Toward a Judeo-Marxist biology

[pood]

Most people are quite content to live an ape-like life, dominated by lust, greed, hierarchy and tribalism.

You are of course free to bow to your god, your universal heat death Moloch.

Comments like these don’t reflect well on you, or your position.

Humans are apes. That is a fact.

I don’t have a god, unlike you. Universal heat death follows from the evidence — the evidence you lack for the positions you have espoused. Of course, this progonosis of heat death might be revised or even reversed by new evidence. We’ll see. By contrast, there is no evidence that that the universe has any goal, purpose, or mind, nor is there any evidence that humans are anything more than an infinitesimal speck in the vastness of space and time, which is indifferent to us. If you have evidence to the contrary, please present it. So far you have presented none.

 

[No Robots]

Most people are quite content to live an ape-like life, dominated by lust, greed, hierarchy and tribalism.

You are of course free to bow to your god, your universal heat death Moloch.

Comments like these don’t reflect well on you, or your position.

Humans are apes. That is a fact.

Heh. Not sure what you're getting at. Am I insulting most people, or am I insulting apes?

There isn’t an ounce of conscious human intelligence or foresight visible in mass-history — it is all animal or sub-animal intelligence, for certainly man in the mass cannot be compared to the fox or the lion. He is nearer the cow, the goose, the parrot, or the stupefying, repetitious, changeless ant, bee and beaver.--Demos: Creative Stupidity / Benjamin DeCasseres.

 

[pood]

Most people are quite content to live an ape-like life, dominated by lust, greed, hierarchy and tribalism.

You are of course free to bow to your god, your universal heat death Moloch.

Comments like these don’t reflect well on you, or your position.

Humans are apes. That is a fact.

Heh. Not sure what you're getting at. Am I insulting most people, or am I insulting apes?

Humans are apes, as noted.

There isn’t an ounce of conscious human intelligence or foresight visible in mass-history — it is all animal or sub-animal intelligence, for certainly man in the mass cannot be compared to the fox or the lion. He is nearer the cow, the goose, the parrot, or the stupefying, repetitious, changeless ant, bee and beaver.--Demos: Creative Stupidity / Benjamin DeCasseres.

This guy is clueless, but I‘m assuming he wrote decades ago so perhaps he can be cut a little slack. We now know much more about animal cognition than we did back in his benighted day. To take one example, because he mentions it — the bee. Bees can do math, talk to each other in dance, like to play with balls, and recognize individual humans. Among other talents, including those that we don’t possess, like flight. Parrots, of course, are extremely inteligent. It has been found that ants have individual personalities, and I recall reading a study from a couple of years ago that ants can pass the famed mirror test, but I’ll have to check on the veracity of that. Anyhow, this guy doesn’t know much. Probably best to pay him no mind.

 

[No Robots]

The point is that there is a huge difference between the thoughts and actions of the vast majority and the those of the small minority who do seek to live in the light of reason, intuition and intellect.

 

[pood]

The point is that there is a huge difference between the thoughts and actions of the vast majority and the those of the small minority who do seek to live in the light of reason, intuition and intellect.

I understand the point. I just desired to point out the needless slur on bees and parrots, among others.

In any case, DeCasseres was a poet, journalist, essayist and political anarchist. He was not a scientist. And it shows.

 

[bilby]

The point is that there is a huge difference between the thoughts and actions of the vast majority and the those of the small minority who do seek to live in the light of reason, intuition and intellect.

The problem is that the vast majority almost all believe themselves to be members of that small minority.

A recent survey found that 95% of people with drivers licenses rate their own driving ability as 'above average'.

If you want to claim membership of the "small minority who do seek to live in the light of reason, intuition and intellect", you're going to need more evidence of that than your own mere opinion, unless you're only talking to yourself.

 

[lpetrich]

The Evolution of Multicellularity: A Minor Major Transition? on JSTOR with ANRV328-ES38-25.tex - The_Evolution_of_Multicellularity_A_Minor_Major_Tr.pdf

Benefits of increased size and functional specialization of cells have repeatedly promoted the evolution of multicellular organisms from unicellular ancestors. Many requirements for multicellular organization (cell adhesion, cell-cell communication and coordination, programmed cell death) likely evolved in ancestral unicellular organisms. However, the evolution of multicellular organisms from unicellular ancestors may be opposed by genetic conflicts that arise when mutant cell lineages promote their own increase at the expense of the integrity of the multicellular organism. Numerous defenses limit such genetic conflicts, perhaps the most important being development from a unicell, which minimizes conflicts from selection among cell lineages, and redistributes genetic variation arising within multicellular individuals between individuals. With a unicellular bottleneck, defecting cell lineages rarely succeed beyond the life span of the multicellular individual. When multicellularity arises through aggregation of scattered cells or when multicellular organisms fuse to form genetic chimeras, there are more opportunities for propagation of defector cell lineages. Intraorganismal competition may partly explain why multicellular organisms that develop by aggregation generally exhibit less differentiation than organisms that develop clonally.

