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Bees Reveal Nature-Nurture Secrets
NoFear writes "The nature-nurture debate is a 'giant step' closer to being resolved after scientists studying bees documented how environmental inputs can modify our genetic hardware. The researchers uncovered extensive molecular differences in the brains of worker bees and queen bees which develop along very different paths when put on different diets. The research was led by Professor Ryszard Maleszka of The Australian National University's College of Medicine, Biology and Environment, working with colleagues from the German Cancer Institute in Heidelberg, Germany and will be published next week in the online, open access journal PLoS Biology."
What is the cause of the behavior of a program, its code or input? Obviously both in virtually all cases. The code sets what inputs it can respond to, and the inputs determine which response occurs. Flexible programs have long-term state, allowing inputs to have an effect on response far into the future. Why is there even a debate as to whether it's the code or input that entirely decides behavior? The particular behavior depends on the program, of course. A program which merely echoes its input back, without any state, is less-flexible than one that receives a script, then interprets it.
People may not like to hear it, but the parent comment succinctly embodies the motivations for all nature-nurture studies and indeed a significant chunk of genetic/biology studies seen in the popular press.
People can be bigoted and racist if they want; but we are free to object when they try to call their opinions science.
May the Maths Be with you!
When bees were asked about this study, they just cheered that they're making the news again after so long.
All glory to Arstotzka!
I often hear it referred to as "the nature/nurture debate," as if people are actually debating whether we are products of our genetics or our environment. There is no debate, we are products of both. I suppose there are lots of little debates about how much each affects some particular trait. But the implication here that there is a single, central debate that can somehow be "resolved" is absurd.
To quote Matt Ridley:
The discovery of how genes actually influence human behaviour, and how human behaviour influences genes, is about to recast the debate entirely. No longer is it nature versus nurture, but nature via nurture. Genes are designed to take their cues from nurture
Goodbye, nature vs nurture
Replace human for bee or for organism and I think the quote still stands. It is not that the behaviour of an organism is for the most part determined by it genes, or either that is is determined by it nurture.
Nurture will give direction, Nature will limit the abilities.
How much you'll train a dog, it will never be able to play chess. How much you'll train a toddler, it will never be able to have capabilities to follow a scent trail like a bloodhound.
For BEES!
That will be totally applicable to humans.
Once we learn to fly.
And turn yellow with black stripes.
And grow bee fuzz.
And grow another pair of limbs...
What you call 'luck' is what the rest of us call 'a combination of known unknowns and unknown unknowns'. It absolutely is calculatable, given enough data and research.
mediocrity rules, man
Get cancer, or do not get cancer. There is no luck.
Humans are terrible replicators of Godly things.
I take a dice and throw it in the air. Even if I give you the starting terms and the exact forces used to throw the cube, you still cannot, with 100% absolute certainty, tell me what number it will land on. Even with everything known, there are things we cannot calculate.
I remember an example from Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book, "The Black Swan". If you hit a ball on a pool table, it is very easy to predict the outcome of the first collision. At about the 5th collision (IIRC, I don't have the book at hand), the mechanics of the collision are affected by the gravitational pull of someone standing near the table. A few more collisions, and the outcome is dependent on every mass in the universe. Given that, can you really predict the outcome of throwing a dice? Can you predict with 100% certainty if someone will have cancer, which type and at what age? We cannot predict everything, even if all the variables are taken into account. This uncertainty is what we call Luck.
Whenever in an argument, remember this.
It sometimes seems that scientists (esp. in the life-sciences) forget that it can be a combinations of the above together with the special magic ingredient called "Luck" (or bad luck).
Don't mistake the simplifications of journalists for a lack of understanding on the part of scientists. *Everyone* working on cancer knows that it is a multifactorial disease process.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I take a dice and throw it in the air. Even if I give you the starting terms and the exact forces used to throw the cube, you still cannot, with 100% absolute certainty, tell me what number it will land on. Even with everything known, there are things we cannot calculate.
I'm pretty sure if we had a marker on the cube and a hi-speed camera plus a rather fast image processing computer, we could give you an answer before the dice had landed. Also it wouldn't be too hard to create a robot arm to throw the dice with exactly the same force and position each time.
Dice have to adhere to the laws of physics just like everything else. Its just when humans throw them, there are so many variables that it seems random.
Now, when we start talking about particle decay or trying to determine the position of an electron.
Then yeah... We can start talking about random.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
The sound of one hand clapping sounds similar to two hands clapping, but less loud due to less force. A coin with one side would be a mobius strip as currency.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.