Dina’s, not Walky’s, has increased significantly increased in range
Doctor_Who
Do you think she picks up on it instantaneously, or is there a lightspeed delay?
If we moved her far enough away from the person saying the incorrect dinosaur fact, we could violate causality.
K^2
It is a quantum phenomenon. The truthfulness of dinosaur fact and Dina’s attack are in an entangled superposition. Once the fact is observed, it becomes either true or false, and the attack commences immediately in the later case. As such, there is no communication delay. However, since truthfulness is revealed only moments before attack, it sadly cannot be used to send information across great distances, per no-communication theorem.
woobie
She hears before the misstatement is made. Like a Ranyhyn arriving when called from the Plains of Ra.
Edwin I Callahan
Now, that’s a deep pop reference. The Unbeliever trilogy goes back to the 70s.
Geneseepaws
Quoting the 1970s does not violate any Covenant.
Paradox
Geneseepaws FTW!
Demoted Oblivious
If this were able to violate causality, the distance between them wouldn’t matter. You may need a bit of distance to allow for reaction time, observations and records to show that the cause of the effect was chronologically outside of the error margins of the observed timing, but for the actual violation of causality, distance doesn’t matter so long as it’s outside the light-cone. (which is to say that effects are always within the light cone of the cause, except for certain weird quantum experiments they’ve been conducting where things are gettung fishy)
Deanatay
It’s not that she picks up on it instantaneously, it’s that there’s no light-speed delay in her physical corrective response (aka ‘attack’) that worries me.
Switchchris23
They are in the the Girl’s dorms atm, and Dina’s room isnt to far away from her’s, so while that was a fast reaction, it probably isnt to difficult to hear things through those dorm room walls.
Lingo
No, Lucy and Jennifer live in a different dorm.
Wagstaff
Does anyone else notice strange similarities between her and Baldi from Baldi’s Basics?
Both use green in their color schemes.
Both are annoyed at scholarly inaccuracies.
Both have incredible hearing.
Reltzik
There’s some sort of wormhole-like phenomenon hiding behind doors. So far only Dina’s figured out how to use them.
thejeff
Though Joyce can use a similar phenomenon to teleport to Dorothy.
Why not just “Rest in Pieces”? Or did you actually mean tear into pieces? Or rest in Pisces? Or are you condemning the dead to be dismembered and scattered? Or..There is a lot to unpack in this.
Kintrex
Analytically dissecting a common joke phrase? Why don’t I just head over to the ATM machine and input my pin number to withdraw $5 dollars to reward you for your originality.
milu
oof, that was unnecessary i think?
Michael Steamweed
Unnecessary.
Demoted Oblivious
Hey, 5$ is 5$. I’ll take it. Please donate it to Child’s Play Charity. They donate games and toys for kids in childrens hospitals around the world.
The question is, if there are two incorrect dinosaur facts on opposite ends of campus, what happens?
Doctor_Who
Wonder what happens if two people watch copies of the Ringu video at the same time and then wait.
Though Dina’s clearly got Sadako beat on speed, Lucy didn’t have to wait a week for a response.
Demoted Oblivious
That’s why the one week wait. Thanks to modern video duplication and youtube like sites, Sadako has been swamped with requests for haunting. She’s so behind schedule at this point she doesn’t know when she’s actually going to get time off to rest in peace.
Cholma
Dina’s “incorrect dino facts-sense” is kind of like Peter Parker’s “spidey-sense”. It triggers whenever someone states false facts about dinosaurs, regardless of their proximity to Dina. She doesn’t need to “hear” the fact to know it was wrong!
Lingo
It is possibly also precognitive (as Parker’s spider-sense has sometimes been described), allowing her to sense the falsehood even before it is uttered!
Cholma
Ooh! Dina’s a Pre-cog! She’ll soon be starring in a new movie: Minority Report: Jurassic World.
He Who Abides
But will it protect Dina’s financial stability, as the ol’ Spidey-Sense has been shown to do?
K^2
Modern theory suggests that only one attack will occur, sparing one or more ignorant parties from due justice, but nobody has yet been brave enough to verify this experimentally.
Reltzik
She grabs whoever’s closest in her teeth, whips them back and forth like a dog shaking a rat, and then flings them across campus where on landing they crush the other offender.
Mturtle7
I like to imagine that, in the case of simultaneous incorrect assertions among their friend group, Becky would happily chip in to handle one while Dina gets the other.
I can see two hypotheses much more likely to explain her extraordinary speed, senses and strength.
1. She learned those skills through meticulous study of the biophysics of prehistoric creatures, mostly dinosaurs.
2. She is the decendant of a samurai or a ninja.
King Daniel
2 would require the existence of Lamarckian inheritance (which is bullshit), so we can rule that out.
