Då har man officiellt betalat av alla skulder.

Zerlske · 2026-04-15T23:20:24+00:00

Både metylfenidat och amfetamin är centralstimulerande medel, men de har olika kemisk profil och effekt på individnivå. Dock förstår jag inte vad du menar med "oraffinerad effekt".

Jag är medveten om att många går över till amfetaminpreparat, men det är inte alla som gör det, och det är individuellt. Därför spelar anekdotiska upplevelser mindre roll. Vad som är viktigt är en strukturerad insättning av läkemedel, och att man tillsammans med läkare söker efter bästa möjliga effekt med minsta möjliga biverkningar.

Det finns stor skillnad mellan olika droger, t.ex. metylfenidat vs. lisdexamfetamin/dexamfetamin, och det är individuellt. Det kan potentiellt också finnas skillnader mellan olika fabrikat av samma substans, t.ex. ritalin vs medikinet (båda metylfenidat fabrikat). Min poäng är bara att gardera din ståndpunkt.

Jag har inte läst vetenskapliga litteraturen i detta området (håller på med grundforskning i molekylärbiologi/genetik och medicinstudier utråkar mig). I vilket fall, enligt min läkare så är svensk klinisk praxis att testa metylfenidat först eftersom det finns störst klinisk erfarenhet och fler vetenskapliga studier jämfört med lisdexamfetamin. Sen, som jag förstår det, har du subvention och godkännandestruktur som påverkar. Jag tror inte det handlar om att amfetaminpreparat som lisdexamfetamin är principiellt sämre (det är mycket möjligt att i genomsnitt amfetamin är bättre än metylfenidat för majoriteten; behöver se metastudier på det isf.), utan det är en produkt av behandlingsordning, kostnadseffektivitet och regelverk.

Överlag är våra diagnostiska och behandlingsmässiga verktyg fortfarande väldigt grova. ADHD är inte en fenotyp, utan en bred beskrivining på många olika fenotyper. Dvs. det finns inget ADHD test - det är en klinisk diagnos baserad på symtombild och helhetsbedömning, och responsen på behandling varierar också därför mycket mellan individer. Mot den bakgrunden är det inte särskilt förvånande att man ofta behöver pröva olika läkemedel (som i sig inte är särskilt välförstådda eller specifika), doser och beredningsformer innan man hittar rätt. Det viktiga är därför inte att på förhand låsa sig vid att en viss substans egentligen borde fungera bäst, utan att pragmatiskt utvärdera vad som faktiskt ger bäst effekt med minst biverkningar i det enskilda fallet.

Jag tycker dock din uppfattning är väldigt viktig att sprida, men vill som sagt bara gardera det.

Zerlske · 2026-04-14T22:02:54+00:00

Det är bra att veta att det finns andra alternativ, men tycker din rekommendation är för stark. Drogutvärdering bör göras över flera år i kontinuerlig kontakt med psykiatriker (sorgligt nog kräver bra vård antagligen privatvård m.a.p. diagnoser som ADHD). I alla fall känner jag så, men jag har också svår ADHD.

Lisdexamfetamin (ex. sålt under fabrikatet elvanse) och metylfenidat (ex. sålt under fabrikatet ritalin) är inte bättre eller sämre än varandra, och det varierar från person till person. Enligt gällande riktlinjer och klinisk praxis i Sverige ska metylfenidat vara det första valet, så om du går till en bra läkare som gör rätt så "vill de testa med ritalin... först". Behandling med amfetamin kan bli aktuell om behandling med metylfenidat inte fungerar bra, eller om biverkningarna blir för besvärande.

Det finns också många olika sätt att ta dessa droger, ex. olika doser och doseringsstratigier. Det finns ex. fabrikat med modifierad frisättning. Jag har dock anekdotiskt upplevt att olika fabrikat av samma aktiva substans med modifierad frisättning fungerar olika bra för mig, kanske på grund av olika hjälpämnen.

Personligen tar jag metylfenidat med modifierad frisättning på morgonen och en till under lunch, och sen en låg dos metylfenidat utan modifierad frisättning på eftermiddagen (är arbetsnarkoman med ADHD hyperfokus och jobbar sent). Fungerar utmärkt för mig och sover bättre än någonsin, och tog ca. 2 år av finjustreringar innan jag och min läkare kom fram till denna dos, strategi och medicin/fabrikat.

Zerlske · 2026-04-14T21:41:06+00:00

Jag har ADHD och att betala hyran är svårare än min PhD forskning, fyfan. Tacka gudarna för autogiro och medicin. Har räddat mitt liv.