The authors state that multicellularity has evolved at least 25 times.

Multicellularity arose several times in the evolution of eukaryotes (Response to DOI 10.1002/bies.201100187) - Parfrey - 2013 - BioEssays - Wiley Online Library
Noting that slime-mold-like multicellularity has evolved at least 7 times among eukaryotes. There are plenty of differences, as one would expect from convergent evolution.

Slime molds have a weird life cycle. Most of the time, they live as separate one-celled organisms: protozoans, animal-like protists. But when they become short of food, they collect together and form a slug-like mass. They then make a fruiting body, a sorocarp, with a mass of spores atop a stalk. The spores are then released into the air, and they can then be blown to new places to live.

The stalk is necessary for the spores to disperse, but it does not reproduce directly. So why would any cell become part of the stalk and not a spore? Kin selection would work, with the aggregating organisms only meeting up with those that they recognize as closely related. But some slime-mold fruiting bodies have some genetic variety, and that is something of a mystery.

Timing the Origins of Multicellular Eukaryotes Through Phylogenomics and Relaxed Molecular Clock Analyses | SpringerLink with Sharpe_Eme_OriginsOfMulticellularity2015.pdf

 

[No Robots]

The point is that there is a huge difference between the thoughts and actions of the vast majority and the those of the small minority who do seek to live in the light of reason, intuition and intellect.

The problem is that the vast majority almost all believe themselves to be members of that small minority.

A recent survey found that 95% of people with drivers licenses rate their own driving ability as 'above average'.

If you want to claim membership of the "small minority who do seek to live in the light of reason, intuition and intellect", you're going to need more evidence of that than your own mere opinion, unless you're only talking to yourself.

The distinction between men on the basis of psychic makeup is of ancient standing. The Greeks maintained the distinction between hylic, psychic and pneumatic (ie. physical, rational and spiritual) men. Jews made a a similar distinction. This is not to say that there is no ambiguity. There are hybrids and there is the possibility of moving from one group to another. However, there is a degree of determinism involved as well. If you maintain that there is no validity to these distinctions, well, you are pretty much ruling yourself (and everyone else) out of anything but the physical group, aren't you?

 

[pood]

The point is that there is a huge difference between the thoughts and actions of the vast majority and the those of the small minority who do seek to live in the light of reason, intuition and intellect.

The problem is that the vast majority almost all believe themselves to be members of that small minority.

A recent survey found that 95% of people with drivers licenses rate their own driving ability as 'above average'.

If you want to claim membership of the "small minority who do seek to live in the light of reason, intuition and intellect", you're going to need more evidence of that than your own mere opinion, unless you're only talking to yourself.

The distinction between men on the basis of psychic makeup is of ancient standing. The Greeks maintained the distinction between hylic, psychic and pneumatic (ie. physical, rational and spiritual) men. Jews made a a similar distinction. This is not to say that there is no ambiguity. There are hybrids and there is the possibility of moving from one group to another. However, there is a degree of determinism involved as well. If you maintain that there is no validity to these distinctions, well, you are pretty much ruling yourself (and everyone else) out of anything but the physical group, aren't you?

Apart from the fact that this doesn’t seem to have much if anything to do with what Bibly wrote, why should we accept any of these categories?

 

[No Robots]

Apart from the fact that this doesn’t seem to have much if anything to do with what Bibly wrote, why should we accept any of these categories?

I can only answer for myself. The reason I accept them is that through them I have learned stop trying to make others like myself or make myself like others. I am not posting to change all the people; I am posting to find my people and to help my people find me. No luck so far, but, who knows?

 

[lpetrich]

I'll now put these results together. D means multicellular by dividing from a single cell, A means multicellular by aggregation, like a slime mold. D* means became multicellular several times.

