Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Cathar]

Altruistic genes are needed to explain why creatures don't merely murder and eat their own children. We don't need to speculate about siblings and groups for why such genes would exist.

Also, the genes for "don't eat this, it's a relative" can't be too specifically encoded since what your children will look like isn't hard-coded either, so even a gene which only exists to stop parents instantly killing their children would have some spill-over effect into how you treat various other creatures. This explains the human propensity to taking pets, which clearly didn't "evolve". It's an emergent property, not a deliberately encoded thing.

As far as siblings go, however, remember that siblings share about 50% DNA. So, siblings are equally closely-related as your own children are, so caring about them makes as much genetic sense as caring about your own children does. I think we've internalized this idea that "parents love their children and wouldn't hurt them" as if that in itself doesn't need explanation, and we act like some big and entirely separate explanation is needed into why organisms aren't murderously callous to organisms which aren't their direct offspring. But, in fact, a genetic explanation is needed for why we even care for our own children in the first place, and also explains care of other relatives by extension.

Someone one day made me the argument that not only human beings have evolved a propensity to care about other animals, but some animals (dogs in particular) have evolved an aptitude to respond specifically to human voice. Tho this is not something I know for a fact so I'll just leave it out there.

I think genetics are plastic in general, and care about the "big picture" without too much reguard for outliers. It is very possible to say "human have evolved a propensity to care for their youngs" and "humans have a need for social connections and cooperation" even if you can meet a sociopathic mom who will take pleasure in beating her kids. The fact that a gene for care and cooperation will survive in the bodies of your siblinghoods, and will therefore spread even if you (as an individual) has to die for it is merely an explanation of how we can evolve a gene that is directly detrimental to our own individual reproductive success

Just in general, caring families  and coopearing tribes will fill up the genepool faster than unhealthy ones, and will lead to a progressive reinforcement of the trait.

I mean, I get the nihilistic point of view "we're all horrible animals deep down, and only society makes us behave", I believed that some years ago, but it flies in the face of every other social specy (from mokeys to wolves to ants) that we come accross. There has to be something hard coded in us that makes us value cooperation - that is what I meant to respond to

[ChairmanPoo]

Why are people feeding a escaped lunatic troll?

We should do like those islanders did on the would be missionary and eat him instead

[Cathar]

My siblihood being made of sociopathic outliers have eaten all the ramen, leaving me to starve, so I'm all for the idea

[Kagus]

Dogs, cats and the like have also been known to "adopt" babies from other, unrelated species. This is generally attributed to a combination of a strong maternal instinct (my aunt had a spinster cat who decided to adopt and care for a makeup brush due to ALL THE HORMONES and no access to chocolate) and some amount of the Cute Baby Hypothesis. Basically that certain configurations of physical traits are almost universally recognized as "cute" by child-rearing animals, and activates an instinctual urge to care for them.

Curiously, this doesn't really do much for several communal primate species, who still regularly engage in genocide and infanticide of offspring descended from other parents. Which leads to hilarious countermeasures like that one species I cannot remember the name of (and which Google is being incredibly unhelpful in finding), where a female will specifically mate with two different males and then make both of them take care of it because it might be theirs.

[Cathar]

(my aunt had a spinster cat who decided to adopt and care for a makeup brush due to ALL THE HORMONES and no access to chocolate)
[...]
Which leads to hilarious countermeasures like that one species I cannot remember the name of (and which Google is being incredibly unhelpful in finding), where a female will specifically mate with two different males and then make both of them take care of it because it might be theirs.

Stuff like that is why I love evolutionary theory so much. Also female penguins will do mating dances toward male penguins, to have them build their nests, and then mate with another male penguin once her nest is done. Ok penguins are assholes

Also

some amount of the Cute Baby Hypothesis. Basically that certain configurations of physical traits are almost universally recognized as "cute" by child-rearing animals, and activates an instinctual urge to care for them.

That's Neoteny ^^
and this is why manga characters have big ass eyes, huge heads and facial features gathered closely near the center of their faces. It triggers a "omg it's a baby, protection needed" instinctual response

[Tack]

Re: Factory farming.
The way I've always thought of it is that if we are going to eat animals we have a bunch of very good practical reasons to do it as ethically as possible- not for the animal's sake, but ours. As was seen above, chickens with sunlight lay much healthier eggs. The same goes for many other animals. Indolent cattle kept indoors don't yield good quality marbled steak, as that requires exercise. Likewise, any animal which dies in pain generally tastes awful. Adrenaline, or whatever other chemical cocktails are released, are super unpalatable. I honestly can't figure how wolves do it (or maybe that's why they eat the squishy bits and leave the musculature).

