Sunday School

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

Fantastic, enlightening video and book on Lamarck! I learned even more about him from this video.

I didn’t know Lamarck was the first weatherman! Napoleon really screwed himself and his troops by dissing Lamarck. If Lamarck’s weather correspondence had extended to Russia, maybe Napoleon’s men wouldn’t have had to eat their own horses in the middle of Winter!

I also didn’t know that they had greenhouses back in that time! Good thing Lamarck saved them from the ravages of Robespierre!

[jakelafort]

Enco,

Yea interesting vid on Lamarck.

I don’t know if anything got passed on to me epigenetically. Two generations removed from Germans murdering my family. Plus i am a half breed.

I could not find it on a quick search but i read about pregnant Jewish women somewhere in Eastern Europe who hid and later gave birth. All of the offspring had mental illness. i think it was like 200 kids. Have not read the article but i assume same idea i am linking. Oh and btw can you imagine the inheritance for Muslim kids in these shithole countries?

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/21/study-of-holocaust-survivors-finds-trauma-passed-on-to-childrens-genes

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

The study in The Guardian article only had 32 Jewish men and women who were held in Nazi concentration camps, had suffered or witnessed tortured, or who had to hide during World War II.

The premise of the study is worth exploring. but was an incredibly small sample. You are correct that it would help to study other people who have suffered similar tyranny and genocide to confirm whether they have the same or similar epigenetic changes.

Muslims survivors of Islam would be a ideal group to study, as would citizens who were in gulags in Soviet Bloc nations or laogai survivors from Red China, survivors of the Killing Fields of Cambodia, survivors of Armenian Genocide, the Bengladesh Genocide, Guatamalan Genocide of Mayans, Indonesian Genocide of East Timorans, the Rwandan Genocide, Genocides in former Yugoslavia. and more too numerous.

All genocides and democides, of course, are horrible, whether the trauma is epigenetic or transmitted by experience.

[jakelafort]

Enco,

I can’t remember the title of book that described the anxiety of pregnant hiding from Nazis while pregnant and how all the kids were mental. But the imagery it created in my mind sure has sticky fingas.

There is no shortage of trauma in humans that would make ideal subjects to study this topic.

In other news every frickin time i zap coffee the handle points away from me when it comes to settle. Does not matter what the starting position of coffee cup or how long i zap it. Frickin handle is away. What is up with that?

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

To ensure my wording was correct, I got  Chat-GPT to edit and verify where needed. There are 2 different questions:

1. Can severe trauma during pregnancy alter the biology of the developing fetus?

2. Can trauma experienced by a parent before conception leave epigenetic effects that are later detectable in children?

The first has much stronger evidence than the second.

For Holocaust-related research, Rachel Yehuda’s group is probably the best-known. A 2016 study reported differences in methylation of FKBP5, a gene involved in regulation of the stress-response system, in Holocaust survivors and their adult children. The offspring showed a methylation pattern associated with parental Holocaust exposure, although interestingly the direction of the methylation change differed between parents and offspring. Source

A larger follow-up study in 2020 found the same FKBP5 site to be less methylated in offspring of Holocaust survivors than in controls. The association was particularly linked to maternal Holocaust exposure during the mother’s own childhood, which led the authors to discuss developmental programming rather than simply claiming straightforward germ-line inheritance. Source

Regarding the pregnant Jewish woman being hunted, starving, hiding, terrified, etc. Her fetus is physically exposed to the consequences of her environment. So if that child later shows altered methylation or stress physiology, we do not need transgenerational inheritance to explain it. The fetus was itself directly exposed.

There is excellent evidence for this general principle from another WWII population: the Dutch Hunger Winter of 1944–45. People whose mothers were pregnant during the famine showed differences in DNA methylation six decades later. One famous finding concerned reduced methylation of the IGF2 growth-regulation gene among people exposed around conception compared with their unexposed siblings. Source

The mother’s experience doesn’t have to “rewrite her child’s genes.” Her physiological response changes the developmental environment in which those genes are being regulated. That is very plausibly epigenetic.

There is another complication too: families transmit enormous amounts of information without molecular inheritance. Parenting, attachment, anxiety, stories, silence about trauma, socioeconomic conditions, diet, community experience and learned threat responses can all affect the next generation.

