Howard Dean and the Gay Gene
- Thread starter Vince
- Start date
Legion said:
Continued taunts? Yes. I never said I would stop that.
Attacks against your character? Certainly not. I admit that this was not intentional. I don't even think you know you're doing it. "Liar" immediately, at least as far as I'm concerned, connotates malice and forethought. Imo this has situation has neither. So no, I don't think you're lying. Mistaken about even the things you've said? Yes. Lying deliberately? No.
Vince,
I do not know if it is true or not, there are several well established lines of study that show no correlation to genetic predisposition, but rather nurture conditions. But its not cut and dry, for instance there could be some rather complicated mechanism involving predispositions to environmental conditions in the womb for instance.
The point is, typically genetic aberations account for <<1 percent of the population, whereas the gay population is somewhere hovering at 10% throughout recent history at least. This begs for a dynamics, and its natural to propose a genetic hypothesis which may be of interest to biologists. Of course, correlation != causation.
I am no expert though, I have hopelessly little biology background, but I just wanted to say that I know that its still debated by people who do know what they are talking about. The issue will be settled at some point, probably in the next thirty years or so.
Its very hard to isolate these things, so we have to settle for incomplete studies done by statistics. But its also too easy to simply discount them as mere fluctuations and number fudging.
I do not know if it is true or not, there are several well established lines of study that show no correlation to genetic predisposition, but rather nurture conditions. But its not cut and dry, for instance there could be some rather complicated mechanism involving predispositions to environmental conditions in the womb for instance.
The point is, typically genetic aberations account for <<1 percent of the population, whereas the gay population is somewhere hovering at 10% throughout recent history at least. This begs for a dynamics, and its natural to propose a genetic hypothesis which may be of interest to biologists. Of course, correlation != causation.
I am no expert though, I have hopelessly little biology background, but I just wanted to say that I know that its still debated by people who do know what they are talking about. The issue will be settled at some point, probably in the next thirty years or so.
Its very hard to isolate these things, so we have to settle for incomplete studies done by statistics. But its also too easy to simply discount them as mere fluctuations and number fudging.
Silent_One
Newcomer
Wow, step out for a little while and look what happens:
Legion wrote:
Legion wrote:
Legion wrote:
Natoma wrote;
Natoma wrote:
Legion wrote:
Correct.
Legion wrote:
I think he ment that too...
Legion wrote:
True. Such as why take general bio and chem courses if your "4" on the AP test exempts you from them and allows you to take genetics??? It just dosen't make logical sense to take those courses.
Natoma wrote;
Just to be clear, see above....I responded to Vince in pm regarding the comments and told him that my response was in regard to his "high school" comment, with a
Natoma wrote:
I vaguely remember something
Silent_One said:
Implication? Sure it could be read that way. Did I clear that up? Certainly. If you choose to continue to have certain beliefs about my "implied" meaning, then so be it. There's nothing I can do about that.
Silent_One said:
Obviously not since I cleared that up.
Silent_One said:
Why take any course even if you're exempt? Because I had the ideal notion of being in a higher institution of learning for the sole purpose of learning. I studied French for 13 years and could have skipped the language requirement had I taken a test for it. I declined so I could take Spanish for no other reason than I wanted to expand my knowledge. As I told Vince in a pm earlier, one of the main reasons I left Yale is because I didn't feel like I was getting a better education than the one I had in high school. I was already $10K in debt at the time, why go any futher if I'm not actually getting anything out of it?
I had a 5 in European History and a 4 in American History. I could have skipped the intro European History courses if I wanted to, but I chose to take them in my second semester, freshman year. Why? Again, to learn. I even went to summer school two years in a row just because I wanted to expand my knowledge.
Is all of that logical if all you're looking for is a piece of paper to show that you graduated? Certainly not. Is it logical if you're trying to learn everything you possibly can? Yes.
