthesize information from multiple sources (AI might be doing that but there are some issues, which are probably better discussed in their own threads). I think that developing reasoning (and lab) skills relies more on practice and repetition of low-level tasks than I thought and effectively eliminating those, might hobble the ability to develop high-level skills. There might be paths to reconcile this, but my worry is that most articles on higher education do not really focus on these aspects, but rather on elements such as engagement, which does seem mostly like a call to compete for attention with the devices. I.e. not a way forward but trying to slow down issues, if that makes sense.

This statement makes no sense. Except researchers clearly recognize it, they just understand that there is more to it. Newtonian physics have a lot of things added, but many principles are still there. You also seem to suggest that if we find more mechanisms with better tools than we had before, it automatically alters the framework. IOW, it seems to me that you think that a theory is a rigid framework that has to be followed to the letter without modifications. That is not how science or research works. You have been presented with additions that alters how we think about the mechanisms of evolution but we still recognize natural selection as a major shaping force. But as we do so we are still operating on the basic assumptions of evolution and it seems you have a hard time seeing it. However: So this sentence shows a clear misunderstanding what evolution is (not only how it works). This sentence conflates the levels of organism (on which molecular mechanisms work) with population-wide changes in the gene pool (on which evolution works). If one is not able to clearly separate those two, it makes it clear that one need to read up far more to get to the point to be able to form valid criticisms on the underlying science, or saying why things are unexpected. I asked to to provide research examples that demonstrate how unexpected results arise from our current understanding of evolution and you keep giving examples how you are surprised about it. HGT doesn't change the game, it changes the timelines and the breadth of gene flow (which we understand). Bacterial evolution (and for others with clonal reproduction) always follow different patterns than other organism, as their reproduction follows different rules. Nothing to be surprised about once folks figured out the genetics of it. Just to make it clear, when we talk about evolution shaping things, we are not talking about creating new molecular mechanisms or traits, which seems to be your primary confusion. Rather, we talk about how the frequency of these traits change over time due the range of shaping forces, including natural selection (the major force that pushes frequencies into a specific direction). I am not sure what you mean with genetic program (again, the use of language strongly suggests that you should read a few textbooks before reading papers). But if you are talking about the genetic basis of traits, then it is prerequisite that they are already in the population before they are needed. Otherwise selection has nothing to work on. Again, I think at this point it is safe to say that the fundamentals are missing and have not really changed since the start of these threads and before those are clarified any attempts on deeper discussions will just be deflected by an armor of ignorance.

This is a flawed on multiple levels, but specifically we recognize shaping forces of evolution, including natural selection, sexual selection but also drift and gene flow. I think you are confusing what layperson think in terms of direction of evolution. Examples include things like evolution towards higher intelligence. These are wrong as evolution as a whole has not predisposition towards any given feature. However, as Darwin recognized first, there are shaping forces, and within a given ecological/environmental context, there is a tendency toward higher fitness (which is not necessarily the same as survival). Likewise, evolutionary history creates boundaries to the evolutionary landscape. I.e. if your species has a given body plan, subsequent developments tend to be based on them rather than allowing radical changes, once a certain complexity threshold is reached. These are all well known things and only surprising if one is not aware of them. HGT has origins in the bacterial realm and was mostly ignored by folks who worked on complex organisms. In fact, microbial evolution is very tricky as certain tools used for animals and plants did not work. There are no fossil records and you need to use molecular methods that were fairly new. The mechanism was known for longer of that, and the overall role of mobile genetic elements was only poorly understood, mostly because techniques likes sequencing were unaffordable. Now we do have a broader appreciation of it though it is still difficult to figure out how they as yet another of the many mechanisms of evolution. None of these change anything regarding the basic premises. Also, we will keep finding new molecular mechanisms we might eventually find that some have a more important impact in some species, no impact in others and so on. These are just regular discoveries within the confines of evolutionary theories, not contradicting them, just because folks did not know that they exist. This argument seems to suggest a very limited view on evolution as we understand it. The new building blocks we find tend to help us understand evolution better and so far there has been no need for major revisions. Rather, we tend to add things, which is why we keep talking about synthesis, rather than revision.

I think you both are not fundamentally wrong, but I think the current trend is something else. The US and also unfortunately Canada university administrators have an incentive to get more students in (for the sweet tuition money, so they can hire their next VP of student experience). This is has been an ongoing process, and has been accelerated each time the government contributes less. This includes getting more students in that are not suited, but it was not such a huge issue. The bad students ultimately fail, and there is little detriment to the performing students. Administration has tried to lower standards and it is unfortunately up to faculty to figure out how much they can fight that. But even in the worst case, good students always performed at high levels. Now, even the good students are not great at performing. As outlined in the article in OP, even in elite universities, which still have strict selection, more and more students fail to come in with basic skills. I.e. it is not just a lowering of standards, but that even those who otherwise would have performed well in the past, cannot perform well with the middle/ high school training they receive.