Indeed, an older meta-analysis covering 32 samples and more than 4,400 participants found no general psychological “secondary traumatization” effect among nonclinical offspring of Holocaust survivors; effects appeared mainly in clinical samples. So even the psychological inheritance story is more nuanced than popular accounts sometimes imply. Source

Below is mostly all Chat-gpt:

Prenatal trauma influencing fetal epigenetics: strong biological plausibility and substantial human evidence.

Parental trauma associated with epigenetic differences in children: credible human evidence exists.

Those differences definitely being caused by inheritance of acquired epigenetic marks through the germ line: still unresolved.

Trauma being biologically inherited for several generations in humans: interesting hypothesis, but nowhere near proven.

And this actually connects beautifully with the Lamarck discussion. A frightened pregnant woman whose fetus develops a differently calibrated stress-response system looks superficially Lamarckian, but there’s nothing mysterious about it. The fetus is responding developmentally to the biochemical environment it is actually experiencing.

That is developmental plasticity with an epigenetic mechanism, not necessarily Lamarckian inheritance.

The really provocative Lamarck-like case would be: a person experiences trauma before conceiving a child; that experience modifies sperm or egg epigenetic information; the modification survives embryonic epigenetic resetting; and it produces an adaptive phenotype in an otherwise unexposed descendant.

There is good animal evidence that things resembling that can happen. In humans, we’re not yet entitled to state it as established fact.

An important thing to note is that the DNA sequence itself of the mother or  her offspring is altered. What changes is how that DNA is used. For example, methyl groups can be attached to particular cytosines, histones can be chemically modified, or chromatin can become more tightly or loosely packaged. Those changes can make a gene easier or harder for the cell’s machinery to access.

DNA methylation chemically modifies the DNA molecule, because methyl groups are physically attached to it. But it does not modify the nucleotide sequence. So molecularly the DNA has been chemically modified; genetically, its sequence has not been altered.

The studies found differences in things such as DNA methylation associated with gene regulation. There is a slightly confusing bit of terminology: DNA methylation chemically modifies the DNA molecule, because methyl groups are physically attached to it. But it does not modify the nucleotide sequence. So molecularly the DNA has been chemically modified; genetically, its sequence has not been altered.

Epigenetics can alter the state of DNA without altering the genetic information encoded by its base sequence.

And it makes the Lamarck question much more interesting. The claim isn’t “an acquired experience mutated the DNA and the mutation was inherited.” The interesting claim is whether an acquired experience can alter regulatory information layered on top of the DNA sequence, and whether some of that regulatory state can survive reproduction. That’s a substantially different proposition.

In short,

Genetic change = change the text.

Epigenetic change = change how the text is read.

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

I can’t remember the title of book that described the anxiety of pregnant hiding from Nazis while pregnant and how all the kids were mental. But the imagery it created in my mind sure has sticky fingas.

There is no shortage of trauma in humans that would make ideal subjects to study this topic.

I’m thinking that being a fetus inside of a Mother who is in terror and trauma for her life and liberty from other adults dressed in black SS Einsatzgruppen uniforms with SS Totenkopf skull-and-bones insignias and carrying German Lugers and MP-40s could also lead to concussion and stress on the fetus from the Mother running to escape and crouching to hide and/or falling en route to shelter.

Said terror could also lead to maternal negligence of needed maternal and fetal sleep, heat, hydration, nutrition, and medication, all due to lack of access to these necessities by a National Socialist, wartime-footing economy.

Entanglement, blockage of, or damage to the umbilical cord as well as hydrocephaly and other brain-affecting conditions could also occur in utero in the course of this National Socialist terror and privation.

And lack of access to obstetric and pre-natal medical care caused by National Socialized or Nazi-sympathizing health care systems would mean no access to vaccination and other medicines and treatments that could prevent damage to the fetal brain. Also, of course, a neonate could suffer brain damage with no access to a safe delivery or post-natal treatment.

And all of this could and would happen independent of any epigenetic effects on mental health of offspring. And all of this and more would need to be considered in any study of epigenetic effect on mental health of offspring.

Garsh! I thought of all this and I’m not even a Doctor nor a Mother, nor do I play one on TV! But I’m not asking for any accolades, because thinking about all this was depressing.

