Interesting Links for 06-12-2016

[andrewducker]

Please stop saying people don’t vote against their economic interests. They do it quite deliberately, all the time.

(tags: politics economics )

Government memo demanding end to Brexit leaks is leaked

(tags: uk europe government leaks funny )

Ex-marine smashes record by running and climbing 24 Munros in under 24 hours

(tags: mountains scotland )

After seven years, The Last Guardian frustrates as much as it delights

(tags: games )

How I Wrote "Arrival" (and What I Learned Doing It)

(tags: movies writing scifi )

Caesarean births affecting human evolution

(tags: caesarians evolution )

The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think

(tags: computers skills )

Momentum is tearing itself apart

(tags: politics uk labour )

Comments

Correlation is not causation

[liv]

Oh goodness that caesarians affecting evolution article is sheer, utter bullshit. The timescale is way too fast to evoke selection changing the composition of the population. And during the time period when Caesarians have become common, there have also been massive changes in dietary and lifestyle habits and all kinds of factors which are way more likely to alter birth size than evolutionary selection. And nobody has proposed any serious mechanism for why genetics should be the main contributor to birth weight as opposed to maternal health and lifestyle.

Correlation is not causation, and not only is this terrible science, it's rehashing a old and really unpleasant eugenic anxiety. If we use medical advances to treat sick and disabled people, maybe we'll somehow undermine evolutionary selection and make humanity less "fit". That attitude is anti-scientific and anti-humanitarian, and I really wish it had been selected out of the memetic pool a hundred years ago.

Re: Correlation is not causation

[andrewducker]

You can totally have selection pressure which only affects a small proportion of the population, and will affect the evolution of just that proportion.

And evolution can absolutely work over only a couple of generations. It'll tend to work in small ways, but that doesn't prevent it from working, or from that being evolution.

And I suspect that both a professor of biology and the editors of the National Academy of Sciences understand that very well.

I agree that genetics are not going to be the only factor that affects head size of babies. But the article also says that.

Re: Correlation is not causation

[andrewducker]

Oh, and I agree that people have used the "we save people, and that affects the population badly" as an argument in the past, but the article specifically mentions that they don't want to criticize medical intervention, but to study its effects. And that seems like a useful thing to do.