Baby got back-up [chat]

Arch

Winky wrote: »

Timothy Leary Come Check Out This Theory wrote: »

Arch wrote: »

Timothy Leary Come Check Out This Theory wrote: »

Is this just the idea that DNA is not the end-all be-all of evolution, but itself a trait which happened to be advantageous? Because I'd agree with that.

no, although that is a good thought!

the idea is that evolution acts either on the genotype or the phenotype

gene-centrists believe that the gene is the unit of selection, whereas the alternate view posits that it is the phenotype that is the unit of selection

What do you think? Seems to me that selection wouldn't be granular enough to act on genes; an expressed trait is going to be the deciding factor, regardless of the genetic precursors.

I would say that everything else, all the epigenetic factors, all the other gene interactions, basically everything else external to the gene itself is part of the gene's environment and is putting selective pressures on it. In which case, you may have selective pressures on the phenotype, but those pressures themselves then put selective pressures on the genes. The genes are central, then, because they are the things that are carrying any information, the selective pressures on them are the only ones that ultimately matter because they're what will be passed on and build the next organism in the generation.

Though, I have to agree with Arch and admit that this is blurred sometimes by epigenetics that manage to carry information.

See, I see this argument

And all I can think is "yeah but the gene wasn't directly affected by the selective pressure"

It is a solid argument (yours) but part of it just doesn't sit with me, but I can't seem to organize a logical argument against it that isn't just a semantics fight

I feel there is some distinction between "selection acts on the phenotype, and the result of selective pressures are recorded in the genome" and "selection acts on the gene"

FroThulhu

Preacher wrote: »

Fartacus wrote: »

Preacher wrote: »

I like pro wrestling as well, zen's a cool guy unlike you lames.

I'll make sure to note next time Fart's being a racist not to call him out on it because it offends him.

Wait, do you genuinely think it was racist that I said college white kids generally consider crack, heroin, and meth to be the "dirty" or "hard" drugs?

Really?

You of all people?

It's more that you made generalized statements about an entire group of people based on your limited interaction with them. You use "white people" as a stand in for the small group you've met and then transpose that to them all. All the white kids I knew in college if they did any drug it was pot and that was it.

This statement combined with your laughable other views is about as joking as rush limbaugh speaking on any minority. You clearly don't like white people, you couch it in a joke but it isn't funny, it won't be funny, because frankly you're a fucking racist.

I actually just went back and read the instigating post. Uhh... no, the comment was completely harmless, couched by a person of the ethnicity being discussed, and got blown way the fuck out of proportion. It was kinda like when one of the local feminist ladies says something feministish, and a few guys pop out of the woodwork to defend their maleness (guilty right here).

Seriously, I'm not saying racism against white people isn't racism, but everybody who shit their pants about that statement seriously needs to re-evaluate their concept of the word. Like woah. The fact that you guys got upset over that initial comment is really... really pathetic.

Abdhyius

Captain Carrot wrote: »

abd you forgot to post in my thread

assuming that i saw it is assuming a lot of the internet i get in the frozen wasteland

Organichu

abd i hope you get shot

Dread Pirate Arbuthnot

Timothy Leary Come Check Out This Theory wrote: »

Dread Pirate Arbuthnot wrote: »

Man I'd book myself into the hospital but that'd fuck up my school year.

And if I am considering my school year I probably don't belong in the hospital at all.

Blarrhghgh.

If it makes you feel any better, an American you will never meet is rooting for you!

Man I don't know

The times where it gets better are starting to feel cruel

It feels like my brain chemistry is taunting me.

Like "Haha, here's the baseline for normal! Feels good, doesn't it? Sleeping eight hours a night, no wild mood swings, you can get out of bed and get things done without mania, gosh, you even feel ... content, don't you? I bet you're having a fabulous time right now! Well fuck you."

Honestly I don't know how much of the problems I'm dealing with are actually legit and how much are fuelled by crazy.

It's infuriating.

Organichu

wait i mean good luck

sorry, typo

Fartacus

Organichu wrote: »

while i ultimately don't think it is (hence this whole conversation, anyway- until you clarified) i thank you for this post.

i think that for me it ends up at the assumption that we are friends, here, and so i try to presume good faith. i do this in general, too.

an example: one of my peeves is people who like to examine the radical aspects of a community, and from that dismiss everything. i am naturally wary when someone regularly talks about another thing a stupid 'radical feminist' did. i sometimes suspect that this is their glib, defensible way to call all of feminism into question. if i call them out on it, all they have to say is "what... i'm not saying anything about feminism is general. i'm only saying this particular thing is stupid". and i mean, i could be suspicious like that all the time. a lot of the time i'd probably be right about the person, too.

