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Just a thought. If you're interested in things like this, you might want to read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins which is a seminal work of evolutionary psychology. Things like mate selection are addressed at length.
Another book from an evolutionary biologist's perspective, The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.
I think this question has so many different angles (from Fermi's paradox to the specific chemistry involved) and I think it's safe to say that no one has a fully satisfying answer for how inevitable self-replicating life is.
A virus is a package of RNA. RNA is made of amino acids. Amino acids are made of chemicals. Chemical combinations that are stable stick around. Those that are unstable disappear. Amino acids that are stable stick around. Those that don’t, disappear. Combinations of amino acids that are stable stick around. Those that aren’t… Once amino acids start combining they start potentially creating other proteins, quite by accident/chance. If that activity makes them more stable or more protected then that combination of amino acids sticks around while other combinations disappear. With each step the combinations and the potential activity and byproduct become more complex. Maybe a set of amino acids creates a proteins that makes a cell capsule that protects the amino acid chain and so forth.
All the answers are here: https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Popular-Science/dp/0192860925#
Don't misunderstand, I don't care what side of the fence you are on this. Whether he's a nazi or a commie, or whatever makes no difference to me, I've seen some of his stuff and while it is iffy, it's not enough to make a judgement, nor do I really care to do so.
I'm just rebutting your claim that it doesn't matter; it absolutely matters where imagery and and forms, (even formats) come from, you can't divorce them from the context and intention imbued into them, whether or not you can transform a piece of culture to the extent that it bares no resemblance to the original work is a separate matter all together; you should know what you're consuming.
Btw, when I was talking about memes, I wasn't talking about mgr, I was talking about this book by Richard Dawkins which was required reading for my bioethics class in uni, it's a good book.
The concept of the meme has been hijacked by idiots. https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Popular-Science/dp/0192860925?dplnkId=29cc3317-7609-4430-be82-ce23acc86c9b
I'm sure there is a socialogical reason that is in large part driven by the cultural norms of the patriarchy. If you're looking for a biological answer, then you might read about evolutionary psychology. Check out "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Selfish-Gene-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0192860925
There you go, you're also free to go to google scholar or any site that aggregates papers and search for specific papers on the subject as there's plenty of those too.
And sure, animals live in groups, groups that fight each other out of selfishness and in those groups there is often a dominance hierarchy which is also requires selfishness to be at the top. Altruism is rewarded too but that's simply not relevant, any selfishness at all and communism falls apart which is the ultimate point of this comment thread.
To answer your question: I attended Canadian schools. I was a very good student, especially in the sciences, and my school taught the accepted state of knowledge in science, including biology and evolution. This was back in the 1970's. Creationism didn't become a hot item until about 2000 or so, when Christians realized that the Theory of Evolution was costing them credibility.
So I was what Christians today would call "an evolutionist" but what I would simply call "well educated, especially in science." I remained fearfully agnostic for much of my life until a few years ago I came across Dawkins' The Selfish Gene. Something went "click" in my mind when I realized that the ToE and TSG together smoothly explained everything about the origins of life and some of the interesting complexities of humanity. That was essentially my turning point to atheism.
>"rewarded"… what advantage is there to "your" genes (that you share with 60% of the population or more" staying in the pool after your death?
Huh? The goals and desires of the individual are separate from the goals of the selfish gene. Sometimes the desires of the individual are actually in opposition with the evolutionary/darwinian goals of the genes.
https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Popular-Science/dp/0192860925
By definition of marriage the man is committing both legally and financially to the woman. The is no harm done to the woman if the man sleeps with other women. The biological and psychological needs of men and women are asymmetric. This has been known for decades.
If a man cheats on a woman and is caught, he will reassure the woman that it was only sex. This works because what a woman really fears and what triggers her jealousy is if the man falls in the love with the woman. This is an evolutionary adaptation because if the man falls in love with another woman, he may leave his wife for her and that takes away the provisioning and protection of the man. Emotions are based on evolutionary needs.
In contrast, the statement it was only sex does not reassure the man if the woman cheats because he's biological concern is that the offspring she bears are his. He's not seeking provisions and protection from her. It's asymmetric, like it or not. And why the hell would we even have two sexes if not for asymmetry?
For the evidence for this, read the following books. They well document the asymmetric needs and jealousy of the sexes.
