Reddit mentions: The best genetics books

Hello! I have lots of recommendations for you, though, I can't think of much for ethics off the top of my head, except for textbooks. I did take an online class that teaches students about genetic counseling offered by South Carolina and some ethical issues were discussed there. Like you, I also love reading and have found a variety of resources. For starters, this subreddit posts decent articles from time to time, so lurk here!


Textbooks
A Guide to Genetic Counseling: This is like the book for genetic counseling programs. It offers a comprehensive overview of counseling and most ethical things I've read about are through this text.


Facilitating the Genetic Counseling Process: This book is designed to help you learn how to communicate effectively with clients/patients.


There are more textbooks to read about genetic counseling that you can find via Amazon. If you want to learn more about diseases, maybe check out Smith's Recognizable Patterns of Human Malformation.


Online
I have found a few things to read online. In case you haven't heard of it The DNA Exchange is excellent. The writers are great and they tackle a whole host of issues. Two magazines I really enjoy are Genome and Helix.


Also, if you're not familiar with GINA, the National Coalition for Health Professional Education in Genetics (NCHPEG) has a web page that explains it nicely.


Also, Unique has the cutest comic ever that explains rare diseases to siblings. Not to mention, that website has a lot of handouts on rare disorders!


Books
I found out about 90% of these books through the online class I took, which I mentioned at the beginning of this comment. I decided to link and give a few lines of each Amazon description to you so you don't have tab fatigue. Of these books, I have read Waiting with Gabriel and Before and After Zachariah. Both are excellent and raise great discussion points.


Choosing Naia: A Family's Journey by Mitchell Zuckoff - A dramatic and carefully detailed account of one family's journey through the maze of genetic counseling, medical technology and disability rights.


Babyface: A Story of Heart and Bones by Jeanne McDermott - When Jeanne McDermott's second child, Nathaniel, was born with Apert syndrome-a condition that results in a towering skull, a sunken face, and fingers webbed so tightly that hands look like mittens-she was completely unprepared for it. In this extraordinary memoir, McDermott calls on her dual roles as science journalist and mother to share her family's traumatic yet enriching experience.


Waiting with Gabriel by Amy Kuebelbeck - This memoir is the true story of parents who were told that their unborn baby had an incurable heart condition, confronting them with an impossible decision: to attempt risky surgeries to give their baby a chance at a longer life, or to continue the pregnancy and embrace their baby's life as it would unfold, from conception to natural death.


Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth and Everyday Magic by Martha Beck - Expecting Adam is an autobiographical tale of an academically oriented Harvard couple who conceive a baby with Down's syndrome and decide to carry him to term.


Spelling Love with an X: A Mother, A Son, and the Gene that Binds Them by Clare Dunsford - Spelling Love with an X is the first personal memoir about living with fragile X and a reflection on the fragility of human identity in the age of the gene. Recalling the psychic wound of learning that she is genetically "flawed," Dunsford wonders: What do you do when you discover that you are not who you thought you were?


The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman - The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down explores the clash between a small county hospital in California and a refugee family from Laos over the care of Lia Lee, a Hmong child diagnosed with severe epilepsy. Lia's parents and her doctors both wanted what was best for Lia, but the lack of understanding between them led to tragedy.


Give Me One Wish by Jacquie Gordon - This is the story of a remarkable mother and daughter and their love as they make sense of life, and their relationship, in the face of a deadly disease. Jackquie Gordon cannot cure her daughter Christine's cystic fibrosis, but she can teach her to follow life's gifts wherever they lead so that she grows up eager to discover the world and her place in it.


Before and After Zachariah by Fern Kupfer - The heart-wrenching story of one couple's courageous decision to have their severely brain-damaged son cared for in a residential facility.


Anna: A Daughter's Life by William Loizeaux - Born with a number of birth defects known as VATER Syndrome, Anna Loizeaux’s chances for survival were uncertain.


