[HN Gopher] How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus (2020)
___________________________________________________________________
How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus (2020)
Author : bkudria
Score : 108 points
Date : 2024-01-20 21:43 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (whyy.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (whyy.org)
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _How the placenta evolved from an ancient virus_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25655346 - Jan 2021 (106
| comments)
| ta8645 wrote:
| It's a little odd to consider the idea that fighting off modern
| viruses today, might actually be impeding human evolution in some
| way we can't foresee.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| I suppose the ethical question would be: how many current
| humans are you willing to let die from exposure to a virus in
| the hopes that one of them might mutate something useful?
| ta8645 wrote:
| It's really an impossible calculation. There's no way to
| appraise the consequences to assign a value. If it were
| possible to say, that a future mutation was necessary to save
| humanity (ie. we are doomed without entering that future)
| well then perhaps we'd be willing to sacrifice a lot of us
| now.
|
| It's all academic of course, we'll never make such a
| decision, and never know what could have been. It's just
| another reminder that we don't really know the future or the
| best course of action in these situations -- we're just
| taking our best guess (even the experts).
| omeid2 wrote:
| > a future mutation was necessary to save humanity
|
| Even in that scenario, it is very simple, we protected the
| people today and use vaccines to induce the necessary
| mutation. The moral choice in my book is to always err on
| the side of the living than "potential of the living".
| ta8645 wrote:
| That's your personal calculus, and fair enough. World
| leaders might make a different decision though.
|
| For instance, the British military planners allowed
| soldiers to die on the battlefield, who they could have
| saved, in order to protect the secret that they had
| cracked German encryption during WWII. That was a place
| where the needs of the many, were deemed more valuable
| than the lives of the few.
|
| I'm not judging one way or the other, but it has happened
| in human history more than once. And in the imaginary
| scenario where leaders had perfect knowledge of the
| future, it would likely happen again.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| That isn't as hypothetical a situation though as what you
| outline which is preventing a mutation now that may be
| important tens, hundreds of thousands of years or maybe
| even millions from now. There's so much time for
| technology to evolve to make it likely that any negative
| effects can be countered through that as technology can
| deal with problems on a much shorter time scale than
| evolution can.
| omeid2 wrote:
| > For instance, the British military planners allowed
| soldiers to die on the battlefield, who they could have
| saved, in order to protect the secret that they had
| cracked German encryption during WWII. That was a place
| where the needs of the many, were deemed more valuable
| than the lives of the few.
|
| This is not a very good comparison, in my opinion.
| Military is rarely about the "needs of the many" far more
| than it is about the "powers that be". Once you
| understand the dynamic at a play, it is rather clear that
| the soldiers died for what soldiers _almost_ always die
| for; the regimes that pushes them to war.
| romusha wrote:
| That's the domain of longscamism
| boredgargoyle wrote:
| There are probably thousands (and my guess would be much more)
| viruses that that dance on the information playground that is
| our genome, metagenome, and the genomes of the organisms we
| host. Fighting a few of them is probably not going to be a
| significant issue.
|
| Having more individuals around by itself would also lead to
| mutations which the environment may select for in the future.
| By itself there is no such thing as a beneficial mutation (gene
| import) unless the environment proves it to be.
| ta8645 wrote:
| You're really missing the point -- there's no way to know the
| future. Maybe your optimism is warranted, but maybe we
| stamped out a virus that would have given us a superpower.
|
| The argument is _not_ that we should change our strategy of
| doing the best we can with the information we have. Just that
| we should have some humility about what we can and can't
| actually predict, or say with certainty.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Our superpower is developing technology. It's unlikely
| evolution could ever outperform that as it operates on much
| slower time scales for adaptation. So any viral mutation
| now will only really manifest at population scale after
| hundreds of thousands of years whereas technology can do it
| within years or decades.
| ta8645 wrote:
| You're doing a lot of work to continue to miss the point.