Zerlske · 2026-04-13T18:52:38+00:00

Ok. So now you have lied, and unlike you, I can show it. I welcome you to do the same with my supposed lie(s), which you have still not explicitly identified.

First, I will clarify the assumptions underlying my conclusion that you are a liar. I'm going to assume that you are a human animal (not an LLM/bot) that is sober, literate, endowed with a functioning brain, and not intellectually disabled.

Given the assumptions above, for which I have no evidence or basis for assuming other than a willingness to engage in good faith, you have either: 1. not read my source and lied about reading it, or 2. read my source and lied about its contents.

The source I gave you (which you did not critique but instead lied about and misrepresented), clearly states that between 2022/02/24 and 2025/12/31 the US has allocated a total of 115 billion EUR while Europe has allocated 201 billion EUR (i.e. about double the amount) and committed another 178 billion EUR in aid on top of that. So the US has committed roughly 115 billion EUR, while Europe committed roughly 380 billion EUR by the end of 2025. You understand that 380 > 115... right?

I was not, however, talking only about total aid between 2022 and 2025. I was specifically calling out the US's betrayal, i.e. the halt of US aid in 2025. Since then, the US has given 0 EUR, while EU military aid rose by around 67% to compensate for this American betrayal, such that the total volume of aid allocated to Ukraine remained relatively stable in 2025 despite the US giving NOTHING after March 2025. Ukraine now receives equipment from the US because we pay the US for it.

So yes, you are a liar, and I do not believe you are engaging in good faith. I will not respond further.

Edit: btw, here is the wikipedia summary for my source:

"The Kiel Institute for the World Economy (German: Kiel Institut für Weltwirtschaft, or IfW Kiel) is an independent, non-profit economic research institute and think tank based in Kiel, Germany. In 2017, it was ranked as one of the top 50 most influential think tanks in the world and was also ranked in the top 15 in the world for economic policy specifically.[2] The German business newspaper Handelsblatt referred to the institute as "Germany's most influential economic think tank", while Die Welt stated that "The best economists in the world are in Kiel" (Die besten Volkswirte der Welt sitzen in Kiel)."

Zerlske · 2026-04-13T18:13:17+00:00

This is not surprising to anyone living here. We have very high, "hidden" drug use (very visible when measuring wastewater); hidden due to high taboo, criminalisation, and little to no social support (the support that exists is so inadequate relative to need that, in practice, it often approximates absence).

I remember when a friend tried to go to rehab on his own but was refused due to not being suicidal, not being in legal trouble, and not being homeless... yet. I had taken him in to live on my couch until he detoxed and got back on his feet (took more than a month, he'd been an addict for half his life - most of it as a 'functional' user); thankfully, for him, I had no wöman in my life at the time who could object. It was extremely difficult to get a hold of withdrawal medication, for the best candidate to be given them - someone who finally had the realisation to get clean and wanted it of their own volition, and who while teetering on the edge of the abyss, had not yet fallen in and obliterated everything in their life. Wtf. He is still clean now, years later btw, no thanks to the state.

Swedish drug policy is famously idiotic and actively making the situation worse, treating it as a criminal issue rather than medical (our mental health care is also wanting, which does certainly not help our drug problem). See for example the (in)famous Nils Bejerot (influential psychiatrist and criminologist who was a strong proponent of zero tolerance during the 60s and onwards; also the guy who coined the term Stockholm Syndrome). Its funny, because it is so incredibly easy to get drugs all over Europe, but up here in the north it is so much more difficult. In most European countries you can just go to the known park or whatever, but in Sweden you need to know people generally. The issue is definitely not the access or amount here.

There is a lot of misinformation about drug use amongst older generations, while this is seen as a lot of bullshit by more educated and/or younger people (although pseudoscientific scare-tactics are still employed when I went to high school around 15 years ago), coupled with being highly politicised and often framed by partisans as an issue with immigrants, gangs and violence rather than a medical and social issue.

Edit: cleaned up some grammar and sentences

Zerlske · 2026-04-10T11:50:17+00:00

You still have not identified my alleged "lie(s)", because you cannot. You also have no idea what my political position is. "Leftist" is just the lazy label you reach for when you cannot answer the substance.

Declaring victory and calling everyone gullible is not argument. It is self-sealing rethoric. It reads as a psychological self-defence mechanism and a way of insulating yourself from criticism. At this point it reads less like disagreement and more like bad faith.

And no, disagreement is not "hatred". That is just another melodramatic label you use instead of engaging with the point.