Old Before My Time by Hayley Okines - In medical terms her body is like that of a 100-year-old woman. Yet she faces her condition with immense courage and a refreshing lack of self-pity.


Pretty is What Changes: Impossible Choices, the Breast Cancer Gene, and How I Defied my Destiny by Jessica Queller - Eleven months after her mother succumbs to cancer, Jessica Queller has herself tested for the BRCA gene mutation. The results come back positive, putting her at a terrifyingly elevated risk of developing breast cancer before the age of fifty and ovarian cancer in her lifetime.


There's also Lisa Genova's books. You've probably heard of Still Alice, which is about a woman who is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's. That was a good read! Her other books also deal with various medical diagnoses and I've heard Inside the O'Briens is quite good as well.


I hope this all helps. I apologize for the length, but I really wanted to share what I could! If you're interested, I could give you some ethical dilemmas to think about. I remember a few from interviews and reading about genetics. Good luck. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions about applications/interviews!

Okay, I've been thinking about this and have many things that have influenced me but here's a few!
this book was wonderful for understnaing the basics of cell biology when I began my journey. It's also a great reference.
For fun reading really enjoyed survival of the sickest and Sharon Moalem's other books as well. He's a medical doctor who also does genetic disease research.
For concepts I struggled with I would find academic videos on you tube. There are some really great resources out there for quick refreshers! I don't have specific channels to recommend though, it just depends on the topic.
After having a good foundation and starting to ask more specific questions it's time dive in to scientific literature! I started out with review articles in my field (membrane trafficking). These are great because they summarize years worth of discoveries in a few pages, and also cite the original papers where you can go to learn more!
After having a good grasp on the past research in order to keep me up to date I use PubCrawler. Its a website that automatically searches pubmed for all of the things you are interested then sends you a list of new papers to dive in to. I have mine delivered to my inbox every monday morning.
Academic papers have a bit of a learning curve before you really begin to digest them, but once you get the hang of it it takes you to literally the edge of current human knowledge (how cool!), and is more real than a polished textbook which is just trying to get the main idea across.
I hope that helps!

>I want to create an alien planet and have life evolve on it. The problem is I am not a scientist and I want my aliens to be believable without going too deep into hard sci-fi territory.





Here's the thing: in writing, the rule is, write what you know. That's a general rule, but it's a good one. You want to write about subjects you're familiar with, because the confidence you have in this familiarity will show through in your writing. If you're really into Pokemon, you can write about Pokemon, and it sounds like you know what you're talking about. Readers have confidence in your authority.

I think the solution is that it's going to go to your benefit to do a bit of research, and actually study and learn a bit more about biology and evolution than you presently know.

A great primer might be Dawkins' The Selfish Gene.

You can find some great science fiction primer vids from Kurzgesagt and Artifexian. Be careful though, because it's easy to fall down the rabbit hole with both these channels...

You might also like r/worldbuilding

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>These aliens evolved on a carbon planet, and I want to know how that would impact life. I imagine life could develop without water or oxygen, but it would certainly be very different from earth.



Okay. The thing is, you want your planet to be in the Goldilocks zone, because water is liquid there. You want water to be liquid so you can have solutions with lots of dissolved stuff. Essentially, the cellular fluid in our own cells is a sort of replication of the solutions found in tide pools that first gave birth to living cells. It's probably a good idea to make your aliens composed of cells, or else they might all be ameboid in nature.

There's no such thing as a carbon planet, but you can have carbon-based lifeforms living on a rocky planet. Earth is a rocky planet, as opposed to a gas giant. Carbon is plentiful and is easy to work with, chemically. You can have photosynthetic organisms store sunlight energy as glucose, made of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Glucose can also be used to make strong fibers, cellulose, which can be used as a structural material.

Beyond that, you've got a ton of leeway. To your advantage is the fact no one knows what alien life might be like. So as long as you don't break any physical laws and avoid pseudoscience, your aliens are probably going to be potentially believable.