Sabastian said:
I've had encounters with women before that I did not enjoy. That doesn't mean anything. I consider myself an exclusive homosexual, even with my experiences with women. Why? Because I was trying everything I could to "make myself straight," from relationships to prayer. Obviously those attempts failed.
A man goes to prison and has sex with other men, but identifies himself as a heterosexual. Does that mean that he identifies sexually as gay? Certainly not.
p.s.: Fred, one wonders how much higher that percentage would be if everyone were comfortable expressing their sexual identities. It took me 12 years from when I became sexually aware to finally feel comfortable enough in my own identity to come out freely. Some people never make that leap because of societal and religious pressures.
Silent_One said:Natoma wrote:
I vaguely remember something
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=157070#157070
The full conversation between the two of us is as follows:
Natoma said:Silent_One said:Natoma said:Silent_One said:Natoma said:
When have I ever stated anything regarding sexual arousal and sexual attraction, or sexuality for that matter? We may have had discussions regarding consistency, or natural (oh God I said that word
It was in the dontamend thread. It wasn't the difference between sexuality and sexual arousal. It was the difference between sexual arousal and sexual attraction, i.e. the vast majority of the human species is bisexual wrt to attraction, but heterosexual wrt arousal. That only 1-2% of the human population is purely homosexual or heterosexual wrt attraction, i.e. unable to see anything physically attractive about someone of the same sex if you're hetero, or someone of the opposite sex if you're homo. Yadda yadda yadda.
Nope. I never said anything in any thread that differs from your opinion regarding sexual arousal and sexual attraction. And it's not that thread either.
Meh. All of these threads merge and stew into one big never ending quagmire. Retracted.
Remember now?
If I misattribute something to someone, I will be the first to retract it and apologize, as I did for you Silent_One, and as I did for Legion (I had called him a liar twice) once I realized he wasn't making those false attributions on purpose. However, he did make them anyway, even if not on purpose, to which I asked for a public retraction of his statements. I have not yet received such courtesy from Legion unfortunately.
Silent_One
Newcomer
Of course.!I remembered all along.
Well now that you've "cleared that up" I understand what you've said. However it did come across as, well, as arrogant.
Not to break your balls or anything but don't you think you would have gotten more out of the courses you did take if you took different ones than repeating courses that, as you say, you "had in high school"? I mean if I got 4's and 5's on AP tests for history (got a 3
) and biology why would I expect anything more from taking the same thing over again since I passed it with flying colors? Spanish I can understand as it's a different language. Maybe had you taken something elce you would have "learn everything you possibly can" and graduatedTo be sure, AP courses, even though they are technically equivalent, are not the same as courses in college. Going in, I felt this way and decided that the best way for me to get the best education possible would be to redo some of the courses I had had in high school. I wanted to make sure my base was solid, because when I went to yale, I was frankly, "star struck" by the name and the promise of this uber education that would be the best that I had ever experienced. Did I make some mistakes in the courses I chose to take? Certainly. But on the other hand, I learned that college courses are also not all they're cracked up to be.
For instance, the main issue that enhanced my jaded state regarding the college education system at yale was with regard to my attempts to study Spanish. I wanted to start off at ground zero with spanish, so I took the intro level course. Officially, that course was for people who had never had access to spanish in any way whatsoever. When I got there, I saw that half of the class were native speaking hispanics. Why? Because they couldn't read or write, that qualified them to enter the intro level course. The other half of the class, to which I was part of, could not read, write, speak, or comprehend spanish save for words like Fajita or Tequila, if you get my drift.
Anyway, I started a petition a few days after class began to have the native speaking half bumped up to the next level, and got half the class to sign it. Considering 40% of the grade was in-class speaking, you can understand what kind of shackle this created.
I took the petition to the head of the Spanish department, then the head of the Language department, and finally to the Dean of Calhoun, i.e. my residential college. All told me the same thing. They can't and won't do anything about the situation. Off the record, it was too bureacratic a matter to warrant action by the Language department. That gave me the very strong impression that they were more interested in maintaining the status quo than actually forwarding a sense of fairness and equity in the educational system at yale. That experience disillusioned me to the idea that I could really learn everything I possibly could while at yale.
