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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   4361 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 27, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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For the more biology inclined among you:

What is the principled difference between Epigenetics [legit science, considered an important new frontier of genetic science], Lamarckism [old-timey predecessor to Darwinian evolution, wrong but not evil], and Lysenkoism [Soviet fallacy that was the demonstration of political correctness in action, wrong and evil]? From 30,000ft it feels to me like the story goes something like Lamarck comes up with it before getting superseded by Darwin, Lysenko revives the idea before getting superseded by Stalin's death and subsequent de-Stalinization efforts under Khruschev, and now it's being revived by modern biologists (with race-grievance experts lurking the background seeking to hijack any actual research to prove their own ends).

The only apologia for Epigenetics on the "it's Lysenko/Lamarck popped in the microwave on thaw" objection has been that epigenetics is more limited in scope than Lysenkoism." But then I read other epigenetics papers and they make claims as wild as Lysenko any day, especially where humans are concerned or humans can be blamed in nature, and at best the field seems like a bit of a motte and bailey.

So what's the real deal? How broadly applicable is epigenetics, and how I do tell good epigenetics from bad epigenetics?

I think the difference between epigenetic and Lysenko is the difference between "I can program a computer to do many different things" and "I can take a computer apart and make a chicken salad, a bicycle or a live cat out of it". The step of taking an electronic scheme and making it flexible so you can make it do different things is a big one, but still you can see how you could get there. But making a live cat out of it is taking it way beyond reasonable.

The cool kids know that bioelectric signaling networks structure the pattern formation of organisms and form an even more important epigenetics.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=5ChRM4CEWyg

So much so that you can take a flatworm, tweak the way it’s cells electrically communicate, and thus induce it to change the shape of its head and brain into that of a different flatworm species without altering its DNA.

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-induce-flatworms-to-grow-heads-and-brains-of-other-species

The big difference is that Lamarckism claimed to be the only biological mechanism of heritable phenotypic changes transmission. And Lysenkoism denied the existence of immutable heritable traits altogether: with sufficiently advanced treatment you could take a zygote from a Sentinelese islander and force it to develop into an Ashkenazi Jew or even a rat.

How do "race-grievance experts" use epigenetics to support their "it's not their fault, it's our fault"? Is it "we need to coddle and pamper the disadvantaged groups for X generations to remove the epigenetic markers of trauma"?

Epigenetics - as a mechanism for inheriting traits, across generations - is severely exaggerated by media, pop science, etc. A number of reasons for this: it's an easy way to escape HBD / blame racism / avoid the impact of genetics, and it just sounds cool. The number of proven cases where 'epigenetic mechanisms' contribute to heritable phenotypic differences in humans is small - especially compared to how "normal" genetics creates every aspect of human biology. On the other hand, epigenetic changes like DNA methylation and histone modification, as well as others, have many, many important effects in biology, just not ones that involve a child inheriting trait from a parent.

Here's a criticism, found in a gwern newsletter, of epigenetic inheritance of trauma

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