>So because you can logically deduce altruism that cannot be the law of God? I don't quite understand what you're getting at. My point, and the point of C.S. Lewis is that people can follow the law of God, love your neighbor and love God, without implicitly knowing Christian law. Regardless of if you can logically deduce morality or not, I don't see how that invalidates the main point.

Because there is ZERO reason to believe there IS a "law of God" or that the phrase "law of God" means anything.

>without implicitly knowing Christian law.

There is NO reason to believe "the law" is "Christian".

As I've said, cooperation and altruism occurs in nature and tying it to anything supernatural is superfluous. What seems more likely is that the authors of the Bible observed cooperation and altruism and then attributed it to their conception of their deity.

Check out The Selfish Gene. If natural selection occurs at the replicating gene level, then altruism at the organism level isn't a mystery at all...nor, again, does it require any divine explanation.

> if you can logically deduce morality

I suppose you may be saying God created the material process by which organisms become altruistic in more evolved species (i.e. humans). Okay. That's more deism, but okay. Not really falsifiable. And not terribly parsimonious as an explanation. But, okay.

>I don't know if you're familiar with the differing sects of Christianity

Abundantly. Familiar.

> The ideals I strive to live by are love, mercy, forgiveness etc... But it all basically falls under the umbrella of love. Do I live by these ideals perfectly? Absolutely not, we are all sinners, even the saints, that doesn't mean that I flippantly ignore my ideals, it just means that even the best of us stumble.

Here. This will help you. Words don't inherently mean something, and you can use them in ways that make it seem like there are distinctions when there aren't.

The other commenters have already explained this very well, but I'm going to try putting it in my own words anyway.

There are two things to talk about: sex and gender. Sex is the biological aspect while gender is the behavioral aspect. But wait, can't behavior have a biological influence? Everything points out that yes, it can, but it can also have environmental influences such as culture.

So how did sex arise? Some animals have only one sex, and some are even able to make babies with themselves. The reason some animals evolved away from this suggests an advantage to having multiple sexes in multiple people. The multiple people part is easy, genetic variability. If you only make sex with yourself, you're going to have very little change in your genes, and any new hazard, like viruses and changes in temperature could wipe your genome out.

What about different sexes? In this case, it is all about specialization. Having someone specialize in nurturing and someone specialize in proliferating might have given advantage to our predecessors. This specialization starts in our germ cells, with one producing small, motile, and ever proliferating spermatozoan and the other producing large, immobile, once in a lifetime eggs. Males make millions of spermatozoan during most of their lifetime while females make eggs only in an early age.

Now, what does that have to do with gender? It is possible that the different costs on the different types of sex cells could have led animals to behave differently. The female invests a lot on a single egg, so maybe she needs to be really picky about whom she mates with; the male can just throw his stuff around. It would also be dangerous if males started mating with males instead of females. That would be just wasted energy that could have been used in effective reproduction.

Note that this behavior isn't always observed in animals. The ultimate goal is gene survival, and there are many factors that help genes survive. Maybe a male fish will find that having a male lover while procreating with a female will cause this lover to protect his offspring for some reason. This would reinforce the behavior of keeping male lovers in this species.

Now, to humans. What makes humans complex is the hypothesis that we have this consciouness that can govern our lower impulses and perhaps even act against them. This area is still growing, and there are many theories. One could say that gene influence is still what matters most. Maybe by choosing not to have children and instead focusing on my career, I am helping my genes survive through other people (all humans have some similar genes, and if my career helps the world, it also helps my genes). On the other hand, I could argue that there is something in humans that really allows them to outrule their survival insticts, or that there are new powerful forces such as culture that can govern our actions more than our genes and our own will together.

So, is there such a thing as gender? Yes, but in humans it could go much beyond simple inherited "instincts". I recommend you read the chapter on sex of this book and maybe take a look at the selfish gene.

> How do you rebutt Christians who claim that prophecies like [Isaiah 53] predicted Jesus and his death?

This is a very, very complex passage. There are literally entire books about proper interpretation of ancient texts; say what you want about the legitimacy of OT scripture, it is a historical document that requires an understanding of the context and culture of its writing. For a brief primer, check this out.

