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Just for fun - does this sound like what the remnants of ancient genetic engineering experiments on primates to increase their intelligence might look like to anyone else?
I'm sure this is good research but I'm also sure it's the basis of the next generation of antivax propaganda.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Someone with a better grasp of the scientific method perhaps you can answer this. As a (recovered, former) neurobio phd it seems the "grasp" is mostly there + the clarity you want just doesn't exist here I.e., the concept of "depression" is pretty hard to nail down quantitatively in the first place: The best model we've got is a kind of self-contained proven-by-internal-self-consistency thing bootstrapped from ques…
Firstly, thank you. > For example, calling "how long do mice swim before giving up if you chuck them into a tank of water" is roughly equated to "amount of depression" (this is oversimplified a bit; you correlate a bunch of those measures etc. but still a lot of very weak signals). Do I understand this? A purely reductionist view of my understanding: this is quantified as "the amount of will to live"? If my understan…
I mean in this is one model and typically a "result" means several models are all consistent with the researcher's mental model of the thing. But yes, the forced swim test is one measure of "will to live" and it's treated as that because of similarities to "that which we call 'depression'" or whatever
It is better than nothing, unless one takes it too seriously.
[0] mice float, they don't drown when they give up, assuming you take them out quickly enough [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4401172/ [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3353513/
I'm sure this is good research but I'm also sure it's the basis of the next generation of antivax propaganda.
As another commenter pointed out, the expression of these genes doesn't cause inflammation. So, maybe the antivaxxers will ignore it, as it doesn't fit well enough into their existing framework.
For anyone that’s read it, I’m curious did they compare relative percentages of these DNA between haplogroups
Eg. Percentage of antisocial DNA in Europe vs Asia vs Bantu etc…
Amateur question: if we've retained these ostensibly dangerous or at least deleterious viral codes in our DNA, is there any reason why these virii don't serve a important evolutionary or remedial (maybe crisis) purpose?
Amateur question: if we've retained these ostensibly dangerous or at least deleterious viral codes in our DNA, is there any reason why these virii don't serve a important evolutionary or remedial (maybe crisis) purpose?
Men who were prone to alternative/extreme states of consciousness would have been better able to summon up the wild emotions necessary for savagery and violence, making them better fighters and hence giving them better mating prospects.
Amateur question: if we've retained these ostensibly dangerous or at least deleterious viral codes in our DNA, is there any reason why these virii don't serve a important evolutionary or remedial (maybe crisis) purpose?