CharonY

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.

That suggests that ethical actions are not feasible within a democratic system, if they are not intuitive. I wonder though, shouldn't governments have a duty to help folks make informed decisions? Even counterintuitive ones? Because otherwise it will perpetuate a system that chases myopic goals at the cost of long-term benefits. For sure, this is how the world seems to work right now, but I do see serious ethical perils with that approach.

It see your motivation, but I would take a step beyond that. Is this attitude the right way to negotiate and govern things? I am thinking about it with a view on the overall outcome. To take your COVID-19 example, the selfish responses of the respective governments might be understandable, but the lack of a strategic, likely caused more excess deaths, and certainly contributed to making it an endemic disease that continues to put stress on health care systems world wide. Similarly, while the motivation of Israel is understandable, I wonder (in addition to ethical concerns) how much it really contributes to overall safety vs the continuation of this long conflict. I.e. pushing a peaceful solution further out of reach.

This argument is in the same line as the article in OP, with the difference that instead of an argument of absolute morality (i.e. any harm to civilians) it has a bit more utilitarian (and potentially more realistic) viewpoint of harm in relation to benefits. This is obviously a tricky ethical discussion and often leads to a slippery slope where civilian lives eventually become expendable. The first part- i.e. equivalency of civilian lives is the element that tries to slow down the slope, so to speak. The obvious issue of course that the "benefit" can be interpreted in many ways and some may have no qualms sacrificing either their own civilians. I.e. if adhering only to the ethical argument of equivalency of civilian lives, Hamas has few qualms sacrificing their own, so while internally consistent, it is a deplorable stance. Even acknowledging the issues of asymmetric warfare, the lack of constraint, including specifically targeting civilians (which are crimes against humanity), as well as internal rivals makes it difficult for me to justify their actions as a legitimate armed struggle. Conversely, Israel's position is hypocritical from an ethical standpoint, as they clearly and systematically diminish the lives of Palestinians over their own citizens (there are also conflicts with the Arab-Israeli community, but that might be another discussion). The Gaza and West Bank policy has made it clear in the past and since the October attack there is but the thinnest veneer of acknowledgement of the endangerment of civilian lives through the military actions. I suspect that if the targeted bombing attacks were conducted instead of flattening Gaza, it may have been perceived somewhat more positively. But with the lack of moral clarity on full display, it taints every action. And ultimately that is where what Swansont said is important. As demonstrated on this forum, it is not the individual action per se or the view of the victims of those actions that determines whether a group is seen as moral or not (the whole terrorist vs freedom fighter argument). But going further, I think it is worthwhile to investigate the moral imperative that guides their decisions, as it would provide a glimpse as to how far these groups will go to reach their respective goals.

I skimmed the article when it came out and I remember that I was mildly annoyed by the fact that (IMO) authors mixed up assumptions with technical limitations of the time to sell how big the discovery ares. Many microbiologists assumed biological activity in deep soil (or deep seas for that matter), but some key abilities (such as dissimilatory iron reduction) were not understood yet and laboratory techniques to investigate the bacteria were missing. I may misremember, but it felt like that the author deliberately tried to conjure a veil of mystique over something that simply required hard work to fully understand and which was much less baffling once it was (as usual).

My interpretation was that it included Israel its partners (i.e. excluding Hamas as they do not sit at the same table), but I may be wrong.

My argument for classifying October attack is that it targeted specifically civilian venues and had civilian deaths as an explicit goals without military benefits, regardless of underlying motivations. Israel's response had a strategic value, though the underlying cost is what the article tries to evaluate. As in many military attacks, including from the USA, there is at least the assumption that killing civilians is not (overtly) the primary goal of the action.

In other threads the issue of proportionality of military responses to terrorist attacks were discussed. One argument was that responses to attacks have to be disproportionate to ensure deterrence. However, the issues with such a framing is that it leaves the door open for open-ended retaliation. I came across an article that contextualizes proportionality which suggests one should not focus proportionality of the actual attacks (as one might do in cases of conflict between two persons), but frames it in the context of the overall military goals that the response is supposed to accomplish relative to the cost (https://theconversation.com/why-all-civilian-lives-matter-equally-according-to-a-military-ethicist-218686) From this argument the authors make the following example regarding the Shifa hospital, where Hamas hid a control base. Obviously, no moral argument is perfect, but this argument of moral equality frames the issue as a neutral with consideration of civilian lives, which is a slightly more dispassionate argument than e.g. outrage at the brutality of the actions themselves. I.e., it becomes a cost-benefit argument, rather than one justification. I think it is an interesting argument, as it removes the emotional issues surrounding arguments of whether which civilians deserve more protection (and the other side of the coin: which ones should be less protected from deaths). The original article of the author discusses drone strikes from the US as another narrative (https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-611-6_11) What are you thoughts on this argument, and would you agree/disagree?

