Damn. I’ve got the Mountain Dew drinkers riled up.

“Possibly causes cancer” is sufficient for me to never the touch the stuff. Please stop drinking these things. They’re literally addictive.

I never trusted the stuff. We use to say this matter-of-factly when I was a kid, about thirty years ago. I’m glad to see that my unfounded confidence and speculation turned out to be right!

Yes. It wasn’t a uniquely German trend, although they applied it the most and thereby killed millions. The Americans also have their own gruesome history of human eugenics.

Probably because of Hitler. He was very inspired by eugenics and Darwin’s recently published seminal work on evolution. In his writings and speeches he frequently referred to Darwinism and human engineering via eugenics. Here’s a quote from Hitler’s Mein Kampf:

“In the struggle for daily bread all those who are weak and sickly or less determined succumb, while the struggle of the males for the female grants the right or opportunity to propagate only to the healthiest. And struggle is always a means for improving a species’ health and power of resistance and, therefore, a cause of its higher evolution.”

Not just Hitler, the whole of the Nazi party and their public propaganda was based on extreme Darwinism.

An important official Nazi Party publication, “Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte”, edited by Alfred Rosenberg, occasionally featured articles promoting evolution. In a 1935 article Heinz Brücher praised German biologist Ernst Haeckel for paving the way for the Nazi regime. In addition to mentioning Haeckel’s advocacy of eugenics and euthanasia, Brücher highlighted Haeckel’s role in promoting human evolution. Brücher reminded his readers that Haeckel’s view of human evolution led him to reject human equality and socialism. In 1941 Brücher published another article in “Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte” on evolution through natural selection. Several times he stressed that the principles of evolution were just as valid for humans as for other organisms. He closed the essay by explaining the practical application of evolutionary theory:

“The hereditary health of the German Volk and of the Nordic-Germanic race that unites it must under all circumstances remain intact. Through an appropriate compliance with the laws of nature, through selection and planned racial care it can even be increased. The racial superiority achieved thereby secures for our Volk in the harsh struggle for existence an advantage, which will make us unconquerable.”

In Brücher’s view human evolution is an essential ingredient of racial ideology, not a hindrance to it. In 1936 another author named Heberer launched an attack on antievolutionists in Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte. He praised Haeckel and stressed the affinities of Darwinism and human evolution with Nazi ideology.

The history is really quite fascinating and it’s rarely taught in your state-mandated evolutionary biology classes!

If I had a dollar for everytime I’ve read a similar story in the last thirty years…

Rendering 3d immersive AI generated deepfake porn is going to be so fucking fast

Path of Exile is like Diablo for adults. It’s much more dark and intense in my opinion. It’s worth checking out because the New Zealanders who make it are genuinely good guys.

I don’t think that Venter is suggesting intelligent design. He’s claiming, as a result of his research, that it’s not effective to assume simple explanations for genomics and especially for cellular biology.

Every technological improvement in the methods of research has revealed more complexity in organisms and so it behooves us to suspend dogmatic approaches to the genome. That’s the subject of the book discussed in the article.

Craig Venter is very controversial and his statements are provocative. I’m not qualified to critique the science in this field. But I’d recommend you to take a look at the work his team is doing with synthetic chromosomes and engineered cells.

I’m not an expert on the subject. I can only repeat what Venter said: “the only junk DNA is in my colleagues brains”. He claims that all DNA has function and that it should not be referred to as junk just because we don’t know the function yet.

He talks about at intervals in this interview.

Craig Venter, the infamous head of the Human Genome Project and who created the first “synthetic” cell, has been saying this stuff for years. It’s remarkable how ahead of the times he is, perhaps because he’s not beholden to an academic institution.

He claims that a “tree of life” is fallacious, that there is no junk DNA, and that the bare minimum genes necessary for a living cell still can’t be determined even after decades of research.

I hope that the authors of the new Extended Evolutionary Synthesis will admit the deficiency of outdated assumptions and reject dogmatic approaches to the theory, as implied by the author of the book reviewed in this article.

🤞🏼

Every five years the date of the earliest homo sapiens is pushed back five thousand years. They’ll be saying that homo sapiens were writing novels in 200,000 BC by the time I die.

OK. Point taken. 👍🏼

What is “thread-sitting”?

It is laughable, especially coming from someone making homage to Neils Bohr. Did he not choose to lend assistance to the building of the bomb? Of course he advocated for peace after the fact…

I believe that all people should be held accountable for their actions, regardless of their beliefs. You probably believe that nuclear science justifies the nuclear proliferation. I don’t.

I define extremism as violence upon others. Both secularists and religionists are capable and culpable.

Therefore adherents of a religion are also not implicit in extremism, right? Pretty sure that’s the original point of the meme…

It seems that we’re mostly in agreement that it’s the broad category of humans who are culpable. Whether secular or sectarian, humans continuously harm others, intentionally or not.

What’s wrong with using the term Darwinism? I think it’s a good umbrella category to include the varieties of evolution theory such Lamarckism, neo-darwinian evolution, modern evolutionary synthesis and extended evolutionary synthesis. What term do the people who aren’t “nut jobs” use?

I’ve made some pretty decent claims about the universality of extremism. I’d love for you to point me to a community of humans who haven’t done something extreme.

Alright, brother. Thank you for this conversation. I appreciate your perspective. 🙏🏼

I think you’re moving the goalposts.