Please explain what you mean with no direction of evolution and how it applies here.

I think you are not wrong that there has been a longer trend, but based on my experience the change from the 90s (I haven't yet taught then) to maybe around 2005-ish or maybe up to 2010 was rather slow. You would see a difference in skill between the oldest and the youngest cohort, but it was easy to catch them up during a practical course (or just in-lab training). I up to perhaps 2010 I could give students a set of protocols, talk them through it, answer questions and most would be able to figure out what to do and why. There were always a few that were not able to follow, because they did not get the why. Somewhere around 2010 the proportion of students lacking the basics to understand what they were doing increased noticeably but one weird thing I noticed is that they stopped asking questions. I first believed that folks were more shy and I tried to engage them more proactively to figure out what they didn't understand. This worked to some degree, but increasingly, I realized that many didn't ask because they had no idea what to ask. I.e. quite a few lacked the basic ability of doing inquiries to figure out what is going on. Overt time it morphed into a strange passive system, where many students expect that the lecturer is going to figure out things for them. So, what I think I see is that there is an acceleration in change and I think past changes were slow enough that remedies could be made (e.g. practical courses), but I think the pace has changed in a unprecedented way. What took a generational change now happens in less than a decade. I suspect the widespread use of AI is only going to accelerate things and I fear that our educational system is not able to deal with it.

This is just a paper dump and gets dangerously close to an attempt at a Gish gallop. As I said, the issues seems that you might not understand the background of the papers sufficiently and I am not going to start guessing where it might be based on a random assortment of papers. To avoid that, you should pick out one paper and explain why you think that the results contradict existing assumptions (rather than pointing out novelty, as per usual in research). I will also encourage you to only look at papers rather than pop-sci articles, which often grossly misunderstand the publications. As the topic has gravitated towards evolution, I would suggest that you frame your question in that regard and state, exactly what you think the expectations of researchers are and how the results defied expectations (again, don't confuse it with regular novelty).

That is what the current system (including middle and highschool) is failing to achieve. I.e. the students struggle with finding a path that allows them to tackle questions. I think in part is because they are used to find quick answers on the internet, they never built the skill to synthesize information and apply it to a question at hand. The issue, I think is that without having at least a foundation of sorts, they won't be able to develop the skills needed to get to that point.

This is a good point, however, I think there at some issues with it. First, if there are easy ways to learn things, we should be able to see some improvement (or at least no change) in areas of higher level of understanding. This, unfortunately is not the case. If we use e.g. Blooms taxonomy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_taxonomy), college students currently fail at the the level of understand and only few reach it the apply stage (i.e. at a much lower rate than it used to be). I.e. they are increasingly overwhelmed by simple as well as complex tasks. This is especially noticeable at the graduate level where students were able to work semi-independently, but which is a challenge for many research groups nowadays. Don't get me wrong, I assumed that exactly what you mentioned should be happening. Especially easy access to information (including the rise of wikipedia) should have created changes in how students learn and limit the "wasted" time in libraries to search for sources, for example. But again, I don't think this happened. One of the reasons for that is related to what was outlined in the article. I.e., by removing the need to learn things the hard way, they also lost the ability to learn effectively. I have come to the (preliminary and probably trivial) conclusion that practicing some low level skills are necessary as a foundation to develop more complex skills. Similar to practicing scales in order to play more complex pieces. I think in education we thought that there are shortcuts (e.g. videos) but while they have been good in getting student's scores up by catering to their inclinations, it also has eroded their ability to e.g. simply focus on lengthier texts. Perhaps at some point someone will develop a method of learning that does not involve reading, but I wouldn't even know how it would work (short of directly re-wiring brains). A third element which is more tangential is that I also think that students are not sufficiently bored. This may sound odd but they are constantly flooded by information (and most not of the good sort). This seems to impact their ability to creatively approach a problem. Either they see an immediate solution, or they give up and do not want to think about it anymore. Again, there may be ways to address that, but I have not yet seena good approach. Again, I am not saying that we need to introduce old ways. However, at least on the college level (and the article shows that it starts earlier), we see that getting rid of the hard stuff actually also reduces the ability of students to perform mildly complicated tasks. I was hoping that this would only be transient, until we figured out how to deal with distractions, such as cell phones and social media. However, the trend seems to be expanding and is worldwide an increasing issue, at least based on anecdotal experiences. I have taken to ask colleagues from around the world (including junior scientists) about the performance of their students. And especially after a few beers there are similar observations. It is not that every single student is underperforming, but even in elite universities (where there is stronger entry selection) the ratio of high vs low performing students has shifted to the latter. More than a few colleagues have abandoned more complex research areas in favour of simplified projects as a consequence, which is somewhat worrying to me (as I do the same).