Wagstaff
Not necessarily. Epigenetic inheritance allows a variety of traits to be transmitted across generations via routes of inherited DNA methyl tags, microbiomes, and antibodies just to name afew.
King Daniel
Fine. On a large scale (such as would be necessary to transfer human traits, skills, and abilities), Lamarckian inheritance is bullshit.
Wagstaff
Silly me! I forgot to consider the possibility that it could be both of those suggested mechanisms working together!
Demoted Oblivious
Not as much as you seem to think though. Lamarckian theory was b.s., yes, but there is a remarkable amount of inheritable traits based on epigenetics. Even new therapies based on methyl tags. See: CRISPR and the new therapies for dis- and re-en abling specific genetics: CRISPRoff and CRISPRon. These are designed to cure genetic diseases, but instead of full excising the genes with CRISPR (like an amputation), now they can just switch them off and observe the effects, and these epigenetic changes are inheritable. An example of a real world epigentic trait, is a person growing up in an environment requiring broad hands (think blacksmith) will have their body respond, grow stronger, but also a more robust skeleton with larger hands. Their children have been shown to be more likely to have broad hands, even if they don’t grow up blacksmithing. (this was a cited example when I first read about epigenetics, but I can’t recall where that was written, else I’d provide the source)
milu
too bad you don’t have a source, cos that sounds like a big claim.
Meagan
Thank you. I’m so sick of people saying Lamarckian inheritance isn’t real when we know at this point that it is, in ways.
Reltzik
So we’re ruling out nature, but why rule out nurture?
Wagstaff
Possibility 1 counts as nurture. While not sufficient for skills on their own, epigenetic inheritance may have at least provided some kind of head start in their development.
Reltzik
… so epigentics from ninja/samurai heritage?
I meant that being descended from ninja and/or samurai could be the source of her skills BECAUSE HER FAMILY TAUGHT HER.
….
…. okay, no, I’m getting a little bit uncomfortable with adjacency to the Japanese-implies-ninja-samurai-and/or-karate trope, so I’m going with the Lamarck thing instead. This is a silly thread, I get to be silly.
Reltzik
Oooh, better yet! Non-epigentic Evolutionary-Science skills through Lamarkian inheritance!
Wagstaff
I merely suggested that epigenetic inheritance is one of the major factors behind her skills, although it probably plays less of a role than her study of prehistoric species.
Wagstaff
I mean her skills of extraordinary speed, senses and strength.
Demoted Oblivious
Were your parents particularly silly Reltzik? Maybe this silliness is also a heritable trait too? Also, why is it that everytime I read your handle, it makes me think of Ruth Lessick? Some combination of the letters and structure I suppose.
Reltzik
Demoted: Mom’s particularly silly. Dad’s particularly quick to go to another room when Mom and I are in a positive-silly-feedback-loop. And I’m guessing you’re right about why the name makes you think of Ruth (mostly the same letters or close to them, in roughly the same order), but I was using this handle before IW started.
Stifyn Baker
No, it wouldn’t necessarily require Lamarckian descent. I am a descendant of foundry workers, which has left me with a short, square physique and fantastic stamina. But my ancestors didn’t give me that physique because they were foundry workers, they became foundry workers because during the industrial revolution, my bloodline’s genetic tendency towards “short, broad and strong” made them perfectly suited for foundry jobs.
Similarly, Dina could inherit ninja traits from a ninja ancestor, because those were the traits that gave said ancestor the aptitude for ninja training.
milu
i live for these nonsense conversations about evolution <3
anyway, here's a thought experiment.
suppose there's a skill, such as "raptor-sense" which one really has to start learning in the first 2 or 3 years of life, or it's very unlikely you'll ever catch up with the True Raptors if you learn it later.
Let's say that early training is complicated, and time-consuming, and you have to teach it exactly right or it's no use. so you have to really know what you're doing, and be really motivated.
Now, who but a True Raptor, or someone very well versed in those arts, will go to the trouble of teaching their infant the crucial early stages of the art?
Final point: though the core teaching is unchanging, as some techniques (such as how to neutralize someone armed with a bamboo flute) become disused (due to the lack of bamboo flutes in your environment), the Raptors may stop teaching them; while some techniques which would not have existed previously (such as using concrete-based architecture to bounce around) are eventually developped and passed on.
OK, now you're an alien scientist and in earthling evolution 101 you learn, "there's darwinian evolution, yadda yadda, and there's lamarckian evolution though it's barely a thing in multicellular organisms, bla bla".
Now you decide to study the lineages of Raptors in that one earthling species, Homo Sapiens. (which you probably call by a less pretentious latin name, such as Simius Invasivus or whatever).
How do you NOT run back to your thesis advisor and yell: OMG I've found lamarckian evolution in Homo Sapiens!!!
idk is that silly? did i just silly all over your smarts?
