Economics:
Philosophy:
...Everything is heritable:
Politics/religion:
"The Acquired Immune System: A Vantage from Beneath", Hedrick 2004 (immune systems as parasites; excerpts)
I absolutely loved this. The concept of the adaptive immune system as something that gives the ability to get a slight advantage over your conspecifics, at the expense of selecting your pathogens to be more virulent such that loss of the adaptive system becomes fatal, reminds me forcefully of all sorts of things in prokaryotic and eukaryotic genome structure. Things that happen because they can and then get locked in place by other things built on top of them even though they themselves are harmful, or sheer selfish elements. Like poison/antidote pairs of genes in bacteria that stick around even though they increase average generation time because fluctuations in the levels of the two make a small fraction of bacteria grow extra slowly and be stress-resistant, or the evolution of the spliceosome to make sure self-splicing introns always leave leading to vertebrate genes that are 90% spliceosome-requiring introns, or the sheer abundance of transposons that make up more than half of our genomes...
"If the resulting body of experiences with women have condensed into a patriarchal tradition which puts women in a bad light - well, you can't blame that on theology, now, can you?"
This starts from a false assumption ("the resulting body of experiences with women have condensed into a patriarchal tradition") and implies a false dichotomy (that men either dominate society because of religious beliefs, or because of some reason that progressives would prefer not to blame), and someone who posts on a website dedicated to rationality should see that. I also don't agree with the claim that history paints women in a bad light compared to men. Until recently we've seen an ugly domination of both men and women by men, and we still that in much of the world.
I see other commenters making the assumptions that historical authoritarianism by men signifies that this trait must have at some point either been advantageous to the species, or advantageous to women who chose to mate with "dominant" men and/or the children they bore. This assumption underlies a lot of anti-feminist philosophy online. Have you considered the possibility that there have been men who have passed along their genes by intimidating others (including other men)? Considering our species' history of violence, is it any wonder that tyrannical and Machiavellian males have had an evolutionary advantage? I have noticed that, especially in large societies, living under said men appears to be unpleasant for the masses who don't reign supreme.
Have you considered the possibility that there have been men who have passed along their genes by intimidating others (including other men)? Considering our species' history of violence, is it any wonder that tyrannical and Machiavellian males have had an evolutionary advantage?
Is the same true for violent and Machiavellian women? If so why doesn't the rest of your logic apply, if not why not?
This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.
Rules: