Disbelief is not a choice

jillio said:
Have you ever heard of plasticity? It is virtually impossible to discuss these concepts with the ignorant. Therefore, I must determine exactly what your level of knowlege is, as you seem to be prone to misunderstanding posts.
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Sure I've heard of it..........mostly used in the material world, not the body....meaning flexible or shapable quality of a MATERIAL.

So sad you can't discuss it with your friends.
 
rolling7 said:
He DOES!?!? First time AD has heard that......be a sweetheart and post HIS proof for us all.
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whatchoo' talking 'bout willis? Seriously, who /what is this post about? Me confused. :confused:
 
rolling7 said:
Sure I've heard of it..........mostly used in the material world, not the body....meaning flexible or shapable quality of a MATERIAL.

So sad you can't discuss it with your friends.
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It would appear that you have about 250 years worth of medical and scientific discovery to catch up on before you are capable of discussing biological plasticity.

I can discuss it with my friends. And do, quite often.:cool2:
 
souggy said:
Wirelessly posted

Take the homosexuality debate to the other thread. It doesn't matter how somneone become gay or transgender. What is clear is every attempt to cure homosexuality and transgenderism, short of extreme electro-colvusion and labotomy, has failed. The only ones who claim any measure of success relies on internal suppression of such thoughts.
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And even then, homosexuality wasn't cured. It was simply rendering the individual unable to act on natural impulse, sexual and otherwise.
 
Wirelessly posted

Besides, medically and biologically are not necessary the same definition. Seagulls are biologically lesbians, but they reproduce heterosexually. It's wired into their brain.

The biological aspect doesn't come from reliance on biochemstry, but from observing their nesting behaviours. For some reason, it is an advantage for them to be raising chicks in a female-female pair.

For the same reason, we don't need to test homosexuals because we know we can't cure it. The only people who have vested interest in reversing homosexuality are trying to find the gene.
 
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souggy said:
Wirelessly posted

Besides, medically and biologically are not necessary the same definition. Seagulls are biologically lesbians, but they reproduce heterosexually. It's wired into their brain.

The biological aspect doesn't come from reliance on biochemstry, but from observing their nesting behaviours. For some reason, it is an advantage for them to be raising chicks in a female-female pair.

For the same reason, we don't need to test homosexuals because we know we can't cure it. The only people who have vested interest in reversing homosexuality are trying to find the gene.
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Well said. And biological plasticity of the brain is a well known and well documented concept. Since function of any body part begins in the brain, not only can the brain be altered in function, it can be altered to the degree that it changes function of other parts of the body. And I am referring not to ways of thought in change, but of actual, documented physical changes in the brain that create changes in the function and response of the body.
 
souggy said:
Wirelessly posted

Besides, medically and biologically are not necessary the same definition. Seagulls are biologically lesbians, but they reproduce heterosexually. It's wired into their brain.

The biological aspect doesn't come from reliance on biochemstry, but from observing their nesting behaviours. For some reason, it is an advantage for them to be raising chicks in a female-female pair.

For the same reason, we don't need to test homosexuals because we know we can't cure it. The only people who have vested interest in reversing homosexuality are trying to find the gene.
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That's of interest. I hadn't known this aobut seagulls.
 
Wirelessly posted

It came out 2 weeks ago in the scientific news. So I am not holding it against you. It takes 10-20 years before new discoveries are known to the mainstream.
 
souggy said:
Wirelessly posted

Oh boy, J found the thread... And there 152 replies to read through.

Sit tight everyone while she catches up.
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Welcome back from hiatus, jillio! :wave:
 
souggy said:
Wirelessly posted

Besides, medically and biologically are not necessary the same definition. Seagulls are biologically lesbians, but they reproduce heterosexually. It's wired into their brain.

The biological aspect doesn't come from reliance on biochemstry, but from observing their nesting behaviours. For some reason, it is an advantage for them to be raising chicks in a female-female pair.

For the same reason, we don't need to test homosexuals because we know we can't cure it. The only people who have vested interest in reversing homosexuality are trying to find the gene.
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I was reading an article several years ago about a breed of fish either off the coast of Japan, or Africa (can't remember) that could change its gender during mating season. I cannot remember all the details of the article, but I can remember that it was theorized that this created more opportunity for offspring for that breed in the event one gender was overpopulated.

In any case, I have noticed that there have been several analogies regarding the sexual orientation of human beings vs. that of animals. I am wondering why this is done.
 
Because the more we learn about the animal kingdom, the less distinction there is between each individual on the planet. As Jane Goodall said, there's a "very wuzzy line" between man and the animal kingdom.