Yes exactly, that is totally the behavior it reminds me of. And you're right, it's not always or necessarily malicious, but it also very often is, and is even a purposeful technique of the right wing to advance their notions publicly.

but i guess what i'm saying is we're (mostly) buddies here so when someone complains about this dumb thing or the treatment they got from that person or whatever, i don't look for the agenda behind it. it leads to long arguments where they have plausible deniability (and i'll never know whether i was right about them).

but i do sympathize with your position, here.

Yeah, I don't feel this way about your posts, or Arch's, or any that followed really, because you were all responding to me.

It's whenever anyone brings it up out of nowhere, like they're trying to make some point about how bad whites can have it too. It's like, yeah? But why do you want to prove that point so much?

I find I spend a lot of time arguing against the choices people make about what to discuss a lot on this forum, and in life, even when I'm calm and reasonable about it, but it's always a weird case to make that confuses people, even when I make it very cleanly.

It's just like the Huck Finn thread. I actually never thought that the editing was a particularly good idea, or even the best way to deal with the problem of the n-word in the text. Probably better to just not teach it, and teach something not written by a dead white guy. Or have a mature discussion with the class, and ask for student input if they want to read it and set ground rules or something.

But I found the outrage at the editing of the book to be so incredibly disingenuous and suspect, because it wasn't hurting anyone!

The asymmetry of intense vitriol for a single independent private publisher choosing to put out an edited version, and complete lack of regard for the alienation that black students have felt as a result of the teaching of that book, which has spurred decades of controversy and protest by various groups -- that was what bothered me.

The policy? Yeah I mostly didn't disagree. It seemed like a silly idea.

But the reason behind it? I found it borderline repulsive. And, in certain contexts, I feel the same way when people jump on "racism against whites." Often I feel like certain people are just champing at the bit to point out examples of it, like discourse on race is a game to be won with points racked up for each race.

But yeah I reacted in a way that impaired the quality of my arguments.

A lot of what I said over the course of the debate was pretty reasonable, but the original assertion dragged the whole thing down.

Winky

Donkey Kong wrote: »

Winky wrote: »

Donkey Kong wrote: »

Arch wrote: »

no, although that is a good thought!

the idea is that evolution acts either on the genotype or the phenotype

gene-centrists believe that the gene is the unit of selection, whereas the alternate view posits that it is the phenotype that is the unit of selection

I'm not a biologist, I've only taken high school biology and brushed up on a few things relating to mitosis in the past few years but aren't both those options silly? Evolution tends to act on a chemical level where shit goes "wrong" either accidentally or by pressure of conditions and if it turns out to be a successful mutation, it spreads through the gene pool by survival of the fittest.

Whether that is expressed as a phenotype, a new gene, a deleted gene, lots of deleted genes, activation of previously inactivated shit, promotion, whatever... That part seems irrelevant; it all falls under the same umbrella of evolution.

It is hard for me to describe the central disagreement in simple terms.

So, I'll frame it like this: group selection, though I know this isn't exactly what Arch is getting at.

So, group selectionists think that a trait may evolve into a population of animals because it benefits the survival of the entire population of animals. Say, food sharing. If one of the animals shares his food with all of the rest of them, his particular genetic fitness will go down, but the entire population's fitness will go up. If the group is the unit of selection, then selective forces will cause this trait to appear.

Now, if the gene is the unit of selection, then no matter what a trait won't get selected for unless it enhances the fitness of the gene itself. So a food sharing trait like that would never get selected for just because it increases the fitness of the group. The trait would only get selected for if it benefited the fitness of the gene, because the selective pressure is felt on the gene and not the population.

EDIT:
Or, you could look at other levels, like if the organism is the unit of selection, or if the phenotypic expression of the gene is the unit of selection, etc.

Why would you ever act like only one or the other occurs? It's a silly disagreement. Obviously "fitness" is a complex thing. If an animal is in a social group, the change will need to be a net benefit, and if it is incompatible with sociability (or some other population trait), it'll need to be a big enough advantage to overcome that. I'm sure there have been cases where both have worked. At any rate, I wouldn't want to have to try and prove the negative.

