CharonY

There is potentially yet another thing at play here. In many cases, the immune system does not really fight them off. Many helminths happily reside in the gut and what many do is to modulate the immune responses of their host (many mechanisms have only recently been discovered). The overall result is that immune-related ejection is suppressed which incidentally also reduces the likelihood of allergic reactions. I think based on the molecular knowledge we have now, we can move away from the original rough hygiene hypothesis and dig a bit deeper into mechanisms. The bottom line is that the immune system is an incredibly complex system which many interactions between the body and its inhabitants. It is almost impossible to define a "best" state from the bits and pieces we know, though we can certainly define a lot of adverse outcomes.

That is exactly it. "Healthy" is actually a bit of a tricky term as we often do not really have a clearly defined optimization parameter to look at. As mentioned multiple times, there is no such things as a strong or a weak gene in isolation. And strong selection in a gene pool can leave a much less diverse gene pool that then becomes weaker to changes in selective pressures. Likewise, even things like a strong health can be difficult to define. What if you are physically ailing, but survive for a long time? What if for some reasons you are very fertile but die young? What if you have been exposed to many infections and might have strong memory effects in your immune system, yet the repeated infections have irreparably damaged your organs?

That then goes into the other argument is that we are then limiting the gene pool again. Simple example that we have discussed already: malaria. While there is a vaccine now (which is only somewhat effective) in the past there was none and in malaria-rich areas the population have a higher than typical prevalence of sickle-cell genes. These of course increase the risk of sickle-cell anemia. If there was a 100% effective vaccine, their levels would be close to those in malaria-free areas. In that scenario, would you consider you argument to be valid? And if so, how? Explain your reasoning, please.

As others have mentioned, generally speaking and depending on jurisdiction you can lose ownership of an animal once it escapes, and you certainly do not get ownership if they reproduce. However, you can be held liable for any damages (including ecological ones) if you release them or if they escape due to your negligence. Moreover, if the animals are genetically modified, they may fall under special laws governing the release of GMO organisms. That being said, the situation might be different if you have a patented breed, someone gets access to them and then breeds them for themselves and sell them for profit, it might be different as there patent infringement comes into play. That is very different question than ownership of an animal.

I don't think that science is well suited for that, but their application and technology are a very real risk factor. And to add to that, we have not yet seen the full potential, COVID-19 was basically just a very successful test case. Its ability to lower the difficulty in implementation in areas including cancer has a huge potential for immunotherapies. The US made a huge investment in that area which and has been pulling back now.

What you seem to be saying is that you expect everything to have a cost and are wondering what it might be. Here, the cost is basically a larger surviving population with all its advantages and drawbacks. But I don't think there is big evolutionary argument to be made here.

In academia that is clearly not the case. There are always researchers working on fundamental science vs applied (including in medicine or engineering). The big breakthroughs folks experience and you see in the media are often in the latter, but they often need first work in the former, which mostly only makes scientists really excited, but often largely passes by the general public. And in the area of fundamental science, it depends on the time frame. If you compare progress that a single person could do to add to the knowledge 100 years ago vs now, it is clear that things have slowed down- as it should. As we accumulate knowledge, the easier bits will be understood first, but more complex questions require more technologies (which is often fed by applied research) and more work. There is the very recent tendency to publish very low-level papers, but that is more of a structural issue, in part with an increasing number of folks getting higher degrees who are less able to do independent research.

Have you checked out the references I provided? There are also synthesis statements based on those and other papers from medical field that I could pull up, assuming that this is a good faith question. It also suggests given all the other elements such as diet, the use of sunscreen (at least up to SPF 30 ish) does not provide evidence for enhanced risk for vitamin D deficiency. Recommendations are typically based this whole assessment as folks want to know the outcome given everything that a person does. This will inevitably have areas of uncertainty. There are a handful for intervention style studies, too (Australia has been mentioned). Can you explain exactly what your hypothesis (I don't really see a theory here) is as it reads still very unspecific to me.

Well, also yeast will have consumed a fair bit of the nutrients (at least where they are sitting). I suspect that this is a larger contributor as yeast is fairly resilient.

And especially nowadays, it would be perfect for mass manipulation via social media.

As mentioned above, yes. SCOTUS basically declared (Seila Law vs CFBP) that there are only two limits to the powers of the President to fire folks. Based on the criteria they lay out, firing her was entirely legal.

As mentioned the effect seems to be small. Most studies I have seen were based on tracking folks who used high levels of SPF (e.g. because of some underlying conditions) and then track their Vitamin levels. There are also handful of controlled trials but usually at lowish SPF (see an example for Australia doi:10.1001/archderm.1995.01690160043006). Obviously, there could also be other effects, but after sufficient such studies you should see an overall lower level among those whop regular use sunscreen, vs the control groups. So far, metastudies have not shown a strong effect. An example is here https://doi.org/10.1111/bjd.17980 However, also as mentioned, the data for very high levels of SPF are still sparse (I think I saw an abstract somewhere suggesting that very high SPF could increase risk of vitamin D deficiency but cannot recall it very clearly).

