I'm entirely ignorant of yeast biology, though a tiny bit informed of yeast
engineering for brewing. But, still in analogy with gender teams, it seems
preposterous that isolation could be common. Even if we considered individual
cells flying around in the air and compared yeast in {all contexts facilitating
reproduction} versus {all contexts inhibiting reproduction} and the latter
contained a larger absolute number of cells, *that* the other contexts
facilitate reproduction implies a dependency between the two. I.e. dependency ≠
isolation. I suppose if we add temporal isolation, we could say {time spent in
isolation} versus {time spent in nutrient bath} and we (I think
counterfactually) found that most yeast spends most of its time separated from
its team, those relatively brief periods in the latter state would be
definitional to the organism, not to mention the species.
In the analogy, there is also no such thing as an isolated human. Sure, we might consider
"wolf children", abandoned as babies and found living in the forest or somesuch. But that
would be too rare for any science. So "decoupled from [sex|society]" must mean something
else, perhaps prisoners in the SHU? My guess is there's a half-life to team identity. Stay in the
SHU for X time and the time spent in milieu is comparatively infinite. Stay in the SHU for Y time
and the isolation screws you up deeply, down into things like proprioception and hallucination.
Studies of team identity, being relatively fungible on top of those deeper traits, would then be
unreliable due to a swamp of confounders. So, there's no science there, either. [⛧]
But the language angle does make some sense, especially in the context of biologists who are so used to using terms like "male" and
"female" jargonally, then suffering a kind of memory error and thinking their jargonal term has meaning outside their domain. Before
enculturation, they took "[fe]male" as the typical social role the laity takes it as, conflated with "masculine",
"feminine", etc. After enculturation, they take it as "producer of ova" and "producer of sperm".
But I worry that such semantic shift isn't as easy as EricS seems to suggest.
Sure, perhaps it's much easier than phonemes and grammar. But it takes a lot of
work, a lot of steeping, a lot of immersive learning. I guess it's a bit like
the Necker cube or Magic Eye graphics. You start out only able to see it one
way. It takes focus and randomness to plunk into the other view. And the more
you practice plunking from one to the other, you gain enough mastery to choose
which way to view it as a function of context.
And that embeds both the temporally piecewise isolation of yeast and humans
back into the conception of the narrative self.
[⛧] I feel like someone, perhaps Dave, will mention monks who may seem like
good candidates for decoupled from [sex|society]. And I imagine most monks,
Christian, Buddhist, whatever, have methodical techniques for [de]categorizing
their selves in parallax to the laity. Because we do some science with a
relatively large cohort of monks, it might be reasonable to compare to a
control cohort from the laity. But, again, I worry about the confounders ...
like McDonalds french fries, Instagram addiction, orthorexia, etc. In order to
make a clinical trial over monk-hood credible, we'd have to have other isolates
... perhaps InCels living in their parents' basements? Furries? Coomers?
Agoraphobics? Those poor people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder? Setting
the control protocol for decoupled/isolation seems fraught.
On 3/4/22 03:27, David Eric Smith wrote:
Marcus’s comment below is a fun and insightful angle for the analogy-mongers.
An area nobody gets angry about is the evolution of the genetic code (the
assignment of amino acids to nuclease triplets by the translation system). In
modern life, coding is heavily heavily conventionalized and translation has
very low error rates in complex organisms. Since that can be presumed, vast
complexity has developed that presumes and makes use of those predictabilities.
Hence, there are very very few ways a code can change, because touching
anything in that tiny finite assignment table breaks an indefinitely large list
of critical infrastructure.
So the Origins question turns to: in what kind of a world could coding ever have been an
evolvable feature? The general belief is: in a world where much much less is
standardized in genomes, and “translation” is a stochastic enough process that, if one
tried to describe it in terms of “reliability”, it would be rated very unreliable. In
such a world, the notion of memory -> function cannot be one of sequence ->
structure, and must be more like cloud-of-sequences ->
moment-of-distribution-of-structures. There are fewer distinctions that can be made in
such a world robustly, and by that categorization “less” that one can do. But the
restriction of what can be done that makes a system at all robust also makes it tolerant
of evolution of the code. All this, on a sliding scale.
The second case is language change, and the people who get angry over that are
people nobody cares about or listens to anyway. Languages can change by shift
of the semantic scope of lexical roots, by phoneme scope and values, and by
aspects of grammar ranging from morphology to phrase structure. The only
redundancies that put limits on semantic shift within a functioning language
are at higher levels of composition or pragmatics. Since those are pretty
fluid anyway, semantic shift is probably the most atomic of all the shifts, and
the one most amenable to simple (meaning, not requiring typological priors)
comparative modeling. Phoneme and phonological shift are more constrained,
because their roles are massively redundant, so they can only change “within
tracks” if intelligibility of words is to be preserved. Along those tracks the
movement is still fairly frictionless, but you need to correctly characterize
the tracks to make valid interpretations from comparative data. The aspects of
“grammar” (morphology to phrase structure) are the worst-accreted into
interdependent systems. So they are resistant to change, when they do change
they tend to “shatter” and re-arrange (or so I have been told by a colleague
who is professional in this area), and the allowed changes are very hard to
predict and thus to use in forward Monte Carlo modeling.
