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Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

sydney.edu.au

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Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#231

Post by zimpenfish »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #227
ip26 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess "fundamental" to me spoke of more horse vs donkey differences, not palomino vs dapple vs grey.

I think, and now biology is not at all my field, but I think the difference between human "races" is greater than just exterior colouring. See for example the Sickle-cell disease situation. That's maybe like horse breeds; this seems a good overview of health differences by breed, https://thehorse.com/111370/genetic-disorders-breed-by-breed... . Human races are certainly more than just skin colour, if your race can af…

> I think the difference between human "races" is greater than just exterior colouring

No.

http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/science-genetics-resh...

> Thus, there is no evidence that the groups we commonly call “races” have distinct, unifying genetic identities.

> Ultimately, there is so much ambiguity between the races, and so much variation within them, that two people of European descent may be more genetically similar to an Asian person than they are to each other

> In the biological and social sciences, the consensus is clear: race is a social construct, not a biological attribute

etc.etc.etc.

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#232

Post by dontbenebby »

mikelevins wrote: post #230
stallmanite wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re not alone. I never tortured any insects or animals as a child and it weirds me the fuck out that that is apparently considered normal behavior. I haven’t seen signs of this in my own kids but then again I’ve taught them explicitly that harming sentient beings is wrong.

I think it's possible that we might be the weird ones. In the environment that our distant ancestors inhabited, squeamishness about harming animals might have been a significant disadvantage. Or maybe not. Joseph Campbell claimed that a common feature of tribal mythology is ceremonial apologies and restitutions to animal spirits to make restitution for the need to kill them.

I think it all depends on the adults in your life. Maybe if we'd had a leader who said don't do that instead of "well they can't feel pain and they're pests" things would have gone differently.

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#233

Post by toasterlovin »

rv-de wrote: post #153
toasterlovin wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's totally realistic to assume that a human will have to suffer psychologically even decades later from a psychological scarring caused by such surgery without anesthesia. That’s what OP said, emphasis mine. I agree with you: that infants experience pain in the same way as adults should be the default hypothesis. That they remain psychologically scarred by it for decades, however, should not be.

Why not? The obvious difference is that an adults nervous system is developed while an infant's is still developing. "Early life stress may have a lasting impact on the developmental programming of the dopamine (DA) system implicated in psychosis." [1] I highly recommend Gabor Maté's book "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts" for a deeper discussion of how various types of pre- and postnatal stress impact a person's procli…

The link you provide A) has a very low N (24, half of which are controls) and B) does not account for genetic confounding. Am I missing something?

Also, there is essentially zero evidence for hereditary epigenetic mechanisms. Epigenetic changes are common in the somatic cell lineages (which make up the entire organism except for the sperm and eggs), but there are very few plausible mechanisms by which epigenetic changes in somatic cells can somehow make their way back to the germ line cells (eggs and sperm) and, thus, exert an influence on subsequent generations. On top of the theoretical underpinnings being essentially implausible, there is no good evidence that hereditary epigenetic mechanisms exist. The only evidence I am aware of in humans are the children of Dutch women who went through a famine in 1944. However, that evidence has since evaporated. Here's a quote from the Wikipedia[0]:

"Moreover, the children of the women who were pregnant during the famine were smaller, as expected. However, surprisingly, when these children grew up and had children those children were thought to also be smaller than average.[11] This data suggested that the famine experienced by the mothers caused some kind of epigenetic changes that were passed down to the next generation. Despite this, a subsequent study by the same author failed to find a correlation between maternal exposure to famine and birth weight of the next generation."

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_famine_of_1944–45

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#234

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Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#235

Post by [deleted] »

nabla9 wrote: post #68

Infant surgery without anesthesia was common still in the mid 80's https://www.nytimes.com/1987/12/17/opinion/l-why-infant-surg... > surveys of medical professionals indicate that as recently as 1986 infants as old as 15 months were receiving no anesthesia during surgery at most American hospitals. It's unknown where the consciousness starts (the hard problem sense) is but it's not unreasonable to assume that sentien…

[deleted]

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#236

Post by pbhjpbhj »

zimpenfish wrote: post #231
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think, and now biology is not at all my field, but I think the difference between human "races" is greater than just exterior colouring. See for example the Sickle-cell disease situation. That's maybe like horse breeds; this seems a good overview of health differences by breed, https://thehorse.com/111370/genetic-disorders-breed-by-breed... . Human races are certainly more than just skin colour, if your race can af…

> I think the difference between human "races" is greater than just exterior colouring No. http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/science-genetics-resh... > Thus, there is no evidence that the groups we commonly call “races” have distinct, unifying genetic identities. > Ultimately, there is so much ambiguity between the races, and so much variation within them, that two people of European descent may be more genetica…

>However, unlike the term “race,” it focuses on understanding how a person’s history unfolded, not how they fit into one category and not another. In a clinical setting, for instance, scientists would say that diseases such as sickle-cell anemia and cystic fibrosis are common in those of “sub-Saharan African” or “Northern European” descent, respectively, rather than in those who are “black” or “white”. (quoting http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/science-genetics-resh...) //

That's just linguistic spin.

>Ultimately, while there certainly are some biological differences between different populations, these differences are few and superficial. //

So Cystic Fibrosis and Sickle-Cell disease are superficial?

>For instance, alt-right proponents have stated, correctly, that many people with European and Asian descent have inherited 1-4% of their DNA from Neanderthals ancestors, and those of African descent do not have Neanderthal heritage. //

Hang on, they said earlier that we share 99% of our DNA with all other humans -- that being proof there are no races (according to the piece) -- but if we share 99%, how can Europeans/Asians have up to 4% Neanderthal that Africans don't have.

Now add in things like "we share 99% of our DNA with chimps" (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tiny-genetic-diff...) and we have a simplistic analysis suggesting we're much farther from other humans than we are from chimpanzees. I don't think that's what the authors wanted their piece to be suggesting.

The piece is unconvincing, badly written IMO, and lacks rigour.

Something they might have addressed is how the likes of 23andMe can give you a ethno-geographic background profile if it's impossible to tell from someone's genes what "race" they are.

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