Wagstaff
I notice that a major confusion over epigenetics is that it somehow confirms Lamarckian theory, which it does not.
Darwin said that traits had some means of mutating and getting transmitted among generations, but he didn’t specify exactly what those mechanisms actually were.
DNA was naturally the first means of said mutation and transmission we discovered in host cells of living things.
Since then, we have built even more upon Darwin’s original work with population genetics and the like. Epigenetic mechanisms are just building upon this framework even more!
milu
ok yeah, that’s useful PSA as regards what Darwin and Lamarck actually said (and i do feel bad for poor Lamarck getting remembered as “the guy who was wrong”, when really w/r/t inheritance Darwin basically agreed with Lamarck and so was equally wrong) but anyway, by now the word “lamarckian” has, however improperly, become shorthand for “inheritance of acquired characters”, so, that’s how i was using it =)
milu
but to put what i’ve said another way,
why don’t we include cultural transmission under the umbrella of “epigenetic transmission”?
Wagstaff
The brain, the skills and knowledge it can retain and transmit to others without reproduction, their ability to mutate and refine useful behaviors called meme, were a major game changer for all of life. In a sense, I guess you can call neuroplasticity the Ultimate Epigenome.
Just below the massively adaptable brain lay the other means of inheritance, in order of speed of mutation: antibodies, host DNA methylation, microbiome and prion mutation.
I know that this is a massive oversimplification. But a very important point is still made.
Reltzik
Milu: For the same reason we classify mechanical reactions, chemical reactions, and nuclear reactions differently.
Genetics involves changes to the genes themselves. Call this analogous to a nuclear reaction where the nucleus of an atom is changed by adding or removing protons or electrons.
Epigenetics doesn’t change the DNA, but does change how that DNA expresses itself, including the nature of the cells the DNA reproduces and how they react to their surroundings. Call this equivalent to chemical reactions. The underlying atoms are the same, but they are brought together in different ways to create different molecules that are fundamentally different in how they interact with other molecules.
Learning changes neither. The cells of the brain remain basically the same in their functioning. What changes is how the cells are organized and interconnected and the strengths of the connections between them. (Maybe you could make a case for some aspects of this to be epigenetic, but it’s something of a grey matter.) This is a bit like a mechanical reaction. You rearrange a machine or take apart and rebuild an object, but the underlying chemistry remains the same.
…
…. okay, I don’t really know what I’m talking about. That was just an excuse for the stealth pun. *flees for dear punning life*
milu
meh, i guess Wagstaff was right, i am a bit muddled myself.
My INITIAL musing wasn’t really “should cultural inheritance count as epigenetic” as i’m sure you’re right that epigenetics being defined as related to the switching-on-&-off of genes is by and large accepted as canon;
INSTEAD i was really interested in the way biologists (afaict????) tend to basically wave away “inheritance of acquired characteristics” (let’s call’em IAC) as non-existant or at best irrelevant.
and yeah sure this has been challenged by epigenetics, but i feel like the consensus is that IAC is still essentially not a thing in complex organisms, with the exception of immunity but geneticists have always known about that and accepted that that was a special case, so, whatever.
NOTWITHSTANDING all that noise, WHY don’t we count CULTURAL transmission as IAC? i pompously wonder.
…and, you know, your answer still holds, in that those are just the categories we (mostly) agree upon. biology (mostly) doesn’t deal with cultural inheritance because that’s (mostly) not what biology is about, and there’s a line in the sand between biology and non-biology and that’s just the way… things… are.
but that line has shifted before, and it might shift again!!!
…although as i write this i’m reminded that biologists blithely forcing their evolutionary models onto humans has not *always* been a cool idea in the past, so, idk maybe that line in the sand is fine just where it is. ok, bye
milu
PS. that was a terrible pun. worth it.
Wagstaff
Just to br clear, evolutionary models on their own were not responsible for said damaging discrimination of the past; bearing scarce exceptions, the scientists behind these models respected the nature, origins and limits of their research.
Much akin to IQ tests, evolutionary models were of course appropriated, misused and abused by bigots, who turned these models into ammunition for their own unacceptable purposes.
milu
ok, no. theories are not innocent of the social context of the people producing them. And the elaboration of modern evolutionary theory paralleled European colonialism and the American conquest of the west.
Look, i’m not sufficiently versed to make a solid argument, but i’ve also read enough history of biology to know to be sceptical of the claim that “bearing scarce exceptions… the scientists behind the models respected the limits of their research”. I’m not burning any books here. But context matters.
Reltzik
I’m also dubious about how scarce the exceptions were. It’s hard to think that, for example, eugenics was the work of only a few outliers.
