CharonY

I need sleep but since I can't get any I might as well say that I don't really have any expertise, well to anything in this thread, really. There are atmospheric gases that are associated with biological activities in conjunction with certain properties of the planets (phosphine was shortly discussed with regard to Venus), for example. But whether those would even be theoretically detectable is beyond my knowledge and would also depend on the available technology of the fictitious alien civilization, I guess.

As mentioned, access to training and popularity have a huge impact on generating talent. There is a reason why the US has been dominating basketball but less so in volleyball. Also there are a lot of African American basketball players, but African teams are not really on that level. For sports where certain genetic advantages have been suspected (e.g. for Kenyan endurance runners), genetic analyses have failed to reproducibly find factors to be associated with performance. And many suspected loci are more associated with relationship (i.e. found in folks in a certain region) rather than being more common in the highest performers. It is part of a trend that came with more access to genetic data. In the past, many thought that we would find clearer associations between populations and certain traits. But increasingly we find that yes, we can find markers which delineate folks typically in a given geological area (i.e. identify relationships) but those are (with few exceptions) not great at explaining traits that were associated with certain groups. It is also increasingly clear that the historic classification of human groups (aka races) does not really follow genetic diversity, either, which of course made many assumptions rather suspect. There is a bit of some slow reckoning of that in the medical field which will take a while to sink in. That is not to say that there no genetic components that could have made an impact on performance and that those are more common within a given population. The issue is really that the being good at a particular sports is multifactorial and isolating the genetic element out of it has been shown to be surprisingly difficult.

That is certainly fair enough, but I was thinking more in terms of biological signatures in general. I mean, intelligent life would be great, but I would still think that any strong evidence of biological activities would be exciting. Though of course if something else was around that is more accessible it would likely be prioritized higher, even with less evidence. Perhaps what I am trying to say is that I am all for alien ants (I may have missed a couple of points, though. Sleep deprivation does that).

I think that is a slightly different argument than this one: The latter seems to be more an argument that life forms must reach a certain complexity to be interesting (which I would argue against), whereas the former takes accessibility into account, which makes a lot of sense. In fact, accessibility would remain the biggest issue. Generally speaking, life is comparatively rare, and while I doubt that anyone can make any reasonable claims regarding alien psychology, I suspect that any life form originating from a different planet would be fascinating to most (except for physicists who are disappointed by the lack of intelligence, but then I suspect teaching more undergrad courses would lower your threshold a fair bit). If we happen to be the only rock where there is some measurable evidence of life, I would think we would stick out. If there are closer ones around, not so much.

If the whole plate changes colour, it is more likely some kind of component in there. Whether that is likely or expected depends on the medium, of course. Often, metals can be involved. Darkening of bacterial colonies can also caused by metals or by pigments such as melanin. If you have bacterial or fungal contamination you would see them on growing on the plates (which is kind of the point of agar plates in the first place).

More likely is that they'll endorse more police shootings. After all, a black person (kid or not) cannot play with a toy gun without risk of getting shot by police.

As mentioned, it seems that you do not understand some basic biology concepts. Mutations are changes in the genetic makeup of an organism. They can be caused by external factors (radiation, chemicals) but are also frequently caused by errors in the replication of the material. These errors are especially common in viruses, as they tend to have fewer systems to control for fidelity during copying. Conjugation, transformation and transduction has little to do with mutations per se, they are modes of horizontal gene transfer. These can lead to mutations e.g. by recombination events, during which external DNA is integrated into the genome, but they are something else entirely. Also btw, transduction is a mechanisms of horizontal gene transfer that relies on virus. Here, the virus accidentally puts some sequences from their host into their capsule and transfer it to a new host. But again, random mutations are not reliant on any of these mechanisms.

It is quite a bit more complicated and as so often, things are not intuitive. The gangs in question were predominantly street gangs and the path to decriminalization is not, as you might imagine, to allow the criminal acts to happen, but rather it is an attempt to move gangs away from criminality. See, the classic (and often unsuccessful) approach to criminal gangs is policing. However, that does not address the issue of why gangs are formed. They are not simply an association of criminals who want to do criminal things, but there is a combination of various factors (poverty, social connections, marginalization) that promote criminal behaviour. By legitimizing certain organizations, they became eligible to state funding for social initiatives, that either disincentivized criminal activities. (a couple of short reads on the initiative: https://www.iadb.org/en/improvinglives/inside-ecuadors-surprising-gang-violence-strategy#:~:text=In parallel%2C juvenile arrests spiked,youth group" by the state. https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/ecuador-legalizes-gangs-slashes-murder-rates/ For more details and insights there are a couple of studies e.g. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-020-09505-5) Of course this is not a magical solution, but the initiative is one example of trying out something new and see where you lead us. And sure, things may not work out the way as intended. But I doubt you are actually arguing that the revolution should not have happened and we were better off living under monarchies? The critical point in my mind is to study these outcomes and decide new policies based on them. There always will be failure and successes but the risk of future failures does not in my mind justify the acceptance of clear existing failures. In the end it becomes a cost-benefit analysis.