>I have parents that are anti-evolution but know nothing about it. What can I do (if anything) to show them that evolution is fact.

You can do nothing if they are unwilling to investigate it on their own. Being against something you are (willfully) ignorant of is, with all due respect, the epitome of ineptitude.

>Not some wacky theory that some drunken scientist came up with after beating his wife, but fact.

I'm honestly not aware of any well publicized scientific theory that originated from a drunken, wife beating scientist, so there's nothing I can contrast this with. (However, I'm convinced John was on shrooms when he wrote Revelation) If there is any hope, I would begin with the proper explanation of what a "theory" is in the scientific perspective. To simplify (and probably over-simplify), something can still be a theory, scientifically, but also be a fact.

As a demonstration, I would tell them to jump off a bridge. After all, gravity is only a theory.

>Have a favourite Dawkins quote? :)

Yup.

“Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.”

>What single argument was the single greatest point in debunking your creationism? (I ask because I often debate creationists).

Genetics. By far. The DNA evidence is astounding. I highly suggest The Relics of Eden and The Making of the Fittest.

>f I have any questions about the Bible I'll be sure to message you. You sound quite knowledgable on it. Cheers!

I would welcome it. At least I could now put some practical use to all this knowledge in my head. :)

That's one of my favorite popular science books, so it's wonderful to hear you're getting so much out of it. It really is a fascinating topic, and it's sad that so many Christians close themselves off to it solely to protect their religious beliefs (though as you discovered, it's good for those religious beliefs that they do).

As a companion to the book you might enjoy the Stated Clearly series of videos, which break down evolution very simply (and they're made by an ex-Christian whose education about evolution was part of his reason for leaving the religion). You might also like Coyne's blog, though these days it's more about his personal views than it is about evolution (but some searching on the site will bring up interesting things he's written on a whole host of religious topics from Adam and Eve to "ground of being" theology). He does also have another book you might like (Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible), though I only read part of it since I was familiar with much of it from his blog.

> If you guys have any other book recommendations along these lines, I'm all ears!

You should definitely read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, if only because it's a classic (and widely misrepresented/misunderstood). A little farther afield, one of my favorite popular science books of all time is The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker, which looks at human language as an evolved ability. Pinker's primary area of academic expertise is child language acquisition, so he's the most in his element in that book.

If you're interested in neuroscience and the brain you could read How the Mind Works (also by Pinker) or The Tell-Tale Brain by V. S. Ramachandran, both of which are wide-ranging and accessibly written. I'd also recommend Thinking, Fast and Slow by psychologist Daniel Kahneman. Evolution gets a lot of attention in ex-Christian circles, but books like these are highly underrated as antidotes to Christian indoctrination -- nothing cures magical thinking about the "soul", consciousness and so on as much as learning how the brain and the mind actually work.

If you're interested in more general/philosophical works that touch on similar themes, Douglas R. Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach made a huge impression on me (years ago). You might also like The Mind's I by Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett, which is a collection of philosophical essays along with commentaries. Books like these will get you thinking about the true mysteries of life, the universe and everything -- the kind of mysteries that have such sterile and unsatisfying "answers" within Christianity and other mythologies.

Don't worry about the past -- just be happy you're learning about all of this now. You've got plenty of life ahead of you to make up for any lost time. Have fun!

Meme theory, while it has gained considerable attention in recent years, may not be the best way to describe what goes on with communicable cognitive content and our minds. There are more rigiorous, specific and detailed theories out there dealing with these issues, but it is possible to 'reconstruct' memetic theory in a more rigorous way (as an extension of more realistic models of social learning).

The research-programs that go into specific detail with the required rigor are: Social learning (example article), cultural niche-construction (example article) and gene-culture coevolution theory (example article) [EDIT: MORE TOPICAL EXAMPLE PAPER:Cultural Transmission and the Evolution of Cooperative Behavior].