A few months later, I dropped out. Luckily about a week after I dropped out in mid December, I joined up with my current company and have been there for the past 5 years, learning a tremendous amount along the way.
As an aside, two years ago, I took up the task of officially learning Perl programming and DB Schema and management to augment my other programming skills. I had already had a good amount of experience with Perl because of prior projects where I had to edit code and write my own code. The CTO of my company suggested that I only had to read a few chapters of the O'Reilly Perl Books. He even marked them for me. Instead, I decided to read the books from front to back, in order to make sure that my base of knowledge had no holes in it. It took me about three times longer to read everything than it would have had I taken shortcuts here and there, but now I feel secure and confidant in my knowledge of Perl from top to bottom.
I learn for the sake of learning, and if I don't feel secure in what I know, I will re-read something to give myself that secure feeling.
Time consuming? Yes. Intellectually satisfying? Most certainly. And that is what is most important to me. The challenge. I hope you understand my thought processes on these matters now.
For instance, the main issue that enhanced my jaded state regarding the college education system at yale was with regard to my attempts to study Spanish. I wanted to start off at ground zero with spanish, so I took the intro level course. Officially, that course was for people who had never had access to spanish in any way whatsoever. When I got there, I saw that half of the class were native speaking hispanics. Why? Because they couldn't read or write, that qualified them to enter the intro level course. The other half of the class, to which I was part of, could not read, write, speak, or comprehend spanish save for words like Fajita or Tequila, if you get my drift.
Anyway, I started a petition a few days after class began to have the native speaking half bumped up to the next level, and got half the class to sign it. Considering 40% of the grade was in-class speaking, you can understand what kind of shackle this created.
I took the petition to the head of the Spanish department, then the head of the Language department, and finally to the Dean of Calhoun, i.e. my residential college. All told me the same thing. They can't and won't do anything about the situation. Off the record, it was too bureacratic a matter to warrant action by the Language department. That gave me the very strong impression that they were more interested in maintaining the status quo than actually forwarding a sense of fairness and equity in the educational system at yale. That experience disillusioned me to the idea that I could really learn everything I possibly could while at yale.
A few months later, I dropped out. Luckily about a week after I dropped out in mid December, I joined up with my current company and have been there for the past 5 years, learning a tremendous amount along the way.
As an aside, two years ago, I took up the task of officially learning Perl programming and DB Schema and management to augment my other programming skills. I had already had a good amount of experience with Perl because of prior projects where I had to edit code and write my own code. The CTO of my company suggested that I only had to read a few chapters of the O'Reilly Perl Books. He even marked them for me. Instead, I decided to read the books from front to back, in order to make sure that my base of knowledge had no holes in it. It took me about three times longer to read everything than it would have had I taken shortcuts here and there, but now I feel secure and confidant in my knowledge of Perl from top to bottom.
I learn for the sake of learning, and if I don't feel secure in what I know, I will re-read something to give myself that secure feeling.
Time consuming? Yes. Intellectually satisfying? Most certainly. And that is what is most important to me. The challenge. I hope you understand my thought processes on these matters now.
zidane1strife
Banned
My two cents...
Well, from the accounts I've read/heard/seen, even with surgery at a very early age, and both parents and society giving their full effort, some people have felt uncomfortable, and questioned, and nearly commited suicide...
I don't recall exactly where I saw it, but it seemed that in various observations of the dev. of the different sexes, there were seen some differences in the brain dev.that were independent of the hormones the animal/child(don't recall species) was exposed to in the womb.
Well, I wouldn't say it's ludicrous. When a person loaths their parents, society, feels unease with their body, and attempts suicide, it hints at the enviroment not being that effective at changing what was put there by nature.