But as a good rule of thumb, scientists (er, “scientists”) who start out looking to arrive at certain conclusions matching their own attitudes (be those attitudes racial chauvinism, or religious chauvinism, or male chauvinism, or buy-our-product chauvinism) don’t discover so much as fabricate. If they’re too busy forcing the evidence where they want it to go, they can’t follow the evidence where it leads. What results is usually either something completely unfalsifiable (which, nowadays at least, is acknowledged as bad science) or something that is quickly falsified. That doesn’t mean that all the scientists that made huge breakthroughs were free of such attitudes, far from it, but being able to put aside their prejudice while you work is an essential skill for doing science. If they can’t do that, the resulting theory will not withstand review.
What you get in that case is… well, something akin to a YEC or QAnon or an election conspiracy theorist. People who will rapidly snap up any factoid to “prove” the point, who produces an abhorrent mess of a theory that falls apart with only the slightest bit of skeptical review, but who can still sell the finished product because the people they’re selling it to are buying affirmation rather than truth and aren’t the sort to check under the hood or kick the tires if it matches their preconceptions.
Clif
“something completely unfalsifiable (which, nowadays at least, is acknowledged as bad science)”
You would think, and yet string theory.
Wagstaff
The people who did that weren’t even real scientists. Social Darwinism wasn’t invented by Darwin. The inventor of the IQ test even protested against its use in disenfranchised people.
Also Milu, the time period and dominant religious atmosphere in which a scientific or otherwise secular theory is created has nothing to do with the validity of its content.
When I quote the author of some idea, sometimes I may have very significant disagreements with them. For instance, I achknowledge that Darwin grew up in a very binary thinking society, and even though he was an agnostic, I still disagree with him there.
The point I’m trying to make is, the author is incidental, and the idea always stands or falls on its OWN merits, not that of the author.
The original IQ tests and evolutionary theory had no elements in them that were intrinsically supremacist. In fact, inter-species cooperation is very well supported by Darwin’s original framework.
Condemning evolutionary theory for having its popular understanding twisted by bigots for their unacceptable purposes is like condemning the brick instead of its wielder for stoning someone to death.
Reltzik
In fairness, Milu does have a point. Darwinian evolution (much less the modern synthesis) isn’t tainted by what the racists did and still do with it, but there is still a warning to be taken from that whole kerfuffle to beware of science that one doesn’t understand, especially in the hands of groups using it to further their own ideological ends.
(Also, string theory isn’t accepted as proven science. An interesting model (er, set of models) with theoretical coherence, potential, and a couple of details that have born fruit, but as a whole it’s still a hypothetical.)
milu
@Wag,
my point was, biologists (#NotAllBiologists) have at times presumed of the explanatory power of their discipline, and overapplied their methods to realms that they were either not really equipped to deal with, or were simply too biased to study carefully. I’m not calling out darwinian evolution itself, like who am I? anyway, i basically worship Darwin and i refuse to learn anything unsavoury about him.
no, but i was mostly thinking, as Reltzik said, of eugenics (Francis Galton: scientist) and assorted flavours of scientific racism.
*HOT TAKE* scientific racism: it was a thing done by scientists!!!
…many of them very reputable. The Paris Society of Anthropology was founded in the 19th century by Paul Broca (very famous doctor) and comprised many fairly eminent scholars of the time, and it was essentially dedicated to measuring skulls, based on the hypothesis of anatomically measurable differences in intelligence between the races and the sexes (a hypothesis which took a very long time to be dropped despite, obviously, no evidence whatsoever.)
So, i feel like we’re not talking of the same thing, quite. i have nothing but admiration for good science that stems from wonder and humility, my ranting was more about how, uh.. good dogs do bad things? i don’t know. i’m exhausted. fucking insomnia, man.
but anyway, i appreciated this conversation =)
milu
ok and now i’m rereading and it sounds like i’m moving the goalposts. i did say that scientific theories shouldn’t be abstracted from their social context, and i stand by that , (i guess i was making 2 sort-of-separate points ok) but it’s a looong conversation??? and now that i’m finally boring myself to sleep i dont wanna miss this train of melatonin, so, xoxox
Uly
Alternatively, we can assume that ninjas have undergone generations of selective breeding, which is Darwinian evolution.
Yumi
Actually, it’s just that Dina is all-seeing, all-knowing, and omnipresent.
276 thoughts on “Ipso”
Ana Chronistic
Walky’s “incorrect dinosaur facts”-dar is improving
Thag Simmons
As a survival skill more than anything
CC
Shouldn’t’ve said that …
Ray Radlein
Have to say any strip involving Stegosaurus facts has to be tailor-made for Thag Simmons
NotThatDrew
No kidding… apparently it can pick up inaccuracies all the way in different dorms now
NotThatDrew
Damn, misread that comment.
Dina’s, not Walky’s, has increased significantly increased in range
Doctor_Who
Do you think she picks up on it instantaneously, or is there a lightspeed delay?
