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Why Sex? Biologists Find New Explanations

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Why Sex? Biologists Find New Explanations

#41

Post by throwaway6575 »

SkyBelow wrote: post #37
rsynnott wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In general, most researchers have failed to find greater variability in either sex in any area that is consistent across cultures and not confounded by social factors.

So it is saying we haven't been able to isolate the extent of the social impact. But this applies to so many things. Do we have research that shows that most people are heterosexual that is consistent across culture and not confounded by social factors? No, we don't. There have historically been cultures where the view on sexuality, what constitutes sex, and how sex is viewed are so different than we cannot say that…

This really reads to me as "the whole field of psychology is compromised" and it's not a surprise for many.

>Is it good science if the standards research are held to are not consistent depending upon the topic?

Passing a single standard would be a start.

Re: Why Sex? Biologists Find New Explanations

#42

Post by vikramkr »

The article really highlights that there's likely not one single explanation for sex - increasing diversity, decreasing diversity through gene repairs. Same-sex behaviors potentially being something not just even worth being selected against, highlighting the "good enough" nature of natural selection where not everything needs a reason. A good read on the complexity behind explaining phenomena with natural selection - billions of years or random chance + selection pressures has no requirement to result in clean, neat, and easy explanations for complex phenomena.

Re: Why Sex? Biologists Find New Explanations

#44

Post by throwaway6575 »

vikramkr wrote: post #40
throwaway6575 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is notoriously bad at anything related to biology, evolution, and genetics. It's a combination of this ( https://xkcd.com/1831/ ) and this ( https://xkcd.com/793/ ) comic. People there are also fond of finding a bunch of psychology papers that confirms existing biases. There's also a misleading phenomenon where many of the fields whose "experts" chime in on these questions are called evolutionary psychology or beh…

There are at least a few of us on here that are actual biologists- and with the increasing overlap of biotech and hacking, maybe we'll see more of us on here soon? Especially with how much HN seems to enjoy bio related threads, it's nice to see people at least engaging with the subject. And it looks like with time some of the poorer faith comments do get buried, however plentiful they may be.

Yeah there are a few bioinformaticians around - but they're few and far between and are often graduate students or candidates. Contrast with the diversity of tech profiles you find on here, from 60 year old COBOL veterans to ex-Googlers or the creators of frameworks, and all the founders.

I think there's a difficulty in that you can't just do biology from your garage, even bioinformatics. The standards have shifted, and most of the low-hanging fruit has been picked. You either need to generate original data yourself with costly experiments, collaborate with people who have done so, or explore enormous amounts of data with costly compute. To meet these requirements you need to be affiliated to an institution, i.e. work within the system. (An exception would be Googlers and other such people who already have access to the compute for some reason)

Perhaps the whole thing is ripe for disruption, but so far all I've seen is repeated variations on xkcd #1831.

Re: Why Sex? Biologists Find New Explanations

#45

Post by Suncho »

itchyjunk wrote: post #20

I like how the article starts but I think it got lost a bit in hypothetical and anecdotes towards the end. Not holding it against the article though. As the article rightly points out, anything involving sex drags in biases as well. I wonder how convergent evolution [0] fits into this? Maybe one form of reproduction leaves a large niche open for another type of reproduction to fill in. Could it be that there was sexu…

> Could it be that there was sexual reproduction first and asexual reproduction came later?

Unlikely. You can't mate with copies of yourself unless there are already multiple copies of yourself floating around.

I like the story they present in the article. For simple organisms, it's fairly inexpensive to let defective individuals die off. As organisms get more complex, it starts to become more costly to allow defects in the genetic code to persist. Then it becomes worthwhile to perform "integrity checks" to correct errors in the data as it's being copied.

If a population of organism is put into an environment conducive to a lot of data corruption, then the ones who are want to perform these checks are the ones who end up surviving.

You could imagine that when higher complexity organisms are exposed to high-stress environments, it would help establish their population's ability to sexually reproduce. The ones who aren't doing it will tend to die off.

Then as the complexity increases further, the genetic complexity itself can be a permanent endogenous source of high stress. The organism then loses the ability to produce asexually because it's no longer needed.

Sexual reproduction promotes genetic complexity because it allows us to survive while having more complicated genes. The recombination and mixing-and-matching only helps further the process along.

Re: Why Sex? Biologists Find New Explanations

#46

Post by abfan1127 »

throwaway6575 wrote: post #38
jedimastert wrote: post #16

These comments make me sad. I thought the HN community was better than this.

HN is notoriously bad at anything related to biology, evolution, and genetics. It's a combination of this ( https://xkcd.com/1831/ ) and this ( https://xkcd.com/793/ ) comic. People there are also fond of finding a bunch of psychology papers that confirms existing biases. There's also a misleading phenomenon where many of the fields whose "experts" chime in on these questions are called evolutionary psychology or beh…

given my experiences, HN isn't special in the sense that their experience is deep in one area, and shallow in another and therefore have simplified views of the areas of shallow experiences. I volunteer in a local sports league. The number of times I get the "why are my dues so high? where does the money go? you're just lining your pockets!" in 1 season is absolutely ridiculous. But most people never stop to think about the details.