Video here and original excerpt here:

Jane Goodall said:
I peered with my binoculars. It was, fortunately, one adult male who I'd named David Greybeard -- and by the way, science at that time was telling me that I shouldn't name the chimps they should all have numbers, that was more scientific. Anyway, David Greybeard -- and I saw that he was picking little pieces of grass and using them to fish termites from their underground nest. And not only that -- he would sometimes pick a leafy twig and strip the leaves. Modifying an object to make it suitable for a specific purpose -- the beginning of tool making. The reason this was so exciting and such a breakthrough is at that time, it was thought that humans, and only humans, used and made tools. When I was at school, we were defined as man, the tool-maker. So that when Louis Leakey, my mentor, heard this news, he said, "Ah, we must now redefine man, redefine tool, or accept chimpanzees as humans." (Laughter) We now know that at Gombe alone, there are nine different ways in which chimpanzees use different objects for different purposes. Moreover, we know that in different parts of Africa, wherever chimps have been studied, there are completely different tool-using behaviors. And because it seems that these patterns are passed from one generation to the next, through observation, imitation and practice -- that is a definition of human culture. What we find is that over these 40-odd years that I and others have been studying chimpanzees and the other great apes, and, as I say, other mammals with complex brains and social systems, we have found that after all, there isn't a sharp line dividing humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. It's a very wuzzy line. It's getting wuzzier all the time as we find animals doing things that we, in our arrogance, used to think was just human.
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However, in the case of homosexuality, I was just clarifying the difference between medical and biological. Yes, one implies the other, but they are not necessarily the same based on how things are classified. Homosexuality is a behaviour influenced by various factors.

Just like how we can't identify whether or not a child will be of exceptional intelligence comes from since there are hundreds of linked genes influencing it, I doubt we will be able to identify homosexuality as well. We just know the behaviour manifests, and it is not something one can be cured of. Suppressed, but not cured.
 
souggy said:
Because the more we learn about the animal kingdom, the less distinction there is between each individual on the planet. As Jane Goodall said, there's a "very wuzzy line" between man and the animal kingdom.

Original excerpt here:



However, in the case of homosexuality, I was just clarifying the difference between medical and biological. Yes, one implies the other, but they are not necessarily the same based on how things are classified.
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Thank you for making that distinction - I was wondering why the comparisons were being made.


I know the general accepted theory is evolution from simple forms to complex forms but it always confused me on how evolution on the short term / measurable time is more of a de-evolution (not sure if that's even a word).

Anyways, any species survival is based on a wide range of available dna and, in farming and breeding, they are always careful to not mix to close relatives as similar dna causes more negative mutations of the genes and the next generation is genetically weaker than the previous.

So, if you were to rewind to some point when it started, as very few of a species (the first), that then reproduced together over and over to create a larger population that would only work with a much stronger dna strand than the current species have today... oh and not talking just human but in general it seems overall we have expanded to lots of specialized creatures for every climate and area of the earth - but to get to that again today I am not sure you can recreate it.


As Severn Cullis-Suzuki said to the UN when she was 12

I'm only a child and I don't have all the solutions, but I want you to realize, neither do you!
You don't know how to fix the holes in our ozone layer.
You don't know how to bring salmon back up a dead stream.
You don't know how to bring back an animal now extinct.
And you can't bring back forests that once grew where there is now desert.
If you don't know how to fix it, please stop breaking it!
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Steinhauer, view post #193, I added a new paragraph and linked back to the original lecture where the excerpt is from. Hope that will explain why we won't be able to find answer for homosexuality at the present date.

Lifeforms don't devolve. They don't necessarily evolve from simple to more complex. One species isn't superior or inferior to another. They evolve, but they don't necessarily regress.

Many plants have more complex and longer strands of DNA, and they have more chromosomes than we do. Does that make them more advanced? It depends on how one looks at it.

Evolution favour stable populations. If the environment changes and it destablize the population, it shifts the frequency of the alleles. Certain alleles regulate different type of expressions. So the ones that are best adept to the change in environment are the most stable.

For example, with Africans, they have a serious bout with malaria. They have a sickle-cell mutation. SS (or non-sickle cell) are prone to being attacked by malaria. Heterozygous (Ss) resists malaria better. Unfortunately, ss, or sickle-cell amenia causes sickness. Now, as long as mosquitoes still transmit malaria, Ss and ss will always be selected for.

If you take the same group of people and stick them in a place where there is no malaria, SS is preferred because there is no selection pressure for Ss to be maintained; and ss is not favourable for the population. So over time, the ss genotype will be completely phased out through genetic drift.

This is vastly oversimplifying because it is ignoring thousands of other loci and the hundreds of different selection pressures acting all at once.
 
But yes, you can't recreate old types because the environment they used to live in are no longer the same.


It's like with foxes. Red foxes are tiny in North America because wolves and coyotes eat them. In Germany, they are absolutely huge because there is no predation other than humans with hounds and terriers; because they virtually humans hunted wolves to extinction on the continent. So, they will never be small again unless there is a reason for them to be so.
 
souggy said:
Steinhauer, view post #193, I added a new paragraph and linked back to the original lecture where the excerpt is from. Hope that will explain why we won't be able to find answer for homosexuality at the present date.

Lifeforms don't devolve. They don't necessarily evolve from simple to more complex. One species isn't superior or inferior to another. They evolve, but they don't necessarily regress.