The bigger issues also regard sustainability. For one, the slowly closing window of our antibiotic cure-all means that we should SERIOUSLY think about banning the use of antibiotics in farms, which is also going to result in said farms needing to drastically improve the living conditions. There should only ever be as many herds as a land can handle, and a small but growing synergistic farming movement has yielded research that shows that many grasses rely on big herds of stompy poop machines just as the livestock rely on grass to feed them.

Which has its own interesting connotations. Forget ethics, let's talk entirely about sustainability- it is seriously amazing the amount of industrial nitrogen we have to put into the ground in order to produce the quantities of cropland we do. It's kind of astonishing, especially considering a primary component is natural gas, and a primary product is carbon dioxide. Not going to go into whataboutism, but boy the hands aren't exactly clean on our grain n' bean manufacturers.



I mean to talk about altruism and Darwinism and empathy and the purring of cats triggering certain neuroreceptors but ugh sleep,

[Cathar]

I mean to talk about altruism and Darwinism and empathy and the purring of cats triggering certain neuroreceptors but ugh sleep,

Breaking my heart into a million pieces. Only red meat can now cure my sadness

[Kagus]

Oh hey, y'know, I was reading about something related just a little while ago.

Aigamo duck/rice synergistic farming. It's a nifty approach that was primarily geared towards reducing pesticide and herbicide usage, but ended up having a bunch of other collateral effects like reducing fertilizer necessity (the ducks themselves only help a little here, but further synergy can be achieved by introducing duckweed into the mix) and actually stimulating growth/reducing maintenance needs. Not to mention improving farmer revenue/food availability with duck eggs and meat.

There's not quite as much documentation on it as I'd like, but it looks promising.

[scourge728]

Why do zoo staff let peacocks roam wild through the zoo

[Hanslanda]

Re: factory farms and emissions - My big stickler on this is that some 60% of farmland is used to make feed and the livestock thus produced doesn't fulfill a appropriate caloric amount in human diet to justify the use of all that land.

Thus we either need to make it more economical... Or eat much more meat!

[Reelya]

some amount of the Cute Baby Hypothesis. Basically that certain configurations of physical traits are almost universally recognized as "cute" by child-rearing animals, and activates an instinctual urge to care for them.

That's Neoteny ^^
and this is why manga characters have big ass eyes, huge heads and facial features gathered closely near the center of their faces. It triggers a "omg it's a baby, protection needed" instinctual response

That's not really what Neoteny means.

neoteny and progenesis cause the retention in adults of traits previously seen only in the young.

The term has nothing to do with how adults are primed to find child-looking things attractive. Sometimes the term "neotenous" is used to describe those sorts of characters who are drawn child-like, however neoteny itself is nothing to do with that.

[Khan Boyzitbig]

It rained sideways earlier, took a tree top off and deposited it in the road (didn't hit anyone) and there were large puddles all over. Glad I was in a car and not walking when the rain went horizontal.

[Cathar]

Whatever it is called, Barakamon plays with it and it is among the finest things in life

[dragdeler]

-snip-

[Reelya]

Man, the reddit /r/iamverysmart seems to have really devolved.

It seems like now it's just ragging on anyone who's vocabulary consists of any words over three syllables. I'm sure the quality of posts was higher before, but now it's just people who are very dumb thinking they are smart by attacking people who have a normal college-grad level vocabulary.

The irony can't just be apparent to me. /r/iamverysmart is for posting quotes/articles by/about smug smart-asses who assume they know better than others, but posting on /r/iamverysmart in itself is an act of smug smart-asses who assume they know better than the people they're posting about. Dunning and Kruger would have a field day with the sub.

for example, a /r/iamverysmart poster was taking the piss out of a "genius" boy who sat the highschool graduation exams at age nine, but failed the exams because he couldn't cope with the workload the school system gave him, so he was complaining that the system failed him. So the /r/iamverysmart people mock him by putting "genius" in quotes (e.g. ' "genius" boy fails exams'). fucking assholes, calling him a fake genius because he couldn't handle the university entrance exams at age nine.

This is the current level of /r/iamverysmart, basically beating down of anyone who displays any actual intelligence. For example, if you're in a debate and you have a degree in physics, and you reply and mention "btw I do have a degree in physics so this is sort of my thing" then they'd put you on /r/iamverysmart to be mocked for the "clearly" false claim of having a degree, you smart-ass loser.