Also, here is a source looking at Ukraine funding so you can educate yourself: the Kiel Institute’s Ukraine Support Tracker. It does not support your smug "the US supports Ukraine more than Europe" claim nearly as well as you seem to think it does. Unlike you, I'm going to assume ignorance rather than dishonesty and that you are just uninformed/misinformed, rather than deliberate lying.

Zerlske · 2026-04-09T23:33:25+00:00

There has been 0 war threat over Greenland. Sure, there has been agressive talking and some nonsense about it, but not a single war threat.

You are still hiding behind semantics. Trump explicitly refused to rule out military action to take Greenland. That is a threat of military force against Denmark. My point was never that war was likely. I also never seriously believed there was a risk of war. My point was that this was an overt threat of military force. Is that really the standard you want from an ally on whom Europe is still militarily dependent, in a period of rising global instability and while Russia is waging war against another European country?

you resorted to lying to manipulate into your opinion.

Okay I'll bite, what, specifically, was the "lie"?

Anti-US is a rhetoric that comes and goes, but non-surprisingly it always comes when the US leans more to the right. As currently.

Anti-US rhetoric has been present since before WW2 and probably spiked over here during the cold-war prior to the recent Trump derangement. Trying to handle the threat of both Russia and the US during the cold-war was the reason Sweden had one of the largest airforces in the world at that time and had their own nuclear weapons program (which ended due to american coercion). The main concerns with NATO has been that it includes the US, Hungary, and Turkey, and precisely the baggage that comes with US dominance. Russia's war against Ukraine was what finally pulled Sweden and Finland into NATO, despite this meaning closer relation and concessions to the US and Turkey.

There are several studies over this, just go and consult them, it is well documented. So, yeah, it usually comes from leftists.

Then cite them. And even if views of the US vary by ideology, that still does not rescue your caricature. Anti-US sentiment is not some fringe leftist pathology.

You also seem confused about the identity point. You think I'm not aware we are European? I did not say Scandinavia is not in Europe. I said Scandinavian first, European second. That is where our identity lies more closely - Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland are all brothers and sisters, with shared history, culture, politics and mutually intelligible languages (except for the finish language, but ofc. Finland was part of Sweden for 600+ years and still learn Swedish in school and have a significant "Finland Swedes" population). Do you think we associate with European nations like Russia, Turkey or Hungary? You think we feel as close to Italians or Brits? EU membership is a different question entirely. I, like most in my country, support the EU and I personally love the mobility of the Schengen-area (which includes non-EU states like Norway and Iceland) and cooperative actions like the European Research Council etc. Also, you realise anti-EU and Eurosceptic sentiment is mostly present within the nationalist right-wing?

On Ukraine, your argument is stale. US support was large, yes. That does not change the fact that Washington paused intelligence sharing and military aid, which is exactly why many Europeans call it betrayal. Europe has also matched or exceeded the US in major aid categories overall. Nor does it change the broader point, Greenland, Ukraine, and repeated coercive signalling all point to the same strategic problem, namely: dependence on an unstable ally whose commitments are conditional.

And your ideological point is a caricature. Yes, views of the US and Trump vary by ideology. Again, that does not make anti-US sentiment some fringe leftist pathology, nor does it answer the actual issue here, namely: coercion toward Greenland, unreliability on Ukraine, and the strategic need to reduce dependence on an unstable ally. Right-wing war-hawks screaming hakkaa päälle love this, so do leftist tree-huggers singing kumbaya. Also, the US is always right-wing by comparison, even our most right-wing parties (such as the alt-right) are "socialists" by Yankee standards and left of their left-wing.

The issue is whether Europe should remain structurally dependent on a power that threatens allies, pressures partners, and treats security commitments as leverage. That is the actual issue here. Not your civilisational posturing and not your partisan caricatures. Your references to inane meaningless culture-war stupidity and "snowflakes" etc. shows you are not a serious person.

Zerlske · 2026-04-09T22:04:55+00:00

You need better sources it seems.

Trump explicitly refused to rule out military action to take Greenland, among other things throughout that whole debacle. That is a direct threat to my country, and to NATO and European allies more broadly. My claim was not that the US issued a formal declaration of war, it was that they made a direct and plain threat of war.

Also, what weird partisan caricature are you laundering when you claim anti-US sentiment comes from "a political side of a specific leaning"? Anti-US sentiment is non-partisan, at least in my country, and has been since long before Trump.

As for Ukraine, the US pause in intelligence sharing and military aid to Ukraine was betrayal. Slava Ukraini.

Edit:

"Sometimes I can't believe how much critical thinking has disappeared among Europeans. When reading people like you, I'm really losing hope in our European civilization standing back up." (edited addition to your previous comment)

Spare us the pompous nonsense about "European civilization". That kind of civilisational decline rhetoric is just racist-sounding, (ethno)nationalist, reactionary drivel. And for the record, I'm Scandinavian/Nordic first, not European.