Meme-theory on its own has always remained rather superficial, and is plagued by the same conceptual problems as the "gene-centric" view of inheritance and evolution, which characteristically neglects the magnitude of t of the contribution by inheritance/'sharing of phenotypically generative information' through multiple channels, having different long-term effects, different rates of dispersion, mechanisms of reproduction, retention rates, noise- & degradation-levels and biases, interacting in complex ways to give rise to evolutionary change of mental contents and characteristics in human populations.

The gene-centric / gene-reductionist view is characterized by some potentially misleading / unrealistic analogies (replicator vs vehicle, gene-meme). There is value in the comparison of cognitive sharing of information to genetic inheritance, but it needs to be carefully extracted from the web of possible misconceptions surrounding it.

Boyd and Richerson (Culture and the Evolutionary Process, The Origin and Evolution of Cultures, Not by Genes Alone - How Culture Transformed Human Evolution and Mathematical Models of Social Evolution: A Guide for the Perplexed) have published extensively on mathematical models of social learning, biased transmission, evolutionary change through social and cultural inheritance - that's where you should look for a solid theoretical foundation of information-sharing in social learning and its role in human evolution.

Laland, Feldman and Odling-Smee have modeled the phenomenon of "
Niche Construction: The Neglected Process in Evolution" providing he seminal work on the topic. It is based around the insight that environments are not static, immunable backgrounds to the actions of organisms as individuals and as populations. The conditions in an environment of indiviudals that allow a population to exist and interact with it just the way it does are not always, not even usually just a "given".

First - organisms locate to where conditions are best for them (within their range of migration), thus selecting the environemental conditions they face and interact with. Second, and more importantly, organisms change their environments in various ways - adaptively, neutrally and maladaptively - through many different channels, 'deliberately' as well as unknowingly.

Many plants change the chemical composition of soil in a way that is favorable to them (releasing poison, attracting microorganisms with beneficial effects etc..). That's a low-level example of niche-construction.

Beaver-dams are a more high-level example. Some capucin monkeys socially learn how to let nuts dry for a few days and then crack them open with stones on larger stones (hammer-anvil principle). This effectively changes the Umwelt of the population, qualitatively changing may aspects of their lives, interactions, and the conditions under which they can survive in the environment.

In humans, uniquely, there is cumulative cultural niche-construction.. (mostly through language), we can study the explicit and formalized theories, inventions and technologies of people in the past, model them in our minds, discuss them, discard or improve upon them - (EDIT:) and most importantly, culture, society and personal caretakers determine the developmental environment and resources our children face, having them grow up learning how to interact with a world that has the accumulated knowledge, theories, techniques and technologies of millenia of people improving on what they grew up with. Growing up we (ideally) become socialized and encultured, learning (some of) what ~2.500 years of rational, methodical investigation of the world has shown us and taught us.

Not only do we build cities that evolve with us and increasingly eliminate previous selection pressures (while creating new ones), but we continuously build cognitive captial, experience and power to predict and interact with the environment... that's why the human population has exploded the way it did, why our lives are quite far removed from 'nature - red in tooth and claw' as it exists everywhere else, and why we are here discussing this.

Finally, Kim Sterelny has provided a rather brilliant synoptic view on the evolution of human mentality - incorporating the insights of the gene's-eye-view, social learning, gene-culture co-evolution, multi-level inheritance and niche-construction theory. I thoroughly recommend his books, e.g. Thought in a Hostile World - The Evolution of Human Cognition and The Evolved Apprentice.

TL;DR: Here's Kim Sterelny's article 'Memes revisited', which clarifies how the central insight of memetics can be explicated in more rigours and diverse frameworks to better explain the workings of human mentality and their evolution

(EDITED for clarity - also: New example article for niche-construction->more topical)

I don't know what you're specifically interested in, but here of a couple books I liked:

Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brown. He's a semi-famous magician/mentalist in the UK, and this book has a ton of really interesting stuff in it like hypnosis and memory hacks. The only issue is the NLP stuff, which is pseudo-science, but the rest is good.