Ants are highly interesting for a huge range of topics. A surprising number of biologists I know turned became fascinated with biology after observing ant behaviour. They are models for a huge range of neurobiological and behavioural aspects, including colony behaviour and related emergent properties. Even engineers, physicists and mathematicians have been looking at ant hill to look at how simple rules can create complex structures, avoid traffic jams and so on. If we are only somewhat as interesting, I fully expect that someone will pour liquid metal over our cities to make a pretty cast and marvel how such simple organisms are able to make such pretty structures. What I am trying to say is that ants are awesome and any disagreeing is just objectively wrong. Also, I have no idea how one would even try to speculate about motivations and patterns to a psychology that is literally alien to us.

As you are looking for an unbiased microbiome analysis, filtration and centrifugation are the standard methods. While one can add steps to it (e.g. flocculation) different bacteria tend to behave slightly differently and can bias your results.

I think we can cut down on a lot of speculations by looking specifically at the findings instructions: https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/circuit/sites/circuit/files/assets/documents/pdf/high-profile/depp v heard/cl-2019-2911-jury-instructions.pdf They refer to these three statements made by Heard in her article: and decided that these statements were false, directed at Depp, made with malice and created damages. What makes it difficult in this civil case is the scope of the decision. While it does imply that the jury does not seem to believe that Heard was abused, it is not an explicit decision on it (or at least it reads to me like that, someone with actual legal expertise might want to correct me). Perhaps confusingly there is also the counterclaim in the same sheet where Heard won on liability (page 3). From what I read the jury specifically agreed that this statement from Depp's lawyer was false:

Against my better I did take a look at the trial and while it has already been stated by other members before, the trial is in fact not about abuse, and as such an even worse example for the real issues outlined in the title than I thought it would be. The libel case really just means that the jury found Heard to have made false and defamatory statements against Depp with malicious intent. At the same time Heard also won a counterclaim against Depp (also for defamation). The big issue with such cases is that it is easy to use these as a strawman to dismiss real societal challenges by pointing at shitty behaviour of celebrities.

I do not see that as an inherent progressive trait, but that of virtually most of folks on any topic. Minus the statistics, which increasingly is replaced just by opinion. I am not saying that everyone with a progressive view is inherently correct or even informed on the subject matter. However, many folks who are researching various aspects of the human condition tend to be progressive almost by definition. The more you look at human society and its mechanisms, the harder it becomes to accept that these things are unchangeable. It is their job to try understand why certain things are the way they are and from there it is almost a natural step to think about how these things can be changed (ideally for the better). It is easy to dismiss the whole thing just by pointing at folks who agree at least somewhat with the conclusions but are unable to follow the details. It is a bit jarring like Oz trying to explain human biology (some things are correct but then wild and unfounded assumptions are put on top and sold as the real thing). But it is important to acknowledge that this is going to be true for the vast majority of the population for anything even slightly complicated. Just because someone on youtube doesn't understand special relativity, we are not going to dismiss theoretical physics. Likewise, we cannot use internet mobs to dismiss actual societal issues and theoretical frameworks. As another addendum to the example of male criminality, I forgot to mention that there are studies and pilot programs where certain interventions (such as providing money and training) for violent or at-risk folks are tested and mostly found to significantly reduce risk of criminal behaviour. Because we find that men are more at risk, these interventions are mostly targeted at them (similar to interventions targeting black folks or specific minorities). Example are programs like BAM (becoming a man) that can be considered rational progressive programs. There are also studies that show that e.g. in Ecuador, legalization of gangs and integrating them into societal programs reduced murder rates (and thus criminalization of men).

