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19 votes
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Scientific rigor proponents retract paper on benefits of scientific rigor
13 votes -
Academic publishers face class action over ‘peer review’ pay, other restrictions
34 votes -
First-ever mRNA vaccine halts pancreatic cancer in its tracks
50 votes -
Ig Nobel prizes 2024: The unexpected science that won this year
14 votes -
Scientists receive Ig Nobel Prize for discovering mammals can breathe through anuses
43 votes -
Study finds people are consistently and confidently wrong about those with opposing views
37 votes -
What happens when you touch a Pickle to an AM radio tower?
36 votes -
Meet the winners of the 2024 Ig Nobel Prizes
26 votes -
The theory that men evolved to hunt and women evolved to gather is wrong
58 votes -
Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and vastly cheaper than mined diamonds. Beating nature took decades of hard graft and millions of pounds of pressure.
63 votes -
Statistics are still misunderstood in the courtroom
16 votes -
Cognitive behavioral therapy enhances brain circuits to relieve depression in subset of depression patients
7 votes -
AI for bio: State of the field
2 votes -
Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?
41 votes -
Is accidentally stumbling across the unknown a key part of science?
7 votes -
Researchers make mouse skin transparent using a common food dye
24 votes -
A cooperative biological perspective on competition and reproductive success in humans
Hi, there is a common trend among people in both physical and online circles: the idea that not reproducing means less reproductive success, so it means less "evolutionary success" for the...
Hi, there is a common trend among people in both physical and online circles: the idea that not reproducing means less reproductive success, so it means less "evolutionary success" for the individual. On an isolated level, the first part is true. However, a lot of people attach value-judgements to this, and wonder whether they are betraying the species by choosing not to reproduce. A lot of intellectual people even consider if they're "dumbing down" the species. And a lot of people think this must constitute some kind of paradox: more intelligence means less reproduction.
There's a lot to be said about this. First is the good ol' (and kind of boring) idea that evolution is not going toward "higher" beings, but simply a change in inherited traits in a population among generations. However, this is not my point in this post.
What I want people to consider is how much variety there is between individuals: only 0.1% of DNA differ between two individuals from the species Homo sapiens. This means the other 99.9% is the same. Despite however much media, intellectuals, and individuals might focus on differences between people, the genome is 99.9% the same.
But what if the 0.1% is so vital that it exerts an outsized influence on the rest of the genome? Well, first of all, at some level it doesn't matter. There is a reason the phrase "evolution by natural selection" is often used, instead of just using the term natural selection. It's because evolution and natural selection are not interchangeable. As stated before, evolution is a change in inherited traits in the population between generations. This includes four forces: selection, mutation, migration, and genetic drift.
Selection, as is known, tends to preserve traits that are more adapted to their environment. Mutation is the spontaneous origination of a new variation in the genome. Migration is individuals migrating to or out of a population. And genetic drift is random variation that happens between generations due to chance.
These mechanisms, taken together, determine the change of inherited traits between generations. However vital, natural selection is by far not the only means.
But-wait?! You were talking about populations, and not individuals. Why?
Well, it's because evolution makes the most sense at population level. You can't really examine the change of traits on an individual level. It's micro of the micro of the microevolution. Furthermore, at macro level (species to species evolution; speciation) it's populations that evolve, not individuals.
This is another key takeaway: in evolution, populations matter the most, not individuals.
Other than the 99.9% sameness in DNA, you can also see this in the genome structure. For the most part, we share the same number of chromosomes, structured in the same way, with genes interspersed at places that are mostly at the same part.
Supporting this, here are the current known numbers of genes in the genome, according to different sources. There is no evidence that the number of these genes differ significantly between individuals. Sure, the variations (alleles) of the exact content change very often. But not the existence of the genes themselves.
So, we not only share vast majority of the same DNA, but the way DNA and genes are structured is also almost exactly the same.
Let's summarize what I've said so far.
- Population level evolution matters the most in evolution.
- We share 99.9% of our DNA.
- We have almost the exact same genome structure.
- We have virtually the same genes (but not alleles).
Why have I said all this? Created this topic?
It's to counter the perspective that is so pervasive in culture, including intellectual spaces. The idea that not reproducing somehow makes you "unnatural", or "against laws of nature". There is, of course, already the ethical rebuttal against these claims: that natural doesn't mean good. However, what I've laid out here is also a different side of nature that is rarely talked about: in evolutionary terms, we are almost the same.
Following this logic, it can be seen that, even if you don't personally reproduce, contributing to the well-being of the population or the species means you are contributing to the inheritence of 99.9% of your DNA, its overall structure, and its gene structure. After all, your contributions make it so that other people can reproduce, and pass on these commonalities they share with you. You are not, in normative terms, "an evolutionary failure". It can even be argued that, at the current connected level of internationality where populations are quite dependent on each other, and exchange DNA with each other frequently, a global cooperative approach can even be considered the most succesful strategy.
As with most things in culture, when interpreting biology, the role of competition and dissimilarity is overemphasized, and the role of cooperation and similarity is overlooked, even when it runs counter to a lot of scientific findings. Funnily enough, Peter Kropotkin, who lived most of his life in the second part of the 19th century, realized this. Of course, he didn't have even remotely enough scientific evidence. But looking at nature, he had realized how much the role of cooperation was ignored, due to a fixation on competition. So, this is not a new problem, and my reasoning is not entirely new.
