Hard Light Productions Forums

Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Bobboau on April 04, 2010, 04:28:39 am

Title: 'personal attacks' ?!
Post by: Bobboau on April 04, 2010, 04:28:39 am
I'm not one to post the post lock thread response thread that is obviously headed directly for a lock but
a) split-lock would have been more appropriate as the argument was ancillary at best to the topic the argument was in, flat out off topic more likely
b) he like three or four times said the exact same thing and each time I told him how he was wrong, his rebuttal was 'but it COULD!!!!!'. I think under these circumstances "you have the evolutionary understanding of Fred Phelps!" is appropriate.

"personal attacks" oh noes not on the internet, we must shut down Madagascar immediately!

I mean is this community that thin skinned? really?

but what ever, this was mostly directed at what ever mod locked that thread, and point (a) was presented first for a reason.
Title: Re: 'personal attacks' ?!
Post by: Kosh on April 04, 2010, 04:36:03 am
What is this in reference to?
Title: Re: 'personal attacks' ?!
Post by: Bobboau on April 04, 2010, 04:37:04 am
look at the last page and a half of the most recently locked thread, for the silliest thread locking I have seen here in quite a time.
Title: Re: 'personal attacks' ?!
Post by: Nuclear1 on April 04, 2010, 04:38:01 am
Yeah, a split lock would've been better, but the name calling was uncalled for.
Title: Re: 'personal attacks' ?!
Post by: Bobboau on April 04, 2010, 04:38:36 am
name calling? are you ****ting me? for real are you just joking here?
Title: Re: 'personal attacks' ?!
Post by: TESLA on April 04, 2010, 04:42:24 am
Sure what do you expect!

Karajorma locked a thread cause he doesnt like me!  :p
Title: Re: 'personal attacks' ?!
Post by: NGTM-1R on April 04, 2010, 04:47:22 am
name calling? are you ****ting me? for real are you just joking here?

What the hell else is comparing someone to the Phelpses? That was reaching pretty low, Bob. I can't honestly think of anyone on the boards who would deserve that comparison. Sure, we've got a few willfully ignorant folks and a Timecube-esque ranter or two, but outright evil bastardy is sort of rare.

And you didn't even direct it at one of the people I actually listed. His assertion wasn't nonsensical, just low order of probablity.
Title: Re: 'personal attacks' ?!
Post by: Bobboau on April 04, 2010, 04:53:08 am
no, it is impossible, according to the theory of evolution that sort of thing could never happen.

as I said, if it was possible then no treatment would ever work because the bacteria would have developed resistance to it millions of years before it was invented. saying that a pathogen could develop resistance to a treatment when not being exposed to said treatment shows a fundamentally flawed understanding of how evolution works. a understanding on the order of some religious wack job's understanding of it.
Title: Re: 'personal attacks' ?!
Post by: kode on April 04, 2010, 05:00:55 am
That was reaching pretty low, Bob.

Only in a community run and populated mostly by vaginas. Grow a pair, people.
Title: Re: 'personal attacks' ?!
Post by: Bobboau on April 04, 2010, 05:01:35 am
thank you
Title: Re: 'personal attacks' ?!
Post by: karajorma on April 04, 2010, 05:05:27 am
Karajorma locked a thread cause he doesnt like me!  :p

Nope. Someone else locked the thread and I didn't reopen it cause I don't like you. :p
Title: Re: 'personal attacks' ?!
Post by: Mika on April 04, 2010, 05:18:15 am
Since I didn't have a chance to ask Before The Lock (TM), might as well do it here:

Bobboau, since you happen to be in the know, what is the average age of bacteria generation and their reproduction rate in human body?

The thing is, we get periodic waves of common flue in here. Some of it is new from other places on Earth, while the second factor in the periodicity is the people who originally carried it here becoming ill again as their defense systems cannot recognise the evoluted forms.

Some of the worse illnesses are a combination of two or more relatively harmless diseases, although they haven't usually developed in human bodies but in other animals. The question is then how come human can catch it? And if diseases from two different animals can combine, I don't see why it couldn't happen in human? If you don't get medical treatment, the longer the person remains sick, the greater the likelihood the disease is going to be mixed with something else - which might make things easier, or worse. When you get a different disease, the current medication doesn't help any more. That's why I said I'm not sure if I should call it "evolved" or "another disease", could be interesting to hear biologists or medical sciences take on this? How much do they need to be different in order to be classified as two different species?

I don't know what I should think of your mutation "equation". Cross combination from parents is a big factor in the theory of evolution, but you get mutation thrown in time by time randomly. And just because in this case the number of individuals is extremely high and age per generation is short, mutation is pretty much happening continuously also.