100 Deadly Skills was interesting, although I'm not sure how useful it is.

The Selfish Gene is a more famous book than those two, but if you're interested in evolution at all it's an awesome book.

I'm not much of a science fiction reader, but I really liked the Foundation Series. Also most Michael Crichton books are good, although in particular I liked Sphere, Jurassic Park and the Lost World, Congo, Timeline, and Prey.

Political psychology, although typically considered a subfield, covers a wide range of variables (e.g., personality, decision-making, behavior, beliefs, emotion, conflict) from multiple levels of analysis (e.g., individual, group, state, system). Given that your thesis will inevitably consume a great deal of your time and effort, you'll want to focus on an area of political psychology that you find particularly interesting. Here are some resources that can help you pinpoint a topic:

• Political Psychology (the most prominent academic journal dedicated to political psychology)
• Political psychology (Wikipedia) [the list of prominent political psychologists toward the bottom of the page provides a decent starting point]
• The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology (Huddy, Sears, & Levy)
• Introduction to Political Psychology (Cottam, Dietz-Uhler, Elena Mastors, & Preston)
• Political Psychology: Neuroscience, Genetics, and Politics (Marcus)

However, it occurs to me that providing you a few links and telling you to "read!" might not be the most helpful approach, since I'm pointing you toward a forest when you eventually need to locate a specific tree. Does your college/university offer any courses that relate to political psychology? If so, I would consider taking them (or at least reaching out to the professors that offer them). [Note: Even if there aren't classes dedicated to the subject, your university likely has related courses (e.g., American politics, social psychology) that might be useful]. In my opinion, taking courses or talking to professors will likely benefit you even more than independent reading.

And lastly, since you asked, here are some specific areas of research (that I find intriguing), along with relevant recent publications (that I have enjoyed):

• The structure and determinants of political ideologies: 1, 2, 3, 4
• Personality characteristics in the political domain 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
• The dynamics of political information processing: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
• The efficacy of biological and neuroscientific explanations of political behavior: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Maybe one the aforementioned topics will interest you. If not, there are plenty other research foci out there (you might have noticed that I failed to include a topic related to foreign policy, a literature to which I haven't paid much attention recently). Best of luck!

Why thank you! If you're interested in the way that species develop altruism, I recommend the book The Selfish Gene. It's a dense read, but it's totally mind blowing.

It breaks down how our genes are kind of the "real" creatures of the Earth, and how we are more or less just convenient vehicles for them. For the most part, we have the genes we have because those genes created bodies that were good at surviving and reproducing. The bodies aren't actually important, apart from how well they replicate the genes.

That's how genes that ultimately lead a body to sacrifice itself for other bodies succeed - as long as the bodies that were saved contain more copies of the genes than the body that was sacrificed, then it's a net win for them.

And even though it's enormously complicated, it has been observed that the math holds up. When animals have to make difficult decisions about saving and nurturing themselves vs their young, their behavior tends to favor saving their genes, regardless of which bodies contain them. Which is exactly what we would expect if human bodies were merely the vehicles that our genes use to spread themselves all over the world.

Michael Sandel's The Case against Perfection {http://www.amazon.com/The-Case-against-Perfection-Engineering/dp/0674036387} is only 100 pages and touches on Eugenics of the Nazi's. Brief Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFcfygkMM0I

The counter is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVsnkRoYfX0 Dr. Gregory Stock To Upgrade is to be Human is only 17mins, he also has a book on it: Redesigning Humans.

The former takes a more philosophical view while the latter is more scientifically inclined.

If I recall correctly there was a debate on the bioethics between the two on a radio station I'll try to find it in the morning.

