> For instance, mouse fathers exposed to nicotine(opens a new tab) sire male pups with livers that are good at disarming not just nicotine but cocaine and other toxins as well.
queue rationalist fathers microdosing nicotine patches before conception to give their kids the best chance at abusing drugs.
"researchers, including those spearheading the work, are cautious about overselling their results"
Either it is correct; or it is not. Perhaps it is somewhat correct, but then it may not be fully correct, so it would contain wrong information.
I write this here because science does not really work well when it is based on speculation. So this article is weird. It starts by speculating about something rather than analyse the article. It then continues to "textbooks have to be rewritten". Well, I think if you are in science, you need to demonstrate that all your claims made need to be correct - and others can verify it, without any restriction whatsoever.
> “We just don’t have really any understanding of how RNAs can do this, and that’s the hand-wavy part,” Conine said.
So their theory is incomplete as of yet. That's not good.
There are examples of where theories were lateron shown to be wrong.
assuming this is true, perhaps it's best to freeze sperm regularly with labels that way if you go off the deep end you can snapshot quite literally your best self? some possible times - right before college, right after college, after you meet someone you think you'd marry (but before you do), after marriage.
I think trying to "tune" your kids in any way is asking to be disappointed. My three kids could not be more different and they all have the same mother, grew up in the same house, etc.
If "microRNA" profiles have any influence, I would wager it's very small.
> they all have the same mother, grew up in the same house, etc.
I’m pretty sure the first one didn’t have siblings, and the second only had one. Also their mother is not the same person after raising the first kid, or raising two.
If my quicksave/quickload savescumming is to be observed, I’d be pining for that sperm from before I told the waitress “you too” wrt to her telling me to enjoy my meal.
> I told the waitress “you too” wrt to her telling me to enjoy my meal.
That's not too bad unless you are in a group and they make fun of you right away, but it's a fumble that you can fix and start a good play if you don't just get super nervous.
Laugh it off, ask her if it's not the first one, ask her to join, even if you know she's actually working and can't.
I've never done any improv, but it seems like something maybe everyone should do so we all can avoid awkward moments that stick for way longer than they should.
Makes me wonder if that's some of the influence that different siblings get? The first born gets more ambition, the middle child chills, and the baby acts like a boomer.
Someone who works out every day will obviously have different metabolic and microRNA profiles; assuming that line of research holds up and those biomolecular profiles make it into the zygote, survive many replication cycles, and act as developmental signalling molecules affecting gene expression during embryonic and fetal development, there could be life-long effects.
What can't happen is inter-generational transmission of particular subjective experiences that aren't paired with specific, unique metabolic, hormonal, and gene-expression signatures. Only biomolecular-mediated phenotypes, the most general and obvious of which would be things like stress or exercise or diet, make sense to be transmitted that way.
For instance, someone who's chronically afraid might transmit some kind of stress/fear modulating signals to offspring. Someone who's afraid of a specific thing, however, cannot transmit fear of that specific thing unless there's some incredible and unexplored cognition-to-biomolecular signalling mechanism that's entirely unexplored and undescribed. Therefore, I don't know why the article uses the term "lived experience", which is too broad a term to describe what the research suggests might be occurring.
> Someone who's afraid of a specific thing, however, cannot transmit fear of that specific thing unless there's some incredible and unexplored cognition-to-biomolecular signalling mechanism that's entirely unexplored and undescribed.
While there is absolutely no conclusive evidence, there are a few studies that indicate this is a possibility.
We know that severe stress (such as trauma) leaves chemical marks on the genes, potentially passed down to the offspring. For example, this paper writes about an “accumulating amount of evidence of an enduring effect of trauma exposure to be passed to offspring transgenerationally: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5977074/
Though “lived experience” can encompass a lot of things, it definitely encompasses severe stress.
For example, constantly worrying about money because you’re poor can definitely put you under severe stress. Also, growing up without secure attachment to your caretakers, being asked to do role reversal (having to take care of your parents as a child), things like that will generate complex PTSD.
A lot of this is transmitted via the language. The stories we form as a result of events in our lives, have power to set our values in all areas. These myths of the self, have what is essentially a value manifest for someone. And these myths, can be so strongly held that it will influence the person and family’s moods, actions, habits.