| The point is not that we should embrace viruses in order
| to reap the benefits. Just that it is _POSSIBLE_ that a
| virus would turn out to be very beneficial to humanity,
| in the long run. We know this to be a fact, because of
| the article we're reading above.
|
| The only point I'm hoping people will take, is that we
| shouldn't be so quick to make categorical statements
| about the future; like we know exactly how things will
| play out. I don't know for sure. You don't know for sure.
| The experts don't know for sure.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| No, you're assuming a counterfactual that isn't
| necessarily true. If the virus hadn't come along,
| humanity as it stands today may not exist but whatever
| animal was infected could potentially have kept
| reproducing / another virus would accomplish what
| happened anyway. Those are far more likely scenarios.
|
| You're taking an impossible to prove hypothetical that
| would require omniscient level reasoning and predictive
| powers to prove or disprove - it's not a productive line
| of reasoning and you're falling into the exact same trap
| you're accusing others of doing. The WWII example is also
| highly flawed because that one was experts making
| strategically reasonable calls. Worrying about some
| hypothetical virus that in the distant future is critical
| is not strategically reasonable - it's science fantasy.
| ta8645 wrote:
| > No, you're assuming a counterfactual.
|
| I'm not assuming anything. I'm following the science as
| reported in the article above. That in FACT a virus lead
| to an important part of human development. And was in
| FACT beneficial. Those are true facts, if you trust the
| science.
|
| > If the virus hadn't come along, humanity as it stands
| today may not exist but whatever animal was infected
| could potentially have kept reproducing / another virus
| would accomplish what happened anyway. Those are far more
| likely scenarios.
|
| You literally immediately launched into assuming a
| counterfactual (that didn't happen, you just made it up).
|
| > You're taking an impossible to prove hypothetical that
| would require omniscient level reasoning
|
| Yes, and I made it clear that's what I was doing. And I
| explicitly said it was an imaginary situation that would
| never happen. I was using it for illustrative purposes
| for people who are flexible enough in their thinking. I'm
| sorry that isn't you.
| qup wrote:
| Additionally, the tech level will eventually allow us to
| discover and implement any/all available superpowers.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| Super powers would be sensory I think unless we sprout
| wings or gills. So things we've probably seen already in
| another species like infrared vision or what not... but we
| do have technology to do that already so the question is
| how does that influence the evolutionary landscape.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| Yeah, if I remember correctly the RAG recombinases that enable
| crazy diversity in your B and T cell receptors of your adaptive
| immune system are also thought to come from a retrovirus that
| got into our ancestors germ cells.
| badosu wrote:
| It is required some process of natural selection for mutations
| to be selected against, do we know how this occurs with the
| modern homo sapiens?
| MrVandemar wrote:
| We have plenty of modern day selection pressure. Watch the
| first 2 minutes of _Idiocracy_.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Unless you think our ancestral biology is perfectly adapted
| to the modern world, evolution will be acting. Indeed,
| evolution is probably occurring on humanity at a breakneck
| pace right now, because our environment has changed so
| radically.
| juggertao wrote:
| Umbrella Corporation is working on the innovative t-Virus for
| the next step in human evolution. But people FUD it.
| 6177c40f wrote:
| I think the tradeoff is worth it, viruses are far more likely
| to do us harm than to help us out. Besides, we're entering the
| age when we can direct our own evolution.
| chasil wrote:
| One way that viral elements are expressed are as transposons.
|
| There is even an infectious variant, a gypsy transposon, that can
| move to neighboring cells.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transposable_element
| mlcrypto wrote:
| Kinda morbid thinking about all the failed mutations as laying
| eggs evolved into the placenta
| jmyeet wrote:
| Here's another sobering thought: you represent an unbroken
| chain from the universal common ancestor of successful
| reproduction going back billions of years and probably
| trillions of generations (given that many of those were as a
| single-celled organism). Every one of those generations a
| success.
|
| So if you fail to reproduce you will break that billion year
| old chain of evolutionary success.