Well, as for homosexuality, as has been seen in many cases with heterosexuals involving the enviroment vs nature, nature has won many times. So since I wouldn't be so quick to rule out the possibility of a male ending up with the wiring of the different sex or viceversa, I would say it's possible that a percentage of homosexuals are so do to circumstances beyond their control.
Now, some people may change their sexual orientation to bisexual, heterosexual, homosexual because they so desire, but I don't see that as any form of perversion or the like.
Hmmm... yeah it helps to do that... but I don't think that's your primary concern...
Well besides the personal experiences of those who've fought the enviroment(IIRC, even hormone injections), there is the personal experience of the rest of the species. From my understanding the feelings of sexuality go beyond those of regularly acquired tastes... heh, the fact that it's ramped up(basically switched on) after the child reaches a certain age, should hint that there is more to it than just personal choice.
From saying "girls/boys" are yucky in many groups to being nearly obsessed with the opposite sex, individuals, groups, and social structures change. Most of the males are attracted to the females, and viceversa, and this has components that go beyond sheer will. I mean when you hit puberty, did you go "Ahh, look at this I may find girls/boys attractive", N O... NO, right? You just began feeling something new, something that was beyond your control for the most part.
Should your family and friends have attempted to raise you as a member of the sex you're now attracted to, and they had chosen a member of the sex "you weren't attracted to" for you to mate in a mating ritual... Would you be glad and exited about it, or feel entirely #%$^^?
PS Yeah, I know I know... I shouldn't start so many sentences with the same word...
Well, from the accounts I've read/heard/seen, even with surgery at a very early age, and both parents and society giving their full effort, some people have felt uncomfortable, and questioned, and nearly commited suicide...
I don't recall exactly where I saw it, but it seemed that in various observations of the dev. of the different sexes, there were seen some differences in the brain dev.that were independent of the hormones the animal/child(don't recall species) was exposed to in the womb.
Well, I wouldn't say it's ludicrous. When a person loaths their parents, society, feels unease with their body, and attempts suicide, it hints at the enviroment not being that effective at changing what was put there by nature.
Well, as for homosexuality, as has been seen in many cases with heterosexuals involving the enviroment vs nature, nature has won many times. So since I wouldn't be so quick to rule out the possibility of a male ending up with the wiring of the different sex or viceversa, I would say it's possible that a percentage of homosexuals are so do to circumstances beyond their control.
Now, some people may change their sexual orientation to bisexual, heterosexual, homosexual because they so desire, but I don't see that as any form of perversion or the like.
Hmmm... yeah it helps to do that... but I don't think that's your primary concern...
Well besides the personal experiences of those who've fought the enviroment(IIRC, even hormone injections), there is the personal experience of the rest of the species. From my understanding the feelings of sexuality go beyond those of regularly acquired tastes... heh, the fact that it's ramped up(basically switched on) after the child reaches a certain age, should hint that there is more to it than just personal choice.
From saying "girls/boys" are yucky in many groups to being nearly obsessed with the opposite sex, individuals, groups, and social structures change. Most of the males are attracted to the females, and viceversa, and this has components that go beyond sheer will. I mean when you hit puberty, did you go "Ahh, look at this I may find girls/boys attractive", N O... NO, right? You just began feeling something new, something that was beyond your control for the most part.
Should your family and friends have attempted to raise you as a member of the sex you're now attracted to, and they had chosen a member of the sex "you weren't attracted to" for you to mate in a mating ritual... Would you be glad and exited about it, or feel entirely #%$^^?
PS Yeah, I know I know... I shouldn't start so many sentences with the same word...
This is very normal reaction to an enviroment. take for example women who at young ages become hyper sensitive about their weight...
Indeed there are differences in male and female brains. Has anyone since this discovery concluded this differences lead to predetermined sexuality? No.
Can you explain to me how a persons conception of themselves based on a cultural standard is some how outside the bounds of enviroment? In words explain to me the reasoning behind this statement. Many young girls suffer from doubts of depression concerning their appearance. Many teenagers worry about their popularity. Both of these are culturally motivated.
