Culture may be encoded in DNA

POSTED BY: kpo
UPDATED: Saturday, September 5, 2026 00:24
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BYTEMITE

Thursday, July 1, 2010 7:05 PM

Pun on "culture" and purported British superiority!

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Ptitle0t9r68ih?from=Main.Do
ntExplainTheJoke

CITIZEN

Thursday, July 1, 2010 7:11 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Pun on "culture" and purported British superiority!

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Ptitle0t9r68ih?from=Main.Do
ntExplainTheJoke

Well, that seems to be miles out of left field.

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If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows.

BYTEMITE

Thursday, July 1, 2010 7:16 PM

Er, sorry, I only saw the first version without the second line, and the wink, so I assumed you were making some kind of joke.

... I don't even know WHAT trope we're doing now.

MALACHITE

Thursday, July 1, 2010 7:30 PM

I'm also wondering what
"After three to four generations, the teachers were producing strapping young finches that belted out normal-sounding songs" means? Does that mean it sounded identical to birds raised in the wild? Or does that merely mean that the song had characteristics of wild bird song patterns? If the song just has characteristics, I'm with Citizen in that I'm not all that impressed -- and I'd like to see a couple of other trials to see if the pattern persists (I'm wondering if some of the birds would just remain squawkers...). If the song is actually identical to the wild birds, then that would be incredible (but I'd be suspicious that someone had tampered with the experiment and I'd still like to see some independent repeats.).

They go on to talk about what would happen if you put human babies on an island and came back in a few generations. That is kind of a silly hypothetical. Most likely, if you left a bunch of infants on an island, they'd die and never reproduce... So, you have to feed them at a minimum... But you can't speak to them (since you want to see how they will develop language). And you should probably nurture them in that first year of life, otherwise, they'll probably all have reactive attachment disorder, which would lead to the formation of a pretty strange society... This hypothetical is getting weirder and weirder. I'll stop now.

REENACT12321

Thursday, July 1, 2010 7:44 PM

I actually have to agree with Wulf on many points.

I can't speak for the world, as Africa in particular has a whole laundry list of competing issues as to why it is.... the way it is.

But as for black culture in America, particularly urban black culture, I do have experience. Growing up in Chicago, quite possibly the most racially segregated city in the US, one can see the self-destructive sub-culture in the west and south sides. One can also see that a good percentage of people do not subscribe to that subculture. Many work very hard to compete against it, to create a stable life for family so that they are no pulled into that lifestyle either in their own or their child's lifetime.

Those who do subscribe to that lifestyle and do not take action to 1. Get out, 2. Support real action for change, or 3. Support law enforcement 4. get away from self-pity and entitlement (someone owes me something(which I'll come back to)) deserve to continue living in that environment. There should be an all-call made for those who want a chance to roll the die again (not a guaranteed job and housing, just a new start) to leave, to travel anywhere they want, 1 ticket. And for the rest, wall off Garfield Park, Englewood, Humboldt Park, and the rest and let them shoot it out, without effecting the communities around them. It's got nothing to do with race, it has everything to do with value systems, and a little to do with socioeconomics.

The entitlement thing comes from those who picked up the pieces of MLK's work after his assassination and decided to make profits out of the shards. Top of the list of these people is Jesse Jackson. I'm a liberal, albeit a moderate one, but this guy is the scum of the earth. Telling impoverished blacks that the "whitey" Alderman, Mayor, state Senators, governer, Federal Senators, and president all owe them something that these public servants don't owe anybody else. In the meantime, Jesse has several large homes, his mansion on the North side being his crown jewel.

My $0.02, okay maybe a bit more like $1.25

"...we need a hood ornament..."

BYTEMITE

Thursday, July 1, 2010 7:48 PM

Malachite: An Egyptian pharaoh, trying to determine which civilization arose first, and therefore was the most natural, performed something very similar to the "babies on an island" experiment.

He was very surprised when the babies didn't spontaneously develop the ability to speak Egyptian as they grew into children, but that no less didn't change the fact that the entire thing was an example of an extremely poorly designed study.

I'm amazed that these "scientists" are making conjectures about the exact same issue, and making the same mistakes, as a PHARAOH FROM 6,000 YEARS AGO.

I'm sorry, I find the whole thing ridiculous.

CITIZEN

Thursday, July 1, 2010 7:48 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Er, sorry, I only saw the first version without the second line, and the wink, so I assumed you were making some kind of joke.

Evidently this joke is one that did need explaining: It wasn't a joke.

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If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows.

CITIZEN

Thursday, July 1, 2010 7:50 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
I'm amazed that these "scientists" are making conjectures about the exact same issue, and making the same mistakes, as a PHARAOH FROM 6,000 YEARS AGO.

I'm sorry, I find the whole thing ridiculous.

I'd be careful making statements about what conclusions the Scientists have drawn from a write up of their study in a media source.

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If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows.

MALACHITE

Thursday, July 1, 2010 8:02 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Malachite: An Egyptian pharaoh, trying to determine which civilization arose first, and therefore was the most natural, performed something very similar to the "babies on an island" experiment.

He was very surprised when the babies didn't spontaneously develop the ability to speak Egyptian as they grew into children, but that no less didn't change the fact that the entire thing was an example of an extremely poorly designed study.

I'm amazed that these "scientists" are making conjectures about the exact same issue, and making the same mistakes, as a PHARAOH FROM 6,000 YEARS AGO.

I'm sorry, I find the whole thing ridiculous.

Yeah, you sort of have to wonder about the quality of the bird experiment if the "scientists" bring up other ridiculous scenarios and think they are logical... But who knows? Sometimes smart people can be smart in some instances and say some pretty strange/illogical stuff in others... Francis Crick codiscovered DNA on the one hand and then supported "directed panspermia" (life evolved when some random alien biomolecules in space landed on the earth), which also doesn't have much, if any, hard evidence (according to wikipedia).

BYTEMITE

Thursday, July 1, 2010 8:05 PM

True, I remember Rue and I arguing over something like this in regards to a morality study. The write up sounded like a basic morality study, I was seeing more sinister undertones. Rue told me I couldn't possibly conclude the things I had determined from the study.

Of course, when I went to find the ABSTRACT, turned out that the study really WAS evaluating how consistent some people were making the choice to kill in an ethical dilemma, and claiming they did so because they were more "intelligent."

Really, I find that you can't trust write ups OR many studies to not have a slant. Skepticism must be practiced, and studies themselves must be read to determine whether proper procedure was followed.

Here's a better description, but still a write up.

http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2009/05/the_universal_grammar_
of_birdsong_is_genetically_encoded.php

I think this is the study, or at least a closely related one, dated 2004.

http://mitralab.org/papers-src/REG-13258681Doc.pdf

This one is also related, and has a conclusion I can buy a lot easier, that the neurology of the birds has some sort of constraint that eventually produces an auto-correction when trying to imitate a note.

http://www.mitralab.org/papers-src/ScienceMarch2001.pdf

Very likely a case of the write-up not fully understanding the science.

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