|
| Here's another: you have 2 biological parents, (up to) 4
| biological grandparents (go look at Cleopatra's family tree)
| and so on to an upper bound of 2^n ancestors for the n'th
| previous generation. At some point this number exceeds the
| number of organisms that were alive at that time so there are
| likely one or more individuals in the past who are direct
| ancestors to everybody.
|
| A consequence of this is that if you go forwards in time
| ultimately your genetic line will either die out or you will be
| the direct ancestor of everybody given sufficient time.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Humans are social animals. It's myopic I think to only
| evaluate based on reproduction and genetic propagation. For
| example, most bees and ants are not involved in reproduction
| but they are all involved in helping the species survive into
| the future. So even if you don't reproduce you have a
| critical role to play in society (helping it stay cohesive,
| helping productivity, helping through your work efforts,
| helping your friends and family raise children who can help
| humanity survive and be good humans themselves etc)
| mrphoebs wrote:
| I doesn't seem like the above commenter was making a value
| judgement.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| > So if you fail to reproduce you will break that billion
| year old chain of evolutionary success.
|
| I'm responding to this and saying that's not an accurate
| way to frame it. I'm saying you are participating in
| evolutionary success even if you don't reproduce. For
| example, a more social family where there are siblings
| that don't reproduce and instead invest in the success of
| the reproductive sibling's offspring is still
| evolutionary success and would be being selected for
| through your whole families reproductive success as a
| whole rather than your individual success.
|
| The argument being made here is similar to the argument
| that sterilizing would result in removal of genes from
| the pool - it doesn't work because gene selection is very
| complicated and doesn't solely rely on individual
| reproduction.
| mrphoebs wrote:
| My mistake, I presumed incorrectly, that the argument you
| were making came from a place of defensiveness, rather
| than a more holistic framing of evolutionary success.
| Thanks for providing further clarity.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I like this argument because it frames the "self"/"you"
| as an illusion--instead, there is a more distributed
| self. I recognize that there are arguments against this
| argument -- but you point out that DNA identity is pretty
| distributed as well. Neat.
| NortySpock wrote:
| I'm currently more focused on spreading good memes to the
| next generation.
|
| Memes like kindness, empathy, planning ahead, being
| honest with yourself (and preferably others),
| communicating your intentions clearly ahead of time, and
| how good parenting takes more emotional labor and
| emotional intelligence than, say, the kind of parenting
| that solely consists of yelling when the parent does not
| receive the desired response from the child.
|
| Genes are not the only thing the next generation needs.
| Loughla wrote:
| Genetic line =/= role to play in society.
|
| Those are different things.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| The OP was making an observation. But I'll bite.
|
| First, human beings are not bees or ants. Our nature vis-a-
| vis reproduction is quite different. Most human beings do
| reproduce as that is our nature, or certainly most of us
| used to with the exception of periods of social collapse
| (think of Rome). We're in that sort of condition now, where
| we are having little or no children in the developed world.
| This does not bode well and at some point the decline of
| such a society will become irreversible.
|
| Of course, you are right that not everyone _must_
| reproduce, that there is no particular obligation for
| anyone to reproduce, and that those who do not can still
| contribute to the well-being of their families, the human
| species, and the common good. And indeed, if you are, say,
| a Catholic, you would say that while having children is the
| natural course and the normal path for most people, a small
| minority are called to sacrifice this natural end for the
| sake of a higher supernatural, spiritual end, e.g., the
| priesthood, by which one becomes a spiritual parent in
| place of a biological one. Certainly, we can be parental
| figures in non-biological ways as well. Even biological
| parents do that.