So after Seila Law, it seems that there are really only two limits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seila_Law_LLC_v._Consumer_Financial_Protection_Bureau From there I suspect that head of the bureau of labour statistics would not fall under these exceptions.

Oh I see what you mean. I was focusing more on the higher positions, but obviously the it would be fairly simple to remove the remaining staff and/or or replace those with hiring authority. But as already mentioned there has been a confluence of decisions, including congress basically giving up their power of the purse as well as rubber-stamping appointees, which makes these details rater superfluous. The fact of the matter is that it turns out that it is rather simple to violate the spirit of the constitution by using the magic power of not caring (and stacking SCOTUS).

While it has gotten worse, in the area of medicine that mindset has existed for quite a while (at least in the Western world). Physicians are expected to "fix" health issues, whereas their role is really support you body to find a workable equilibrium.

So I think this is where the distinction between inferior and principal officers come in. The former can be removed when certain minimal conditions are met. However, Seila Law (not Sailor... I had to look it up) is even more explicit, concluding that the power of removal is unrestricted with only two exceptions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seila_Law_LLC_v._Consumer_Financial_Protection_Bureau But essentially this was used to fire the Inspector Generals.

So the way it was explained to me is that if congress passes a law to establish an agency to be put under the president, they would have implicit power to appoint inferior officers. However, this provision does not establish how firing is done and in fact SCOTUS has established in the past that even if they did not hire them, they are able to fire them. It was originally interpreted very broadly until a SCOTUS ruling (Humphreys executor) has limited it. It involved a member of the FTC and it was decided that it was not an arm of the executive and the President cannot fire them. Apparently there was also a later attempt at reconciling the power of removal via a slew of SCOTUS decisions but we ran low on coffee and time, and the summary was that congress would need to protect positions explicitly. And I think power was further diminished recently (I think it was Sailor Law or something, cannot recall).

Interestingly, there is some evidence that while sunblock is protective against skin cancer, it does not seem to affect other processes significantly. I am not entirely sure regarding the whole autoimmune angle, but in terms of easier measurable factors such as Vitamin D the impact of sunscreen seems to be fairly low (except on the very high end). The general recommendation I have seen in that regards is to sue SPF 30 with intensive UVB radiation (regardless of season) and daily SPF15 in temperate climates.

This sounds like a recipe for fatigue as already mentioned. In Switzerland you have got something like 4 votes per year. Having one every week is insanity.

From what I understand the role is mostly outlined in the Appointments Clause (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appointments_Clause) where there is a distinction between "Principal Officers of the United states" which includes SCOTUS, public ministers, ambassadors etc., which require senate confirmation, and "inferior officers" which typically are appointed by principal officers. The latter can be appointed within the executive branch and under presidential authority. Also from what I understand, under the duty of faithful execution of the law (which is freaking ironic in this presidency) the President has the authority to remove any officials without congress, except when there is a law stating otherwise. So that makes independence of agencies in the US really shaky.

As TheVat said, the point is not about killing folks, but rather a sort of vision of an optimized gene pool, by letting natural selection (or anything else) do its thing. The idea that it results in a healthier population is a faulty one due to the reason I mentioned before. It is a short-term optimization but limits potential. Our tree of life is full of dead branches of species who were very optimized for their particular situation, but vanished when the situation changed. You can also think of it that way- a "perfect" gene pool formed by natural selection with the highest fitness will have all relevant alleles fixed (i.e. a given locus will be identical through the whole population). If the selective pressure at some point changes so that these specific alleles become detrimental (say, a high susceptible to a new virus) the whole population is going to be affected. In other words, envisioning a form of optimization as outlined in OP necessarily means a reduction of diversity, and hence flexibility in the gene pool and makes the population more vulnerable to new health events.

I have gotten more interested in that field recently and I have chatted with folks who had some more interactions with custom-designed AI for in the medical field and one for biological research. The former performed really well, whereas the latter was abysmal. I have some thoughts on why that is the case, but I the folks I chatted with are more on the user, rather than developer side. I am wondering whether that could be discussed in one of the existing threads or whether it might be something for a dedicated one?

I don't think that this is new per se. It was quite common that folks adopted a poorly understood verbiage that they have seen used in scientific context in order to provide their arguments with some gravitas without doing the actual footwork. Or to put it differently: The phenomenon under scrutiny does not, in a rigorous epistemological sense, constitute a novel emergence. Historically, there exists a demonstrable proclivity among lay interlocutors to appropriate lexemes and syntactic constructions ostensibly derived from scientific discourse. This semiotic transference is frequently executed with minimal hermeneutic engagement, serving primarily to imbue their rhetorical postulates with an illusory veneer of empirical legitimacy, absent any substantive methodological substantiation or evidentiary corroboration.

The way it reads seems to be that if there is a resources something will somehow gain the ability to access it. It seems to be somewhat Lamarckian but an overall misunderstanding how (and on which level) evolution works.

Oh, I have no doubt that this was mostly rhetoric, though it managed to change the way folks thought about the government, which probably was the plan all along. It is just now that the mask is all off.