What is important is to note that there are many formulas for consciousness. Some are truely bonkers, some are just fundamental truth. And some… have yet to be discovered.
Permutations and combinatorics create a hyperspace of all ridiculous things!
The comment you’re replying to suggests “lived experience” is too broad, not too narrow. The issue isn’t that it fails to include your example. It fails to exclude other things. Part of my lived experience today was seeing a manatee. It is unlikely this will be passed on.
It feels so wonderfully weird reading about some else seeing a manatee today. I too saw a manatee while walking with my kids today. The interesting part was our navigational strategies complementing each other (me – misremembering the details of a road closure, and them - getting curious about what a bunch of people at a marina are looking at) to find a group of manatees in a place we didn’t know they can be found.
And the comment you’re replying to suggests that since many lived experiences are plausibly heritable, the term is appropriate. In any case, the context in which it is actually used in the article seems beyond all but the most pedantic reproach:
>The first is how a father’s body physically encodes lived experience, such as stress, diet, exercise or nicotine use
And that’s a single sentence partway through the article. From the beginning, the refrain is the list of the sorts of things that seem to have heritable effect, not the phrase “lived experiences”.
>Research into how a father’s choices — such as diet, exercise, stress, nicotine use — may transfer traits to his children
>Within a sperm’s minuscule head are stowaway molecules, which enter the egg and convey information about the father’s fitness, such as diet, exercise habits and stress levels, to his offspring
Etc.
The article is clearly not attempting to suggest that all experiences are heritable.
> The authors pointed out “there are significant drawbacks in the existing human literature” including “lack of longitudinal studies, methodological heterogeneity, selection of tissue type, and the influence of developmental stage and trauma type on methylation outcomes”
The literature in this area is a mess, has become highly politicized. I’d give it another 10 or so years before I made any strong statements about these effects in humans. Famously the study of Holocaust survivors’ descendants didn’t show transgenerational effects.
> “It’s still very hand-wavy,” said the epigeneticist Colin Conine (opens a new tab) of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
okay, I trust this article and source more
where can I keep up with this in more mainstream but technical publications
Lamarckian vs. Mendelian genetics was about heritable traits being acquired in life (Lamarck), or being discrete units passed down at conception (Mendel).
Genetics is almost entirely Mendelian, but some of epigenetics is durable and thus Lamarckian.
There's also retroviral integrations, transposons, and all sorts of other complexities that don't fit neatly into boxes.
Interesting about the epigenetics, transposons, and other DNA augmentations…
These are all fundamentally a story of how the individual encounters and uses information in their lived experience. But there is also a very strong consensus narrative that must be respected, but also challenged and evolved. DNA is literally the informational substrate of a life… when you adopt a personal belief, or are subject to someone elses, you have the ability to help but also harm your informational substrate. Tend your garden of ideas with love and care.
Not just epigenetics, cells (and probably organisms) have mechanisms to induce mutations at elevated rates (e.g. E. Coli lacZ mutation under pressure). I wouldn't be surprised if nervous systems are elegantly wired to both epigentic and mutagenic levers to accelerate evolution through stimulus guided modifications rather than just raw survival/selection.
The dirty little secret is that there is an incredible ideological incentive for many for Lamarckianism to be true so that they can blame “lived experience” for every ill in the world. Retroviruses, transposons, etc do not have that specific property and thus you see far fewer articles extolling their purported impacts.
I was taken aback to learn my dad did the exact same thing at my age!
queue rationalist fathers microdosing nicotine patches before conception to give their kids the best chance at abusing drugs.
I wound read it as “the drug has less effect” - so in that case you can better abuse these drugs if you are worse at “disarming” them I guess
Not without a new cult spin-off you don't!
Either it is correct; or it is not. Perhaps it is somewhat correct, but then it may not be fully correct, so it would contain wrong information.
I write this here because science does not really work well when it is based on speculation. So this article is weird. It starts by speculating about something rather than analyse the article. It then continues to "textbooks have to be rewritten". Well, I think if you are in science, you need to demonstrate that all your claims made need to be correct - and others can verify it, without any restriction whatsoever.