Many plants have more complex and longer strands of DNA, and they have more chromosomes than we do. Does that make them more advanced? It depends on how one looks at it.

Evolution favour stable populations. If the environment changes and it destablize the population, it shifts the frequency of the alleles. Certain alleles regulate different type of expressions. So the ones that are best adept to the change in environment are the most stable.

For example, with Africans, they have a serious bout with malaria. They have a sickle-cell mutation. SS (or non-sickle cell) are prone to being attacked by malaria. Heterozygous (Ss) resists malaria better. Unfortunately, ss, or sickle-cell amenia causes sickness. Now, as long as mosquitoes still transmit malaria, Ss and ss will always be selected for.

If you take the same group of people and stick them in a place where there is no malaria, SS is preferred because there is no selection pressure for Ss to be maintained; and ss is not favourable for the population. So over time, the ss genotype will be completely phased out through genetic drift.

This is vastly oversimplifying because it is ignoring thousands of other loci and the hundreds of different selection pressures acting all at once.
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Wouldn't that be more the definition of "adaptation" than micro or macro evolution?
 
On a very small scale. However it is easy to take that and apply it long term.

Especially since each of us carry a mutation no other individual has. It just those mutations are not expressed because either there is not enough acclimated linked genes to make a measurable difference beyond looking at strands; or there is no selection pressure for that new mutation to spread throughout the population.

However most people won't be able to understand it, so let make it more visual: take dwarfism. I think it's like 7 out of 8 cases of dwarfism are de nevo mutations. Because there is no selection pressure for dwarfism, we don't see a noticeable split in population of dwarf and non-dwarf.

The other problem is, just because you pair up two dwarfs, it doesn't necessarily means they will produce more because they could be very well be carrying different genes. Also, there are not a lot of families out there that are third, fourth, fifth generation dwarfs. So we will never see a unique group of humans that are uniquely dwarfs. So they are usually reabsorbed back into the mainstream since there's nothing that keep them separate.
 
souggy said:
On a very small scale. However it is easy to take that and apply it long term.

Especially since each of us carry a mutation no other individual has. It just those mutations are not expressed because either there is not enough acclimated linked genes to make a measurable difference beyond looking at strands; or there is no selection pressure for that new mutation to spread throughout the population.

However most people won't be able to understand it, so let make it more visual: take dwarfism. I think it's like 7 out of 8 cases of dwarfism are de nevo mutations. Because there is no selection pressure for dwarfism, we don't see a noticeable split in population of dwarf and non-dwarf.

The other problem is, just because you pair up two dwarfs, it doesn't necessarily means they will produce more because they could be very well be carrying different genes. Also, there are not a lot of families out there that are third, fourth, fifth generation dwarfs. So we will never see a unique group of humans that are uniquely dwarfs. So they are usually reabsorbed back into the mainstream since there's nothing that keep them separate.
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Are you referring to X and Y chromosomes. Someone would have to be a carrier of the gene that causes dwarfism, and even if so, chances are more likely they would not have children that are born with dwarfism.

I used to discuss this stuff with one the nation's top AIDs researchers. The ability of the AIDs virus to leap from apes to humans is a relatively new development. All I know is that the AIDs virus somehow attacks the body's ability to detect that it is sick. The white blood cells created in bone marrow is what creates the body's ability to detect an illness and defend the body from it. AIDs just takes this away, so people die of the common cold and any other type of illness (AIDs doesn't do the actual killing - the disease the person gets and cannot defend against is what eventually kills a person).

There has been research in bone marrow transplants - it doesn't work - and the only thing that seems to fend off illness is the urine from pregnant women.

You would think ... that such an epidemic would have caused human beings to somehow adapt to this.
 
De nevo - "afresh", "from the beginning", "new", meaning neither parents carry the locus for dwarfism. It's a sporadic case where it mutates in a germ cell and is passed on to the offspring. Most form of achondroplastic dwarfism is also a dominant trait, meaning if a person is a dwarf and gets married, it's passed onto the children. We know this, yet we don't see a new ethnic group of dwarfs developing. Either it's not a desirable trait by normal women, or there is no selection pressure to keep these new mutations unique.

As for HIV, it's already being observed. Sex workers in Africa are already developing resistance to the virus. It was first noted around 1995, 1996. (ScienceDirect - The Lancet : Resistance to HIV-1 infection among persistently seronegative prostitutes in Nairobi, Kenya) and it's a recent subject of interest:

Resistance to HIV-1 infection among African sex workers is associated with global hyporesponsiveness in interleukin 4 production
Cutting Edge: Resistance to HIV-1 Infection among African Female Sex Workers Is Associated with Inhibitory KIR in the Absence of Their HLA Ligands

Mind you we don't fully understand why some are resistant to HIV. It must be emphasized, it's not a cure because 5 of the workers studied since 1995 lost immunity to the virus.

But virtually every single European descendant is the byproduct of several ancestors who were resistant to the Black Plague. The same thing will happen with HIV.
 
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