I say this could be split from the current topic if more people decide to write about it.
Title: Re: 'personal attacks' ?!
Post by: TESLA on April 04, 2010, 05:22:24 am
Karajorma locked a thread cause he doesnt like me!  :p

Nope. Someone else locked the thread and I didn't reopen it cause I don't like you. :p

You sir, are hearby challenged to a duel!!!

*slap with a glove*
Title: Re: 'personal attacks' ?!
Post by: Nuclear1 on April 04, 2010, 05:23:31 am
Bob, you could've just said "you're wrong, and here's why" but instead you called the guy a name when he did nothing to deserve it.

Seriously, we'll reopen the thread but just watch what you're calling people already.

Karajorma locked a thread cause he doesnt like me!  :p

Nope. Someone else locked the thread and I didn't reopen it cause I don't like you. :p

You sir, are hearby challenged to a duel!!!

*slap with a glove*

And now, karajorma, I shall give you one last chance to rescind your insult of calling me a common dandy! :p
Title: Re: 'personal attacks' ?!
Post by: kode on April 04, 2010, 05:27:39 am
No, in fact he compared the sucker to Phelps. He did not say he was Phelps.
Title: Re: 'personal attacks' ?!
Post by: Bobboau on April 04, 2010, 05:34:47 am
period of generation ranges from about 20 minutes to several hours, in general. not that I see what that has to do with anything. yes this means they can evolve very very fast, but as I've said without a change in environment this means nothing.

ok, so tell me what is the difference between a population not receiving treatment for a disease when a treatment does exists,  and a population not receiving treatment for a disease when a treatment does not exist? I contend that there is no difference, in both populations no treatment is being applied. the bacteria don't get on the internet and find out somewhere else in the world there is a treatment and start making plans. therefor there is no difference between a population before a treatment exists and an untreated population after a treatment exists. so, if it was possible that a disease could develop resistance to a treatment in an untreated population then that means that it would be just as likely that said disease would be able to develop a resistance to the treatment before it was developed, now because diseases tend to be fast on the draw for these sort of things this means that all diseases would be resistant to all treatments before the treatment was developed because they would have about a 2 million year head start when it came to infecting humans, and therefore no treatment would ever be effective because if it was possible then with the rate pathogens tend to evolve they would almost certainly have found immunity by the time we developed it. however treatments are effective so your assertion that a disease can become resistant to a treatment without being exposed to said treatment must be wrong.

BTW I haven't even brought in the fact that drug resistance is often detrimental to the pathogen when treatments are not being administered. which incidentally leads to an exact opposite conclusion than you were presenting. that is to say that not treating people makes the disease more vulnerable to treatment.
Title: Re: 'personal attacks' ?!
Post by: Bobboau on April 04, 2010, 05:36:27 am
I compared his understanding of evolution to that of Phelps, that is all. I was very specific, the intended meaning was that he didn't know a ****ing thing about evolution.
Title: Re: 'personal attacks' ?!
Post by: Bobboau on April 04, 2010, 06:13:59 am
hmmm... I just noticed something... Mars isn't Mika
sorry for over reacting Mars I thought your were Mika, seeing as you both have four letter names that start with 'M', your profile/badge/avatar stuff is very similar, and you were arguing the exact same thing.
Title: Re: 'personal attacks' ?!
Post by: mister J on April 04, 2010, 06:21:03 am
Hi.

I have a bit of background in medicine and have been practicing it for a while, and I guess it's time I gave my take on the matter.

Let's set up a hypothetical scenario. Let's say Joe gets infected with Staph Aureus. He takes his medicine, but he suddenly gets worse, and we find that it's because his bugs are now resistant to his antibiotics. There's 2 scenarios why this could have happened, as explained here:

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IIIC1aRandom.shtml

if don't want to read it, the two scenarios are:

1) resistant strains of S. Aureus infected him along with the non-resistant variety in the first place, and the antibiotic killed those susceptible strains, leaving the resistant strains to party hard like a couple of teenagers during spring break

2) the S. Aureus, after being exposed to the susceptible strain, develops mutations and becomes used to the antibiotic, screwing Joe over.

having studied this for many years, I've always been told that number 1 is the correct answer. Joe basically won the unlucky lottery and got infected by a resistant strain. Now how did resistant strains come about in the first place? Completely at RANDOM, with NO respect to selective advantage.

How did they figure this out you ask? Some dude named Lederberg did an experiment on it, 50 years ago. And no study has ever shown to portray the opposite effect.