> “We just don’t have really any understanding of how RNAs can do this, and that’s the hand-wavy part,” Conine said.
So their theory is incomplete as of yet. That's not good.
There are examples of where theories were lateron shown to be wrong.
See this article:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1197258
It was later redacted - a total fabrication. A lie.
seems like a neat premise for a sci fi novella.
If "microRNA" profiles have any influence, I would wager it's very small.
I’m pretty sure the first one didn’t have siblings, and the second only had one. Also their mother is not the same person after raising the first kid, or raising two.
Parenting never have reproducible conditions.
That's not too bad unless you are in a group and they make fun of you right away, but it's a fumble that you can fix and start a good play if you don't just get super nervous.
Laugh it off, ask her if it's not the first one, ask her to join, even if you know she's actually working and can't.
I've never done any improv, but it seems like something maybe everyone should do so we all can avoid awkward moments that stick for way longer than they should.
Savecumming?
jk.
Honestly, sounds like a great read!
What can't happen is inter-generational transmission of particular subjective experiences that aren't paired with specific, unique metabolic, hormonal, and gene-expression signatures. Only biomolecular-mediated phenotypes, the most general and obvious of which would be things like stress or exercise or diet, make sense to be transmitted that way.
For instance, someone who's chronically afraid might transmit some kind of stress/fear modulating signals to offspring. Someone who's afraid of a specific thing, however, cannot transmit fear of that specific thing unless there's some incredible and unexplored cognition-to-biomolecular signalling mechanism that's entirely unexplored and undescribed. Therefore, I don't know why the article uses the term "lived experience", which is too broad a term to describe what the research suggests might be occurring.
While there is absolutely no conclusive evidence, there are a few studies that indicate this is a possibility.
One such study from 2013: https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.3594
Again, there’s not strong proof- but at least plausible evidence.
Though “lived experience” can encompass a lot of things, it definitely encompasses severe stress.
For example, constantly worrying about money because you’re poor can definitely put you under severe stress. Also, growing up without secure attachment to your caretakers, being asked to do role reversal (having to take care of your parents as a child), things like that will generate complex PTSD.
What is important is to note that there are many formulas for consciousness. Some are truely bonkers, some are just fundamental truth. And some… have yet to be discovered.
Permutations and combinatorics create a hyperspace of all ridiculous things!
>The first is how a father’s body physically encodes lived experience, such as stress, diet, exercise or nicotine use
And that’s a single sentence partway through the article. From the beginning, the refrain is the list of the sorts of things that seem to have heritable effect, not the phrase “lived experiences”.
>Research into how a father’s choices — such as diet, exercise, stress, nicotine use — may transfer traits to his children
>Within a sperm’s minuscule head are stowaway molecules, which enter the egg and convey information about the father’s fitness, such as diet, exercise habits and stress levels, to his offspring
Etc. The article is clearly not attempting to suggest that all experiences are heritable.
The literature in this area is a mess, has become highly politicized. I’d give it another 10 or so years before I made any strong statements about these effects in humans. Famously the study of Holocaust survivors’ descendants didn’t show transgenerational effects.
Current criteria appear to be motility, morphology, and DNA attributes (fragmentation & integrity) [1], all mostly visual or physical assessments.
[1] https://vidafertility.com/en/best-sperm-selection/
okay, I trust this article and source more
where can I keep up with this in more mainstream but technical publications
Quanta Magazine is great! They have a cool YouTube channel as well
Lamarckian vs. Mendelian genetics was about heritable traits being acquired in life (Lamarck), or being discrete units passed down at conception (Mendel).
Genetics is almost entirely Mendelian, but some of epigenetics is durable and thus Lamarckian.
There's also retroviral integrations, transposons, and all sorts of other complexities that don't fit neatly into boxes.
These are all fundamentally a story of how the individual encounters and uses information in their lived experience. But there is also a very strong consensus narrative that must be respected, but also challenged and evolved. DNA is literally the informational substrate of a life… when you adopt a personal belief, or are subject to someone elses, you have the ability to help but also harm your informational substrate. Tend your garden of ideas with love and care.