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New human-like species discovered

bbc.co.uk

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Re: New human-like species discovered

#191

Post by twright0 »

jister wrote: post #190

I don't understand why they spend that much money finding out what had happened in the past or where we came from. Why not spend those money finding ways to save our future? Maybe a technology that converts those smoke coming out from factories to oxygen instantly or something that will clean the water or fix the ozone maybe? We need all the help we can get.

Do you work on "a technology that converts those smoke coming out from factories to oxygen instantly or something that will clean the water or fix the ozone"? If not, why not? I find that I can often understand why others make the decisions they do by comparing my own motivations for similar decisions.

Re: New human-like species discovered

#192

Post by [deleted] »

jister wrote: post #190

I don't understand why they spend that much money finding out what had happened in the past or where we came from. Why not spend those money finding ways to save our future? Maybe a technology that converts those smoke coming out from factories to oxygen instantly or something that will clean the water or fix the ozone maybe? We need all the help we can get.

[deleted]

Re: New human-like species discovered

#193

Post by biot »

erroneousfunk wrote: post #187
biot wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In modern speech, the opposite of "girls" is "guys". Think "girls night out" vs. "guys night out". I have female friends approaching their fifties who refer to themselves and their female friends as "the girls". Perhaps this is a regional thing, where saying "women" sounds old-fashioned and stodgy.

Right, and I have "girls' night out" with my friends and occasionally address them as "hey girl!", but god help the new co-worker who comes up to me and says "you're a girl software engineer!" Honestly, I can't believe you'd think that would be remotely appropriate in this context (or that I'd even have to have this discussion on Hacker News at all, or that ainiriand would feel a sense of "pride" as a male -- yeah, I…

I'm not saying it's appropriate; just offering a possible explanation for the use of the word. Personally, I'd just go with "female" or simply saying "she's a software engineer" gets the point across well without having to delve into sex vs. gender identity etc.

Re: New human-like species discovered

#194

Post by samfoo »

scrollaway wrote: post #145
samfoo wrote: post #23

Awesome to see the Rising Star Expedition on HN! I was working in Johannesburg while the expedition was active and my partner managed, through a serious of very fortunate events to become a caver on the expedition. Here she is carrying up some of the first bones they extracted - https://i.imgur.com/IfT4PQz.jpg . For those of you interested, the expedition was sponsored by National Geographic, and there was/is a fairl…

Is this a correct mirror for the video? The player on natgeo is not even sort of working here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_r3UnkjcL0

That's the one!

Re: New human-like species discovered

#195

Post by yawaramin »

scarmig wrote: post #150
kissickas wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A species cannot be clearly defined until you try to mate it with something else and it fails to produce a viable offspring, as far as I'm aware. No DNA analysis is indisputable with what we currently know.

There are multiple definitions of species, and we choose whichever abstraction is most useful for a given approach. The concept of species exists purely as a human, scientific abstraction: evolution/biology doesn't give us absolute categories that you can unambiguously put any organism into.

Isn't the ability to produce fertile offspring a de facto proof that two organisms are of the same species?

Re: New human-like species discovered

#196

Post by IndianAstronaut »

jister wrote: post #190

I don't understand why they spend that much money finding out what had happened in the past or where we came from. Why not spend those money finding ways to save our future? Maybe a technology that converts those smoke coming out from factories to oxygen instantly or something that will clean the water or fix the ozone maybe? We need all the help we can get.

It's probably not that much money. I hear the same complaints that we spend too much on NASA when we should fix the problems at home. Nevermind that it gets only half a percent of the federal budget.

Re: New human-like species discovered

#197

Post by scarmig »

yawaramin wrote: post #195
scarmig wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are multiple definitions of species, and we choose whichever abstraction is most useful for a given approach. The concept of species exists purely as a human, scientific abstraction: evolution/biology doesn't give us absolute categories that you can unambiguously put any organism into.

Isn't the ability to produce fertile offspring a de facto proof that two organisms are of the same species?

Depends on the context, but generally nope. Consider the example of "ring species"--A can breed with B, B with C, .., Y with Z, and Z with A. However, A can't interbreed with M. What's the species?

That's a somewhat rare version of a general pattern where that abstraction is leaky. Much more common is a temporal version of that. A might beget A1 and B, with A1 begetting A2 and B begetting C, continuing all the way down. And though A can interbreed with A1 and B, and B with C, etc, Z can't interbreed with A25. That's speciation, which happens all the time. The only thing that makes it a clear species is defining the concept species while abandoning time invariance.

Re: New human-like species discovered

#198

Post by yawaramin »

SEJeff wrote: post #179
beambot wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Peer reviewed results are hard to be sceptical about. With rampant forging of data and results, you better be skeptical of peer-reviewed results too. Reproducibility is an important, oft-overlooked, and under-appreciated part of science.

And when I say peer review, perhaps I meant to say peer reproduced (which wasn't super obvious in the initial comment).

Good point; after all, how can a review be serious if the reviewer(s) don't even try to reproduce the results?

Re: New human-like species discovered

#199

Post by kibibu »

yawaramin wrote: post #198
SEJeff wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when I say peer review, perhaps I meant to say peer reproduced (which wasn't super obvious in the initial comment).

Good point; after all, how can a review be serious if the reviewer(s) don't even try to reproduce the results?

A peer review can identify a very large class of problems with research without actually replicating the experiment.

For example, problems with methodology and sampling, overlooked prior research, bad analysis of results, straight-up non-sequiturs and conclusions drawn from insufficient data.

All of these mean peer review is valuable without reproducing results.

For an extreme example: if somebody publishes a "Cheese found on moon" paper, do you expect the reviewer to mount an expedition to the moon to check?

Re: New human-like species discovered

#200

Post by erroneousfunk »

biot wrote: post #193
erroneousfunk wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and I have "girls' night out" with my friends and occasionally address them as "hey girl!", but god help the new co-worker who comes up to me and says "you're a girl software engineer!" Honestly, I can't believe you'd think that would be remotely appropriate in this context (or that I'd even have to have this discussion on Hacker News at all, or that ainiriand would feel a sense of "pride" as a male -- yeah, I…

I'm not saying it's appropriate; just offering a possible explanation for the use of the word. Personally, I'd just go with "female" or simply saying "she's a software engineer" gets the point across well without having to delve into sex vs. gender identity etc.

You certainly seemed ready to defend lev_k. Someone makes a ridiculous comment like "Maybe 'scientists who are girls' would be more befitting?" (I thought that was hilarious until I realized they weren't joking) mcv calls him out, and then you jump in and explain why "girls" is okay to use here?

Again, it's not. It's really really not. Outside of pop song lyrics and college parties "girl" is not the opposite of "guy." And if you don't understand the connotations/subtle unspoken irony when a middle aged woman says "she's going out with The Girls" (and, yeah, my white-haired grandmother still says this -- she's less serious and more vocal about the phrase every year) you probably shouldn't be using the word at all when you're referring to anyone over the age of 12.

So, okay, great, you said you wouldn't actually use it. But why were you defending it, or... trying to come up with an explanation and using your 50 year old female friend as a rationalization? I don't get it.

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