I cut people a lot slack that might be dealing with a lot of negative issues in their head. If they want to drop out and spend the next year hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, cut off from the outside world, I'm going to respect their choices.
great, but we still cannot say anything beyond "what survives, survives". fitness is a central concept to natural selection and ultimately evolution, but it seems to bother nobody that its an empty concept, a tautology. its a nice observation but doesnt actually explain anything, and I expect science to explain the world.
Saying "what survives, survives" may bother Creationists, the Discovery Institute, and Intelligent Design pushers, but not actual scientists who don't have an ideological agenda to discredit evolution as revenge because it discredits their religious dogma.
Saying "what survives, survives" is like saying physics explains motion as "things that move, move." That’s not what the theory actually claims; it’s a caricature.
Evolutionary theory explains mechanisms, not slogans. "Fitness" is not the explanation, it’s a measurable consequence of those mechanisms.
If you want teleology or ultimate purpose, science won’t give you that, so take some shrooms and ask the machine elves. But evolution absolutely explains how structured complexity accumulates without foresight, and it does so with predictive, testable models.
Please inoculate yourself against believing and parroting anti-science Intelligent Design / Creationist talking points by understanding where they come from, and what they led to.
Intelligent Design is a religious ideology, not a scientific theory. The Discovery Institute is the evangelical advocacy organization that systematized and promoted it.
After Intelligent Design failed legally and scientifically, the Institute pivoted to the "Teach the Controversy" strategy -- not to advance new science, but to manufacture doubt about evolution in public education.
That approach -- revealingly effective -- became a template for later efforts to reintroduce religious ideology into secular institutions. Project 2025 represents the political continuation of that same strategy at a much larger scale: shifting from attacking a single scientific theory to reshaping education, governance, and public policy along explicitly religious lines.
>Have you heard of the Discovery Institute? Have you fallen under the impression that they know what they are talking about, or can be considered an even remotely legitimate source of information?
>Well, you've come to right place. They aren't. They're a propaganda mill, and all of their content is full of lies.
>They hide behind a paper-thin roster of scientists who have deluded themselves into dishonestly preaching outside of their expertise, and they blatantly misrepresent any scientific research or scientists they are referring to. Constantly. Sometimes they even commit slander.
>That's what this video is about, and it is the first installment in a series where I will expose the fraudulent activity of all the major contributors at the Discovery Institute, one clown at a time.
>Part 1 addresses Casey Luskin, and it is centered around some very serious slander he committed against an esteemed anthropologist.
>But don't worry, I cover lots of other lies and stupidity that come out of his mouth as well.
>If you're a fan of the DI, do please find the courage to watch this rather than running to the comments section to yell at me.
>It's not all that long, and I promise that I make it extremely clear and undeniable that Casey is a liar. If you have a shred of honesty within you, you will quickly see that this is the case. Enjoy!
This dives into the "Junk DNA" cannard:
Exposing Discovery Institute Part 10: Casey Luskin Again (Because He's Such a Loser Fraud)
> Assuming a scientific testing gloss, each new genetic code variation X can be considered as a hypothesis, that "variant X is fit", and then natural selection events that act on copies of X (for or against) serve as experiments testing the hypothesis
this is the problem i have with natural selection... it has no predictive power. You can never use natural selection theory to say if an organism is "fit" before it exhibits its fitness. what good is this?
This may be more a problem with how "fit" is defined and used than with natural selection theory itself. Fitness can be hard to define beyond the trivial "these organisms which survived the selection event must be the fit ones," and natural systems are usually so noisy with inputs that its hard to figure out what was actually important in retrospect, or likely to evolve in the future.
Only in situations with a powerful selection pressure (like an asteroid strike causing a nuclear winter, or antibiotic applied to a petri dish) can one have a hope of reliably predicting which variants will be selected for or against.
However, these situations are not irrelevant, especially if we can predict the likelihood of those situations developing. Real predictions of the theory of natural selection can be applied to managing antibiotic resistance in populations of bacteria. For example, we know that antibiotic resistance mechanisms that bacteria evolve will often have an energy metabolism cost to their maintenance. This means that, absent pressure to be resistant to antibiotics, we'd expect a population to gradually lose individuals with the genes for the resistance mechanism, because they would be incurring a metabolic penalty for possessing those genes. So natural selection theory accurately predicts that if you remove the selection pressure of the antibiotic, the bacteria will evolve to lose the resistance mechanism, and become susceptible to the antibiotic again over several generations of natural selection. Using this knowledge, some rural regions will discontinue use of a given class of antibiotics in agriculture to allow for resistant strains to decline, and then resume their use when they are again effective. By intelligently rotating use of antibiotics in this way, we can enjoy their benefits without incurring too much inefficiencies and worse tragedies from antibiotic resistance.
im similarly dubious about this.... only works by blue light hitting your retina, which meant your eye was open, which meant you were awake ie not even trying to sleep. also, circadian rhythms were proven to be unaffected even when living in a cave with no natural sunlight - so theres more to sleepiness than just light hitting your eyebaws
>only works by blue light hitting your retina, which meant your eye was open, which meant you were awake ie not even trying to sleep.
not necessarily - your eyelids aren't perfectly opaque
>also, circadian rhythms were proven to be unaffected even when living in a cave with no natural sunlight - so theres more to sleepiness than just light hitting your eyebaws
yeah, not disputing this. Blue light doesn't have to be the sole determinant to have an effect though
If you're in a suburb what else is there to do? Going to any interesting spots to hang out with friends involve asking your parents to bring you there with the family car and then arranging a strict timetable on when to pick you up again.
