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It's a simulation. In other words, the only conclusions that the scientists can really draw out are those that were hard-coded into the organism behaviour to be
by mnw21cam 13y ago
It's a simulation. In other words, the only conclusions that the scientists can really draw out are those that were hard-coded into the organism behaviour to begin with. For instance, they speculate that perhaps it might be a disadvantage to the parasite to have to generate powerful hormones - yeah, they would have had to have written that particular parameter into their simulation. Alter the parameter slightly, and you change the outcome.
- yiedyie 13y agoTo wildly speculate they as well might have been interested from a technical point of view because they could have grown on animals parasites that grow testosterone this could have had commercial purpose. etc.
- eloff 13y agoMost of the simulation results for things like this are dubious at best. Seems like money better spent to me to focus research energy on more useful endeavors. However, some simulations are extremely useful and really do represent reality well.
- mnw21cam 13y agoThe key is if you can match the simulation parameters to the results, so you can say "if the disadvantage of having to produce hormones to control the host becomes less than X, then we see sex mind control appearing - we generally don't see this in nature, so it must be more disadvantageous than X to produce hormones". That's a real result.