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IIIC1bLederberg.shtml

so unless some study us universally agreed upon by microbiologists and evo biologists that #2 is actually the correct answer, those who understand otherwise have a flawed (if not misleading) understanding of evolution. I wouldn't blame em, since it really is confusing sometimes.

p.s. and Joe lived happily ever after... just kidding. He spent like 2 months in the ICU, his kidneys shut down and he died of sepsis, leaving his family in debt for like a kazillion years. Yay! /sarcasm
Title: Re: 'personal attacks' ?!
Post by: Bobboau on April 04, 2010, 06:39:02 am
that experiment does not address the origin of the resistant bacteria, it simply proves that resistant strains exist and are in the wild.
Title: Re: 'personal attacks' ?!
Post by: Mika on April 04, 2010, 07:30:18 am
Thanks misterJ for jumping in the bandwagon. Maybe we'll all learn something from this discussion after all. I like it when people from different fields of Science can talk about the same thing but the perspectives are usually very different!

Quote
period of generation ranges from about 20 minutes to several hours, in general. not that I see what that has to do with anything. yes this means they can evolve very very fast, but as I've said without a change in environment this means nothing.

Here, what does it mean "no change in environment"? Terms like these are awfully easy to throw around but show me a place where this actually holds! Mind you, this is now roughly atomic level stuff we are talking about! Physicists know it best that Mathematics is an abstraction and especially logic (as defined in Mathematics). What I think is that you are thinking in terms of mathematical abstraction when you have written some of the above. I don't bother to go through the whole thing today as it needs to be split into parts to check the validity of each, but I'll try to do it tomorrow.

The molecular level DNA copying already introduces random errors. Add some further noise to it from environmental conditions like radiation for example. So the conclusion of the research is: being resistant to antibiotics can happen without any antibiotic influence at all. Given the numbers of population, mutation rates, cross-over rates and time period between generations, I don't find it that difficult to believe. As an analogy, some people are able to do splits, while for some this is physically impossible without tearing some ligaments. It might be little details like this (in their scale) that determine if bacteria is able to withstand an antibiotic or not.

Yes I'm not Mars. Maybe I should restart putting my name also on the bottom of the messages to clear up confusions that people thought cannot happen.
Title: Re: 'personal attacks' ?!
Post by: mister J on April 04, 2010, 08:08:51 am
Quote
that experiment does not address the origin of the resistant bacteria, it simply proves that resistant strains exist and are in the wild.

actually, what it does address is the fact that exposure to a treatment has nothing to do with whether resistance develops or not. It just happens that way at random.

It's kinda like how Lamarck and Darwin had differing opinions on how giraffes got longer necks. Darwin's idea, which is currently the one accepted today, is that Giraffes did not develop longer necks specifically because they needed to get to that higher foliage, it just happened that giraffes with longer necks had a better chance of survival. Those giraffes had little long necked babies and they flourished, having spread their advantageous phenotype to the next generation.

Just the same with bacteria. Bacteria did not suddenly adapt to antibiotics specifically because they were exposed to them, it just happened that bacteria existed that were resistant, having been born with a random mutation that makes them different, and had a better chance of survival. Those bacteria flourished through dividing or transferring their genetic info "horizontally*" and flourished, having spread their advantageous phenotype to generations in both their own and subsequent levels of the phylogenetic tree.

so to reiterate, in answering the question, "how do resistant strains exist?" Current evidence points to "it just happened at random." Given that  gazillions of any species of bacteria are created at any moment, it's not hard to believe. Selective pressure (such as antibiotic use) just accelerates the process by making the environment favorable to certain bacterial types, forcing them to adapt, by (again) random mutation.

*basically, one bacteria shares genetic information (which can include resistance) to another without creating offspring, which helps a bacteria evolve.
Title: Re: 'personal attacks' ?!
Post by: General Battuta on April 04, 2010, 08:48:37 am
That was reaching pretty low, Bob.

Only in a community run and populated mostly by vaginas. Grow a pair, people.

Excuse me? The vagina is a mighty organ! The penis is fragile and delicate!

Title: Re: 'personal attacks' ?!
Post by: Thaeris on April 04, 2010, 10:04:54 am
Excuse me? The vagina is a mighty organ! The penis is fragile and delicate!

Oh, you know what it's time for now, right?

CLITORIS!!!

 :lol:
Title: Re: 'personal attacks' ?!
Post by: General Battuta on April 04, 2010, 10:09:57 am
Different organ, mate.
Title: Re: 'personal attacks' ?!
Post by: Snail on April 04, 2010, 10:26:08 am
...
Title: Re: 'personal attacks' ?!
Post by: Flipside on April 04, 2010, 10:31:10 am
Yeah, because it's perfectly alright to be rude and ignorant to other people, that's never caused any problems, ever...

Edit: Basically, 'everyone else does it' stopped being an excuse for me at the age of 12, and I don't consider it justification in here.

I will attempt to clean out the sensible discussion from the name-calling in that thread and seperate it out, that's an acceptable suggestion, but the idea that hurling personal insults at each other merely requires 'a thick skin' or that because it is 'just what the Internet is like', it is ok, is a self-delusion. It's what the Internet is like because of people doing it, not vice versa.