The eukaryote family tree is:

• Amorphea
  • Opisthokonta
    • Animals - D
    • Fungi - D
    • Nucleariids - Fonticula alba - A
    • (others)
  • Amoebozoa
    • Mycetozoa (including dictyostelids) - A
    • Tubulinea - Copromyxa protea - A
    • (others)
  • (others)
• Diaphoretickes
  • Archaeplastida
    • Green algae, land plants - D*
    • Red algae - D*
    • Glaucophytes
  • SAR
    • Stramenopiles
      • Oomycetes (fungus-like) - D
      • Brown algae (kelp) - D
      • Labyrinthulids - Sorodiplophrys stercorea - A
      • (others)
    • Alveolata
      • Ciliates - Sorogena stoianovitchae - A
      • (others)
    • Rhizaria
      • Cercozoa - Guttulinopsis vulgaris - A
      • (others)
  • (others)
• Excavata
  • Heterolobosea - Acrasidae - A
  • (others)

 

[steve_bank]

Contrary to a Christian view science as a whole is not out to eliminate religion or philosophy.

There are undoubtedly secular anti region scientists, but that is a personal view. There is no iogfical scince doctrine, philopshy or goal oer then to uncover new science. What people interpret with science is philosophy and religion.

When creationists say the Earth is about 4000 years old and wnat it taught in public school science as they have done in the past, then science is used used to refute the claim.

In the 90s the Catholic Pope said given the scitentific evidence, evolution may be true AND if so it is then part of god's plan. Adaptive theology.

There have been secular on the forum who seem to cling to pre modern science philosophy amd metaphysics.

 

[lpetrich]

Prokaryotes also have multicellular members, though not as many.

• Bacteria
  • Hydrobacteria
    • Proteobacteria - Myxobacteria (slime-mold-like)
    • Bacteriodetes
    • Spirochaetes
  • Terrabacteria
    • Cyanobacteria (plantlike)
    • Actinomycetes (funguslike)
    • Firmicutes
• Archaea

 

[lpetrich]

Neoproterozoic origin and multiple transitions to macroscopic growth in green seaweeds | PNAS - macroscopic algae - counts at least 8 times. It did not discuss Volvox, which became multicellular in the last few hundred million years, but doing so gives 9.

 

[lpetrich]

The distinction between men on the basis of psychic makeup is of ancient standing. The Greeks maintained the distinction between hylic, psychic and pneumatic (ie. physical, rational and spiritual) men. Jews made a a similar distinction. ...

Where? I've looked at personality psychology, and I've yet to find anything like it. The Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator (MBTI) is the best-known, but it's one of those things that has taken on a life of its own outside the scientific community. Psychology researchers don't think that MBTI is very informative, and they have found a system with much more predictive value, the  Big Five personality traits

• Extraversion (vs. Introversion) -- Sociability, assertiveness, activity, positive emotions
• Openness to Experience (vs. Closedness) -- Ideas/intellect, imagination, creativity, curiosity
• Conscientiousness (vs. Impulsiveness) - Deliberation, self-discipline, dutifulness, order
• Agreeableness (vs. Antagonism) - Trust, tendermindedness, cooperation, lack of aggression
• Neuroticism (vs. Emotional Stability) - Anxiety, depression, vulnerability to stress, moodiness

These are all continuous scales. I have not found any consensus on how to divide them into subtraits or facets, or what additional personality traits might be worth adding to them.

The Big Five in other species

Not much on assessing Openness in other species, but a limited form of Conscientiousness was found in chimpanzees: "lack of attention and goal directedness, as well as erratic, unpredictable, and disorganized behavior," features typical of Impulsiveness.

Agreeableness was found in most the mammals studied, including familiar pet species: dogs and cats.

Extraversion and neuroticism were found very broadly, including in the two non-mammalian species: guppy and octopus. Extraversion typically appears as Boldness and Neuroticism as sensitivity to threat.

The Big Five traits cluster together as two supertraits: Plasticity and Stability, each associated with a neurotransmitter in our brains:

• Plasticity - dopamine - extraversion, openness
• Stability - serotonin - emotional stability (negative neuroticism), agreeableness, conscientiousness

Dopamine (and dopamine-like NT"s) and serotonin are found in most of the animal kingdom, all over Bilateria and Cnidaria.

 

[lpetrich]

The distinction between men on the basis of psychic makeup is of ancient standing. The Greeks maintained the distinction between hylic, psychic and pneumatic (ie. physical, rational and spiritual) men. Jews made a a similar distinction.

Having handled modern personality research, I will take on the most common premodern theory of personality, the four humors (body fluids) theory. It maps very well onto two of the Big Five traits, extraversion and neuroticism, though it treats them in binary fashion.