If we moved her far enough away from the person saying the incorrect dinosaur fact, we could violate causality.
K^2
It is a quantum phenomenon. The truthfulness of dinosaur fact and Dina’s attack are in an entangled superposition. Once the fact is observed, it becomes either true or false, and the attack commences immediately in the later case. As such, there is no communication delay. However, since truthfulness is revealed only moments before attack, it sadly cannot be used to send information across great distances, per no-communication theorem.
woobie
She hears before the misstatement is made. Like a Ranyhyn arriving when called from the Plains of Ra.
Edwin I Callahan
Now, that’s a deep pop reference. The Unbeliever trilogy goes back to the 70s.
Geneseepaws
Quoting the 1970s does not violate any Covenant.
Paradox
Geneseepaws FTW!
Demoted Oblivious
If this were able to violate causality, the distance between them wouldn’t matter. You may need a bit of distance to allow for reaction time, observations and records to show that the cause of the effect was chronologically outside of the error margins of the observed timing, but for the actual violation of causality, distance doesn’t matter so long as it’s outside the light-cone. (which is to say that effects are always within the light cone of the cause, except for certain weird quantum experiments they’ve been conducting where things are gettung fishy)
Deanatay
It’s not that she picks up on it instantaneously, it’s that there’s no light-speed delay in her physical corrective response (aka ‘attack’) that worries me.
Switchchris23
They are in the the Girl’s dorms atm, and Dina’s room isnt to far away from her’s, so while that was a fast reaction, it probably isnt to difficult to hear things through those dorm room walls.
Lingo
No, Lucy and Jennifer live in a different dorm.
Wagstaff
Does anyone else notice strange similarities between her and Baldi from Baldi’s Basics?
Both use green in their color schemes.
Both are annoyed at scholarly inaccuracies.
Both have incredible hearing.
Reltzik
There’s some sort of wormhole-like phenomenon hiding behind doors. So far only Dina’s figured out how to use them.
thejeff
Though Joyce can use a similar phenomenon to teleport to Dorothy.
Doctor_Who
I guess Mike & the Evil Dads (worst band name ever) gave Willis a taste for blood, now he’s killing off characters left and right!
King Daniel
rip in pieces
Demoted Oblivious
Why not just “Rest in Pieces”? Or did you actually mean tear into pieces? Or rest in Pisces? Or are you condemning the dead to be dismembered and scattered? Or..There is a lot to unpack in this.
Kintrex
Analytically dissecting a common joke phrase? Why don’t I just head over to the ATM machine and input my pin number to withdraw $5 dollars to reward you for your originality.
milu
oof, that was unnecessary i think?
Michael Steamweed
Unnecessary.
Demoted Oblivious
Hey, 5$ is 5$. I’ll take it. Please donate it to Child’s Play Charity. They donate games and toys for kids in childrens hospitals around the world.
Doctor_Who
Wait, isn’t this Lucy’s dorm room? That Starfire poster is hers, right?
…Just how good is Dina’s hearing, and how fast can she move?
NotThatDrew
The same thing occurred to me as well
Nono
The question is, if there are two incorrect dinosaur facts on opposite ends of campus, what happens?
Doctor_Who
Wonder what happens if two people watch copies of the Ringu video at the same time and then wait.
Though Dina’s clearly got Sadako beat on speed, Lucy didn’t have to wait a week for a response.
Demoted Oblivious
That’s why the one week wait. Thanks to modern video duplication and youtube like sites, Sadako has been swamped with requests for haunting. She’s so behind schedule at this point she doesn’t know when she’s actually going to get time off to rest in peace.
Cholma
Dina’s “incorrect dino facts-sense” is kind of like Peter Parker’s “spidey-sense”. It triggers whenever someone states false facts about dinosaurs, regardless of their proximity to Dina. She doesn’t need to “hear” the fact to know it was wrong!
Lingo
It is possibly also precognitive (as Parker’s spider-sense has sometimes been described), allowing her to sense the falsehood even before it is uttered!
Cholma
Ooh! Dina’s a Pre-cog! She’ll soon be starring in a new movie: Minority Report: Jurassic World.
He Who Abides
But will it protect Dina’s financial stability, as the ol’ Spidey-Sense has been shown to do?
K^2
Modern theory suggests that only one attack will occur, sparing one or more ignorant parties from due justice, but nobody has yet been brave enough to verify this experimentally.
Reltzik
She grabs whoever’s closest in her teeth, whips them back and forth like a dog shaking a rat, and then flings them across campus where on landing they crush the other offender.
Mturtle7
I like to imagine that, in the case of simultaneous incorrect assertions among their friend group, Becky would happily chip in to handle one while Dina gets the other.
Yumi
Dina is all-seeing, all-knowing, and omnipresent.