|
| But that's not that we're seeing behind the present
| demographic decline. Something like the priesthood is an
| exception, not the rule. Most who can have children of
| their own are not having them, or many of them, not because
| of some kind of exceptional higher calling, but rather for
| morally dubious reasons. Children are demanding. They
| require sacrifice. They demand the love known as charity. A
| consumerist is going to view a child not as a gift, but a
| burden. Furthermore, our society demonizes families,
| especially large families (perhaps in part stemming from
| Protestant attempts to restrict Catholic populations in the
| US). Having many children used to be seen as a blessing, a
| privilege. Today, we both think we're _entitled_ to having
| children (IVF is a testament to that), and refuse to have
| them.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| > Furthermore, our society demonizes families, especially
| large families (perhaps in part stemming from Protestant
| attempts to restrict Catholic populations in the US)
|
| I think it has a lot more to do with feminism than any
| Protestant/Catholic divide. In the Protestant church I
| attend, having 6+ kids is pretty normal. Certainly many
| evangelicals don't value large families but I think
| they're getting that mindset from the culture, rather
| than sacred Scipture.
| zpeti wrote:
| Some say feminism (and progressivism) is just an offshoot
| of protestantism, albeit a secular, puritan version.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| No humans aren't bees or ants. We're social animals and
| you can't ignore society and culture as aspects of
| evolution.
|
| Regardless, you've taken this whole thing in a weird
| direction bringing up a demographic collapse that is a
| fringe theory at the moment. As for that hypothesis,
| there's no actual indication that humanity is in any
| danger of a collapse just because the boomer generation
| is passing and our numbers return to normal. Humans can
| reproduce quite quick and have a long reproductive
| lifecycle - if it ever becomes a problem society will
| change to priority life more. As it is, life has gotten
| pretty difficult in terms of supporting kids and people
| having fewer is a symptom of that and not consumerism as
| you claim. And children are both a blessing and a burden.
| If they weren't a burden then the statistics about
| teenager births and the outcome for the parents and
| babies wouldn't be as bad as they are.
| zpeti wrote:
| > demographic collapse that is a fringe theory at the
| moment
|
| Show me the actual numbers where this isn't a massive
| change in humanity in the future?
|
| This is not a fringe theory. The effects of the collapse
| we can theorise on, but the collapse will happen now.
| It's not a question or a theory.
| InSteady wrote:
| I mean, population decline is a thing, and most
| 'developed' nations, or whatever you want to call us, are
| experiencing it. Demographic collapse sounds like a a
| scary term bandied about by people with an agenda (or
| those who want to proclaim the sky is falling but
| bizarrely want to ignore climate change and ecological
| collapse).
|
| I'm just guessing, because I haven't encountered the term
| and I'm not finding much about it on google. Certainly
| nothing from scientific or authoritative sources. I guess
| one article from FT uses the term to describe China's
| population decline.
| overtomanu wrote:
| My theory is that, as of now population might be above a
| "equilibrium". Since it is above equilibrium, it causes
| increased economic competition to raise kids. So only few
| economically well off couple have kid's.
|
| After few generations, population comes back to some
| level where economic competition to raise kids is
| reduced. Also, most of the lineages of people who chose
| not to have kids would have been wiped out or atleast
| somewhat reduced (Natural selection at play). So the
| people living in the future are likely to have kids on
| the condition that there is no economic penalty.
|
| So humanity extinction due to demographic decline is less
| likely. Instead it might happen due to something like
| nuclear war. More details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
| Fermi_paradox#It_is_the_nature...
| vlovich123 wrote:
| The person making the claim gets to present the data
| supporting it.
|
| It depends on what you mean by collapse. Is it that
| population will decline globally for a bit to a new
| equilibrium point? Sure I can believe that because
| boomers were a huge population bubble after WWII and
| there have been lots of living standard advancements
| since then (a huge one being family planning options
| being more and more available to the world's population).
| It's also important to remember that the population
| bubble was also driven by significant life extension and
| health advancements in medicine and nutrition without any
| real birth control being available so the lag until birth
| control became available results in another population
| bubble.
|
| None of that is particularly dire. And btw, it's not even
| clear to me that the population will actually start
| decreasing. And even if it does, believing it's some
| runaway effect that can't be fixed within 20 years once
| we notice it seems myopic as well.