These books go into detail siting all the scientific evidence that men and women have different emotional needs and triggers for jealousy and what the evolutionary reasons for those differences are.
As for your baseless assertion that most men are cheating, well that's obviously false. Most men in today's sexual market don't have the option of getting sex, nonetheless cheating as a husband. Most marriages do not break up because of cheating.
The bottom line is that men are more committed and there are deep evolutionary reasons as to why. If you can't accept this because you feel it makes women looks bad, well, that does not change the reality of the situation.
> It'll help balance out the attention-gender relationship
Nothing will balance that, ever, because it's biological. In terms of evolutionary psychology, the cost of mating is vastly higher for females. Men donate sperm, women donate 9 months of eating for two, being incapacitated for months, potentially dying while giving birth, and potentially years of caring for a child. Men want to fuck pretty much everything all the time, because it's pure win, biologically, to seed as many women as possible.
> Read Dawkins
The article got something right at least. I recommend The Selfish Gene and The Greatest Show On Earth.
Here, read a book:
Richard Dawkins is a pretty vanilla post-doctoral famous genius, but the book is fantastic.
https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Popular-Science/dp/0192860925
It sounds like you might enjoy The Selfish Gene
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Hi there, this comment is overdue but severely needed, my apologies for the delay my stat mech exams interrupted my happy redditing. This post replies more in depth than my previous one which admittedly was too short to reply fully to the others.
The Mediterranean diet
In response to the third message “It’s the Mayo Clinic, bud, the Mayo Clinic” regarding the health aspects of the traditional Mediterraean diet being a plant based diet, we can look at the link provided and see that this it is clearly not a plant based diet. According to the presented pyramid therein, assuming that it is accurate, we see that the Mediterranean traditional diet consists of 4 parts animal products and 6 parts plant products. To designate this as “plant based” is like saying the United States is a liberal nation. It completely disregards basically half the thing. Actual plant based diets such as vegetarian, vegan and traditional Okinawan diets consist of upwards of 90% plants. Incidentally all of this does support the original point I was trying to voice, namely that the more plants people eat, the healthier they get. Since the Mediterranean diet contains more plants than the Standard American Diet, and it has an equivalent (and probably slightly better) healthcare system, the expected result would be high life expectancies. It just doesn't go far not enough to get more than Andorran level life expectancies.
"Acclimatized phenotypes", Inuit & Maasaai
The main argument mentioned against the plant based position involves the claim that two major metabolic phenotypes exist due to acclimatization to hot and cold climates, neatly summarized as "monkeys don't eat salmon and Inuits don't eat bananas". Despite the 'catchiness' of that phrase, it turns out to be wrong. Orang-utans for example do eat fish. They are known to furnish spears and hunt for all kinds of fish in the Borneo rainforests (what is left of them anyway). And while the Inuit may not traditionally eat bananas this does not mean that they wouldn't if they could. And that if they did it wouldn't mean a measurable improvement of their health. Banana's just happen to be very expensive to bring all the way to some remote village by motor sled. So getting such an addition to the diet is just difficult not necessarily useless or genetically harmful. The idea that Inuit are fine regardless of their intake of animal products is seriously questionable. The same goes for the Maasaai.
Furthermore if the acclimatization hypothesis purported by hastasiempre is correct we can cure all cardiovascular disease, diet related cancers, Alzheimer's disease and a great number more, simply by changing the thermostat.
In addition to these two points the story presented in the three posts above is inconsistent. The Chinese traditional diet is included in the “heat acclimated phenotype” which is especially odd since Beijing regularly looks like this. China does contain some extreme regions like Hainan Island and the disputed islands in the South China Sea which are tropical but the region where the vast majority of the population lives is as temperate as Northern Europe. The climate of the northern part of the Yellow River valley is comparable with the climates of southern parts of Sweden, Poland and Lithuania, albeit with higher concentrations of rainfall in the summer. And Southern China mostly has a temperate climate equal to the climate of Serbia or the Russian Black Sea shores.
Finally, and this is why I referenced to Dawkins earlier, even if a careful rational evaluation of the available were to indicate differences in cholesterol and animal protein adaptation this would not occur due to acclimatization but due to evolutionary change in the genome. Acclimatization is not a way to get major changes in the body such as the ones in question here. This is because acclimatization, as far as it is long term and goes beyond mere direct physiological reactions like shivering, relies on changes in gene expression (activation). You can't express genes for eating additional cholesterol from ones diet if those genes do not exist. Consequently the evolutionary history of an organism is vastly more important than the acclimatization of it to its surroundings during its life time (this is one of the cornerstones of Darwinism and one of the main reasons why Lamarckism was eventually discarded).
