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I should have made it more clear what I thought about the paper, my bad. Similar to the others it does not offer any biological insights, but rather discusses the aspects on a conceptual level linking it to learned behaviour, which is still in the purview of psychological sciences. Towards the end it veers of quite a bit again into the just-so story region, which has become fairly common since the rise (and perhaps also through the fall) of evo-psych. But at least the first part is something that one could discuss about as it stays more within the purview of psychology (i.e. does not venture too far out into the bio realm.). I will also note that the Terrizzi & Shook as well as the Fessler paper have similar issues. I.e. there is a large conceptual framework, or narrative, but data that can be used to test or invalidate hypotheses are lacking (or are very crude and often not robust). In human genetics (in the biological realm) there is increasing realization that our genes alone are much less defining than originally anticipated (to large part caused by the increase of sequencing data and GWAS). As such the field of evo psych is still behind the curve. Again, there is good reason to believe that shame and other behaviour in a moral system can have important social functions. But introducing genetics without actual genetic data, is a big stretch that folks are increasingly skeptical about (and rightfully so). That is basically the issue, the studies speculate about it, but as far as I can see, there is no evidence. Beyond that the basic brain functions are involved. But that is a bit like saying that the system for pottery is genetic as it involves hands and eyes which have a genetic basis. It is not entirely wrong, but also so broad as to be meaningless.

This is most likely factually incorrect. First of all Tomkins is a psychologist and has not worked on any genetic studies that I am aware of. In fact, he is mostly a theorist from what I can see, so there is likely little to any experimental work. As such he can't possibly have confirmed the biological basis of shame. There is a much more appealing suggestion that these traits are part of cultural adaptation based on what some might call non-genetic evolution (i.e. learned behavior). See for example https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781880/ for a discussion on that subject. Again, note the use of "evolution" in a non-genetic context.

There have been a lot of similar approaches, trying to leverage biology to modify behaviour. Most of these have failed, as the psychological underpinning are poorly understood. I would also advise against conflating psychology and evolution, the field of evolutionary psychology is in a big crisis, as it has largely failed to reproduce many of their claims and there are too many "just so" story arounds in that area. For sake of OP, I would also suggest to focus on one aspect first and really figure out how much we know about it, rather than trying to have large bucket with concepts and try to extrapolate from them. I think, trying to define shame and their origins might be a good start. As shame as a concept is deeply rooted in psychology, but to my knowledge is not really explored biologically, we should avoid confusion with evolutionary or genetic concepts at this point. It also seems to be a high-level concept associated with moral behaviour, suggesting that it might be a learned response.

This does not follow. Not every behaviour, even common ones are hard-coded in DNA. Fundamentally DNA does not carry that level of information density. Rather the whole system is an interplay between the components, that are encoded (e.g. receptors, hormone synthesis pathways etc.) but other elements (e.g. nutrition, but also developmental experiences and learning) affect how the system ultimately works. I.e. it is an oversimplification of many overlapping systems and the conclusions are therefore an overinterpretation. There are many systems involved, which we only partially understand (and which are outside my expertise). That being said, I am not even sure whether the existing framework are sufficiently specific. There are for example examples of altruistic behaviour in bacteria (essentially production of metabolites that are used like common goods or certain suicide pathways). But it is still under discussion whether these are good examples of altruism. Then in animals we got a whole discussion on reward systems in the brain, and how they affect individual behaviour and how they are connected to evolution of various traits. It gets complicated and messy very quickly. Perhaps the simplest criticism on OP could be fact that evolution nor DNA, does determine what things "ought" to be. Either they are or they are not. There is no driving force that determines what should be.

That does not seem like a good comparison, a faster computer is not very likely to accidentally (or purposefully) kill anyone. If the tradeoff to a slower or older CPU could somehow save lives, it may be another argument. I also seriously doubt that there are many folks happy with an old Pentium. Boot times alone are going to drive folks nuts. Also, at least with the early Pentium series, I am not sure whether you can get anything running on it that could access the web nowadays (maybe starting Pentium 4 there might be lightweight Linux distros). Ultimately, there are things that you cannot do with an old CPU anymore. Conversely, for the purposes outlined above (recreation, pest control, etc.) there is little difference between a single-action to a larger magazine rifle. And if lengthy shootouts are somehow part of life, moving may become more attractive at some point. The bigger point is that among certain conservatives in the US being somewhat irrational regarding guns has become part of their identity. The Overton window has shifted so much that reasonable gun control has become a no-go, and it is really not about the need of guns. Paradoxically, the NRA was a champion for gun safety and regulation before deciding to jump the shark (https://time.com/4431356/nra-gun-control-history/).