Wagstaff
I can see two hypotheses much more likely to explain her extraordinary speed, senses and strength.
1. She learned those skills through meticulous study of the biophysics of prehistoric creatures, mostly dinosaurs.
2. She is the decendant of a samurai or a ninja.
King Daniel
2 would require the existence of Lamarckian inheritance (which is bullshit), so we can rule that out.
Wagstaff
Not necessarily. Epigenetic inheritance allows a variety of traits to be transmitted across generations via routes of inherited DNA methyl tags, microbiomes, and antibodies just to name afew.
King Daniel
Fine. On a large scale (such as would be necessary to transfer human traits, skills, and abilities), Lamarckian inheritance is bullshit.
Wagstaff
Silly me! I forgot to consider the possibility that it could be both of those suggested mechanisms working together!
Demoted Oblivious
Not as much as you seem to think though. Lamarckian theory was b.s., yes, but there is a remarkable amount of inheritable traits based on epigenetics. Even new therapies based on methyl tags. See: CRISPR and the new therapies for dis- and re-en abling specific genetics: CRISPRoff and CRISPRon. These are designed to cure genetic diseases, but instead of full excising the genes with CRISPR (like an amputation), now they can just switch them off and observe the effects, and these epigenetic changes are inheritable. An example of a real world epigentic trait, is a person growing up in an environment requiring broad hands (think blacksmith) will have their body respond, grow stronger, but also a more robust skeleton with larger hands. Their children have been shown to be more likely to have broad hands, even if they don’t grow up blacksmithing. (this was a cited example when I first read about epigenetics, but I can’t recall where that was written, else I’d provide the source)
milu
too bad you don’t have a source, cos that sounds like a big claim.
Meagan
Thank you. I’m so sick of people saying Lamarckian inheritance isn’t real when we know at this point that it is, in ways.
Reltzik
So we’re ruling out nature, but why rule out nurture?
Wagstaff
Possibility 1 counts as nurture. While not sufficient for skills on their own, epigenetic inheritance may have at least provided some kind of head start in their development.
Reltzik
… so epigentics from ninja/samurai heritage?
I meant that being descended from ninja and/or samurai could be the source of her skills BECAUSE HER FAMILY TAUGHT HER.
….
…. okay, no, I’m getting a little bit uncomfortable with adjacency to the Japanese-implies-ninja-samurai-and/or-karate trope, so I’m going with the Lamarck thing instead. This is a silly thread, I get to be silly.
Reltzik
Oooh, better yet! Non-epigentic Evolutionary-Science skills through Lamarkian inheritance!
Wagstaff
I merely suggested that epigenetic inheritance is one of the major factors behind her skills, although it probably plays less of a role than her study of prehistoric species.
Wagstaff
I mean her skills of extraordinary speed, senses and strength.
Demoted Oblivious
Were your parents particularly silly Reltzik? Maybe this silliness is also a heritable trait too? Also, why is it that everytime I read your handle, it makes me think of Ruth Lessick? Some combination of the letters and structure I suppose.
Reltzik
Demoted: Mom’s particularly silly. Dad’s particularly quick to go to another room when Mom and I are in a positive-silly-feedback-loop. And I’m guessing you’re right about why the name makes you think of Ruth (mostly the same letters or close to them, in roughly the same order), but I was using this handle before IW started.
Stifyn Baker
No, it wouldn’t necessarily require Lamarckian descent. I am a descendant of foundry workers, which has left me with a short, square physique and fantastic stamina. But my ancestors didn’t give me that physique because they were foundry workers, they became foundry workers because during the industrial revolution, my bloodline’s genetic tendency towards “short, broad and strong” made them perfectly suited for foundry jobs.
Similarly, Dina could inherit ninja traits from a ninja ancestor, because those were the traits that gave said ancestor the aptitude for ninja training.
milu
i live for these nonsense conversations about evolution <3
anyway, here's a thought experiment.
suppose there's a skill, such as "raptor-sense" which one really has to start learning in the first 2 or 3 years of life, or it's very unlikely you'll ever catch up with the True Raptors if you learn it later.
Let's say that early training is complicated, and time-consuming, and you have to teach it exactly right or it's no use. so you have to really know what you're doing, and be really motivated.
Now, who but a True Raptor, or someone very well versed in those arts, will go to the trouble of teaching their infant the crucial early stages of the art?
Final point: though the core teaching is unchanging, as some techniques (such as how to neutralize someone armed with a bamboo flute) become disused (due to the lack of bamboo flutes in your environment), the Raptors may stop teaching them; while some techniques which would not have existed previously (such as using concrete-based architecture to bounce around) are eventually developped and passed on.
OK, now you're an alien scientist and in earthling evolution 101 you learn, "there's darwinian evolution, yadda yadda, and there's lamarckian evolution though it's barely a thing in multicellular organisms, bla bla".