The question though is how much. Is it really that men are so much more violent? As I mentioned before, there are also other issues at play. Why it is still likely that a gap may persist, it does not mean that the system has not impact on the outcome. That depends on the context. Because the next question is why are they more implicated in crime. If your answer is because black males are by nature more criminal, then yes, the racist label is likely going to be used. If you state that you genuinely don't know, then folks will typically provide information regarding overpolicing and poverty. What you do with that knowledge might or might not indicate race-based attitudes. Here you make a couple of assumptions, including the fact that power occupations require aggression and also that they require it in a form that is uniquely male. You would need to show a lot of data to back that up and also demonstrate that female leaders cannot deal with stress. I am confident that this is going to be challenging. If, on the other hand you assert your assumptions of these connections as fact, then again, you basically highlight your viewpoint, but do not show that they are indeed connected to reality and therefore cause the imbalance we are seeing.

That would take the gender gap into account, certainly. In all of these cases the question (from a progressive view) is really how much of the situation we see here is caused by the system and which are those. After identification of such issues the next is really asking whether there another system that could be fairer. In a way one could think of it as any other scientific question. I.e. the null could be that there are no differences. Once we find them, we then try to figure out why. The main difference is that in contrast to nature, our society is our creation so there is quite a bit that we can change (the equivalent in my mind are experimental systems where we control the environment in order to investigate their impact on our biological system).

You missed the part about the system. It is not about forcing the numbers to become similar, but to understand what causes the discrepancies and whether there is a way to add it. One part of the discrepancies I mentioned is the longer sentencing of men (if men are on average in prison longer, that affects the prison population). This is certainly also something that I see in "progressive" arguments, though the argument is often to reduce sentencing to similar levels, rather than about increasing it. Now as I also mentioned there are likely issues at play that will prevent a disproportionate lowering of male incarceration (without a massive overhaul of society), but as to why you would need to ask someone who is more knowledgeable in that area. One issue is of course that violent actions are more common and more severe in men. Now in feminist literature you do see arguments for a different view on traditional masculinity, that would de-emphasize violence has a positive male behaviour. I am not sure how well that is received, but there are anti-violence programs that seek to address this issue. Another aspect is the war on drugs, which also disproportionately address men. So the progressive attempt of decriminalizing drugs could lower male incarceration to some degree. There are also other issues which are perhaps even more difficult to tackle. For example men are more likely to be part of criminal organizations. That certainly requires a complex set of strategies to address. One of the reasons why there are no great answer is probably because no one has found any good solutions yet. Perhaps you could provide some answers here, why do you think are men more likely to be incarcerated. Is it really because men have a higher tendency to be criminal? And if so, why is it? Should we rethink criminality, or should we just accept that men are worse? (And as a sidenote: if that is the conclusion , why do we trust folks who are more likely to be criminals to become leaders?) I am ultimately not sure where the argument really goes, though. As I mentioned, the idea is not to randomly look at the numbers and try to make everything equal. Rather it is about looking at the system and see how it affects folks differently.

I am not sure whether that is really the goal. What I have seen is more from the other side, i.e. the issue that women are underrepresented in positions of power, decision-making and so on, and the issues that arises from there. The idea is not necessarily a perfect reflection, but at minimum sufficient representation. As before, but more strongly so, there is no expectation of equal outcome in all matters. However, when disparities exist, the question is why and whether that is a matter of the system and if so, is there a way to fix or at least improve it. The latter part is where the progressive idea comes in. I.e. that we as society can change outcome rather than taking things as a god-given reality. So for example, you could ask why black folks are overrepresented and is there something that could change that (social programs come to mind). Similar questions could be asked for female leadership. Is it really something inherent to women? Or is it because in highly competitive jobs women have some disadvantages? Is it biases? We can try to address those. Is it child-bearing (which in academia is a significant element of the leaky pipeline situation)? Can we address that? Again, it is not blindly adjusting the outcome, but rather playing around the system and see whether it affects outcome in a way that we may consider more fair or equal. It is possible that some imbalances may persist, but that is why we want data (and studies) to see what and how much we can fix. Perhaps we cannot fix the gender gap in imprisonment, but perhaps we can bring imprisonment down in a way that we get overall better outcomes (e.g. focus on rehabilitation or enact social policies that cuts down on criminality rates). However, we can also look at societal biases- there is good reason to believe that men get longer sentences for similar crimes as women, so perhaps that is something we want to address. The issue with the countermovement is that it assumes that the system we got is the best we can have and therefore any change is somehow bad. In my mind society is an ongoing experiment. Everything we do is made up to a certain degree and as an experimental scientist the idea of poking at bits and pieces to see how the system reacts is very close to my heart. It is not about achieving perfection, but looking at whether the system does something that overall is a detriment to certain folks (which is harder to notice than something that harms everyone equally) and try to adjust it.

