Chinese Economics Thread

[vesicles]

That's true, but there another side to the equation. The biases you hold yourself. We all have to fight our own just as hard as those we see in other people. Harder actually.

I agree with this statement 100%.

The best we can hope for in my opinion is to minimise bias. Neuroscientists and psychologists have shown we are are not fully rational beings. That still puts us far ahead of chimps, which don't seem able to control their impulses and emotions at all, but the animal part of our brains still has the capacity to rule us. I'd like to think another 50,000 or so years of evolution will have changed this if our species can survive that long.

I'm having some issues with the above statements.

Neuroscientists cannot decide whether we are rational beings.

And how do you define being rational? If you think it is some kind of emotional behavior that keeps us acting from impulses, you should think again. Keep in mind that everything that we do, impulse or rational, comes from the same biochemical processes that stimulate/inhibit our neuronal activities. If you eliminate one, you eliminate both. Impulse or rational is all about the balance between the two. Impulse keeps us alive while rationalization keeps us intelligent and gives creativity. It's the impulsive responses that tell us to stay away from danger. It is the same impulsive response that "automatically" mounts defense against bacterial/viral infections, without us telling our bodies to do that. You certainly don't want to lose that. Unfortunately, all biological impulses are interconnected. It is also the same molecular processes that tell us to be rational. You can't choose to lose one but keep others. Again, they work via the same set of cellular signaling cascades. In other words, one of our biological impulses is to be rational. That's why we human have spent all our existence to become rational. It is simply one of our impulses.

Also, our efforts to become rational depend heavily on our other impulses. We have to stay alive before talking about rationality. So all those survival impulses matter a lot. Then our impulse of curiosity. It is our impulse to be curious at everything around us to drive our need to be rational. Because the best way to understand things is to be rational. Yet, we must stay curious, an impulse. We are naturally competitive. We want to be the best at what we do. The best way to achieve perfection is being rational. Yet, we must keep that competitive edge in order to actually need to be rational. Being competitive is an impulse, a huge survival impulse. Collaboration is a huge impulse too. We as social animals must stay in a community to function. So being rational means we must satisfy our impulse to be included in communities. Examples go on and on...

Also, evolution won't make us smarter or more rational. That's NOT how evolution works. As the dominating species on this planet, we don't want any evolution to be happening to us. Now, the only thing evolution can do is to hurt us. When I say "hurt", I mean extinction. Evolution does not slowly change our genes to anything else. It does not work that way. It is mathematically and biologically improbable. Because mutation is completely random, any mutation will be wiped out by the dominating genomic makeup in no time. even in the best case scenario, the mutant can only hope to maintain an infinitely small population, even in a billion years. This is true mathematically and biologically. The ONLY chance for the mutant to become dominant is that some global catastrophe occurs and almost all the dominating species is wiped out. That is the only way. So we, as the dominating species, don't want evolution to happen to us. That would be mean 99.999% of human will have to extinct. So we will NOT "slowly evolve to eliminate/change any of our physiological features". That won't happen. period.

 

[solarz]

And how do you define being rational?

Rational means acting on the basis of logical thought processes, as opposed to emotional judgements. For example, do you eat this delicious cake that also happens to be loaded with calories and saturated fat? The rational actor would say: no, it would negatively affect my health. The emotional actor would say: screw that, I want cake!

 

[vesicles]

Rational means acting on the basis of logical thought processes, as opposed to emotional judgements. For example, do you eat this delicious cake that also happens to be loaded with calories and saturated fat? The rational actor would say: no, it would negatively affect my health. The emotional actor would say: screw that, I want cake!

Well, impulses are biological signals that your body uses to tell you something. They signify the conditions in your body. So you should never simply ignore those impulses. They are your body's ways to communicate with you. when you crave for that piece of cake, it may be that you simply have a sweet tooth. It may also be that your body is telling you that it needs energy. rationally, you shouldn't ignore your impulse and should eat something to give your body the much-needed energy.

When you crave for salty food, you may be having some kind of electrolyte imbalance and your body might be telling you that it needs some Na+ ions in the blood to keep your heart pumping. Then rationally, you should heed your impulses and get some more electrolytes. This is especially the case when you are working out and have been drinking a lot of water, which dilute electrolyte concentration. Not heeding to your impulses will lead to multiple organ failure and eventually brain death.

Abnormal impulses also signal medical issues. If you are already full but still crave for cake or something else, it is telling you that your brain is not getting the signal that your stomach is full. That means some miscommunication going on in your body. It may be something as simple as high stress level. It may also be something complex like insufficient secretion of leptin hormone, which should tell your brain that you are full and you should stop eating. Then, rationally, you should seek professional help.

You see? You should not ignore your impulses. They keep you alive.

Have you wondered why we LOVE fatty, salty and sweet food? These kinds of food provide most nutrients that our body needs: proteins, fatty acids, electrolytes and calories. These are the things that keep us alive. Keep in mind that before 1800/1900's, human, just like any wild animal could not obtain food on a consistent basis. That means we have been genetically engrained to favor the kind of food that will contain the most nutrients. To make the most of any meal, so to speak. Not a lot of people naturally prefer vegetables because our digestive system is not optimized for absorbing plant nutrients. Wasting so much time eating a lot veggies won't give us a lot of much-needed nutrients. Of course, the unlimited supply of food is a new problem that no animal species has faced before. We human now face a new problem that evolution has no solution to. So again, impulses are signals that our body uses to communicate / warn us.

