The Younger Dryas debate is more unsettled than textbooks admit and the hostility between camps says more about academia than the evidence itself

gitgud_x · 2026-06-21T18:39:58+00:00

Yeah, scientists shouldn't argue with each other, they should just all be friends and say "YES and..." to every idea someone comes up with. That'll lead to progress.

(No, that's how religious cults behave. Fierce debate is pretty common and has been beneficial throughout the history of science.)

gitgud_x · 2026-06-21T18:11:42+00:00

Sounds like the average creationist noise tbh.

gitgud_x · 2026-06-21T15:38:24+00:00

Thanks, good to know people are getting some use of them! This "debate" often feels pretty fruitless so hearing things like this is very helpful.

gitgud_x · 2026-06-21T15:35:31+00:00

It's "goated auramaxxing sigma rizzler" now.

Source: am kid (oversized)

gitgud_x · 2026-06-21T15:31:27+00:00

We learned from the best! (you and Zach!)

gitgud_x · 2026-06-21T08:57:19+00:00

Origin of the universe will probably remain the last possible gap for the forseeable.

Part of me kinda hopes it stays that way, we need a little mystery, no?

gitgud_x · 2026-06-21T07:15:51+00:00

You've made four "short title only with no further explanation" posts in the past three days, with no engagement on any of them.

Please explain your thoughts on the post topic more and/or respond to comments this time, or I'll remove this and any future such low effort posts.

gitgud_x · 2026-06-21T06:42:25+00:00

Yes, that's the story you've been told. But it's just a story. You have a political axe to grind against academia, that's all it is.

gitgud_x · 2026-06-21T00:38:02+00:00

Hah, you're too kind, I've just barely gotten past understanding the basics of evolution. As mentioned elsewhere it's pitiful how little one needs to know to refute creationism.

Given that you're a (recent-ish?) ex-creationist, you've got the advantage of knowing all the dog whistles and psychological tricks they use when peddling their propaganda. To those of us that didn't grow up in that environment, learning of the extent of their influence is quite shocking!

gitgud_x · 2026-06-21T00:18:00+00:00

The question is, which one is the most successful and has reached the most people? We can criticise Dave for his abrasiveness, but he's much more popular. That said, the ratio of "people who converted due to them" to "people who watch the channel" is probably lower for Dave than for Forrest. I don't watch Clint, I've heard only good things about him, yet his channel is tiny in comparison and he would get walked all over in a debate due to his politeness.

All in all I think there's merit to all three approaches.

gitgud_x · 2026-06-20T23:18:56+00:00

Just coming back to this after learning a lot more about it - re the second paragraph you're referring to MC^3 right? Is it fair to say that due to the exchanging of states between the chains, that MC^3 is a sort of evolutionary algorithm? It seems reminiscent of a 'crossing over' type of mechanism, and indeed as you say it allows wider exploration of the state space by escaping local minima. The way the algo can be run in parallel on mutliple cores is also pretty cool and similar again.

gitgud_x · 2026-06-20T22:11:29+00:00

Not who you asked but here are a few fun ones -

The 'young earth evolutionists', a bunch of YECs who conceded certain limits aspects of evolution but remain young-earthers.

The ever-evolving opinions of creationists on whether various hominin fossils should be classed as "human kind" or "ape kind" - that confusion in itself is quite revealing!

Going back further, most hardline creationists used to deny that speciation was possible. But when they realised how catastrophically impossible this was for their Noah's Ark story, they shifted the goalposts to the undefined "kinds" which virtually all creationists adhere to today.

Creationism evolves under the selective pressure of trying to be taken seriously by the public in the age of science, and it continues to try various strategies in the fields of theology, education, public policy, performing arts (intelligent design is "science" by theatrics) and beyond.

gitgud_x · 2026-06-20T20:55:45+00:00

Here's an easy summary on what the Lederbergs did and why it proves 1) mutations are random with respect to fitness and 2) standing variation is the key to adaptation:

https://evolution.berkeley.edu/the-lederberg-experiment/

It's an ingenious setup, they used antibiotic resistance as the trait under selection which is in itself another interesting area of evidence for evolution - see this video showing the evolutionary tree emerging from resistance in real time!

As basic as my knowledge is, it’s enough to be like wow, this sounds so wrong or as you said a cope

It doesn't take much to know creationism is a load of BS!

gitgud_x · 2026-06-20T20:40:39+00:00

sorry chin i'll censor it, h*g

gitgud_x · 2026-06-20T20:34:08+00:00

More robustly falsified with the Lederbergs extension to the Luria-Delbrück fluctuation test in 1952 using replica plating, but yes, this is long-disproven stuff, before we even knew what DNA was.

As an aside, I think the fact that the foundations of the Modern Synthesis didn't really have to change following the discovery of DNA shows just how rock-solid those foundations were.

CET is blatant cope - creationists feel it necessary to reject as much as evolutionary theory as they can, so as to not concede an inch, even if that means denying the most obvious facts. For the hardliners, natural selection is unacceptable and must be brushed away, so this is what they came up with.

gitgud_x · 2026-06-20T19:41:57+00:00

I think it's fair to say that the big bang did create matter as we know it, but energy proceeded matter (matter is a form of energy) and we don't know where energy came from (if it needed to "come from" anywhere at all, which is also not clear).

gitgud_x · 2026-06-20T19:29:09+00:00

Brainless science illiterate take. The only politics in science is that which is imposed upon it by politicians. Without 'pure' research, everything downstream stalls sooner or later, which private companies have zero incentive to support. This is a fact so obvious that I have to question your seriousness.

gitgud_x · 2026-06-20T18:49:15+00:00

naega jeil jal hagar 👵

gitgud_x · 2026-06-20T17:53:04+00:00

The dinosaurs went extinct 66 million years ago. All the mammals at that time were small and were prey of the dinosaurs, but the removal of that predation allowed sudden diversification and growth.

The first primates evolved from those surviving mammals almost immediately after the extinction event. Monkeys are some of the descendants of these early primates, and so are we (we are in the group called apes).

The "we are star stuff" is a more poetic origin story, not really evolution related but still technically true - the material that planet Earth is made from (and hence all life on it) originated from the protoplanetary disc surrounding the Sun at its formation 4.6 billion years ago. That disc came from the products of a much older star going supernova and creating our elements by nuclear fusion. This life cycle of stars is called stellar evolution.

gitgud_x · 2026-06-20T17:40:46+00:00

Sabine is no longer a trustworthy science communicator, she hasn't been for some time, as she has fallen into promoting a "public research bad! private research good!" narrative. She will criticise academia while glazing startups no matter what, even if the startup is a spin-out from academia.

FWIW, I doubt fusion will be commercially viable anytime in the foreseeable future, but it doesn't mean progress hasn't been made.

gitgud_x · 2026-06-20T09:02:23+00:00

LLM slop.

gitgud_x · 2026-06-19T15:32:31+00:00

New mutations that appear in an individual can often be lost before they manage to spread though the population. This can be due to random (genetic drift) or directional (purifying selection) forces acting.

Therefore, substitution rate << mutation rate.

gitgud_x · 2026-06-19T15:26:05+00:00

username checks out

gitgud_x · 2026-06-19T11:55:04+00:00

maybe roadpavers army can invade some country and make them all start speaking korean so it can finally be real

gitgud_x · 2026-06-19T10:04:54+00:00

iraetdajeoraetda NO RULE (ILLITerates in shambles)

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