Not an American, but it seems to me that it is in part the success of long-developed identity-based campaigning. And by that I do not mean policies that would benefit certain folks (perhaps other than tax exemptions for the rich), but rather in terms of a belief system. It was always a bit that being WASPY was considered the norm. But over time, several aspects that were part of the GOP sometimes on the fringe, sometime more centered have become almost a religious belief system (e.g. from anti-evolution to full on anti-science, from being pro-gun as choice to being a core identity of sort, and now increasingly making fringe beliefs such as white nationalism and conspiracy theories accepted parts). A lot of what are considered now by them as extremist progressive attacks were at least under discussion by the reasonable wing of the party, which apparently has lost their voice (and backbone) entirely. So why are they elected? In part because some areas will vote for the GOP no matter what. Then there are folks who feel threatened by made-up bogeyman (white displacement, homosexual mafia, female potato heads, transgender-I-dunno-kids-?) so they will be energized by such bills and depending where you are there is also a nice chunk of voter suppression and gerrymandering going on. The thing though is that the US has a huge cultural influence over the Western world so that is certainly something to look forward to.

This seems like obfuscation to me. There are a lot of parameters with which we can measure equality. For example, if you put a female name on a CV and then switch to a male one. Would you consider it an equal treatment if the latter gets a higher evaluation?

What you refer to you here is called implicit bias. And it has some impact on modern hiring practices because of the overwhelming evidence that it exist. In the past, leadership has been overwhelmingly white and male. Thus, if you think in terms of fit for a leadership role, you intuitively picture a white male (often a bit on the older side). Studies have shown repeatedly male white applicants with exactly the same CV are routinely evaluated higher than female counterparts or with non-European names. As you said, we can appeal and utilize this implicit bias and thereby exclude certain segments of the population from power (and there are parties who do that at various times with various success). But that clashes with the ideal of fairness within society. There are therefore progressive attempts to provide more equal conditions, with varying degree of success. If we, as society don't want that, I would at least wish for some honesty from those folks. Too often folks who honestly believe that men should hold power and women should be excluded are lamenting about accusations of misogyny. Yet you cannot reasonably desire an unequal system but complain about being unfair. Instead there are this mental contortions in which folks who want to maintain power imbalance in their favour are also somehow the victims of unequal treatment.

Also it ignores the rather well-established and common higher demand for female teachers on all levels. I mostly see it in university, obviously, but papers have described it for other levels as well. Typically, there is a higher expectation that female teachers spend more time with students, are more accomodating and are more harshly evaluated if they do not fulfil these demands, compared their male peers. But obviously regular day-to-day demand does not factor in this line of thinking. Following that line of logic it seems that higher salary for men is always justified, but better career prospects for women is considered progressive overreach.

I think that this a very US-conservative view, though. While it is exported increasingly (Canada gets a fair bit of it) and others have high similarity in other aspects of it (who the deserving ones are, for example), gun attitudes are special in the US.

I actually was thinking of (isolated) news reports where in some areas actual mugshots or photos of black men were used. But I do recall that some also criticized black silhouette targets, but I don't think I have seen any studies whether that has any impact.

That is a big part of it, certainly (though again, the overall rate of physical abuse is a bit higher for women as victims). Also there seems to be a difference in how violence is expressed. Women are way more likely to be shaken, pushed or thrown, as well as beaten, which requires strength and has high injury potential. They are also more likely to be choked. Getting hit or bitten is much closer (still statistically significantly higher for women). The main category where there are no significant differences between gender of the victim is slapping (lower overall injury potential but still strength dependent). The inherent violent aspect is almost its own discussion. One could ask whether men are learned to become more violent and/or how much biology is behind it that might facilitate violent behaviour. While seemingly trivial, getting enough information to separate these aspects (as almost all nature vs nurture debates) is often very difficult (especially if one wants to avoid speculation and/or extrapolations).

Unfortunately there are a bunch of studies out there showing that police officers are more likely and faster to shoot black folks. This is not only happening in the field, but also during tests when black or white targets are presented. Racial bias is also not uncommon among law enforcement. There was also the issue that in somec areas during training officers were presented with black targets to shoot at.