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[Squirrelloid]

E.O. Wilson was horribly, brutally excoriated for suggesting those kinds of things. People accused him of giving fodder to eugenicists. In truth he had no idea his suggestions would spark such a debacle. He was merely reporting on findings he had found doing relatively isolated research.

He also suggested that in some ways humanity can be called a superorganism, if I remember right.

And E.O. Wilson was right (At least in thrust, I can't recall all the specifics of his work).  Just because the truth is unpalatable to a vocal portion of the population doesn't make it wrong.

[MuonDecay]

Oh I agree with him too, overall... but in the social sciences before then it was an unwritten rule that everyone who wanted to get along with others would agree that humans are the product of their environment and little more.

To this day, suggesting significant genetic determinance of human behavior is violently opposed by a lot of people in the scientific community, some for ethical reasons and others out of (potentially biased) skepticism.

[LegoLord]

Political affiliation isn't inherited.  It's taught.  Genetics have nothing to do with your political preference.  My mom and dad were both republican, even though my mom was not officially either, but me and my brother are politically neutral, and for quite a long time now my mom has been politically neutral; she gave up on party affiliation.

And yeah, modern technology has almost completely eliminated variation -> differential survival.  Even in less developed areas, survival is more chance of situation rather than chance of genetics.

[Armok]

Science!

QF(mostly)T

I'd probably say it's about 40% genetics, 40% environment, and 20% randomness/"free will choices". But my numbers are really aspulled.

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

Asian foot binding, South American skull shaping, Aryian breeding programs, African fat-camps, liposuction, breast augmentation, Hair dye, corsets, animism/furries, transgender operations... all examples of attempts to significantly change the human body.

They all still look like humans though, don't they?

We're only a  few million years old as a species, and in that time we've gone from being monkeys who lurched around on their hind legs to being us.
We're not a very old species at all, especially compared to, say, sharks.
Idiots still die sooner than clever people, and people with no arms and legs are less likely to breed than someone with all their legs.

[LegoLord]

Asian foot binding, South American skull shaping, Aryian breeding programs, African fat-camps, liposuction, breast augmentation, Hair dye, corsets, animism/furries, transgender operations... all examples of attempts to significantly change the human body.

They all still look like humans though, don't they?

We're only a  few million years old as a species, and in that time we've gone from being monkeys who lurched around on their hind legs to being us.
We're not a very old species at all, especially compared to, say, sharks.
Idiots still die sooner than clever people, and people with no arms and legs are less likely to breed than someone with all their legs.

Prosthetics.  And it's not how soon the idiot dies; it's whether or not the idiot reproduced before it died, which happens quite often.  They may not reproduce as much, but they often do.  And these monkeys you mention are not human.  They are pre-human.  You don't get humans until you have the ability to stand up more or less straight, use tools, and have sufficiently reduced body hair.  Neanderthals and Cromagnon (horrible spelling) were not different species than us; they were different sub-species, but still the same species.

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

Asian foot binding, South American skull shaping, Aryian breeding programs, African fat-camps, liposuction, breast augmentation, Hair dye, corsets, animism/furries, transgender operations... all examples of attempts to significantly change the human body.

They all still look like humans though, don't they?

We're only a  few million years old as a species, and in that time we've gone from being monkeys who lurched around on their hind legs to being us.
We're not a very old species at all, especially compared to, say, sharks.
Idiots still die sooner than clever people, and people with no arms and legs are less likely to breed than someone with all their legs.

Prosthetics.  And it's not how soon the idiot dies; it's whether or not the idiot reproduced before it died, which happens quite often.  They may not reproduce as much, but they often do.  And these monkeys you mention are not human.  They are pre-human.  You don't get humans until you have the ability to stand up more or less straight, use tools, and have sufficiently reduced body hair.  Neanderthals and Cromagnon (horrible spelling) were not different species than us; they were different sub-species, but still the same species.

And the neanderthals and Cromagnons weren't very long ago at all in evolutionary terms.
Most of the animals we see today aren't all that different to the ones that Ug the caveman would have battered senseless/been battered senseless by. Just less fuzzy.

[LegoLord]

That's not quite correct.  While many of today's creatures existed in the ice age, several ice age creatures have gone extinct and are non-existent.  Humans have had mere changes in sub-species while other creatures continued to adapt to changing conditions.