If we believe the yeast biologists most-fully understand The True Nature of
Life, and that isolation is the default, and the relinquishment of isolation is
a hazardous and fraught negotiation, then Marcus’s teams probably grow up in
the shade of a difficult and long-standing negotiation of how it is possible to
have a manageable life in society. For there to be difficulties in changing
many things within those systems would then be the zero-knowledge prior.
Eric
On Mar 3, 2022, at 5:05 PM, Marcus Daniels <mar...@snoutfarm.com> wrote:
I guess I'd approach it by trying to see what gender means to people decoupled
from society and decoupled from sex. To the laity, I think it probably has
something to do what team you are on, and the implicit rules of the teams and
whether one respects them or disrespects them. Changing rules is one thing
that can get people this wound up.
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Thursday, March 3, 2022 1:51 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] academic freedom
Biologists are NOT held to a higher standard. But when they do just go on
speaking without ever listening, then they deserve some pushback. In this
particular context, there was no bad faith on either side. But one of the
biologists is accusing bad faith on the part of the non-cis people.
As for a symbol being used without introduction, that's nearly impossible with "male" and
"female" ... in English, anyway, which was the language we were all speaking. It would be
like using pi to mean e in a paper. You *already* know that's a bad idea. So if you do it, and the
readers don't know what the hell you're saying, it's your fault, not theirs. It's not a higher
standard ... it's a standard standard.
On 3/3/22 13:26, Marcus Daniels wrote:
It seems to me it is like a paper where some symbol is used without
introduction, but it becomes clear from context and reflection.
Not clear why a biologist should be held to a higher standard for explaining themselves
when speaking to the laity. I mean their reality feels real to them so it must be true.
;-) FEELING is everything! It seems evil to me to limit "ordinary
conversation" to a restricted, banal vocabulary. That's how people like Trump get
their claws in. People should be able to listen and not just speak, to imagine the
possible and not just what is right in front of them.
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Thursday, March 3, 2022 1:14 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] academic freedom
The jargon being used by the biologist came in the form of "male", "female", "gametes", and such.
"Male" and "female", when used by the biologists means something very different from what it means to the laity. And
the biologists should know that. If they don't, they're stupid. If they do, but they don't dial down their jargonal use, then they're evil.
And the use of "gamete" in an ordinary conversation is just Scientismist confabulation.
On 3/3/22 13:10, Marcus Daniels wrote:
The distinction I'd make is between talking about identity in principle and
talking about the details of my identity. That's not a question of jargon,
but of detachment. Jargon is a tool for detachment.
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Thursday, March 3, 2022 1:04 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] academic freedom
Maybe. But I don't think it's generosity that's required. I think it's humility that's
required. Anyone who both engages a group of strangers about identity *and* identifies in
a non-standard way is already demonstrating that they're not too damaged. Or, I'd turn
the tables and say that the snowflakes in this conversation (the Scientismists) are too
damaged for the conversation ... damaged by their entrenched, enculturation into,
Scientism. The one guy's exclamation "Gametes are real" was obviously an
indicator that the other participants would either have to play by *his* nutty rules or
wait for him to dial down his jargon-laced gobbledygook and have a real conversation with
ordinary people.
On 3/3/22 12:56, Marcus Daniels wrote:
Glen writes:
< I think they're just defense mechanisms they've learned over years of abuse. >
The defense mechanisms could be more like acquired allergies and do harm. Once one is
dealing with reflexive mechanisms, I start to worry that a conversation is not possible.
Because they would 1) need to learn to control those mechanisms (and who wants to take
the time for them to do that) or 2) claim "You [the man] made me this may, now live
with it." (and then adapt to their nutty rules).
There seems to be a need for some generosity to help people cope, but it seems
plausible to me some people are just too damaged. Does the absence of
generosity make one a snowflake?
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Thursday, March 3, 2022 12:47 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] academic freedom
Yeah, that's a good take. It also helps in distinguishing between reflexive defense
mechanisms and cryptic character traits. Where me and the biologist who felt shut down
disagree is in the interpretation of the non-cis participants word and body language
choices. He thinks they're reflections of character traits. I think they're just defense
mechanisms they've learned over years of abuse. In the non-binary person's case, they
have an entire non-estranged, continually engaged, family that rejects their identity. So
their body and word language is probably an example of them saying to the white cis
biologists "pull yourselves together and we'll try again later." But I'm
willing to be shown wrong if that's the case.
On 3/3/22 12:36, Marcus Daniels wrote:
Hmm. Another experience I have had while deconstructing someone with "charged feelings"
is coming to the ought-to-be-obvious recognition that neither of us care about the other, but
nonetheless the counterparty who feels compelled to share their boring feelings believes it is my
job to patiently listen to them work through their issues (even though they would never do the same
for me). Canceling could just mean "Pull yourself together and we'll try again next
week."
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Thursday, March 3, 2022 12:28 PM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] academic freedom
Ha! No, I was making a point about freedom of speech, in particularly
"academic" speech, and canceling or shutting down others. Sorry if my anecdote
got in the way. I pared it down for you below.
On 3/3/22 12:16, Marcus Daniels wrote:
Anyway, I guess you were making some point about people getting riled up at a
pub, and that it being informative somehow. (Or at least entertaining?)
On 3/3/22 11:02, glen wrote:
Nobody was actively trying to shut anyone down. But the more conservative
biologist actively claims the non-binary and queer participants *were* trying
to shut down the biologists and had clearly shut down their reasoning. I
disagree completely.
--
glen
When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.
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