|
| The position you're taking though, that population will
| not only decline but that there's no bottom to it and
| society will collapse, is the Elon Musk doomer talking
| point that this somehow portends the end of countries or
| civilizations or humanity itself. There's simply no
| evidence and no realistic mechanism of action for
| something that extreme. Human populations have always
| ebbed and flowed and the exponential growth we've seen
| since the Industrial Revolution is not the norm nor is it
| sustainable.
|
| > This is not a fringe theory. The effects of the
| collapse we can theorise on, but the collapse will happen
| now. It's not a question or a theory
|
| Again - you've stated something quite extreme without
| providing any support and then tried to shift the
| responsibility for providing evidence to the person
| doubting your wild claim. That's not how it works, sorry.
| It is a hypothesis that there's demographic collapse
| until it's either happened or there's credible evidence
| it will happen. Right now afaik neither is true.
| safety1st wrote:
| I'm downvoting this because of the arrogant and dubious
| notion that people who've chosen not to have children are
| somehow morally flawed. The fact of the matter is that
| successfully raising, educating etc. a child is
| dramatically more expensive than it was a few generations
| ago. While we can debate the various reasons for the
| decline in the reproduction rate there's no doubt that
| this is a big one, not as many people can _afford_ to
| raise kids.
|
| The factual and pragmatic view today is that if you can't
| afford a large home, one parent taking a lot of time off
| of work, and $120K+ in education bills then you are not
| setting your offspring up for success, this is not based
| on your personal morality, it is based on economics, and
| on statistical observations of the population.
|
| Ergo your lionizing of people who have have children
| actually amounts to a defense of the economically
| privileged, and you assert that the benefactors of the
| systemic increase of wealth inequality in our society are
| the most moral people. It's despicable really. Go eat
| your cake, pig.
| eks391 wrote:
| I don't believe whether ones finances allowing someone to
| have children is the factor for whether they will. From
| my observation (i have not researched this; this is
| anecdotal), wealthier people opt to have fewer or no
| kids, and larger families are usually those of lower
| income, like there's an inverse relationship between
| wealth and desired number of children. Even I used to
| want a large family until I acquired a higher standard of
| living and certain luxuries that I would likely have to
| give up if I got married and had kids.
|
| There's a popular line of thought that motherhood is
| below a working woman, and men and woman alike are
| enjoying increased ease of living and a consumerism
| lifestyle. The folk who still have to stretch and
| sacrifice to make ends meet already have the mindsets
| needed for children (sacrifice, hard work) and aren't
| affected by the line of belief that motherhood is 'below'
| since they already have learned not to compare themselves
| to others.
|
| Again this is speculation. I am not a sociologist.
| safety1st wrote:
| There used to be some truth to that but not so much
| anymore. It's historically correct that the poor used to
| have more kids (and I think are still a bit more likely
| to have them than the middle class). But what started to
| happen about 10-15 years ago was that _everyone_ became
| less likely to start a family _except_ for rich people.
| To be precise if a woman is rich enough to afford
| childcare she 's much more likely to have kids.
|
| Here's an article on the topic: https://www.theguardian.c
| om/lifeandstyle/2014/oct/25/women-w... - that's about a
| decade old and the evidence/trend has only grown.
|
| Children are just another one of those things that is
| increasingly out of reach for the American middle class,
| along with property ownership, health care etc. For the
| poster I responded to to ignore the economic data and
| paint the middle class and ordinary human beings as being
| selfish and immoral is perverse.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >wealthier people opt to have fewer or no kids, and
| larger families are usually those of lower income, like
| there's an inverse relationship between wealth and
| desired number of children.
|
| I've also noticed this trend, richer societies have less
| children and poorer societies have more children.
|
| Absolutely no politician (aka the people charged with
| population and demographic concerns) actually points this
| out, though. Probably because it goes against a _lot_ of
| narratives and the simple solution it implies is brutally
| unpalatable for pretty much everyone.