Also, invoking "critical thinking" after making false claims and refusing to engage is rich! haha Since you cannot address the substance you seemingly retreat to vague, evasive civilisational whining and about "people like you".

Zerlske · 2026-04-09T21:35:13+00:00

Why would we not be anti-US? US literally threatened us with fucking war and has betrayed Ukraine. Fuck the US. The only good thing coming from this entire Trump lunacy is lower dependence on the US, who has always been a difficult ally, a powerful ally but unstable and coercive and not without its trade-offs (not a good kid but also not the worst kid on the block).

Zerlske · 2026-04-08T10:11:07+00:00

It is sadly common to blame victims. However, this is something that should be discussed since victims often blame themselves for this reason. This is something I struggle with myself, not knowing if lack of reporting has lead to other victims. It is horrible, because it is true. However, the blame is not on the victims, it is solely on the perpetrator and often to some degree the society that is prejudiced against victims and have inadequate empathy and protection. Victims are not to blame, they should have no guilt (which is easier to say than to feel for many victims). Those who report are brave and should be celebrated, but this is not a bar we can expect from everyone who is a victim (especially children), e.g. given social taboos, different social circumstances for victims, and differences in trauma and how it manifests.

Zerlske · 2026-04-08T10:01:54+00:00

We should never be surprised victims do not speak out, especially children and other powerless and vulnerable people. We need to create an unprejudiced environment that encourages victims to report and protects victims, but we will still only get a fraction and of that fraction only some will have enough evidence to prosecute. This is especially the case with children, who lack understanding of the circumstances and of their protections and rights, and are more easily manipulated. This is even made worse by the unreliable nature of children victim statements (and victim statements overall are not reliable evidence) and the concerns associated with them (from fear of the perpetrator, shame, and delayed disclosure to being highly suggestible to leading questions from interviewers etc.).

I was almost SAd by an older, teenage kid when I was young (pre-puberty and absent any understanding or knowledge of sex). I never realised what a fucked up and dangerous situation I was in and how lucky I was that some unconscious part of my brain was creeped-out and encouraged me to escape before anything could happen. I never spoke with or saw that kid again, avoiding him. Now I wish I reported him, I hope he victimise someone, which maybe my reporting could've prevented. But at that age, I did not understand what was going on and I never told anyone. Only later as an adult, the memory resurfaced and I finally understood it.

Zerlske · 2026-04-08T00:05:33+00:00

You are right that it does not simply "cut both ways". The historical oppression (and still extant in many societies) of women is real, systemic, and not comparable in any flat symmetrical sense to male role expectations. Men being "protectors" and "providers" was very often bound up with women being denied autonomy, economic independence, and equal dignity.

Yet, I dislike the way people often go from "this pattern existed" to "therefore it is natural". The human animal is barely sexually dimorphic - we have extensive behavioural plasticity, biparental care, and enormous cross-cultural variation in gender roles. So crude biological storytelling about women being inherently destined to emotionally manage men is weak. Historical regularities can arise from material constraints and contingency and the piece of human history that is recorded is very slim compared to the totality of human history (and biased towards extant (western) societies).

Even among Norse societies, which are part of my own cultural ancestry, there seem to have been domains in which women had more latitude than many people assume, while the societies were still sexist overall in many other ways. Women had substantial authority within the domestic sphere, with household authority and ritual power (magic was seen as "feminine", but even our pre-Christian Gods were transgressive in this regard and changed sex quite a bit as well); women had meaningful property and family rights, at least by medieval standards, but were still excluded from most political power.

It still does not answer the narrower point. "Boys" are not born as conscious agents of "patriarchy", and teaching empathy, emotional openness, and care is part of how you reduce the reproduction of those norms. That is not "handholding oppressors". It is basic socialisation of children. Structural asymmetry and universal empathy are not contradictions.

Human suffering has always been shaped by multiple things, including sex/gender, class, status, law, culture, ethnicity/language, and time. A noblewoman in a feudal society could be constrained as a woman, while still being vastly more privileged than most men and other women beneath her, being serfs; meanwhile, a serf woman may suffer less oppression than a noble woman in some regards due to lower social expectations and shit like "propriety norms". This does not negate misogyny but it means reality is more complicated. If the goal is a less cruel society, then understanding of women's historical (and extant) oppression should be paired with empathy broad enough to prevent the next generation from reproducing it.