Well, a gene centrist would say that group selection can't work, that the population would go extinct rather than adapt to the pressure because it's incapable of doing so, only genes can adapt.

If you want to learn more, The Selfish Gene is pretty much the definitive work on the subject, despite being really old.

Captain Carrot

Abdhyius wrote: »

Captain Carrot wrote: »

abd you forgot to post in my thread

assuming that i saw it is assuming a lot of the internet i get in the frozen wasteland

I'm sure you didn't see it. It has 3 views, including mine. I was being silly.

Donkey Kong

Chu's typos and tendency to write congratulatory letters to congresspeople have gotten him investigated by the FBI at least 6 times.

Ludious

undeniable proof that tapout shirt wearers are bad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbDuAEAST7E

Arch

I wish The Selfish Gene wasn't the only work on this issue that was really accessible to the layman winky

makes me sad

maybe I will write my own at some point!

Abdhyius

yeah theres still plenty weeks to go until i cease being recruit onstein and become artilleryman onstein

anyway 7 min to my legs have to be in bed, later

Preacher

FroThulhu wrote: »

I actually just went back and read the instigating post. Uhh... no, the comment was completely harmless, couched by a person of the ethnicity being discussed, and got blown way the fuck out of proportion. It was kinda like when one of the local feminist ladies says something feministish, and a few guys pop out of the woodwork to defend their maleness (guilty right here).

Seriously, I'm not saying racism against white people isn't racism, but everybody who shit their pants about that statement seriously needs to re-evaluate their concept of the word. Like woah. The fact that you guys got upset over that initial comment is really... really pathetic.

But I'm about to handwave away the argument as you being overly sensitive despite the post that set him off being sarcasm and then he followed that up with "You can't be racist to white people I'm not even joking" but we are oversensitive. Right fro.

Fartacus

FroThulhu wrote: »

I actually just went back and read the instigating post. Uhh... no, the comment was completely harmless, couched by a person of the ethnicity being discussed, and got blown way the fuck out of proportion. It was kinda like when one of the local feminist ladies says something feministish, and a few guys pop out of the woodwork to defend their maleness (guilty right here).

Seriously, I'm not saying racism against white people isn't racism, but everybody who shit their pants about that statement seriously needs to re-evaluate their concept of the word. Like woah. The fact that you guys got upset over that initial comment is really... really pathetic.

yes thank you

It doesn't justify my poor argumentation after the fact (though I also believe nothing I said after the fact was racist, at all. An indefensible, over-extended position, and some posts that were a little mean and cold, and which I feel bad about now? Yes. But not racist), but it was pretty damn lame.

Styrofoam Sammich

ooooh KevinNash is back.

/popcorn

HappylilElf

Organichu wrote: »

an example: one of my peeves is people who like to examine the radical aspects of a community, and from that dismiss everything.

Yes. This. This irk'd the shit out of me yesterday.

Organichu

Fartacus wrote: »

Organichu wrote: »

while i ultimately don't think it is (hence this whole conversation, anyway- until you clarified) i thank you for this post.

i think that for me it ends up at the assumption that we are friends, here, and so i try to presume good faith. i do this in general, too.

an example: one of my peeves is people who like to examine the radical aspects of a community, and from that dismiss everything. i am naturally wary when someone regularly talks about another thing a stupid 'radical feminist' did. i sometimes suspect that this is their glib, defensible way to call all of feminism into question. if i call them out on it, all they have to say is "what... i'm not saying anything about feminism is general. i'm only saying this particular thing is stupid". and i mean, i could be suspicious like that all the time. a lot of the time i'd probably be right about the person, too.

Yes exactly, that is totally the behavior it reminds me of. And you're right, it's not always or necessarily malicious, but it also very often is, and is even a purposeful technique of the right wing to advance their notions publicly.

but i guess what i'm saying is we're (mostly) buddies here so when someone complains about this dumb thing or the treatment they got from that person or whatever, i don't look for the agenda behind it. it leads to long arguments where they have plausible deniability (and i'll never know whether i was right about them).

but i do sympathize with your position, here.

Yeah, I don't feel this way about your posts, or Arch's, or any that followed really, because you were all responding to me.

It's whenever anyone brings it up out of nowhere, like they're trying to make some point about how bad whites can have it too. It's like, yeah? But why do you want to prove that point so much?