Now you decide to study the lineages of Raptors in that one earthling species, Homo Sapiens. (which you probably call by a less pretentious latin name, such as Simius Invasivus or whatever).
How do you NOT run back to your thesis advisor and yell: OMG I've found lamarckian evolution in Homo Sapiens!!!
idk is that silly? did i just silly all over your smarts?
Wagstaff
I notice that a major confusion over epigenetics is that it somehow confirms Lamarckian theory, which it does not.
Darwin said that traits had some means of mutating and getting transmitted among generations, but he didn’t specify exactly what those mechanisms actually were.
DNA was naturally the first means of said mutation and transmission we discovered in host cells of living things.
Since then, we have built even more upon Darwin’s original work with population genetics and the like. Epigenetic mechanisms are just building upon this framework even more!
milu
ok yeah, that’s useful PSA as regards what Darwin and Lamarck actually said (and i do feel bad for poor Lamarck getting remembered as “the guy who was wrong”, when really w/r/t inheritance Darwin basically agreed with Lamarck and so was equally wrong) but anyway, by now the word “lamarckian” has, however improperly, become shorthand for “inheritance of acquired characters”, so, that’s how i was using it =)
milu
but to put what i’ve said another way,
why don’t we include cultural transmission under the umbrella of “epigenetic transmission”?
Wagstaff
The brain, the skills and knowledge it can retain and transmit to others without reproduction, their ability to mutate and refine useful behaviors called meme, were a major game changer for all of life. In a sense, I guess you can call neuroplasticity the Ultimate Epigenome.
Just below the massively adaptable brain lay the other means of inheritance, in order of speed of mutation: antibodies, host DNA methylation, microbiome and prion mutation.
I know that this is a massive oversimplification. But a very important point is still made.
Reltzik
Milu: For the same reason we classify mechanical reactions, chemical reactions, and nuclear reactions differently.
Genetics involves changes to the genes themselves. Call this analogous to a nuclear reaction where the nucleus of an atom is changed by adding or removing protons or electrons.
Epigenetics doesn’t change the DNA, but does change how that DNA expresses itself, including the nature of the cells the DNA reproduces and how they react to their surroundings. Call this equivalent to chemical reactions. The underlying atoms are the same, but they are brought together in different ways to create different molecules that are fundamentally different in how they interact with other molecules.
Learning changes neither. The cells of the brain remain basically the same in their functioning. What changes is how the cells are organized and interconnected and the strengths of the connections between them. (Maybe you could make a case for some aspects of this to be epigenetic, but it’s something of a grey matter.) This is a bit like a mechanical reaction. You rearrange a machine or take apart and rebuild an object, but the underlying chemistry remains the same.
…
…. okay, I don’t really know what I’m talking about. That was just an excuse for the stealth pun. *flees for dear punning life*
milu
meh, i guess Wagstaff was right, i am a bit muddled myself.
My INITIAL musing wasn’t really “should cultural inheritance count as epigenetic” as i’m sure you’re right that epigenetics being defined as related to the switching-on-&-off of genes is by and large accepted as canon;
INSTEAD i was really interested in the way biologists (afaict????) tend to basically wave away “inheritance of acquired characteristics” (let’s call’em IAC) as non-existant or at best irrelevant.
and yeah sure this has been challenged by epigenetics, but i feel like the consensus is that IAC is still essentially not a thing in complex organisms, with the exception of immunity but geneticists have always known about that and accepted that that was a special case, so, whatever.
NOTWITHSTANDING all that noise, WHY don’t we count CULTURAL transmission as IAC? i pompously wonder.
…and, you know, your answer still holds, in that those are just the categories we (mostly) agree upon. biology (mostly) doesn’t deal with cultural inheritance because that’s (mostly) not what biology is about, and there’s a line in the sand between biology and non-biology and that’s just the way… things… are.
but that line has shifted before, and it might shift again!!!
…although as i write this i’m reminded that biologists blithely forcing their evolutionary models onto humans has not *always* been a cool idea in the past, so, idk maybe that line in the sand is fine just where it is. ok, bye
milu
PS. that was a terrible pun. worth it.
Wagstaff
Just to br clear, evolutionary models on their own were not responsible for said damaging discrimination of the past; bearing scarce exceptions, the scientists behind these models respected the nature, origins and limits of their research.
Much akin to IQ tests, evolutionary models were of course appropriated, misused and abused by bigots, who turned these models into ammunition for their own unacceptable purposes.
milu
ok, no. theories are not innocent of the social context of the people producing them. And the elaboration of modern evolutionary theory paralleled European colonialism and the American conquest of the west.
Look, i’m not sufficiently versed to make a solid argument, but i’ve also read enough history of biology to know to be sceptical of the claim that “bearing scarce exceptions… the scientists behind the models respected the limits of their research”. I’m not burning any books here. But context matters.