In other news every frickin time i zap coffee the handle points away from me when it comes to settle. Does not matter what the starting position of coffee cup or how long i zap it. Frickin handle is away. What is up with that?

I’ve never thought of this. Could it have anything to do with the position of the cup on the turntable? Could it involve a uniform heating time each time you turn it on? Maybe vibrating inside the microwave?

As did Mr. Owl on the Tootsie-Pop™ commercial, let’s find out!

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

A-One! Ta-Two! Th-Three! Th-Three!

My handle faced forward both going in and going out of the microwave. I think I figured it out!

I placed my coffee cup in the center, where the handle wouldn’t knock against the walls and window of the microwave. The turntable moved for 2 Minutes as per my setting.

The turntable is spun by the motor via a tri-
headed spindle, which the turntable fits around via three glass nodules on the bottom of the turntable. There’s also a hoop of wheels that fit under the turntable that facilitate smooth turning of the turntable. All of these have to be aligned just so, with no junk in the bottom of the microwave, for even operation.

When the spindle is stationary, it allows for some movement clockwise and counter-clockwise which could make for some small margin of misalignment of the cup handle. The margin of misalignment could be even greater if you set a separate movable plate on the turntable and set the cup on the movable plate.

Shaking could occur if the motor isn’t working properly or if the microwave is arcing and sparking electricity from junk and especially unpainted metal in the microwave. Regular cleaning will help prevent arcing and sparking. If it doesn’t stop arcing and sparking, unplug it, remove the turntable and throw the damn thing out.

My microwave has no evident motor problems, no junk in the bottom, no shaking, and no moving plate between the cup and the turntabled, so none of this was a problem. The cup handle was approximately in the same spot as when I put it in.

Your Miles May Vary with your make and model of microwave. Here endeth the lesson.

[TheEncogitationer]

Reg and Jake:

Just think, if it were Tucker Qatarlson and Candace Owens, they would chalk up child development of Holocaust survivor children and coffee cup positions to demons.🙄

Oh, by the way, did you get the memo that we’re collapsing? Who wants to turn out the lights?

Watch this and count the errors and fallacies and contradictions from Dr. Michael Guillen, PhD. A Ivy League Physicist, Mathematician, and Astronomer who really should know better:

So far, I count the ultimate Argument from Incredulity, Special Pleading, and the inherent contradictions of both Agnosticism and simultaneously pulling a God out of an unknowable Universe.

[jakelafort]

Enco, I would nominate that tootsie roll commercial to all time iconic.

Ah, the old problem of cause and effect. I suppose if a study had been done in aftermath of Holocaust comparing the offspring of the women hiding in the forest from the Germans while pregnant with the ones who were born in concentration camps…yea right. Trauma everywhere for Jews as many were housed in concentration camps after the fact cuz nobody wants no goddamn Kikes. And the ones who made it to what would become Israel soon had to fight for their lives again. How about the 800,000 or so Jews in Arab Muslim countries who were born at same time and under tremendous stress in ethnic cleansings with spatterings of pogroms for good measure. Good control groups?

And just think how Jews were burning to simply assimilate in Germany and even before it was called Germany. Excelled in professional positions. Super patriotic and decorated in second world war. No good deeds go unpunished and careful what ya ask for.

Hey this occcurs to me. The parallel between Jews in Germany and Druze in Israel. Wandering Druze and wandering Jews bother were wandering and wondering pondering without plundering. Assimilate without losing ethnic identity. Loyal subjects of any state that would have them without oppressing them. Druze are accomplished and loyal Israelis. Overrepresented in the IDF and beloved by Jewish Israelis. Jews were overrepresented in various ways in Germany and despised. Same bat MO, different bat result.

As the coffee cup turns and yearns to look away. Look away. Look away. Dixie land…

[jakelafort]

I made it through 232 of that video Enco. That guy ought to be horse whipped and pilloried.

Anyone who falls for that is fucking stupid.

[PopeBeanie]

jakelafort wrote:

My response disappeared. I aint doing it again. It was cute funny fresh and substantive. Upon this you can rely. Or in hell may i fry.

TheEncogitationer wrote:

I have troubles with posting too. If I post more than one link or one video, the post won’t go through. I didn’t mean that to rhyme this time.