I think just being able to get together with a couple other kids means that, even lacking videogames or boardgames or whatever, means that the opportunities available abound. Kids are infinitely creative and very good at inventing games out of any situation you throw them into. Give them two sticks and a piece of string and they'll turn it into a game of "don't let the string hit the ground" or something.
In the 50s the suburbs were new and inhabited mainly by families who also had kids. By the time I came around those people still lived in most houses and they were quite old in the neighborhood with few, if any families with kids my age. Quite a contrast to the stories I was told about my parents upbringing in the suburbs, where they could collect a dozen plus kids going door to door down the block.
In the 70s and 80s if you wanted to play video games you would go to an arcade and meet other kids there. Where are those arcades now? Or you might go to and hang out at a mall, but those are few and far in between now too.
The fact that adults don't have third places anymore affects kids just as much, maybe even more.
It doesn't help that you can do a lot more indoors now, and the indoors has gotten more addictive. So relative to that, there's even less you can do outdoors.
Aside from the fact that drivers have been known to mount sidewalks (especially while sending a text), the real problem is intersections, and crossing said stroads. When there's 8 lanes of Dodge Rams, Chevy Silverados, and F-250's with hoods that are taller than your head you're putting a great deal of trust in the red lamp overhead to actually stop them from killing you.
I was at a conference in St Cloud, MN a few years ago, and I could see the Panda Express from my hotel. Took around 40 minutes to walk there because I couldn't get the timing right to frogger myself across the 6 lanes. Got stuck in the island in the middle for a good 15 minutes because the slip lane always had cars in it.
sidewalk ended apparently. i am imagining some super hostile urban planning. like did a cyclist cheat with the planner's spouse? is there not another route?
It's impossible for people to get how bad it is until they see it. My old house had a grocery store 1.2 miles away. To walk there, you have to cross a 6 lane highway. Entire neighborhoods here have no sidewalks. And the roads are so torn up they're unusable. My friend had to get rid of his road bike and get a fat tire suspension bike. None of the intersections have any lights or visibility. And you can't run off the road because the ditches have broken glass and garbage in them!. Trash that hasn't been cleaned up in years. Add to that there's a general culture of hostility towards bicycles.
A pedestrian got hit by a pickup truck and the trucks made a "caravan" to roll coal at the memorial spot where they hit her.
There's no consistency in america. I moved 15 minutes away to "the good" part of town, and every street is new and perfectly smooth. There are marked bike lanes everywhere and they're all connected. I didn't understand at the time, but moving to where the bike lanes are completely changed my life and opened up the entire city for exploring in a way that I didn't expect.
Aside from getting my adorable cats on craigslist, no other 1 decision has changed my life for the better so drastically. I sold my car. I bike to new food places on my lunch break. I met tons of amazing new friends. My fitness is way up.
People aren't good at visualizing what being in a car all the time is taking from them. In terms of happiness, I honestly feel like I got a 50k raise at my job or something. Car centric design is robbing people of the chance to disscover thier own cities
> People aren't good at visualizing what being in a car all the time is taking from them.
I really wish someone would do a study somehow on what kind of psychological effects are caused by being angry at everyone in your city for an hour twice a day (sitting in traffic).
Too, in regions with winter weather (snow, or worse, sleet and ice), what few sidewalks or walking/biking trails which might exist are often further limited due to accumulated snow, if not slick with ice.
This can be found even within town/village centres, let alone the stroads and strip-malls on their peripheries. Walking and cycling become far more perilous.
Not impossible, but challenging, and a clear danger for the very young, elderly, or disabled.
Local ordinances to maintain clear sidewalks are quite often observed in the breach.
Then there's the shortened daylight hours, mentioned elsewhere in this thread.
You are right for most people. I am not (and cannot get) fit enough to walk and ride everywhere. I walk as much as I can because cars suck but I appreciate the car. You got me thinking about ebikes. Speed is also a thing though. Getting somewhere in 2 minutes instead of 10 is very convenient.
The best cities have laws that allow for light motorized vehicles in the bike lanes. Not just ebikes, but also mobility scooters, microcars, electric wheelchairs, and adaptive bicycles.
My friend has a velotric T1 and it's really great. Definitely get an ebike. I got a reflective jacket on ebay for $20 so cars can see me at night. Ebikes are just as good as normal bikes ( it took me years to realize this ). I have an EUC so I wont get an ebike fore now.
And yeah if I end up having kids, Ill get a minivan or something for chauffeuring. Sometimes you do in fact, need a car
Streetview almost any US suburb. There often is not a way to safely cross a 60ft+ wide road with a 40mph speed limit (which means large vehicles with distracted drivers are driving 50mph+.
Almost all businesses are located on these wide roads, and neighborhoods basically become islands for the kids. It’s especially bad in the winter, because it gets dark quicker, and crossing that 60ft+ wide 40mph+ road gets dicey even as an adult.
I wish we had a neighborhood island. The road we live on is a quarter mile long (so, short) with few houses. It ends in a road where cars go 40+ mph. That road is awful - not only are there no sidewalks, but it twists and turns, and the road is cut into a hill with steep unwalkable slopes on either side. At any point a car could be coming downhill around the bend and your options as a pedestrian are to hope they see you or to just get run over.
harm??? so only happy thoughts from now on?
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