|
| I also notice that every single would-be or could-be
| parent inquired says they can't afford it, while also
| clearly enjoying _many_ luxuries that being poor would
| actively prohibit. I presume they all keep claiming the
| issue is money because who doesn 't like free handouts
| from the government just by saying you'll have kids? Get
| 'em while the getting's good. I'm not talking about just
| the US, either.
|
| Anyway, I believe the only true solution to declining
| birth rates is simply to become poor again as a society.
| It's the only logical solution when becoming richer
| clearly leads to less children.
| tanepiper wrote:
| It's not just economics. I earn a good salary and own my
| house, but I'm on my second marriage as both my partner
| and I have ADHD and Autism and in our 40s.
|
| It's not fair to try raise a child in those conditions,
| so we choose not to for their sake more than ours.
| laeri wrote:
| They are involved in helping their queen produce new
| offspring that also contains part of their own genetic
| material. In bees and ants you have to think of them as one
| single individual. Each single worker is not able to
| reproduce but they still will indirectly still reproduce
| through their queen. Not sure what being good humans has to
| do with this.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Ants and bees in a hive have _very_ similar genetics.
| Typically 75%, and sometimes 100%, if I remember.
|
| This means that a hive in some ways is best thought of as a
| single organization, which happens to have a "distributed"
| body.
|
| In that view, the non reproducing individuals _are_
| propagating their DNA in the same sense that human liver
| cells do, even though they don 't have the direct
| involvement that down and egg cells do.
| derac wrote:
| Human beings are 99.9% genetically similar to each other.
| Also, we're about 99% genetically similar to chimpanzees.
| inciampati wrote:
| In the euchromatic regions, yeah, it's about that.
| Elsewhere (e.g. centromeres) we are all quite diverse.
| This is recent news due to long read sequencing and
| complete genome assembly. The human pangenome project is
| touching on this, if still reticent to make clear claims
| about the centromeres.
|
| I'm not sure that "99%" similar is the right way to think
| about chimpanzees and humans. We have a different
| chromosome number. Our chromosome 2 is a roberstonian
| fusion of two acrocentric chromosomes found in all other
| great apes, including chimpanzees and bonobos.
| lynguist wrote:
| And 30% to a tomato. So what?
|
| The basics of cellular respiration are always the same on
| this planet.
| pi-e-sigma wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfate-
| reducing_microorganism
| BurningFrog wrote:
| That's a different kind of percentage. The terminology is
| unfortunate and confusing.
|
| I'm taking about the sense in which you share 50% of the
| DNA with a sibling or payment.
| jmyeet wrote:
| This is a perfect example of what I like to call the Eggs-
| Waffles Phenomenon. Basically, you can't say something like
| "I like waffles" on the internet without someone replying
| "how dare you malign people who like eggs". And here
| there's not even a value judgement or personal preference
| yet this has somehow been perceived as an attack on the
| childless. Others have jumped in to bemoan the perceived
| attack on the family. It's wild.
|
| Nowhere do I argue that you should or shouldn't reproduce
| or that either outcome affects your perceived or actual
| value. The word "fail" seems to be doing a lot of heavy
| lifting in your perceptions here.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > At some point this number exceeds the number of organisms
| that were alive at that time so there are likely one or more
| individuals in the past who are direct ancestors to everybody
|
| Wouldn't this common ancestor be a certainty? Otherwise
| aren't you betting that there were similar mutations in
| different lines?
| nostrademons wrote:
| I suspect a lot of the "woe, things are way harder for
| Millennials than past generations, I'm too poor to have a
| family" zeitgeist is actually this phenomena + literal
| survivorship bias. Every single person alive today came from
| parents that successfully reproduced. When you're a kid, it's
| very natural to think that having kids and a family of your
| own is the default state of being. After all, all of your
| friends have parents who successfully reproduced too.