Renown means nothing, if it is outside their expertise. And in any given field there are established and capable scientists who are mostly unknown to the public.

Well, that is a matter of perspective- all it means is that the outcome of these events cannot be seen in isolation- it is the overall system that determines outcome. And usually there is a clear income-dependent situation. There are few diseases (if any) that affect poor and rich equally.

The issue is that it works quite well if folks have only minor health issues. But once it gets serious, folks are facing a double-whammy. The company might fire them because of lost work due to illness, (and the likelihood of being irreplaceable has been shrinking in modern companies), and losing the insurance can result in massive debt (there is plenty of statistics to show that). Before ACA, pre-existing conditions could also be excluded from coverage. So yes, if you have a good income, a great job with excellent coverage, it might not seem like a problem. But for everyone else, the situation kind of sucks and statistics do show the negative impact on overall public health, especially for those with lower income. That being said, public health is a team sport and if one lets someone suffer, sooner or later almost everyone will be affected negatively. It did discriminate, actually. Workers and other folks relying on work under unsafe conditions were way likelier to contract and die of COVID-19. Also related to that, countries with higher income inequality also suffered a higher health burden.

In gastronomy there is another issue at play. Salaries are typically the highest expense in a restaurant as the work is rather labor-intensive. In addition, the margins on food are often low, especially for freshly produced items. In most of North America (and increasingly elsewhere) there are more and more chains that that are simply more profitable as they have pre-cooked food and require less trained staff. At the lower price scale, often only family-run restaurants (which basically have cheap labor in form of family members) are likely to stay alive for a bit longer. This also means that there is a huge cultural loss to corporations here, which makes me rather sad (and supercharged by the pandemic). Also saves trained staff, similar to the actual restaurants. Also, insulin is dirt-cheap, if purchased in bulk by comparison. Finally even in non-profit systems, hospitals are run by administrators and not that frequently by medical experts. As such it is more about profit or balancing budgets (which is less bad but not by that much). There are a lot of stories from MDs who talk about how stupid administrative decisions interfere with their ability to care for patients. This is especially the case when it comes to atypical diseases. The delayed reporting and initial suppression of information during the early COVID-19 outbreaks is a bit of an administrative (though not operational) example of how checklists are taking precedence over medical judgement.

How did you figure out someone's sexual orientation in the past? How did you scientifically prove to yourself that you are a man? How does it related to categorization in sports, and if that is so confusing how did folks do that for cis-folks?

I don't think that this is a surprise and honestly, while paper mills might make it easier, it is not necessarily the driving force. The peer-review process is not well-suited to detect outright fraud. And a reason why folks are willing to risk their reputation is the insane competitive pressure in the field (especially leading up to tenure).

It reads to me that there is a conflation between gender identity and transition here. Folks that change their identity do not, as far as I know, get to choose under which category they can compete. In fact, there are athletes who have competed in different pre- and post transition. What research has been focused on is which physical changes are happening after gender affirming procedures. And I will again mention that while a small fraction, there are folks who are testosterone resistant. Meaning that with an XY karyotype they have body structures that are indistinguishable from a typical female. So they would be severely disadvantaged if they were sorted according to their genetic makeup rather than their physical.

I mean, ultimately it could, but if one manages to curb women's rights access to healthcare or venues of power, it might not actually solve the issue. It is rather difficult as the anti-abortion movement has many different facets. Some are plainly misinformed and at least on other emotional matters, direct engagement can help. But it requires time and effort. Others use abortion to push different sentiments, there are misogynist streaks (which, to be clear is not only found in men) with sentiments ranging from punishing women to have sex, especially outside of marriage, to securing the role of women in society (i.e. as child bearers, rather than career professionals, for example). These are ideological stances and not one borne of logic, and are much harder to address as they are connected to ones perceived identity and worldview.

In OP it was actually framed it rather stringently with a heavy focus on abortion, which is the source of my confusion. I think in high school, in the broader context of objective relativism. But I have no real recollection anymore.

