MC_Escherichia

Hmm. I see. It's a weird sentence, to call a person a "disaster precedent". It would work better with a simple rearrangement:

"Memorable storytelling about past disasters highlights why top thinkers (e.g. the inventor of two environmental nightmares: tetra-ethyl-lead gasoline and Freon) so often don’t see the catastrophes they create."

But I suppose one does not simply edit a quote.

and they don't understand that there has never been a common ancestor of all and only the monkeys

This fact though -- that monkeys are paraphyletic -- argues in favour of (not against) the view that the common ancestor of monkeys and apes was itself monkey-like...

If you think about when the "ape traits" must have evolved, it would be after the new-world monkeys had already diverged away. The common ancestor of monkeys and apes wouldn't have had them, but must have had those traits common to both old and new-world monkeys. It itself has to be basically a monkey.

(I drew out a phylogenetic tree for this but couldn't get it to format, alas...)

That's also interesting... I think the two ways of looking at it are equivalent, i.e. any pattern that satisfies one should also satisfy the other. (Only because the XOR pattern works both vertically and horizontally.)

The enemy of the enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

Harrap's First Law

What book?

won't have the problem of being acyclic

Should that be "cyclic"? I take it from Richard's post that "acyclic" is what we want.

It should be pointed out here that biological genuses, families, orders, and so on do not exist.

Yes, this is true of course.

What I was saying is that humans are the only living member of the Homo family

So was the claim "Humans are the only single species mammal" simply a claim that humans are the only mammal with their own genus? That's certainly not true, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Monotypic_mammal_genera

The reproductive isolation can be genetic, or it can be simply geographical or habitual.

This is probably not relevant to our point, but Futuyma (2005) Evolution p356 defines reproductive isolation as "reduction or prevention of gene flow b... (read more)

None of the things you mention are likely to affect the sex determination system.

the only single species mammal.

The only what?

Could you direct me to the comparative analysis of Mammalian reproductive systems that discusses hermaphrodites in other species?

What I meant was that we can think about other mammals ourselves, and note that no other mammal species has hermaphrodites at significant frequencies. I had no specific research in mind.

there would be a decent size population of hermaphrodites able to develop a stable social station; if there were a stable hermaphrodite community their genes would spread

This depends both on a genetic cause, and also on hermaphrodites havin... (read more)

I don't think there's a prejudice against replying to old posts around here...

Yes, that seems reasonable. There are four biologically possible scenarios I can think of to explain the numbers:

1. It's developmental noise.
2. Mutations that cause hermaphroditism arise at a certain rate and are eliminated by natural (or artificial) selection at a certain rate; this is mutation-selection balance.
3. Multiple genes at different loci are required to produce a hermaphrodite (this is epistasis); natural selection doesn't act against these genes since it is rare for them to be found in the same invididual, and they may produce some benefit when apar

intentional out breeding [elimination] of more sexes

A comparative analysis of Mammalia shows this to be extremely doubtful, unless you think that only humans have these extra sexes. In all mammals the vast bulk of individuals can be cleanly assigned to male or female without ambiguity, and no such intentional elimination was required. [Note "outbreeding" means something else.]

You have to look at quite distantly related species before hermaphrodites show up at interesting frequencies. Certainly some fish can be hermaphrodite.

As an aside; the use of "Org" (i.e. Rationality Org) seems really unusual and immediately makes me think of Scientology (Sea Org); am I unusual in having this reaction?

I might come, though there's a conflicting Starcraft 2 tournament...

[Edit] But since I failed to qualify in a satelite tournament, I shall attend the LW meeting.

I've noticed lately a lot of websites seem to use some bizarre font that looks awful. But since they keep doing it, I'm beginning to wonder if it's just me that sees it looking awful. Does it look like this for anyone else?

http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/7224/fontyo.png

Which is the case?

Your initial read off your calculator tells you with 99% certainty.

Now Omega comes in and asks you to consider the opposite case. It matters how Omega decided what to say to you. If Omega was always going to contradict your calculator, then what Omega says offers no new information. But if Omega essentially had its own calculator, and was always going to tell you the result even if it didn't contradict yours, then the probabilities become 50%.

I'm still not following. Either the answer is even in every possible world, or it is odd in every possible world. It can't be legitimate to consider worlds where it is even and worlds where it is odd, as if they both actually existed.