Reltzik
I’m also dubious about how scarce the exceptions were. It’s hard to think that, for example, eugenics was the work of only a few outliers.
But as a good rule of thumb, scientists (er, “scientists”) who start out looking to arrive at certain conclusions matching their own attitudes (be those attitudes racial chauvinism, or religious chauvinism, or male chauvinism, or buy-our-product chauvinism) don’t discover so much as fabricate. If they’re too busy forcing the evidence where they want it to go, they can’t follow the evidence where it leads. What results is usually either something completely unfalsifiable (which, nowadays at least, is acknowledged as bad science) or something that is quickly falsified. That doesn’t mean that all the scientists that made huge breakthroughs were free of such attitudes, far from it, but being able to put aside their prejudice while you work is an essential skill for doing science. If they can’t do that, the resulting theory will not withstand review.
What you get in that case is… well, something akin to a YEC or QAnon or an election conspiracy theorist. People who will rapidly snap up any factoid to “prove” the point, who produces an abhorrent mess of a theory that falls apart with only the slightest bit of skeptical review, but who can still sell the finished product because the people they’re selling it to are buying affirmation rather than truth and aren’t the sort to check under the hood or kick the tires if it matches their preconceptions.
Clif
“something completely unfalsifiable (which, nowadays at least, is acknowledged as bad science)”
You would think, and yet string theory.
Wagstaff
The people who did that weren’t even real scientists. Social Darwinism wasn’t invented by Darwin. The inventor of the IQ test even protested against its use in disenfranchised people.
Also Milu, the time period and dominant religious atmosphere in which a scientific or otherwise secular theory is created has nothing to do with the validity of its content.
When I quote the author of some idea, sometimes I may have very significant disagreements with them. For instance, I achknowledge that Darwin grew up in a very binary thinking society, and even though he was an agnostic, I still disagree with him there.
The point I’m trying to make is, the author is incidental, and the idea always stands or falls on its OWN merits, not that of the author.
The original IQ tests and evolutionary theory had no elements in them that were intrinsically supremacist. In fact, inter-species cooperation is very well supported by Darwin’s original framework.
Condemning evolutionary theory for having its popular understanding twisted by bigots for their unacceptable purposes is like condemning the brick instead of its wielder for stoning someone to death.
Reltzik
In fairness, Milu does have a point. Darwinian evolution (much less the modern synthesis) isn’t tainted by what the racists did and still do with it, but there is still a warning to be taken from that whole kerfuffle to beware of science that one doesn’t understand, especially in the hands of groups using it to further their own ideological ends.
(Also, string theory isn’t accepted as proven science. An interesting model (er, set of models) with theoretical coherence, potential, and a couple of details that have born fruit, but as a whole it’s still a hypothetical.)
milu
@Wag,
my point was, biologists (#NotAllBiologists) have at times presumed of the explanatory power of their discipline, and overapplied their methods to realms that they were either not really equipped to deal with, or were simply too biased to study carefully. I’m not calling out darwinian evolution itself, like who am I? anyway, i basically worship Darwin and i refuse to learn anything unsavoury about him.
no, but i was mostly thinking, as Reltzik said, of eugenics (Francis Galton: scientist) and assorted flavours of scientific racism.
*HOT TAKE* scientific racism: it was a thing done by scientists!!!
…many of them very reputable. The Paris Society of Anthropology was founded in the 19th century by Paul Broca (very famous doctor) and comprised many fairly eminent scholars of the time, and it was essentially dedicated to measuring skulls, based on the hypothesis of anatomically measurable differences in intelligence between the races and the sexes (a hypothesis which took a very long time to be dropped despite, obviously, no evidence whatsoever.)
So, i feel like we’re not talking of the same thing, quite. i have nothing but admiration for good science that stems from wonder and humility, my ranting was more about how, uh.. good dogs do bad things? i don’t know. i’m exhausted. fucking insomnia, man.
but anyway, i appreciated this conversation =)
milu
ok and now i’m rereading and it sounds like i’m moving the goalposts. i did say that scientific theories shouldn’t be abstracted from their social context, and i stand by that , (i guess i was making 2 sort-of-separate points ok) but it’s a looong conversation??? and now that i’m finally boring myself to sleep i dont wanna miss this train of melatonin, so, xoxox
Uly
Alternatively, we can assume that ninjas have undergone generations of selective breeding, which is Darwinian evolution.
Yumi
Actually, it’s just that Dina is all-seeing, all-knowing, and omnipresent.
MaximumZero
3. In DoA, Dina is The Cheese.
Regalli
Raptor, raptor, what do you hear?
*Dina turns, staring at the fourth wall with sharp, sharp teeth.’
“ALL.”
RowenMorland