|
| But that's because you tend to have much closer relationships
| with your family and peers than with childless adults. When I
| change my sample from "my friends growing up" to "my parent's
| friends when they were growing up", _a lot_ of them never had
| children. By the numbers, the percentage of households that
| are families with children has gone down, but it 's gone from
| about 55% in 1970 to 40% in 2022, which is a much less
| drastic fall than most people would suspect. Being childless
| is far more normal than children believe.
| InSteady wrote:
| You raise an interesting point, but you also seem to be
| conflating two things. Having children is more expensive
| than ever, and purchasing power has continued to drop for
| decades. Not to mention the drastic increase in specific
| "raising a family" essentials/barriers like housing costs,
| medical debt, educational debt, and childcare expenses. I
| don't have numbers to back this up, but my intuition (based
| on observation and casual reading) is that more working
| class people who actively want to have children are not
| doing so because they are stretched too thin than we saw in
| the 1970's (when people could work part-time to pay for all
| 4 years of college and expect a high paying career out of
| their degree).
|
| Also, a 15% drop in 50 years is nothing to scoff at. In
| America, we are below the replacement fertility rate of 2.1
| children per woman. Currently it is at 1.7, so our
| population would be declining without immigration. [1] This
| is not a bad thing in my opinion, but it is extremely
| significant in terms of politics, culture, and economics.
| If our fertility rate continues to drop expect to start
| hearing about it more often and at higher volume from many
| different corners.
|
| [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr028.pdf
| afavour wrote:
| Why would any of that be specific to millennials, though?
| The way you're describing it nothing would have changed in
| a very long time.
|
| I'm pretty sure the "I'm too poor to have a family"
| perspective stems directly from the wild increases we've
| see in the price of housing and not a whole lot else.
| nostrademons wrote:
| That's the point - nothing has changed, except the
| narrative.
|
| The wild increases in the price of housing is a symptom
| of the same dynamic we've seen throughout time, of
| competition over resources and survival of the "fittest"
| (where "fittest" occasionally means most
| brutal/devious/selfish). The differences are that a.) The
| (white) Baby-boom generation (in the U.S.) bucked the
| trend and enjoyed abundance and very little selection
| pressure. Note that the story was very different if you
| were black (where you had the gains of the Civil Rights
| movement, only to have the rug pulled out from under you
| with the 70s inflation and 80s crack epidemic) or if you
| were Chinese (where you probably died in the Cultural
| Revolution or Great Famine) or Russian / Eastern European
| (where you likely drank yourself to death after the
| breakup of the Warsaw Pact). And b.) that in our
| "civilized" society, we prefer to let people die rather
| than kill them outright. Not so for the WW1/WW2
| generation.
| wruza wrote:
| _So if you fail to reproduce you will break that billion year
| old chain of evolutionary success._
|
| True to an extent. What you really break in this case is the
| last inch change that your parents happened to merge in. Your
| extended families are still there with almost the same
| genotype.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >So if you fail to reproduce you will break that billion year
| old chain of evolutionary success.
|
| I sincerely could not care less. As far as I'm concerned, my
| blood ends with me. I have absolutely no interest in
| continuing this endless cycle of bullshit.
|
| You are welcome to have babby, of course, and to also do so
| in my stead if you are exceedingly concerned about the
| population count that I won't help grow or maintain, I ain't
| stopping you since what you do in your bedroom is none of my
| business (and vice versa, if the above wasn't clear enough).
| _0ffh wrote:
| Here's another, superficially quite perplexing one: Your
| female ancestors vastly outnumber your male ancestors.
| overtomanu wrote:
| For those wondering, I think this is mostly because of men
| having multiple wives.