Though I do go into a bit more detail below the general gist of this essay can be summarized by this source which also provides ample references to the medical literature.
5 out of 7 figure
>you are right that the prevalent traditional diets are plant-based, maybe around 5 out of the 7 Bil people eat diets which are mainly carbs
While it is nice to hear someone say “you are right”, in this case I’d rather you didn’t because the 5 out of 7 figure you are giving is, as far as I can tell, not true. The figure (which I have been unable to find in any literature so far, which adds to my doubts about it) I must assume refers to plant vs animal based diets. In populations where over the course of evolutionary history (the last 2 million years in very broad terms, the last 100,000 years in general terms after the migration out of Africa and the last 10,000 years in particular since the invention of agriculture and animal husbandry) animal products have outweighed plant based ones adaptation to meat eating for example could have occurred. Based on the current pastoralist population of the planet however, see this rough estimate I made, pastoral societies form approximately 2% of the world’s population. And this tally includes groups such as the Fula of western Africa of which only a third is pastoral, therefore likely overestimating the total pastoral population. In this small pastoral population it may very well be that genetic mutations have occurred that would allow its members to consume any level of animal based products without negative consequences. The Maasaai could be such a group, although the Inuit are not. However, more importantly most of the world's population does not belong to this category. Consequently there is no way to get a animal product adapted phenotype in the human species based on our evolutionary history (genetic engineering would be a whole different case of course, but so far people balk at such practices because they consider them unethical).
This estimate is probably to high even as most of the pastoral population does not belong to the adaptation capable group and the Maasaai are probably more exception than rule here. For example the Fula and the Inuit are not capable of regulating the LDL and HDL cholesterol levels to optimum ranges regardless of intake as the Maasaai are. Because of this they either suffer similar levels of cardiovascular dissease (Inuit) or have to resort to energy intake restriction and high levels of activity (Maasaai). The fact that some pastoralists do not have this adaptation is explained by this general reference, the fact that pastoralist societies are often cut of from one another by agricultural societies, and finally the fact that mutations such as those didn’t tend to spread through agricultural societies because they exact energy costs on populations that don’t use them. This of course does mean that Maasaai genes do have an evolutionary advantage in modern day North America but there is clearly not enough genetic transfer nor generational overturn for the mutation to spread through the North American population at this time. A little later on in the longer post the Tuoli people are also mentioned as having a similar condition as the Maasaai, literally the first hit on google however states that the evidence on them should be taken with “a whoppin’ huge grain of salt” and that it should not be used for quoting to the benefit of meat nor citing it as evidence, because the Tuoli were feasting the day the researchers of the China Study came. Thus they seemed to consume a lot of meat yet they had the health of plant eaters (which they really were the rest of the year).
Conclusion
>there is NO single HEALTHY diet
Yes there is, a plant based one, that is at least 90% or ideally more, of energy intake from a wide variety of non-toxic plants, while ensuring either via micro intake of animal products or supplements that B12 and Omega-3 intake stays sufficient. Ample evidence in favour of this assertion has been posted in this thread for anyone to verify this statement, but also here, here, here and here.
Cheerio, :) !
> If a culture values bad traits then its safe to say the people of that culture might just not be good people.
Exactly, if you have a culture that glorifies greed, the people will be greedy, if you have one that glorifies violence, they will be violent, ect.
>but do people not have free will over their actions and beliefs? Do people not have brains to think of problems logically?
Not as much as you might think. Most of your thoughts occur on the unconscious level, which is to say that they affect the way you feel and act, but you are not aware of them. The driving force behind your actions and beliefs is not the conscious consideration of whether or not those things are logical, it is unconscious recall of the schema that you have formed through a lifetime of experiences and learned information. The media you consume, the beliefs of your friends and relatives, and the myths you're told (not necessarily negative, the "self-made man myth" is basically a moral parable for modern America) all go into shaping these schema, which have a much more profound effect on your day-to-day thoughts and feelings than your conscious, logical processes. The shape of those schema is largely determined by the culture you live in, and the place you occupy in it.
>What I'm saying is that the culture is created by the people, so the people are just products of themselves. So is this to suggest that people are generally ignorant and selfish?