Where can i find references to th information you have cited here?
Until some one provides substantive evidence that can be replicated i will believe otherwise.
WOuld the same be true for Pedophiles, those sexually excited by animals, and necrophiliacs fit into the same category?
I am glad we can come to terms with this issue.
How so? I don't think that information should have to lead to the conclusion you have made. Urges/Drives themselves may be increased by hormones. This says little if anything concerning the object that is fueling the drive or for that matter the reasons behind it.
I disagree with this societal stereotype. I have seen quite often girls and boys playing with each other. Its generally when an outsider informs them of some soceital norm that "girls/boys are yucky" or "you shouldn't play with girls/boys" that children begin to behave differently.
What does this say about the about of the drive? Surely you admitt cultures accross the world value different features as to be attractive. Are all these features some how preprogrammed in the psyche?
I found and recognized this long before. Attractiveness needs not anything but an enviromental explanation.
I doubt this is so. Infact i am willing to wager children can recognize what htey have been taught to find attractive at early ages.
The nature of this question will not provide you with the answer you are looking for.
The conception of "male" and "female" are obviously enviromental (unless of course you'd care to explain to me how a child is conceived with this knowledge). How then could they possibly know what is attractive or what is the "right" gender to pursue sexually?
If you examine prison life you can find perfect examples of heterosexuals becoming homosexual.
I think if you examine prison life you'll find a lot of anal rapes, and no relational bonding.
This, in my mind, falls outside of sexual expression and into the bounds of aggression expression.
zidane1strife
Banned
The enviroment(in a cultural sense) influences people, that is true. But even it(cultural influence) is only allowed to do so after the brain has developed quite a bit.
Well, they've been on the discover channel network, msnbc, etc... In my free time I've watched countless programs dealing with this, and I'm sure there are many sources on the net.
Well, there is a significant difference, two large segments of the populations, that is the sexes, are attracted to those members of the other group. I believe this is not so for animals or the like.
The fact that the male/female silhouette, and shapes or hints resembling bodily portions of a member of the sex to which the person is attracted, tend to arouse should give you a hint. This arousal response arises naturally out of most members of this species, this is not so for other objects silhouettes, etc.
The child does not tend to develop an attraction for some random object, it is for the female/male figure. This is so in other sexual species, the sexes tend to attract each other.
I know, that was just an example.
True, as is in many other species, still it tends to be between members of the opposite genders.
We could design, unethical, experiments to see if we teach children to be attracted to non-human things and see if they remain so, or if they return to their nature... I'm sure you'd agree with my hypotheses that the males will tend to be attracted to the females, etc.
There are many children who tend to ignore their parents and even societal rules, and even present a facade in front of them, even amongst them I'm sure a poll will show you their sexual preferences are similar to the rest of the species.
The brain has areas to recognize facial features, and it also has several reflexes built in. The survival of the species depends on the reproduction of its members, this is something of the utmost importance, surely you don't think that it is left up to chance or the enviroment. Attraction also occurs in all other species, and surely you've seen the DNA % comparisons. Unless you argue this pre-built stuff that highly influences many organisms, has for some unknown and illogical reason being taken out of our species through NS... it or part of it should be there, humans evolved, and I see no logical reason for these things to be removed.
Heck, SS could probably have influenced quite some the dev. of many human characteristics...
Do you think, even if we stop teaching children about "sex", as has been in many areas where it is taboo, and attempt a ban on it for the next gen., that it will go well with them? I'd say NO, as I'm sure you'd agree.
It is clear, IMHO, that people aren't taught to seek those members of the opposite sex, their desire to do so is built-in to a certain degree. Still, there are probably ways to change this, just as people can starve themselves to death, or go without sleep to their tomb, etc.
zidane1strife said:
Actually Legion was arguing that very point in another thread. According to him, we don't learn anything about sex unless we're taught in sex-ed class. Which of course is bullocks because of the fact that the species has been procreating long before sex-ed ever came into being.