Further reading on this topic could be made by searching for "evolution cooperation" on the search engine of your choice, and on Google Scholar.
4 votes -
The asteroid-in-spring hypothesis - Two paleontologists have turned on each other, each claiming to have found new evidence about the worst day on Earth
8 votes -
The Marshmallow Test and other predictors of success have bias built in, researchers say
28 votes -
No, intelligence is not like height
31 votes -
New nanogenerators achieve 140-fold power density gain, could rival solar cells
17 votes -
Nuclear breakthrough (laser excitation of nuclei) could improve clocks/measurement and detect variance in currently-believed fundamental constants
23 votes -
Eight basic rules for causal inference
9 votes -
Are there any actual science shows still out there?
Science has always been a major interest of mine- I majored in a particular branch in college- though I've never pursued a science career. And very recently I saw a couple of movies about sharks...
Science has always been a major interest of mine- I majored in a particular branch in college- though I've never pursued a science career. And very recently I saw a couple of movies about sharks that got me more interested (Jaws and the Meg, if you're curious). I realize that movies are fictional and HEAVILY exaggerate any actual science... but I still find it cool. And because of those movies, I was reminded of Shark Week on Discovery.
Which lead to my next thought: I'm out of the US now, and last I knew, Discovery or even things like Nat Geo had become more Reality TV shows. This brought up the nostalgia of the old shows that actually used to be about science- think Mythbusters. Or to go waaaaaaay back, the original Bill Nye and Beakman's world. They were cool (or at least to a kid, they were freakin' cool).
Now my first thought was to check out anything on Youtube. But not only do I frequently see posts about "how to break away from Youtube", I also realize that the algorithm is completely busted, and overall I'm not sure I can even trust any science content on Youtube because it'll have biases to make money on the platform, more than likely (if I'm wrong about this, please feel free to correct me).
So... in terms of shows or other video content, what is out there to learn more about science and see cool shenanigans demonstrating science?
53 votes -
Scientists research man missing 90% of his brain who leads a normal life
27 votes -
Does anyone have experience working as an independent researcher?
Ive been working in engineering for a few years now. Ive gotten pretty good at my job, and Ive learned a lot. But it was never really my intention to work at a big corporation my whole life. When...
Ive been working in engineering for a few years now. Ive gotten pretty good at my job, and Ive learned a lot. But it was never really my intention to work at a big corporation my whole life.
When I was a kid, on TV there were all these scientists and researchers who just had money to do research somehow. They didnt go to an office or go to meetings, they just had funding somehow to go do science stuff. There was often a big lab built right into their home so they could just wake up and tinker around with stuff. That was the dream for me growing up.
I could always just keep working where I am now, but I cant really do the kind of research I want within the normal structured environment that big companies want me to work in. I want to work on a difficult problem that I would expect to take years of experimentation before I would even hope of making any big breakthroughs.
Im wondering if anyone here has ever done any kind of work as an independent researcher. Like, living off grant money or something like that. Ive been looking at SBIR/STTR grants as a possible first step, but that would only get me 3 years, and after that Id need to find a continued income source.
17 votes -
Scientists find humans age dramatically in two bursts – at 44, then 60
32 votes -
New antiviral HIV drug with 100% prevention efficiency in African women gets prolonged standing ovation at scientific conference
45 votes -
This innovative device allows South American paleontologists to share fossils with the world
11 votes -
How rediscovering Neanderthals primed us for the search for extraterrestrial life
3 votes -
The impact of auditors’ gender on the quality of financial reporting: a comparative study of auditors with accounting expertise
8 votes -
Engineers develop a recipe for zero-emissions fuel: soda cans (aluminium), seawater and caffeine
34 votes -
Maglev titanium heart now whirs inside the chest of a live patient
24 votes -
"Dark oxygen" production defies knowledge of the deep ocean, potentially upends standard model for discovering life on other planets
31 votes -
You don't descend from all your ancestors
21 votes -
Discovery of a new primitive microcontinent between Greenland and Canada could help scientists understand how microcontinents form
14 votes -
Stephen Hawking Archive made available to historians and researchers
17 votes -
The unexpected poetry of PhD acknowledgements
29 votes -
Maps distort how we see the world
23 votes -
Why don’t we know how antidepressants work yet?
30 votes -
Genomic prediction of IQ is modern snake oil
11 votes -
Denmark's Museum of Evolution displays a rare, 97% complete skeleton of a Camarasaurus Grandis, a sauropod discovered in Wyoming
12 votes -
How AI revolutionized protein science, but didn’t end it
16 votes -
This is the first animal ever found that doesn't need oxygen to survive
48 votes -
The misplaced incentives in academic publishing
21 votes -
Breakthrough in nuclear spectroscopy would lead to more accurate clocks
20 votes -
Paul Meehl’s philosophical psychology
5 votes -
Ozempic and Wegovy linked to rare blindness risk, study finds
27 votes -
High-altitude cave used by Tibetan Buddhists yields a Denisovan fossil
14 votes