4 ms·

I haven't read the paper either, but I must say the operation of parasites as elements in complex biological super-systems is absolutely fascinating. Ants that

I haven't read the paper either, but I must say the operation of parasites as elements in complex biological super-systems is absolutely fascinating. Ants that march to the top of trees under the influence of fungus spores trying to be eaten by birds. Fish that commit suicide by swimming toward predators as part of a parasitic lifecycle.... evolution is truly miraculous. Another apocryphal story is cats carrying Toxoplasma Gondii make some people really like cats. So maybe mad cat lady syndrome is treatable with drugs :) Who knows what super-systems we are unwittingly a part of. That seems an interesting area for big-data + AI hypothesis synthesis - we may find new explanations or even whole new branches of behaviour in psychology.

pydry 4y ago
Things also get interesting if you look at economic and social systems in this context.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  - voltaireodactyl 4y ago
    This is a fascinating and unexpected piece of information. I would be very intrigued to read your source.
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      Here's CNN's exit poll for November 2022: https://www.cnn.com/election/2022/exit-polls/national-results/house https://www.cnn.com/election/2022/exit-polls/national-result... Unmarried women vote Democratic, 68-31. Unmarried men vote Republican, 52-45. Married women, Republican, 56-42. Married men, Republican, 59-39. Here's an image purporting to describe the Reuters-Ipsos poll of 2012: https://i.imgur.com/I3ycNpC.png https://i.imgur.com/I3ycNpC.png . (I haven't been able to find the actual poll.) It only gives the Republican share of the vote for each demographic, but Republicans+Democrats should be close to 100% of the vote. 1992 is an exception. Unmarried women, 31% Republican. Unmarried men, 41% Republican. Married women, 55% Republican. Married men, 58% Republican.
      - meindnoch 4y ago
        Most likely Democrat couples don’t feel the need to marry at the same rate as Republicans. Anyhow, the quoted figures doesn’t exactly show that married people “barely vote Republican”.
      - salawat 4y ago
        Sampling bias: those that respond to polls.
  - tafda 4y ago
    “ Republicans lead among married men (51%-38%), while married women are evenly divided (44% Republican, 44% Democratic). ” https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2015/04/07/a-deep-dive-into-party-affiliation/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2015/04/07/a-deep-dive-... That’s out of more than 60 million married couples in the US. Barely here equals about half?
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      > Barely here equals about half? Well, first, married women are not evenly divided. They are more Republican and less Democratic than unmarried men, who are also Republican. Second, even by the numbers you cite, Democrats aren't coming close to half of the vote among married couples. Third, you have over 11% of the vote going to third parties. In reality, in 2016 the two-party vote share was just over 94%. Some of these problems seem to arise from you confusing party affiliation with voting. They're different.
  - pfisch 4y ago
    How do you know you're not just catching cross correlation with age?
    - bena 4y ago
      Age, socio-economic status, and other confounding factors. Not to mention, according to him, 40% is "barely".
      - jesushax 4y ago
        He probably didn't have the stat off the top of his head, so it was exaggerated based on assumptions. But the underlying intuition had a kernel of truth and applies to any political party, or any institution, really. For example, if an organization dedicated to the poor mainly draws support from poor people, they have a kind of incentive to subtly maintain poverty. This theory that institutions kind of have a tendency to perpetuate the conditions that necessitate their existence was developed by Durkheim, and like most of the other early sociologists, I really recommend it over newer stuff. It's not conspiratorial, the idea is that organizations that do this outsurvive groups that legitimately solve the problems they are created to solve, and so through an evolutionary process, the longest lived and deepest institutions tend to be ones with behaviors ironically antithetical to their supposed mission (even if the members of the institution totally believe in and earnestly support the mission). The typical example (at least when I was into this kind of stuff) is the Catholic Church earnestly helping the poor, but doing so in a way that societaly, will never actually alleviate poverty, or may even exacerbate it. Now days I tend to hear this line of thinking used about liberals supporting policies that "help" minorities but really perpetuate the cycle of poverty. Whether you believe this is beside the point, I only mean to suggest that OP is wrong, but a steelman of his point is deeper than it seems, and deserves our good faith imo.
        qnr 4y ago
        Same general idea: it's not in the dating apps' best interest to get their users into successful long-term relationships and out of the dating pool.
        4y ago
  - shkkmo 4y ago
    Married people make about half the Democratic voter base, so your reasoning seems flawed at best. Not to mention that a large part of the relative under representation of married people in the Democratic voter base is due to relative over representation of younger people.
  - dtgriscom 4y ago
    We went from wolf parasites to "Democrats want to prevent marriage", via exaggerated polling data. How does this add to our conversation?
novosel 4y ago
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31980266/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31980266/

pydry 4y ago

Things also get interesting if you look at economic and social systems in this context.