Activity	Positivity	Body fluid	Name	Emotion
E+ Active	N- Positive	Blood	Sanguine	Joy
E- Passive	N- Positive	Phlegm	Phlegmatic	Contentment
E+ Active	N+ Negative	Yellow bile	Choleric	Anger
E- Passive	N+ Negative	Black bile	Melancholic	Sadness

In early modern times, these personality types were often treated as funny stereotypes, thus the present meaning of "humor".

Not a trace of "hylic", "psychic", or "pneumatic".

 

[lpetrich]

No Robots, have you ever heard of reproduction?

Reproduction occurs in two forms: mitosis and meiosis. In terms of reproduction, the multicellar body of an organism is simply the delivery system for meiosis.

Those are for individual cells, not multicelled organisms. But many organisms are one-celled, and multicellularity evolved from unicellularity several times.

Mitosis is the usual mode of reproduction of eukaryotic cells:
(X) -> (XX) -> (X) + (X)

Meiosis is a modification of it, for going from diploid to haploid:
(XX) -> (XXXX) -> (XX) + (XX) -> (X) + (X) + (X) + (X)

Cell fusion completes the eukaryotic ploidy cycle, going from haploid to diploid:
(X) + (X) -> (XX)

Prokaryotes use a counterpart of mitosis and only that counterpart. The meiosis - fusion cycle was invented by some ancestral eukaryote.

 

[No Robots]

Where? I've looked at personality psychology, and I've yet to find anything like it.

If you want something more modern, try Spinoza. His three kinds of knowledge--imaginatio, ratio and scientia intuitiva--correspond to the same divisions indicated earlier. Freud followed Spinoza and called his three forms of thought id, ego and superego.

Those are for individual cells, not multicelled organisms. But many organisms are one-celled, and multicellularity evolved from unicellularity several times.

In multicellular organisms, it is still only cells that reproduce. The multicellular body is, as I said before, a fruiting body that facilitates meiosis of germ cells.

 

[lpetrich]

Where? I've looked at personality psychology, and I've yet to find anything like it.

If you want something more modern, try Spinoza. His three kinds of knowledge--imaginatio, ratio and scientia intuitiva--correspond to the same divisions indicated earlier. Freud followed Spinoza and called his three forms of thought id, ego and superego.

What is their evidence?

Sigmund Freud was a very imaginative storyteller, but not much more than that. I remember someone claiming about him that he had no idea of how to test a hypothesis, and that seems very likely.

Those are for individual cells, not multicelled organisms. But many organisms are one-celled, and multicellularity evolved from unicellularity several times.

In multicellular organisms, it is still only cells that reproduce. The multicellular body is, as I said before, a fruiting body that facilitates meiosis of germ cells.

That is indeed correct in many cases, but there are also a lot of  Clonal colony - lots of organisms reproduce by a sort of budding, like plants sending out runners or making shoots from their roots.

 

[lpetrich]

Lecture 14: The Rise and Fall of Psychoanalytic Theory - Freud's theories

Mentions a lot of criticisms of Freudianism.

F. The Nature of Human Nature
Critiques and concerns

• No controlled experimentation - Only methodology available was suspect.
• Definition of Terms - Not clear, not quantifiable, and certainly not consistently interpreted.
• Dogmatism - No toleration for conflicting ideas
• Overemphasis on sex - Issues which drove followers away

G. Critiques and Concerns
Critiques and concerns

• Self-fulfilling prophesy - Freud found what he was looking for because he was looking for it
• Length, cost, and limited effectiveness of psychoanalysis - Takes too long and too costly for common people and it may not work anyway
• Lack of falsifiability - A good theory must have this characteristic

Then discussing Anna Freud, daughter of Sigmund himself, and Carl Jung and Alfred Adler and Karen Horney.

AA was a follower os SF, but then had a falling out with him when AA came to disagree with SF on some issues. You may not have heard of him, but he was the one who invented the idea of  Inferiority complex - strong feelings of inadequacy.

Psychologist Hans Eysenck wrote  Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire - an allusion to Edward Gibbon's famous book "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire".

Eysenck argues that psychoanalysis is unscientific and that its theories are based on no legitimate base of observation or experiment and have the status only of speculation. Eysenck argues that the veracity of psychoanalysis is testable through traditional empirical means, and that in all areas where such tests have been carried out it has failed. Eysenck calls Freud, "a genius, not of science, but of propaganda, not of rigorous proof, but of persuasion, not of the design of experiments, but of literary art." According to Eysenck, Freud set back the study of psychology and psychiatry by around fifty years.