 

[vesicles]

I guess what I'm trying to say is that impulses are actually very rational.

 

[a1a2a3a4a5a6a]

Because mutation is completely random,

Is there solid scientific proof on the above, or just a generally-accepted assumption when the actual statistical distribution is unknown?

For example, older Options Pricing Theory neglected the "fat tails", where realistic outliers occur slightly more than random and partially contributed to the downfall of Long-Term Capital Management in 1998.

Usually it is the deviation from randomness that makes science interesting. For example, the bias of left-handed cosmic magnetic field is responsible for the excess of matter over antimatter and hence, our existence.

Now back to evolution and mutation, would you mind comment on this paper? Thanks.

Evolution: are the monkeys’ typewriters rigged?
Michael R. Garvin, Anthony J. Gharrett
Published 1 October 2014.DOI: 10.1098/rsos.140172

"Evolution is presumed to proceed by random mutations, which increase an individual’s fitness........ Furthermore, we show that our proposed model accounts for most of the mutations at neutral sites but it is probably the predominant mechanism at positively selected sites. This suggests that evolution does not proceed by simple random processes but is guided by physical properties of the DNA itself and functional constraint of the proteins encoded by the DNA."

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

 

[vesicles]

Is there solid scientific proof on the above, or just a generally-accepted assumption when the actual statistical distribution is unknown?
............

Now back to evolution and mutation

Evolution: are the monkeys’ typewriters rigged?
Michael R. Garvin, Anthony J. Gharrett
Published 1 October 2014.DOI: 10.1098/rsos.140172

"Evolution is presumed to proceed by random mutations, which increase an individual’s fitness........ Furthermore, we show that our proposed model accounts for most of the mutations at neutral sites but it is probably the predominant mechanism at positively selected sites. This suggests that evolution does not proceed by simple random processes but is guided by physical properties of the DNA itself and functional constraint of the proteins encoded by the DNA."

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Genetic mutation has been well established to be completely random. In fact, scientists generate point mutations in genomic DNA based on the principle of random mutation. This has been done for decades in labs.

The article you quoted was published in royal society open science. The Royal society journals typically have low impact factors, which suggests low quality studies published in the journals. The royal society open science does not even have an impact factor, which means it's a bad journal. In fact, this particular article was submitted in June 2014 and was accepted for publication in July 2014. One month! This means little time for a detailed peer review and definitely no revision. It takes a typical manuscript 6-9 months to go through the peer review process in an average-quality journal. This does not boast well for the article. So in short, I don't have much faith in the study.

 

[a1a2a3a4a5a6a]

The article you quoted was published in royal society open science. The Royal society journals typically have low impact factors, which suggests low quality studies published in the journals. The royal society open science does not even have an impact factor, which means it's a bad journal. In fact, this particular article was submitted in June 2014 and was accepted for publication in July 2014. One month! This means little time for a detailed peer review and definitely no revision. It takes a typical manuscript 6-9 months to go through the peer review process in an average-quality journal. This does not boast well for the article. So in short, I don't have much faith in the study.

How about this one? The impact factor of Nature shouldn't be a problem here. Is mutation truely random or an accepted approximation in general?

Evidence of non-random mutation rates suggests an evolutionary risk management strategy

Iñigo Martincorena, Aswin S. N. Seshasayee & Nicholas M. Luscombe
Nature 485, 95–98 (03 May 2012) doi:10.1038/nature10995
Received 27 October 2011 Accepted 29 February 2012 Published online 22 April 2012

"A central tenet in evolutionary theory is that mutations occur randomly with respect to their value to an organism; selection then governs whether they are fixed in a population. This principle has been challenged by long-standing theoretical models predicting that selection could modulate the rate of mutation itself........ Upon comparing 34 Escherichia coli genomes, we observe that the neutral mutation rate varies by more than an order of magnitude across 2,659 genes, with mutational hot and cold spots spanning several kilobases. Importantly, the variation is not random: we detect a lower rate in highly expressed genes and in those undergoing stronger purifying selection. Our observations suggest that the mutation rate has been evolutionarily optimized to reduce the risk of deleterious mutations. Current knowledge of factors influencing the mutation rate—including transcription-coupled repair and context-dependent mutagenesis—do not explain these observations, indicating that additional mechanisms must be involved. The findings have important implications for our understanding of evolution and the control of mutations."

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

 

[SampanViking]

FASCINATING BUT IRRELEVANT!

PLEASE RETURN TO ECONOMIC TOPIC

 

[vesicles]

I apologize for the off-topic stuff. I would like to move the genetic mutation discussion to the "Ask anything thread" in this section, if it is ok with the moderation.

 

[Equation]

Most loans were to SOEs and local governments, so if they go bad and need resolution, Beijing has the option to pull an Alexander Hamilton and nationalize the debt in exchange for greater central government control.

Either way China doesn't required TRILIONS of tax payers hard earn dollars like Fannie Mae, Fredie Mac, Leoman Brothers and others to bail their "too big to fail" sorry butts and than the executives gave themselves a bonus while laying off thousands.