Over the last 10-20 years I noticed a gradual change in the learning abilities of college students, but have largely put it down to generational differences, such as changes in learning preferences, work ethics and so on. Basically things that old folks have always complained about the younger generations. However, over in the last couple of years and especially due to disruptions by COVID-19 these gradual changes have accelerated and it seems increasingly to me that student performance is not dropping because they have different priorities in life, but rather that increasingly they just do not how. There are minor things including the inability to use a computer (as they are used to cell phones and apps), but also major things like reading (and comprehending) papers. Now, in the past it was fairly common that many students would just muddle their way through but it seems that nowadays students are struggling, even if they invest a ton of time, which seemed to me like a qualitative change in the situation. I came across this article in The Atlantic that described the exact situation that I see, except it is for the arts. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-elite-college-students-who-cant-read-books/679945/ Now, there are worldwide drops in student performance even before the pandemic (but certainly accelerated by it), and in many countries the scores peaked around 2010. The overall decline in scores do not seem particularly dramatic, but anecdotally many of my colleagues who have been teaching for more than 10 years are noticing that not only performance is dropping, but that also strategies used to help struggling students do not work anymore. I suspect that we are looking at more fundamental change in how the younger generation processes information, e.g. with an emphasis of quantity vs depth and that it will eventually have profound impact on how learning will change. Again, I acknowledge that every generation has complained about the next one, but it does seem to me that currently, the younger folks are struggling more while achieving less. It would be different if they chose to work less, but the combination of struggling, being stressed out and still underachieving seems to me a rather bad combination. It is not a necessarily a doom and gloom scenario, as they will have to figure it out somehow, but right now it seems that the main strategy, especially among the younger generation of educators, is to make the material more shallow and expect less of the student. I am not sure whether in the long run this is the right strategy, though. I am aware that most folks on this site are on the older end of the spectrum, but I would be curious if folks have experiences (e.g. from kids or grandkids) to share on this matter. I am aware that my experiences have been narrowly focussed on College education (in a limited number of countries).

I would suggest that you pull out a paper where you find such a situation and we can discuss it. The question to me is whose expectations the results are not matching.

This is not true. Scientist do not propose new things if they think existing theories are covering sufficient ground. I.e. the fact that amendments and changes are published are an acknowledgement that we need to advance things. But for scientists this is the just the regular job. We cannot and do not publish things that are well known. What would be the point of that? Once sufficient evidence has emerged, we use the most up-to date model (or fight over which we think is more accurate). I think you are unders some misconception about how scientists use and apply theories and models. That is a gross mischaracterization of the current state of knowledge. We keep finding new mechanisms, and we keep re-evaluating the weight of of each mechanism. However we also understand that the history of each species or even population can diverge and that there is no simple universal theory that can perfectly explain each population we see. The histories can be hugely complex with some parts of the genome shaped by natural selection at one point in the past, but the selective pressures might have changed with other forces taking over. Again, it looks to me more like not being aware of evolutionary research (and I am not really up to date either) and making rather bold statements based on flawed premises.

The issues with these questions is that most are based on false premises. I.e. there are flawed assumptions regarding, both, the overall process of evolution as well as molecular mechanisms. I will try to shortly address them, but ultimately they can only be remedied if you change discard most of your assumption and start learning from the bottom up. 1) Natural selection does not produce any characteristics. Natural selection increases the frequency allelic variations that already exist. 2) I am not sure what you mean with essential nucleotides. However the rise of new genes often involves gene duplication, which you did not even mention. Subsequently recombination and mutations can shape them. 3) I am not sure what you mean by that. Surprise to whom? Darwin assumed a gradual vs saltatory mechanism, if that is what you mean. However, as Swansont mentioned, in modern terms we mean phyletic gradualism which is in contrast to punctuated equilibrium, which essentially is also a gradualist model, just intersected with phases of stability. 4) In short: evolution. Because we are all related (instead of independently created) the embryogenesis of vertebrates is very similar. 5) Convergent evolution is sufficiently explained even by the simple model proposed by Darwin. I.e. similar selective pressures are likely to lead to similar phenotypes (though he would express it differently). 6) There is some debate regarding whether this distinction is necessary, as some would argue it is just a matter of scale. The short answer is yes and there are examples. Yet there are gaps, but these are because we do not have a full understanding how our molecular composition creates certain phenotypes. This is because molecular functions are massively complex and is pretty much the same reason why we do not understand things like cancer fully yet. But on the theoretical level the answer is still a yes to the question

Not to mention that this is not an either or situation (when talking about the modern forms of gradualism). There are mechanisms that would allow for both, slow gradual change, but also larger macroevolutionary shifts.