The confusing part to me is that you anchor this on the reduction on abortion, rather than (what it rather seems to be) making it easier to have kids. These are not the same. Folks do not have abortion because having children is hard. It is because they got pregnant and don't want to be for whatever reasons (including medical necessity). This includes folks who never want kids regardless of how easy or hard it is, but also other forms of unwanted pregnancies. Logically it would make much more sense (to me at least) to frame the question around improving family care and encouraging having kids and not on abortion prevention, especially as the latter is (as discussed here) not the main means of birth control. The moment you look at abortion rates, you are looking at contraception rates. In your example, once you improve quality of life in low-income countries, birth rates go down. This does not happen magically, but rather it involves contraception. Improving the ability to have children still makes it a strategic decision (how many children, and when?) and again, the only realistic way to time it, is to use contraception. Again, if you do not want to have this discussion, it makes far more sense to frame it around promoting birth rather than preventing abortion.

I am not sure what the core thought here is, to be honest. Obviously having a child always has some impact, and it is impossible to entirely remove them from the equation, unless we are making a spherical-cow-in-vacuum type argument. Having a child always impacts health, even with the best care, for example. You always have to (want to?) spend time with it. At minimum, you have to take responsibility for another life, so there is no way to decouple having a child from these elements. The only true freedom from having to deal with a child, is, well, not having one.

Well that is the keystone to the whole issue, though. I.e. without contraception, you basically have no control when and if to get pregnant. And that will inevitably leave abortion as the only alternative if a child is not wanted. This is part is extremely complicated as it requires basically a complete overhaul in society. For example, if women want a career in a competitive field, it often means the end of it. Dropping out of a field and then getting back in after a while can be extremely hard. The main crutch that folks have been thinking about is better childcare, but even so, mostly women spend more time on children and household than men, for which children are less associated with progress in a career. There have been various attempts (including obligatory paternity leave) to even out the field and change perception, but it is a slow process with a lot of backsliding. But again, when it comes specifically to avoid abortion, the answer is obvious, improve control regarding when or if to get pregnant. If your question is how do you get folks to have more children that is a rather different issue.

I think studies on pet ownership have largely failed to replicate direct health benefits as such. Though there are improvement in things like mood and there may be indirect effects that provide benefits (e.g. creating routine, or taking regular walks). One group where pet does seem to have an reproducible effect is specifically among recovering elderly.

There is also quite a bit of overlap between anti-abortion group and moral sentiments that want to control women's reproduction. I remember polls showing correlation between folks wanting women to have sex primarily for reproduction (rather than, e.g. recreation, which seems to be fine for men). But going back to OP, key elements are essentially giving folks the tools to have (or not to have) kids on their own terms. I.e. better control of when they get pregnant (including mentioned access to contraception, better and genuine family planning, but also things like better sexual education), but also support to be able to raise kids, if that is what folks want.

Here, you are somewhat wrong. You should check back on JCM's post regarding the definition and binary nature of biological sex and perhaps also the link I provided that questions some of the tenets there. It is important to note that an evolutionary/biological system cannot be mapped exclusively to humans, it has to cover biology as we know it. Thus, in the evolutionary view, the common definition is based around anisogamy, which means the different in types of gametes produced in a population. Here, we have a binary distinction (large gametes like ova, small gametes like sperm). The physical build of the producers does not play into it, as there is no direct connection between types of ovaries and a particular build, for example. In fact, some species change over their lifetime whether and what kind of gametes are being produced (a specific example that was provided in the prior discussion). Therefore, although the Goymann et al claim that biological sex is binary, they do state that In other words, if we use it as a condition to categorize each and every individual, we are in fact misusing the concept of biological sex. And this goes back to the issue that in the society we have learned to conflate concepts like gender and biological sex to a degree that the latter is often also applied outside of the precise valid scope. To some degree it is inevitable, as many areas (especially medical sciences) obviously have a human-centric view, which kinds of ignores the broader scope of biology. But if we want to talk about biology and especially evolution, we are forced to be more precise about it (it is a bit like trying to apply classical physics to quantum phenomena, at some point it becomes wildly inaccurate). The challenge here is that science here runs counter to intuition.