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

That's not quite correct.  While many of today's creatures existed in the ice age, several ice age creatures have gone extinct and are non-existent.  Humans have had mere changes in sub-species while other creatures continued to adapt to changing conditions.

That's mostly because we nicked all the fuzzy creatures nice fuzzy coats.
Which kind of helped them along the way to being dead.
Fun fact: There really was such a thing as a Dire Wolf. It was a big, fuzzy wolf. A very big wolf.

[LegoLord]

Humans weren't populous enough at the time to actually extinct a species.  It was change in climate that killed most ice age creatures.

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

Humans weren't populous enough at the time to actually extinct a species.  It was change in climate that killed most ice age creatures.

I know.
What I was saying was that we helped the big fluffy dummies on to the best of our ability.
Anyway, I think we've gone a long, long way off-topic, so I sacrifice this argument in favour of gigantic mushrooms!

[ein Syndication]

I'm no scientist, certainly not a fungi-specialist, but fungi don't consume as much nutrients as photosynthesising plants do, right? Include the fact that they're living deep underground, surrounded by a wealth of minerals (for nutrients, not money ) and they should be able to live for a very long time.

On a totally stupid note: Perhaps long enough to become sentient, cover the globe and... something... We'd all be dead in this hypothetical scenario, right? So it wouldn't be terrorizing us... What's a planet-sized sentient fungus to do?

Well, it waits for humans to come back, then it sends humanoid versions of itself to talk to them. Then the humans learn how to use the thought waves of it to power mechs and airships, and um... yea. Cookie time for reference. As soon as I saw that post I had to say something

If I was a giant living fungus, I would totally wrap the planet just to do it. And just in case something neat or crazy happened, have room for other things inside of me.

Just have to hope Limit of Life is a lie ...

[Mel_Vixen]

Since the this thread was originally about shrooms and fungy i like to present you glowing shrooms.



The words are geman for "Glowing mushroom << Panellus Stipticus >>" The little boxes on the pictures are labeled "at day" and "at night".

[Squirrelloid]

Political affiliation isn't inherited.  It's taught.  Genetics have nothing to do with your political preference.  My mom and dad were both republican, even though my mom was not officially either, but me and my brother are politically neutral, and for quite a long time now my mom has been politically neutral; she gave up on party affiliation.

First, this is not evidence against the heritability of political affiliation.  Heritability is a technical term, it basically means plot parents against offspring for a particular trait and look for covariance.  The heritability of height is between .6 and .7.  The heritability of political party is over .8.

Note that this is a comment not about a given instance (just like tall people *can* have short parents, but on average they don't), but about population trends.

Further, your anecdote actually aligns with a high heritability - from your description, you seem to closely match your mom's political party decisions (tendency towards neutrality).

And yeah, modern technology has almost completely eliminated variation -> differential survival.  Even in less developed areas, survival is more chance of situation rather than chance of genetics.

Assuming
(1) your description is true.
(2) situation does not covary with genetics.

Given that genetics and 'situation' certainly do covary, that is, certain populations are more likely to live in safer neighborhoods, or have more money, or go to college, then we can safely say 2 is wrong.  Further, survival is not the ultimate measure of fitness, its number of children - and that certainly varies by population.

Since populations have different genetic compositions, this means that gene frequencies are changing across generations (because those populations that have more children contribute more to the gene pool of the next generation), and that is evolution *by definition*.  It doesn't matter if the genes cause the differences that are being selected for - the population's gene pool is still responding to the selective pressures so imposed.  And since some populations are more successful, that even means that they are better adapted to modern conditions than other populations, and evolution will drive the population towards that ideal.

Humans weren't populous enough at the time to actually extinct a species.  It was change in climate that killed most ice age creatures.

Wrong.  There is rather good evidence that humans are directly responsible for a mass extinction of mammalian megafauna in north america that pretty much coincided with the arrival of humans to the continent.  I'd recommend reading papers by Alroy on the subject.

[numerobis]

Last I read about the American megafauna case, it wasn't perfect yet.  Alroy's work was simulations that showed that humans *might* have done it -- but there were objections that I've forgotten because it's been so long since I checked.  Do you have references more recent than 2007?