thaumasiotes 4y ago
- voltaireodactyl 4y ago
  This is a fascinating and unexpected piece of information. I would be very intrigued to read your source.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    Here's CNN's exit poll for November 2022: https://www.cnn.com/election/2022/exit-polls/national-results/house https://www.cnn.com/election/2022/exit-polls/national-result... Unmarried women vote Democratic, 68-31. Unmarried men vote Republican, 52-45. Married women, Republican, 56-42. Married men, Republican, 59-39. Here's an image purporting to describe the Reuters-Ipsos poll of 2012: https://i.imgur.com/I3ycNpC.png https://i.imgur.com/I3ycNpC.png . (I haven't been able to find the actual poll.) It only gives the Republican share of the vote for each demographic, but Republicans+Democrats should be close to 100% of the vote. 1992 is an exception. Unmarried women, 31% Republican. Unmarried men, 41% Republican. Married women, 55% Republican. Married men, 58% Republican.
    - meindnoch 4y ago
      Most likely Democrat couples don’t feel the need to marry at the same rate as Republicans. Anyhow, the quoted figures doesn’t exactly show that married people “barely vote Republican”.
    - salawat 4y ago
      Sampling bias: those that respond to polls.
- tafda 4y ago
  “ Republicans lead among married men (51%-38%), while married women are evenly divided (44% Republican, 44% Democratic). ” https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2015/04/07/a-deep-dive-into-party-affiliation/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2015/04/07/a-deep-dive-... That’s out of more than 60 million married couples in the US. Barely here equals about half?
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    > Barely here equals about half? Well, first, married women are not evenly divided. They are more Republican and less Democratic than unmarried men, who are also Republican. Second, even by the numbers you cite, Democrats aren't coming close to half of the vote among married couples. Third, you have over 11% of the vote going to third parties. In reality, in 2016 the two-party vote share was just over 94%. Some of these problems seem to arise from you confusing party affiliation with voting. They're different.
- pfisch 4y ago
  How do you know you're not just catching cross correlation with age?
  - bena 4y ago
    Age, socio-economic status, and other confounding factors. Not to mention, according to him, 40% is "barely".
    - jesushax 4y ago
      He probably didn't have the stat off the top of his head, so it was exaggerated based on assumptions. But the underlying intuition had a kernel of truth and applies to any political party, or any institution, really. For example, if an organization dedicated to the poor mainly draws support from poor people, they have a kind of incentive to subtly maintain poverty. This theory that institutions kind of have a tendency to perpetuate the conditions that necessitate their existence was developed by Durkheim, and like most of the other early sociologists, I really recommend it over newer stuff. It's not conspiratorial, the idea is that organizations that do this outsurvive groups that legitimately solve the problems they are created to solve, and so through an evolutionary process, the longest lived and deepest institutions tend to be ones with behaviors ironically antithetical to their supposed mission (even if the members of the institution totally believe in and earnestly support the mission). The typical example (at least when I was into this kind of stuff) is the Catholic Church earnestly helping the poor, but doing so in a way that societaly, will never actually alleviate poverty, or may even exacerbate it. Now days I tend to hear this line of thinking used about liberals supporting policies that "help" minorities but really perpetuate the cycle of poverty. Whether you believe this is beside the point, I only mean to suggest that OP is wrong, but a steelman of his point is deeper than it seems, and deserves our good faith imo.
      - qnr 4y ago
        Same general idea: it's not in the dating apps' best interest to get their users into successful long-term relationships and out of the dating pool.
      - 4y ago
- shkkmo 4y ago
  Married people make about half the Democratic voter base, so your reasoning seems flawed at best. Not to mention that a large part of the relative under representation of married people in the Democratic voter base is due to relative over representation of younger people.
- dtgriscom 4y ago
  We went from wolf parasites to "Democrats want to prevent marriage", via exaggerated polling data. How does this add to our conversation?

novosel 4y ago

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31980266/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31980266/