I think the whole discussion here is a bit on the ridiculous side, but unless one wants to apply semantic tricks (e.g. in terms of which stage of the Muscovy we talk about and/or whether being a vassal is the same as being ruled over), this is not quite accurate. I am pretty sure you are familiar with the phrase of the Tatar-Mongol yoke, and there is a reason for that. In the early conquests of the 13th century most major cities found in the now Russian sphere were conquered and/or razed (including Moscow). The invasion also famously came to an end due to the death of Ögedei Khan. Most Rus' principalities then became vassals. There were varying conflicts (in-fighting, but to a large part also actions against the waning power of the Mongol empire) and Moscow got burned again towards the end of the 14th century. But Mongol rule is often marked after the defeat in 1480 at the Ugra river (though tributes continued for quite a while thereafter). As such, the original Muscovy principality was a vassal of the Golden Horde, even as it increased its power from the mid 13th century to the end of the 15th century. One could argue that the rise of Muscovy was eventually a response to Mongol rulership and ultimately united feuding principalities. But again, none of that really matters as trying to extrapolate history to presence is really silly. There is a reason why seemingly almighty empires ultimately crumbled. But as others have stated, it is not even clear what a win is supposed to be. Not fighting a war would be a huge win, for example.

This is not a scientific approach. You are pre-defining your scenario and then declare any deviation merely as aberrations and then basically ignore them. As I said many times before, you can create binary categories, but they are not universally applicable. You can, for example state that biological sex is only valid in the context of reproduction (which is reasonable). You can further state that you want to categorize folks based on the types of gametes they produce (also fine). As such, you now have a binary category of only two biological sexes, which makes entirely sense in terms of reproductive discussions. But this is not the same as claiming that every single individual falls inevitably into either of categories. There are quite a few folks who are either born sterile as well as the fact that reproductive ability is not maintained throughout one's life. So there are times and/or individuals that fall outside this specific scenario. This is not to mean that there is anisogamy (quite the opposite as outlined above), nor that that there are sexual dimorphisms. What is really discussed here is that these categories are "typical" but not "universal". You may want to have everyone neatly fall into either category, but so far you have failed to come up with a definition or categorization that manages to do so, without having to at least an additional category for what you call aberration. The latter term in itself is rather unscientific, as it implies that nature has a rigid norm of sorts. But nature has no "ought to be" it only has what is. And our job as scientists is to describe and explain what is, rather than telling nature what it should be (I mean seriously, they should stop with horizontal gene transfer, that is no way to behave).

I didn't have time to follow all the new posts on this thread, but here you ironically managed to contradict yourself. If a human was indeed defined by the parameters you outlined, then by this definition obviously an organism outside of these parameters would not be considered a human. This is how definitions work. If I define something by parameters X than something that does not have this parameter, it automatically falls outside. The way you created a definition demonstrates that it is either wrong, or at least not useful, as you want to create a category that would still sort folks with atypical features into the same category. Your definition does not do that. As such your definition is either wrong, or at least not useful for your purposes. That is why modern species concepts are defined by lineage and ability to interbreed. This would take care of what you consider abnormalities. Rather, what you describe is what can be considered as "typical" features. And as you you just more or less described yourself, it cannot be used as a definition, since it actually excludes individuals, which you want to put into the same group. In your mind that is not an issue, as you just need to define things that do not fit as outliers and than just put them into the same group. But this is clearly a rather arbitrary approach to things, which undermines your basic argument that it is somehow clearly (and perhaps objectively) delineated. As we have discussed earlier, there are binary definitions that one could use, but as even folks advocating it (I am referring back to the essay JCM provided), it struggles with classifying it the way we want to classify folks (especially with a view on athletic performance).

Paper such as those referenced in the article on fish and other animals have raised broad question regarding the nature of self awareness (is it binary or gradual, for example) and pretty much since folks did the original experiment it was hotly discussed what it actually measured. I think there are (at least) two major changes in behavioural biology which ultimately will tip the scale toward the gradualist school of thought. One is a departure of using mammalian behavior as hallmark of complex behaviour. A large number of experiments on birds, mollusks (especially octopus but also other invertebrates) have challenged the notion of what could be considered higher cognitive functions. A second movement has increasingly shown that many classic behavioural studies could be very skewed, as they often ignore individual behavioral differences. Animals that do not cooperate with certain experiments, are excluded, for example. But it is possible that the cooperating animals are in fact only showing a sliver of the behavioural repertoire.

How would you know if someone was transgender, if they are not transitioning?