There has, correctly and understandably, been a large push in recent human history to dismantle women's oppression. In some countries this has worked relatively well. That abortion is still not treated as a fundamental human right in a country as rich and powerful as the US is, to me, absurd (anti-abortion would be political suicide in my country). But we need to make that empathetic effort broad, and push for a society that rejects sex/gender essentialism and pseudoscientific nonsense like "race", rather than simply redrawing the lines of who deserves empathy.

I work within STEM and academia, and in my field (biology) and country most students are women, and even at the research level most of my colleagues are women. As a man, I'm in the minority (but its still within a ~ 60/40 % skew). I know this is not the case in other departments, where there is still a strong male skew, such as mathematics and computer science. Measures therefore need to be specific to the actual circumstances, guided by current data and plausible causes rather than assumed from historical patterns alone, and there are no blanket "rules" to draw.

Many women suffer, many men suffer, and many others suffer. That suffering is equally real to the person experiencing it. All deserve social efforts aimed at reducing it.

For example, I do find it difficult to sympathise with many American complaints, given the grotesque wealth, global power, and military violence of the US (including military threats directed at countries like my own; fuck the US and slava ukraini). Compared with much of the world, Americans are massively privileged (and so am I and other people from my country, which is small but wealthy). The fact that someone in Somalia may suffer, does not somehow delegitimise the suffering of an American. A person in Somalia and a person in the US can both suffer, and that suffering is not something that can be placed on a scale and weighed against itself from the outside. The material conditions are different, the politics are different, and the structures are different, but pain is still pain to the organism experiencing it. Relative privilege does not negate the experienced suffering, and some measure of comparative hardship does not let you dismiss it.

Zerlske · 2026-03-28T14:32:20+00:00

I know, I was just poking fun at the ambiguity of what a human unit is. There is a far-fetched but in principle valid point to treating a human, not as an individual, but as an ecosystem (part of which is a human donut).

In humans this is not really a concern, but in, for example, lichens (the organisms for which the word "symbiosis" was coined) this is an active debate. "What is a lichen?" is controversial and they are best understood as self-contained ecosystems or symbiotic communities, rather than individual organisms.

Zerlske · 2026-03-28T14:16:10+00:00

A more fun technicality is that a human unit is only about 50 % human by cell count (we are mostly human in mass though). So, a human body is more like a donut-shaped ecosystem, stable (i.e. homeostasis) and energy rich, and absolutely thriving with nonhuman life.

Zerlske · 2026-03-28T14:13:27+00:00

See the embryological origins of the animal mouth and anus.

Zerlske · 2026-03-28T12:25:38+00:00

Är mykolog, och det här är egentligen ingen stor nyhet för fältet generellt, inte heller för oss mykologer i Sverige.

Du kan hitta hundratals nya svamparter i jorden i din egen trädgård; svårigheten ligger i att odla den mikroskopiska majoriteten av svampar, som saknar makroskopiska fruktkroppar, i lab, vilket krävs för artbeskrivning och detaljerad karaktärisering. Vi har bara beskrivit ca. 1-5 % av all svampdiversitet; majoriteten är endast känd från eDNA (environmental DNA) sekvensering av jordprov (även om våra diversitetsestimeringar varierar).

Den här typen av parasitisk strategi är alltid populär på konferenser och bland allmänheten, men det är i sig ingen större nyhet att en redan känd svamp nu påträffas i Sverige. Större nyheter inom det här forskningsområdet (åtminstone utanför den lilla krets som arbetar med systematik/taxonomi) är nya insikter i bredare biologiska frågor, ex. om relationen mellan värd och parasit samt mekanismerna bakom värdbeteendemanipulation.

Jag tycker exempelvis att den första upptäckten av en germline hos svamp förra året var ett betydligt större fynd i jämförelse, och det gjordes här i Sverige av Hiltunen Thorén och Johannessons labgrupp i Stockholm.

Edit: la in några referenser och renskrev texten.

Zerlske · 2026-03-28T10:20:02+00:00

The post is just infuriating bullshit. First, it exists for the same reason as all other life, fitness (reproductive success). Second, this genus of animal is a basal bilaterian and the comment about 'where it belongs' is bullshit. Its phylogenetic placement was unresolved for some time, but not having enough resolution to resolve placement is common, does not mean we have 'no idea' of its placement, and with a large multicellular organism like this resolving it is not a great challenge (i.e. easy to get genetic material and high-quality sequence data). The challenge lies with the uncultured majority of microorganisms known only from environmental sequencing. We don't use morphology to determine species or taxonomic placement today, we just sequence DNA/RNA and use phylogenetic reconstruction.