I find I spend a lot of time arguing against the choices people make about what to discuss a lot on this forum, and in life, even when I'm calm and reasonable about it, but it's always a weird case to make that confuses people, even when I make it very cleanly.

It's just like the Huck Finn thread. I actually never thought that the editing was a particularly good idea, or even the best way to deal with the problem of the n-word in the text. Probably better to just not teach it, and teach something not written by a dead white guy. Or have a mature discussion with the class, and ask for student input if they want to read it and set ground rules or something.

But I found the outrage at the editing of the book to be so incredibly disingenuous and suspect, because it wasn't hurting anyone!

The asymmetry of intense vitriol for a single independent private publisher choosing to put out an edited version, and complete lack of regard for the alienation that black students have felt as a result of the teaching of that book, which has spurred decades of controversy and protest by various groups -- that was what bothered me.

The policy? Yeah I mostly didn't disagree. It seemed like a silly idea.

But the reason behind it? I found it borderline repulsive. And, in certain contexts, I feel the same way when people jump on "racism against whites." Often I feel like certain people are just champing at the bit to point out examples of it, like discourse on race is a game to be won with points racked up for each race.

But yeah I reacted in a way that impaired the quality of my arguments.

A lot of what I said over the course of the debate was pretty reasonable, but the original assertion dragged the whole thing down.

i thumbs up this post

i think we agree a lot more than last 20 pages would suggest

Ludious

hand waving is like the biggest tactic around here, always

Organichu

also

maybe i should drive down to egypt

see what all the hubbub is about

i can't sleep with all their ruckus

Fartacus

Preacher wrote: »

But I'm about to handwave away the argument as you being overly sensitive despite the post that set him off being sarcasm and then he followed that up with "You can't be racist to white people I'm not even joking" but we are oversensitive. Right fro.

But you just posted sincerely defending it a minute ago

but now you're getting called out on it by someone who's not me so "oh it was just sarcasm lol"

cool story bro

Arch

Ludious wrote: »

hand waving is like the biggest tactic around here, always

whatever lud

Organichu

talk to the hand

(of the king who speaks for all of westeros)

japan

Organichu wrote: »

also

maybe i should drive down to egypt

see what all the hubbub is about

i can't sleep with all their ruckus

Something big is up.

Rumours are flying that Mubarak has fled the country.

TL DR

Dread Pirate Arbuthnot wrote: »

Timothy Leary Come Check Out This Theory wrote: »

Dread Pirate Arbuthnot wrote: »

Man I'd book myself into the hospital but that'd fuck up my school year.

And if I am considering my school year I probably don't belong in the hospital at all.

Blarrhghgh.

If it makes you feel any better, an American you will never meet is rooting for you!

Man I don't know

The times where it gets better are starting to feel cruel

It feels like my brain chemistry is taunting me.

Like "Haha, here's the baseline for normal! Feels good, doesn't it? Sleeping eight hours a night, no wild mood swings, you can get out of bed and get things done without mania, gosh, you even feel ... content, don't you? I bet you're having a fabulous time right now! Well fuck you."

Honestly I don't know how much of the problems I'm dealing with are actually legit and how much are fuelled by crazy.

It's infuriating.

'crazy' can be a legit problem. hang in there



pic unrelated

MikeMan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoQb8vb4blA

Fartacus

Organichu wrote: »

i thumbs up this post

i think we agree a lot more than last 20 pages would suggest

Chu you know we are tight bro

give me some bro-grabs

Fartacus

japan wrote: »

Organichu wrote: »

also

maybe i should drive down to egypt

see what all the hubbub is about

i can't sleep with all their ruckus

Something big is up.

Rumours are flying that Mubarak has fled the country.

?!? holy shit really

that's awesome

Dread Pirate Arbuthnot

There is a kitty on my lap.

He does not want to be here.

Jacobkosh

Donkey Kong, make the new chat.

Organ, you are his Diddy.

Preacher

Fartacus wrote: »

Preacher wrote: »

But I'm about to handwave away the argument as you being overly sensitive despite the post that set him off being sarcasm and then he followed that up with "You can't be racist to white people I'm not even joking" but we are oversensitive. Right fro.

But you just posted sincerely defending it a minute ago

but now you're getting called out on it by someone who's not me so "oh it was just sarcasm lol"

cool story bro

One can be sarcastic and still saying a truth, you are a fucking racist fart, and apparently unable to read.