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| I don't understand that, IMO it's more than only high
| cast/class men could reproduce, others were used as
| slaves/living tools. Isn't the main change brought by the
| Neolithic?
| _0ffh wrote:
| Imagine drawing your ancestry tree, parents,
| grandparents, etc. you will of course have as many male
| as female nodes. The higher variance of male reproductive
| success makes it likelier for two given male nodes to be
| filled by the same infividual, than for two given female
| nodes.
|
| Ed. Of course this only works if some males have more
| than one reproductive partner over their life span.
| Serial monogamy, escapades, and polygynie are the obvious
| probable factors in skewing the symmetry. I might have
| missed some less obvious ones, but can't think of any
| right now.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Even the current version fails on its own quite often.
| pfdietz wrote:
| There's a reason religious types recoiled from Darwin's idea.
| It paints God as a vivisectionist on the grandest scale.
|
| Darwin experienced this as a father, watching his oldest child
| die slowly and horribly (probably from cerebral tuberculosis).
| It would not be a stretch to imagine this experience soured him
| on traditional religious dogmas.
| lotrjohn wrote:
| According to Wikipedia it was Darwin's _second_ child (eldest
| daughter). I believe that is who you are referring to.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Darwin
| pfdietz wrote:
| That's who I meant, yes.
| Sakos wrote:
| This seems to be a common thing. We're an amalgamation of
| different viruses and bacteria that somehow over billions of
| years coalesced and evolved together into what we are now. I'm
| never not astounded when I think about it.
| zakki wrote:
| If every part of a human coming from evolution, how it
| synchronize between each part? Is there any books explaining
| evolution in detail? How cell formed? How they found a way to
| multiply? How they choose DNA to store the information? And so
| on.
| getoffmycase wrote:
| There is literally a world of biology (text)books that describe
| the process of evolution and how life came to be. I would
| recommend finding a syllabus at a local college for a biology
| class, getting the textbook second hand and then reading it
| taneq wrote:
| It doesn't. Everything that's poorly 'synchronized' just dies
| out and the more effective organisms keep reproducing. This
| explains basically everything past the original question of how
| the original self-replicating chemical reaction started.
| dirtyhippiefree wrote:
| Think about it.
|
| The species that is now Mitochondria was an entirely different
| species.
|
| We carry Mitochondrial DNA, while the human side is Nuclear
| DNA...nucleus of every cell.
|
| Birth as we know it wouldn't have happened without a third
| species invading our cells. We know it as placenta.
|
| Profound that we fight microbes, but without two (that we know
| about), our species literally (accurate use) would not exist.
|
| At all.
|
| Just, wow.
| deadbeeves wrote:
| I mean, everything would seem to indicate that mitochondria
| were assimilated while our ancestors were still microbes
| themselves. But that aside, our species is the result of
| _everything_ that happened prior to its appearance, including
| for example the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. Arguing
| that we should not attempt to prevent such events (if we 're
| able to) because it would evolutionarily benefit the survivors
| is suicidal.
|
| There's nothing special about our species. If things had
| happened different would the species that would have been in
| our place (whatever that means) be better or worse by any
| metric one chooses? There's no point in wondering about that.
| dirtyhippiefree wrote:
| Yes, our ancestors were simpler...clearly.
|
| We aren't the only species with the placenta...horses, for
| example...
|
| One species among many.
| pitdicker wrote:
| > The syncytiotrophoblast is the outermost layer of the placenta,
| the part that is pressed against the uterus. It's literally a
| layer of cells that have fused together, forming a wall. ...
| There's no other structure like this anywhere else in the body."
|
| > When evolutionary biologists like Chuong mapped the genomes of
| these cells, they found that the protein that allowed these cells
| to fuse into a wall, called syncytin, didn't look like it came
| from human DNA. It looked more like HIV.
|
| So the entire premise of the placenta evolving from a virus rests
| on the fact that the organ has a unique function requiring a
| unique protein in the body. Saying the source probably is a virus
| seems quite a leap of thought. And aren't there many highly
| specialized proteins in the body?
|
| Has anybody has some more information on what protein in a
| retrovirus looks similar to syncytin?
| pitdicker wrote:
| Paper that discusses similarities between the envelope
| glycoprotein of retroviruses and syncytin:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3758191/
|
| This field is called paleovirology, and the paper also
| discusses in some more detail how fragments of viral DNA can
| end up in human DNA.
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