People are generally ignorant. You dispel ignorance through education, and that takes time and effort. Most people never bother to educate themselves out of ignorance, because beyond securing an income it's not essential to their survival.
Culture is created through the collective actions of people over huge expanses of time. Each generation alters the culture of the generation that came before it in an attempt to bring it more in line with the new values and ideas that set them apart from their parents. Culture is a massive, cumulative effort with a few relatively unchanged ideas running throughout that create a sense of cultural continuity. The Bill of Rights and the Constitution of the US are good examples. Additions have been made and removed, and though the documents themselves remain largely unchanged, our interpretations of the documents are wildly different than those of people who wrote them.
>How many people act as if they care just to "look good" rather than actually being good?
If by "actually good" you mean pure altruism, there are plenty of philosophers and scientists who would tell you that it doesn't exist. Richard Dawkins wrote a book about it, The Selfish Gene. As an example lets say a man jumps in front of a train to save another man who has fallen onto the tracks. Though it seems like pure altruism, risking his life to save a stranger, the man who is jumping onto the tracks does get something out of it. It's possible that the knowledge that he would feel guilty for the rest of his life if he didn't pull the man off the tracks was so frightening that it made his actions worth the risk. To be sure he thought "I can't let that man die, I have to help." but the payoff he received from saving him was freedom from a life of guilt and regret. Another possibility is that he subconsciously knew that watching that other man get turned into paste would be so traumatic for him that he had to do something to prevent it from happening. It could combination of the two. Those are examples of subconscious thoughts that happened so quickly that he wouldn't have noticed them, and were so powerful that they made him jump in front of a train. You could view his desire to do the right thing as his rationalization of his actions, not their source.
So we can't base our standard of what makes a person good on the idea that they should be selfless. It might be better to think about how they improve the lives of those around them, and to what degree their actions make the world a better place, instead of concerning ourselves with the satisfaction they get from their actions.
I discovered The Selfish Gene as a child via an excerpt in <em>The Mind's I</em>, and I went out and bought a used copy. I just wanted to say thanks for introducing me to biology and philosophy -- you changed my life.
>I am at how seriously you take a throwaway comment on a message board. :-)
I'm thoroughly enjoying this. I couldn't care less about whats said on the interweb. I'm 2000 miles away from Family on mothers day and this is keeping me entertained on a cold day.
>I say there is no official definition for a meme and you cite wikipedia of all places. Brilliant.
Whats wrong with wikipedia? Is it too hard for you to click on the citations? I don't have an online copy of The Selfish Gene, so I linked to a cited article about it. Would you rather I linked to a random page that didn't list sources? Here. Or here. Or here. Just because it's on wikipedia doesn't mean it's wrong.
>Your comment makes no sense.
I fail to see how being insulted on the internet matters at all. Your argument for r/firstworldproblems was that it involves things that aren't actual problems. Please tell me how being insulted online is an actual problem. If it's not, you're doing the same thing OP did, complain about something that is insignificant.
>Nice straw-man. I never said anything about commenting, I'm referring to taking such offence at a throw-away comment.
Where did I say I was offended?
>Also; please let me know: What is the difference between "looking" and "being" an idiot, save for a minor technicality.
In one, you are an idiot. In the other, you're not, but you did something idiotic. If your only comment in a thread is something idiotic, people have no way of knowing whether you are or are not an idiot. They can only judge based on that single comment. My comment gave you the benefit of the doubt by assuming you were smart, but just made an idiotic statement.
If understanding the difference between two similar, yet distinct concepts is pedantic, then guilty as charged.
I like how you try to belittle me based on the length of our conversation here. I suppose I should point out you've commented as often and consistently as I have.
That is not the case.
When I am hungry, I eat; when I am done eating, I shit. These instincts are believable, and can be safely assumed. However, it is also the case that I can resist the urge to eat for a long while, to the point of death. While I'm not suggesting that treating people equally is anything like facing death, it does seem quite plausible that we are, by nature, selfish. However, we are also, by nature, social. It is our best interest to obey both of these instincts to a degree, but it is also in our interest to resist these urges at times, which we certainly do. Our society and all of the technological achievements which we have achieved and now enjoy all stem from the overcoming of our instincts, and this is the view which seems most legitimate to me.
Richard Dawkins wrote an excellent book on the subject, titled The Selfish Gene.
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