In this case, biology has a bunch of details, many still unknown, and problems look easy until you get into the details.

Re: Why Sex? Biologists Find New Explanations

#47

Post by daemonk »

throwaway6575 wrote: post #38
jedimastert wrote: post #16

These comments make me sad. I thought the HN community was better than this.

HN is notoriously bad at anything related to biology, evolution, and genetics. It's a combination of this ( https://xkcd.com/1831/ ) and this ( https://xkcd.com/793/ ) comic. People there are also fond of finding a bunch of psychology papers that confirms existing biases. There's also a misleading phenomenon where many of the fields whose "experts" chime in on these questions are called evolutionary psychology or beh…

There is definitely a trend of tech bros 1831'ing biology. While it is very annoying, I do think we should try to be more charitable in how we respond to them. It's ultimately a good thing that other people are interested in what we are doing.

Re: Why Sex? Biologists Find New Explanations

#48

Post by vikramkr »

throwaway6575 wrote: post #44
vikramkr wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are at least a few of us on here that are actual biologists- and with the increasing overlap of biotech and hacking, maybe we'll see more of us on here soon? Especially with how much HN seems to enjoy bio related threads, it's nice to see people at least engaging with the subject. And it looks like with time some of the poorer faith comments do get buried, however plentiful they may be.

Yeah there are a few bioinformaticians around - but they're few and far between and are often graduate students or candidates. Contrast with the diversity of tech profiles you find on here, from 60 year old COBOL veterans to ex-Googlers or the creators of frameworks, and all the founders. I think there's a difficulty in that you can't just do biology from your garage, even bioinformatics. The standards have shifted,…

Well, the biohacker movement begs to differ on the garage part, but academic biologists would beg to differ with the biohackers there. I agree that there arent the diversity of opinion that you get in programming here (I'm certainly not amy sort of expert myself, new grad here), but that might come with time. Just having the experience of having studied biology, worked in a lab, written proposals and papers, all go a long way. Imagine we had a biology forum that was a bunch of biologists that barely knew what a computer was discussing the latest media hype around AI. Would be pretty bad. But then even people with just an undergrad or masters level of CS training and some work experience with actual programming could make that discussion a thousand times better, even if they aren't AI experts.

Right now, with all the COVID type articles being posted, it feels a bit like that. I'm not a trained virologist, and I dont know how many trained virologist there are on HN. But a basic perspective on what is the diagnostic test (I've done plenty of QPCR), what is primer design, what are antibody tests, and basic virology like what does it mean to be an rna virus, how is remdesivir supposed to work, etc tends to be missing, and I think k people with my level of experience can provide that. I've studied enough healthcare management to know the terminology at least and be able to discuss a placebo controlled trial versus not, and there are a lot of people with that level of basic knowledge than can contribute. And I've seen those sorts of explanations that are quite good. I've also noticed some pushback from people with at least a basic level of statistical/epidemiological training to the narrative that the risks of COVID are overblown, with discussions of exponential growth and SIR models. There are a few glimpses buried on what can be a pretty large initial onslaught of nonsense of actual biological knowledge. I dont think you need 50 years experience to provide that, though of course that would make the perspectives that much richer and deeper.

Re: Why Sex? Biologists Find New Explanations

#49

Post by globular-toast »

throwaway6575 wrote: post #44
vikramkr wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are at least a few of us on here that are actual biologists- and with the increasing overlap of biotech and hacking, maybe we'll see more of us on here soon? Especially with how much HN seems to enjoy bio related threads, it's nice to see people at least engaging with the subject. And it looks like with time some of the poorer faith comments do get buried, however plentiful they may be.

Yeah there are a few bioinformaticians around - but they're few and far between and are often graduate students or candidates. Contrast with the diversity of tech profiles you find on here, from 60 year old COBOL veterans to ex-Googlers or the creators of frameworks, and all the founders. I think there's a difficulty in that you can't just do biology from your garage, even bioinformatics. The standards have shifted,…

I mean, I've actually worked in bioinformatics and with biologists who have studied sexual species their entire life and my top-level comment was one of the ones that got buried.

The main thing to learn from this is you can't really talk about this stuff because people don't want certain things to be true. Biologists tended to talk about this stuff openly with me after a few drinks. They dare not speak about it most of the time.

Re: Why Sex? Biologists Find New Explanations

#50

Post by vikramkr »

globular-toast wrote: post #49
throwaway6575 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah there are a few bioinformaticians around - but they're few and far between and are often graduate students or candidates. Contrast with the diversity of tech profiles you find on here, from 60 year old COBOL veterans to ex-Googlers or the creators of frameworks, and all the founders. I think there's a difficulty in that you can't just do biology from your garage, even bioinformatics. The standards have shifted,…

I mean, I've actually worked in bioinformatics and with biologists who have studied sexual species their entire life and my top-level comment was one of the ones that got buried. The main thing to learn from this is you can't really talk about this stuff because people don't want certain things to be true. Biologists tended to talk about this stuff openly with me after a few drinks. They dare not speak about it most…

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