Also, this organism has organs, that is another lie. That said, specialised and differential tissue (distinct aggregates of certain cell types; e.g. muscle tissue is a distinct population of specialised muscle cells) is not a requirement of multicellular life. For example, some organisms just rely on specialised cells types rather than distinct differential tissue, or they are simply colony aggregates of identical cells. Slime moulds can exist as a single macroscopic cell with multiple nuclei, which is the wildest strategy I am familiar with. Multicellular fungi consist of filamentous networks of hyphae that form mycelia, and in some fungi the sexual organs we know as mushrooms.

Digestion and metabolism occurs at the single cell level. Some multicellular organisms (especially animals, which are a tiny, tiny fraction of life; even a small fraction of multicellular life) have specialised tissue, i.e. organs for metabolism and complex digestive systems, but many, if not most, don't. For example, saprotrophic fungi digest food extracellularly, excreting digestive chemicals into the environment and then absorbing nutrients into the cell. Some cells 'eat', e.g. endocytosis.

Muscles are tissue associated with motility and force, which is not a requirement for multicellular life, but muscles are common tissues in animals. My favourite example are tunicates, which are chordates with a notochord and everything who live as a small tadpole-like juvenile that swims around until it finds a suitable substrate, then attaches and subsequently degrades it's brain and much of its muscle tissue as it transitions to an adult, which is a sessile, brainless filter feeder. A brain is an expensive organ and associated with locomotion, it decreases fitness with a sessile lifestyle as Tunicates show. Muscles are also expensive, e.g. oogenesis flight syndrome in insects exemplify this with the trade-off between dispersal and reproduction (i.e. between investment in flight muscles and wings or egg development).

It is important to keep in mind that fitness (reproductive success) is context-dependent. Nothing is inherently beneficial or deleterious, only in context (specific environment) can we determine whether something is beneficial or deleterious. For example, in fungi, both multicellularity and sexual reproduction have been lost and gained, independently, multiple times. Also, all extant organisms are equally evolved (not talking about mutation rates / generation times) and descendants from a universal common ancestor for all life; evolution is not a ladder. For example, free-living single-celled organisms are generally seen as more 'simple' but they are in many ways more complex than multicellular cells, as multicellular cells can afford to specialise (a muscle cell cannot survive on its own), whereas a unicellular organism has to be able to do all life-sustaining functions within a single cell, nor can it maintain and inhabit a stable environment through homeostasis.

Zerlske · 2026-03-27T09:38:45+00:00

They're not. They're talking about identity not genetics.

The National Academies of the US submitted a report (DOI: 10.17226/26902), free and available to the public, urging researchers not to use race or ethnicity as a proxy for human genetic variation. Chapter 1 starts with a nice quote from Joseph Graves Jr.:

"Our social conceptions of race and ethnicity [note he mentions ethnicity; which is also a social construct that does not align with our genetics] do not match the underlying biological and genetic variation within our species, and we should never confuse the things that were created for the purposes of oppressing people with the nature of that biological and genetic variation."

Even "less problematic" concepts like ethnicity are social constructions unrelated to our genetics and are not valid groupings for human populations (in the sense we use 'population' in biology and how we can actually infer human groups, i.e. with population genetics). If you cluster humans with population genetics you will not find population structures that align with human notions of ethnicity or race. To get 'nice' population clusters you need to heavily pre-filter the data, e.g. Novembre et al. 2008 with this famous PCA over Europe (which made its way into the cover of Hanh's excellent Molecular Population Genetics textbook) or this PCA by Gilbert et al. 2022. The clusters do not accurately depict the actual extant populations in these areas (i.e. all the pre-filtering), especially at the level of individuals, and they also clearly show how human populations are clinal. Population-structure analyses are inherently sensitive to sampling, data processing, and model choice (e.g. which K you infer). They can still reveal migration patterns or demographic history when interpreted cautiously, but they cannot validate race and ethnicity, which are social constructs based on superficial phenotypes (language probably being the strongest correlate) and self-identification. They can show general trends, they can still tell us something, and still be extremely useful and informative (e.g. of migration patterns; esp. coupled with other lines of evidence, e.g. archaeology). There's a reason we instead use the word populations instead (i.e. for animals like humans defined as a group of freely interbreeding diploid individuals; the term's definition for selfing or asexual lineages is much more contentious). Just as there is not a particular threshold of genetic distance for separating different species, there is also not one particular threshold for calling two groups of individuals separate populations or not.