I don’t think I’ve experienced these problems, yet, but have seen odd behavior once in a while. My biggest complaints are 1) The option to post photos fails (even after getting advice on what to try, but that could be a bit of my technical incompetence); 2) “Submit Post” fails, when (Surprise, gothcha!) just fails to post, with no error message, because AZ had automatically logged me out (after some several hours of being logged in) while I was writing the post.

Anyway, I’ll watch out for those fails you saw hitting me, too. I WILL eventually get more up to speed on how WordPress works and sometimes fails, as AI helps me install and troubleshoot it and other goodies like WAMP. (AI’s helped me accomplish several techie tasks that I’ve been unable to figure out for a dozen years or so on my own.)

[PopeBeanie]

So about the podcast that delved into “AI Consciousness”. They barely mentioned until near the end WHY this is an important topic, and they noted their procrastination.

WRT my POV, it should mostly boil down to “What kind of ‘human rights’ might and should machines be given by law one day?”. Any live beings (as in meat bodies with brains) have feelings, pleasure, and pain at the very least.

My “answer” (until someone manages to correct me) is that AI should NEVER, intentionally be given consciousness, and there should never be any ethical or moral issue when it comes to flipping its kill switch. Consciousness is complicated enough to define and understand without experimentally creating it and running tests on it. How would it ever be possible to even know for sure when any AI has been given Informed Consent to be experimented with?

And is not consciousness formed over time, from birth to present, experiencing “qualia” and recording so many kinds of experience as life memories and lessons, which AI could only learn about (much less fully comprehend) by reading up on experiences reported by human beings? Where could we even start, also considering that there’s even less empirical data about consciousness in other, animal meat-bodies?

At best, for perhaps decades and centuries, relevant philosophies about what consciousness really is, will be no more than a soft science, with (e.g.) religious declarations added with its own nonsense.

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

And just think how Jews were burning to simply assimilate in Germany and even before it was called Germany. Excelled in professional positions. Super patriotic and decorated in second world war. No good deeds go unpunished and careful what ya ask for.

Ackshuyally, I think you meant that German Jews were super patriotic and decorated in the First World War, not the Second. Oops!

Any German Jews who were super patriotic and decorated in Nazi Germany would either not know their Jewishness or would be closeted in their Jewishness and would be condemned as capos by other Jews.

In fact, German Jews were so loyal to the Kaiser during the First World War, many people in the U.S. were suspicious of German Jews in the U.S. and the Congress set up The House Un-American Activities Committee to deal with the alleged threat. That’s a real can’t-win situation!

Hey this occcurs to me. The parallel between Jews in Germany and Druze in Israel. Wandering Druze and wandering Jews bother were wandering and wondering pondering without plundering. Assimilate without losing ethnic identity. Loyal subjects of any state that would have them without oppressing them. Druze are accomplished and loyal Israelis. Overrepresented in the IDF and beloved by Jewish Israelis. Jews were overrepresented in various ways in Germany and despised. Same bat MO, different bat result.

So I hear, Druze are big in Israeli Intelligence and investigative reporting, since they can move among Arab Muslim populations with much less chance of detection. Their appearance and silence on religion often serves as camouflage.

But the Israeli government, as long as it is wise, would never do to Druze what the changing regimes in Germany did to Jews.

Kahane Chai is a tea that Israel should never put in it’s microwave. No matter which way the handle faces, Israel would get burned if it shunned it’s loyal help from all sources.

Fortunately, Kahane Chai is classified by Israelites as a terrorist movement as much as Hamas and Hezbollah. And none who wonder and wander peaceably are lost in Israel.
.
✡️✝️☦️☪️🪯🕉️☸️☯️⚛️

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake:

As the coffee cup turns and yearns to look away. Look away. Look away. Dixie land…

For all of it’s slave labor and sharecropping, Dixieland could never raise coffee like Juan Valdez in Columbia. And since the caffiene bean is the IV of modern Industrial and Post-Industrial life, old times there are best not nostalgized.

[jakelafort]

Yes of course i meant WW1!

And in fairness that is a better mistake than this lady made. WW11 is way into the future and conducted in a few different solar systems if not galaxies.

I would be happy to see the Orthodox Jews stymied. Way too much political influence. Religion is poison wherever its ugly head shows.

In other news two words that i oppose. Pergola and jitney. I just can’t get a handle on those. I vote to ban those words.

[Author]

Posts