So just that I understand your position accurately, you are against collateral damage, and presumably would be open to criticism for Israel high-collateral damage approach, provided the argument allows for targeted attacks? I am then wondering, what is your view of the Israel's action response resulting ca. 10k dead children? Would this be unacceptable? Or does the need for defending themselves justify these collaterals (especially if we throw out proportionality out of the window)? I am also wondering whether deterrents really work on those guys, if they are happy that their own are getting killed, I am not sure that doing just that actually has a net detriment to except for the terrorists (at least I have not yet seen any evidence for that). The issue is that you demand being understood literally and maybe it is a language issue but in many cases your arguments are not as clear to me. The quote helps, where you for example distinguish between disproportionate responses and collateral damage. But if you say that you are just providing counter-balance, the context of your statements are unclear (again, to me, it may be clearer for others) as I tend to understand the full argument of folks I am having a virtual discussion with. Fora can lead to misunderstandings and clarifications are appreciated (which Is why my posts are often verbose as I tend to overexplain things- comes with the job, I suspect). I don't think I have seen anyone absolving Hamas of anything, but are we then in agreement that blame on the situation is shared between certain Palestinians and parts of the Israeli government? Perhaps not equally but forces are moving things on both sides into the wrong direction?

I would agree that all things being equal, I am also more for targeted rather than indiscriminate attack, but as to your questions: It goes beyond this thread, but a couple of things are related to that notion in this thread. Here you are saying that you are for retaliation at any level. Why not explicitly stating that you endorse collateral damage, the notion of not using proportionality at least suggests that there is not hard cap on the level of destruction. This here is a condemnation of, ehm, condemning collateral damage. This at least suggest that you think the criticisms regarding collateral killing are not justified. Conversely, that would indicate that some collateral damage has to be justified, likely as a means to remove the threat. In our previous discussions you have made a point that deterrence is more important than restraining collaterals. This was part of the notion that Palestinians are basically choosing violence (and through various threads, it is implicitly a justification for collateral deaths. The important context added in this thread is that Israel helped creating a situation where Hamas could thrive, in order to squash a two-state solution. Now, we cannot turn back time and figure out whether strengthening the PLO would have resulted in peace eventually. But it remains a fact that Hamas was able to reach and cling to power with Israeli support. I am fairly confident that you would condemn any group knowingly providing funds to a terrorist organization and not dismiss it as mere stupidity. In our earlier discussions you have made the point that Gazans could have a thriving community if they only had gotten rid of Hamas. Yet, the the various articles suggest that Israel had a hand in providing Hamas the means to take over the government and keep them in power. This also does add another dimension of Israel's strategy of containment (including economic isolation, which we discussed in another thread). Just to avoid any confusion, this does in no way justify Hamas' actions, but it does show that Israel was a contributing architect in the role of Hamas. While one can state that Palestinians should have gotten rid of Hamas for their own good, we see that someone else certainly stacked the deck against that possibility.

It seems you are claiming that the only mistake was being stupid and that the support for Hamas was just incidental. Thus, you seem to deliberately ignore the fact that Netanyahu himself said that it was important to keep Hamas strong as a counterpoint to the PLO, in order to torpedo a two-state solution. You have criticized the Palestinians for supporting Hamas and implicitly justify collateral damage because of their choice. Conversely, a deliberate strategy to torpedo a peace process is considered to be merely "stupidity". Obviously, people have their biases (including myself), and this basically shows that apparently no one is above that. While the current architect of the conflict is Netanyahu, it is not his "stupidity" alone. A short article discussing aspects of the NYtimes article (shared above) here: https://www.thenation.com/article/world/why-netanyahu-bolstered-hamas/ From the cited article (https://www.upi.com/Archives/2001/02/24/Israel-gave-major-to-aid-to-Hamas/6023982990800/): In other words, while it is fair to say it is stupid to assume that they could control Hamas, one would need stronger words to describe a strategy that revolves around supporting extremists in the hopes that they would do more harm to others than to oneself (but still knowing that they are enemies). It reminds me of the support for the NSDAP from the right factions in the Weimar Republic in an effort to control workers. Stupid? Sure. But also complicit.