I think Koonin proposed exactly called that. Pigliucci called for an extended synthesis, IIRC. I believe others have been talking about an inclusive evolutionary synthesis. The reason for a lack of formalism is that (I think) that molecular discoveries are still moving and anyone trying to ties things down in a nice comprehensive package likely will need to rewrite bits every few years. Also because of that, folks are working in very specialized areas (e.g. molecular clocking of highly specific genes) so it makes it a bit harder to bring everything together neatly. I think in many ways biology and the way biologists work do not make it easy to establish enduring models that are also very precise. So any paradigm that is not at least somewhat vague tends to be overturned at some point. I would say that much of modern evolution is driven by molecular research, but not only in the areas of what is classically seen as genetics (and is also kind of swallowed by genomic research) but also other molecular works that look into e.g. genome structure, associated functional changes, stability and associated mechanisms. I am highly biased, of course, but at this point it is hard to see how (post)genomic research has not shaped our current understanding of evolution. I suspect it depends on the the context, i.e. significant for what. If we talk about genetic overall genetic variation, then yes for sure.

Good post. I would like to add that currently, modern synthesis is at the stage folks in the last century looked at Darwinism. Folks like Koonin, Kutschera have called for a new synthesis, which to my knowledge is not formalized as such but includes all the elements that modern folks in the field are working with. Molecular studies have introduced the neutral theory, we got a better grip on molecular timing and so on. I.e. the field continues to move on, and is very telling that criticisms are raised by folks using knowledge that is outdated for hundred years and more.

I think the other conviction is relevant to the price-gouging scheme, which essentially boiled down to attempts in creating a monopoly. Essentially after jacking prices, he also prevented generics from entering the market. In other words (and as already said) one mechanism for inflating prices is to manipulate the market, which in turn requires governmental controls (i.e. checks on capitalist systems). And there are other situations where it may be possible, including markets where there is imperfect information (arguably diamonds could qualify, but certainly also health care) or where options are limited for whatever reasons (again, healthcare is a good example).

I think that depends a lot on the overall circumstance. In isolation, there is obviously nothing wrong with it. But as a whole it can lead to ethical dilemmas, as TheVat pointed out . Even if one considers prioritizing one's own as an universally ethical principle, it would not be feasible to translate that into universal law. For example, would it be ethical to kill someone else to obtain an organ needed to save the live of one's own child? I think there is a difference between personal and societal ethics. The latter is essentially based on a societal contract where we trade some personal priorities against the benefits of living in a society. I.e., ethics is balanced with societal responsibility and laws are put in place for this reason. The issue with prioritizing personal ethics, is of course that there is no resolution in conflicting events. I don't think that there are universal rules that we can apply, but we can think in terms of simple tests. The trolley dilemma is on of those, and the ethical test outlined in the article in OP is another. If the ethical test is: "does it benefit the safety of the one closests to oneself", it would seem to justify for example Israel's action and might result in eliminating all threats (including young folks that have not joined the war yet) ethical. I think that this does not necessarily follow from the principles of prioritizing one's own people. The benefit is often not obvious, and may require sacrifices. Let me take a step back, my initial thrust of this thread is not whether different views on morals or ethics are explainable or even justified, but more in line of what principles are there that we should follow. The issue I see is, for example that if in the course of justifying prioritizing our own, we cheapen other's lives, it can ultimately lead to net negative outcomes. Again taking the COVID-19 pandemic, the everyone for their own approach has led to fairly ineffective responses, and we ultimately lost the race to contain the disease. Likewise, justifying full-on destruction could over time to lead to prolonging the conflict, which could ultimately cost more lives (including the one's one cares about). To take another example: They do ask that, but they also think about societal duties in certain cases. For example, reporting certain types of infectious diseases, or putting patients into quarantine can harm the patient to some degree. But that is balanced by the need to protect others from the disease. As you mentioned, the bigger picture needs to be seem and I suspect that because of the powerful motivation of protecting those closer to oneself, it can cloud one's vision rather than guide it effectively.

This is in fact, a big philosophical question and I am not sufficiently well-read to make a clear argument here (perhaps Eise could chime in). I am reminded of Kant's categorical imperative as an objective and rational principle to follow regardless of individual desires. The issue here would be that if wanted to universalize the position of let's say prioritizing your own child, even at the cost of others, it would create inherent contradictions. I.e. it is impossible prioritize everyone's child over everyone else's. I will need to find some time to think about this aspect a bit longer.