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Why Sex? Biologists Find New Explanations

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Why Sex? Biologists Find New Explanations

#61

Post by 1123581321 »

daemonk wrote: post #47
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 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.

What is 1831?

Re: Why Sex? Biologists Find New Explanations

#62

Post by throwaway6575 »

vikramkr wrote: post #51
daemonk wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree. Maybe I've just gotten jaded from the usual responses I get when trying to talk about biology with tech people (where they just assume it's over their head and want painful analogies to "simplify" it for them) that it's a bit of a breath of fresh air to see people try to engage with it. Even if they're wrong, well, so was I about basically everything when I took bio 101. It's a way to have those assumptions…

I mean, people being wrong about biology is ok, the issue is when the discussion devolves into some of the touchier subjects and suddenly everyone larps as a scientist. "Do you have citations for that?" "There is a widely accepted consensus that..." "It's not just my opinion, it's science."

This is very strange because in technology threads where actual experts chime in, no one acts like that. People share their experiences about using such-and-such stack, sometimes with very strongly worded and passionate opinions but never with the pretense of scolarship or "quest for truth". Imagine how bewildering it'd be if people cited publications from "The Journal of Serverless Stacks" (IF=1.4) in lieu of experience sharing.

Re: Why Sex? Biologists Find New Explanations

#63

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Koshkin wrote: post #54
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Viruses

Sexual reproduction is not about injecting a DNA (or RNA) into a host cell for one's own sake.

Ok that sounds a bit pedantic. Reproduction is a technical term, sure. But its also a common term for life copying itself. But ok, sure.

Re: Why Sex? Biologists Find New Explanations

#64

Post by sdegutis »

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…

> 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.

Also https://xkcd.com/55/ and https://xkcd.com/128/

This is the inevitable confusion of a society that insists that nothing exists outside what we can scientifically observe, who rejects concepts of soul and love and still tries to explain their effects using only what they admit. It's like saying we bleed when we're cut because the skin must be producing that blood, denying the existence of veins or a heart.

Re: Why Sex? Biologists Find New Explanations

#65

Post by reubenswartz »

I'm not a biologist, but my understanding is that bacteria are much more likely to undergo horizontal gene transfer when undress stress. (Particularly troubling these days for antibiotic resistance.)

Seems like it would be a natural next step for single cell eukaryotes to have a similar mechanism to fix bad DNA, especially given the much longer genomes of eukaryotes, which the article discusses without mentioning bacteria.

By the time you get to multicellular creatures, this gets even more important and leads to males, who pass on only nuclear DNA, and females, who pass one nuclear and mitochondrial DNA.

Re: Why Sex? Biologists Find New Explanations

#66

Post by econcon »

If same sex attraction exists biologically, not as a social construct than it's possible those genes are select as side effect of smth else that comes with it. For example, my gay friend is godlike attractive and one girl literally begged him to marry him in really sick ways and he's ended up marrying her to make his life easier and also because she was completely attached and attracted to us just because of how he looked. Few months ago, they had a kid. Has there been any studies which can shed some light on this, if gay people are more attractive on average or more intelligent?

Re: Why Sex? Biologists Find New Explanations

#67

Post by daemonk »

1123581321 wrote: post #61
daemonk wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What is 1831?

I was referring the XKCD #1831 comic the previous post linked to. https://xkcd.com/1831/

Re: Why Sex? Biologists Find New Explanations

#68

Post by 1123581321 »

daemonk wrote: post #67
1123581321 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is 1831?

I was referring the XKCD #1831 comic the previous post linked to. https://xkcd.com/1831/

Thanks. The numbers in those URLs didn’t register with me. I like the idea of verbing them!

Re: Why Sex? Biologists Find New Explanations

#69

Post by daemonk »

throwaway6575 wrote: post #62
vikramkr wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Maybe I've just gotten jaded from the usual responses I get when trying to talk about biology with tech people (where they just assume it's over their head and want painful analogies to "simplify" it for them) that it's a bit of a breath of fresh air to see people try to engage with it. Even if they're wrong, well, so was I about basically everything when I took bio 101. It's a way to have those assumptions…

I mean, people being wrong about biology is ok, the issue is when the discussion devolves into some of the touchier subjects and suddenly everyone larps as a scientist. "Do you have citations for that?" "There is a widely accepted consensus that..." "It's not just my opinion, it's science." This is very strange because in technology threads where actual experts chime in, no one acts like that. People share their expe…

Yes. It takes a lot of time for concepts in biology to sink in and become interconnected mentally. People who are not in the field tend to think about concepts in isolation. Tech people also tend to think more mechanistically/rigidly because they are used to things obeying rules/code.

I agree that it can be annoying when armchair biologists make hollow arguments. But I also do think that we do share some responsibility to not turn people off completely or make them dig in harder in their positions.

Re: Why Sex? Biologists Find New Explanations

#70

Post by slfnflctd »

econcon wrote: post #66

If same sex attraction exists biologically, not as a social construct than it's possible those genes are select as side effect of smth else that comes with it. For example, my gay friend is godlike attractive and one girl literally begged him to marry him in really sick ways and he's ended up marrying her to make his life easier and also because she was completely attached and attracted to us just because of how he l…

This is really more of a silly and non-scientific anecdotal pursuit of probably very little value. That being said, I have heard many women say, "Oh, he's way too hot to be straight". So I think there is at least some kind of meme-level support for the idea.

I have also met lots of very wonderful, very gay, quite-less-than-stereotypically-attractive people who could warm almost any soul with the way their smiles lit up their faces. For whatever any of that is worth.

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