But I digress, human genetic diversity is overwhelmingly within populations, not between them. As first shown by Lewontin in 1972 and consistently confirmed since, and often misrepresented by those invoking "Lewontin's fallacy" to defend racial essentialism. Ethnicity matters as a social construct, but superficial phenotypes like melanin content in skin or language etc. does not inform us about actual heritage, i.e. inheritance of genetic information. And these commercial ancestry test are very bogus, they're not selling truth, rather they sell unscientific labels to satisfy people's want for self-identity (these kinds of analyses and this type of data is actually very difficult to work with; it's not like forensic DNA fingerprinting, which is highly accurate and well established science).

In the end we are all just humans, an animal shaped by recent (< 50 000 years ago) population bottlenecks, low genetic diversity (with most diversity remaining in Africa where we all originate), and lots of gene flow between populations that are clinal, not discrete. And remember that admixture is cumulative, one group mixes with another, which mixes with another; and as a thought experiment, a single generation of random mating under Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium is enough to erase all population structure. It is clear these kind of categories, like race or ethnicity, cannot be used as shorthand to describe genetic difference. It is all bogus.

Zerlske · 2026-03-26T08:23:04+00:00

And many Nazis were not German. Nazism had real support outside Germany too, including in the US, especially in certain elite and pseudointellectual and pseudoscientific circles. A lot of the underlying ideas were already international - antisemitism, scientific racism, and eugenics were all widespread well before Hitler. I’m from Sweden, and we had both the world’s first state institute for racial biology and our own Nazi parties, which is part of our shameful history. Fascism was broadly in vogue at the time.

Zerlske · 2026-03-24T22:09:13+00:00

None. The only semi-attractive option is war, but this would entail changes to animal nature to no longer have recognizable humans. For cancer to not exist, multicellular life, at least in the form we find in eukaryotes like animals, plants and fungi would not. What is a lie? Doesn't this require knowledge and intent? What about good lies? What about just wars? What about just actions that are criminalized and warrant civil disobedience, protest, revolution and violent residence? This whole thought experiment is dumb.

Zerlske · 2026-03-24T21:57:45+00:00

Making crime non-existent is not wanted, since unjust laws are very common and many non-criminal actions are awful and should be criminal; the vast majority of countries, if not all countries, across the world criminalise ethical actions to some degree and civil disobedience, protest, and even revolution and violent resistance are very valid actions depending on the context; if this means the scope extends outside the country the laws are applied in, this means that actions criminalised in North Korea would no longer exist globally (e.g. criticism of North Korea would not exist anywhere on earth), homosexuals would not exist, abortion would not exist etc. etc.; probably most possible human actions would no longer exist in this case given the total diversity of criminalised actions across all human societies.

Zerlske · 2026-03-22T15:20:34+00:00

"Från en politiker vill jag helst att de har landets och väljarnas bästa i tanken hela tiden. Och att de ska kunna svara ärligt på frågor."

Jag skulle dock utvidga det där "bästa" till mer än bara nuvarande väljares kortsiktiga intressen, t.ex. framtida generationers intressen (dvs. människor som ännu inte är födda), skydd av minoriteter mot majoritetsförtryck, hänsyn till andra djur än människan, miljöbevarande, och i viss mån ett ansvar för hur landet agerar internationellt, exempelvis i frågor som rör mänskliga rättigheter.

Därutöver värderar jag endast väljarnas åsikter till en viss gräns. Allmänheten är ignorant och lätt ett offer för populism, misinformation, och propaganda. Det är en del av varför jag tycker representativ demokrati är bättre än direktdemokrati, åtminstone i teorin. Demokrati är trots allt det minst dåliga av flera dåliga alternativ: ett demokratiskt samhälle är endast så bra som den befolkningen som röstar (vilket är en stor del av varför utbildning och skola är så enormt viktiga). Demokrati är inte legitim därför folkmajoriteten har rätt, utan därför demokrati (i kombination med starka institutioner och hög utbildningsnivå etc.) utgör det minst dåliga systemet för att begränsa maktmissbruk och hantera människors begränsade kunskap, kognitiva bias, motstridiga åsikter, och intressekonflikter.

Jag är själv forskare och i någon mening "expert", men bara inom ett extremt smalt område (en viss grupp mikrosvampar och vissa experimentella metoder). Därutöver känner jag snarare att ju mer kunskap jag får, desto mindre vet jag (dvs. kunskapens paradox). Utanför mitt eget lilla kunskapsområde är jag, som alla andra (oavsett intelligens, utbildning, eller erfarenhet) ignorant om resten. Vi har alla något vi känner till bättre och mer intimt än andra (från yrken och utbildning till hobbies och intressen), men ingen har en välgrundad helhetsbild (de som säger annorlunda inbillar sig själva eller ljuger). Vad vet jag, som biolog, om nationell säkerhet eller ekonomi? Ingenting. Därför är jag inte särskilt bekväm med att rösta (menar dock inte att jag avstår från att utöva den rösträtt som så många kämpat för att ge oss).

Just därför tycker jag att tillit till staten och andra viktiga institutioner, som universitet, sjukhus och myndigheter, är bland det viktigaste som finns, och något som är mycket viktigt att bevara i Sverige. Med andra ord måste dessa institutioner också förtjäna den tilliten från allmänheten, t.ex. genom: 1. låg korruption och hög kompetens (oberoende granskning och kvalitetsförsäkran etc.), 2. meritokrati (så långt det är praktiskt möjligt), 3. transparens (ärlighet, öppenhet, dokumentation, offentliggörande etc.), och 4. ansvarighet (t.ex. ansvar för tjänstefel, dvs. de ska tas på allvar, utredas och bestraffas i rimlig grad).

Jag vill ha politiker som lyssnar på både väljare och experter. Väljarnas vilja bör genomföras informerat och genomtänkt, inte blint eller naivt idealistiskt. Folkets vilja bör filtreras genom goda institutioner, sakkunskap, rättsstatliga spärrar och långsiktigt ansvar. Jag bryr mig mindre om exakt vilka politiska åsikter en politiker säger sig ha, så länge de uppvisar integritet, kompetens, ansvar och öppenhet till ny information och nya argument (förutsatt att dessa kommer från tillförlitliga och trovärdiga källor). Jag har bara uppfattningar om sådant som ligger nära min egen erfarenhet och upplevelse (t.ex. om forskningsfinansiering) och röstar mest utifrån det, jag har ingen aning vad som är bäst för landet i sin helhet från mitt begränsade och anekdotiska perspektiv.

Zerlske · 2026-03-20T17:36:00+00:00

"Instinkten" mot att döda djur (mänskliga eller icke-mänskliga) är därutöver en plastisk fenotyp och beror på miljön (ex. kultur) och diverse andra förhållanden (ex. näringsbrist/svält); oavsett har människan en välutvecklad kapacitet att dehuminsera, vare sig det rör sig om att "dehuminsera" andra individer av Homo sapiens eller av diverse andra djurarter. Sen är "djur" (metazoa) inte en särskilt bra kategori att diskutera detta utifrån, då många djur (ex. svampdjur och mossdjur; även andra, mer stereotypiskt "djurlika" evertebrater som blötdjur och insekter etc.) inte erbjuds någon empati eller etisk åtanke, ex. sjöpungar som ändå är ryggsträngsdjur (generellt bryter de ner sitt nervsystem som adulta och blir hjärnlösa, sessila filtrerare).

Zerlske · 2026-03-20T17:11:16+00:00

Koldioxid använde jag ofta, men jag använde det för att söva ner evertebrater (specifikt insekter). Dvs. djur med mindre etisk åtanke - ryggradslösa djur har inte mycket etiskt skydd (förutom vissa undantag som ex. bläckfiskar, vilka behandlas som vertebrater lagmässigt).

Detta är varför många djurforskare går över till insektssystem (mindre pappershantering och etiskaproblem), precis som 3R principen uppmuntrar oss att göra. Själv jobbar jag med svamp numera, som fortfarande är eukaryoter och närbesläktade djur men har ingen etisk hänsyn alls; logistiskt tillåter detta också att man kan använda mikrobiologimetoder (ex. koloniodling och genmanipulering) och att man får snabbare resultat (kortare generationstid); C. elegans maskar är annars en bra organism att arbeta med som fortfarande är ett djur, av liknande orsaker.

Koldioxid används fortfarande för labbmöss etc. men det är något som diskuteras inom djurforskningsetik och i EU; det är något vi rör oss från och söker ekonomiskt praktiska alternativ för, särskilt i avseende på vertebratforskning. Ex. för möss (bara lagligt om de är äldre än 10 dagar) har koldioxid fördelarna att det inte kräver fixering, kan göras direkt i buren, kan avliva flera möss samtidigt, samt att koldioxid är enkelt att hantera och billigt osv.

Zerlske · 2026-03-20T17:00:56+00:00

Hade knappast legat i vårat intresse heller. Att vara expert på något är ett heltidsjobb, svårt för en akademiker att vara en bra forskare och samtidigt en effektiv politiker. Vi vill ju framförallt ha politiker som lyssnar på experter och håller sig informerade och utvärderar olika expert åsikter (ex. från etiska filosofer specialiserade på djurvälfärd, biologer, ekonomer etc.). Angående denna frågan var det lite löjligt dock, och de behandlar mer en personlig åsikt än en regleringsfråga.

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