If you want to tie it to something modern President Bush had a bioethics committee of philosophers and political theorist to debate the subject (stem cells in particular but they touch on the same principles. I'm sure you can find a treasure drove of stuff

Hope I was of some assistance best of luck in teaching the class!

sorry if there are typos/syntax errors/bad writing it's late :)
also none of the aforementioned things are Kantian :x

I don't remember what textbook my genetics class used, but the best person you should ask is a professor that teaches a genetics course (assuming that they don't have a book of their own that they wrote). I briefly perused Amazon and it seems like the following book is worth looking into:

http://www.amazon.com/Genetics-Genes-Genomes-Leland-Hartwell/dp/007352526X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1289872798&sr=1-2

I would check your local library first, since textbooks are so overpriced these days that there is no sense buying one unless you can preview it first.

If you are looking for something to read for your own benefit, then I suggest a textbook, as I generally tend to stay away from scientific non-fiction that is written by only one or two authors since they are more likely to have not thoroughly reviewed the literature and less likely to give a conservative consensus review. But if you are looking to get somebody else interested in the field or science in general then those kinds of books are priceless to really set the imagination on fire.

Edit: Also, another tip. If you want to see real scientists talk about their own work and there is a local university nearby, ask the relevant department if they have a calendar of seminars that are open access for the public. These are some of the best opportunities to learn about the latest developments in science that haven't even been published yet. If you're not familiar with the field these kinds of things can be a bit hard to follow at first, though, since their intended audience is scientists.

Read/watch more Sagan. He really wanted to talk more about science than superstition. Even the social/political situation about it.

https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469

Also, have you read any of Dawkins' books about biology, rather than superstition? He really didn't start directly attacking religion until he realized that anti-reality stuff was so prevalent in society.

I have to admit, first time I read this one..I had to have a dictionary open alongside it. :D

https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Anniversary-Landmark-Science-ebook/dp/B01GI5F2FS/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=richard+dawkins&qid=1554875427&s=books&sr=1-2

> Although, I'm struggling with the point to existence

I have to be honest. I really don't understand why so many people have this concern. I do understand that they feel it's legitimate, I just don't understand why.

I suspect my personal experience is behind that..I grew up Southern Baptist, and my first realization was full-tilt "I'M FREE!"

I don't care if there's no 'greater celestial reason' for my existence. I exist. I might as well do the most I can with it.

I love good food. I love sportscars. I love a woman's company. I love my daughter. I love soccer.

> and why the universe is the way it is.

I really don't know..but only the religious people in my life act as if that's some great crime. Personally..I'll just read the works of the people who are actually looking for it, instead of performing mental fellatio upon the pack of lying shamans who claim they actually know.

> I simply don't want to believe that I'm just an accident

Well, you're not! Go study more biology. That old Christian whine about "..the Earth is perfectly tuned for life!!" is pathetic.

The Earth came first. We're here because we come from it. Of course it's 'perfect' for us. It's our mommy.

> I'm done being force-fed information. I want to find out for myself.

And you can, if you just get past the fear. And I know that the fear can really blow around your mind for awhile. Wishing you well with it.

My favorite author, and this is his most fun book even if he has a couple better received books

Bukowski is an amazing author regardless of what succs say.

Great book. Brought the term grok into existence

Really cool graphic novel series

David sedaris is probably the best comedic novelist i've ever read/heard. I recommend audio though because he has great delivery, which is what made him such a popular guest on NPR


selfish gene by dawkins. I know Dawkins is a meme, but this book is actually really good along with a lot of his earlier books.

Biology is nothing without chemistry so you need to know the basics of chemistry as well. My favourite book is the Color Atlas of Biochemistry by Jan Koolman, K. Rohm.

Another very useful book is Biochemistry (Lippincott Illustrated Reviews Series) by R. Harvey.

Many past participants recommend the Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry, however, this book may be too detailed for olympiads.

GENETICS TEXTBOOKS|

Genetics: Analysis and Principles (WCB Cell & Molecular Biology) by Brooker presents an experimental approach to understanding genetics and what I like most is that there are plenty of problems with explanations and answers. Another good textbook for genetics is Genetics: From Genes to Genomes, 5th edition by Hartwell. Genetics: From Genes to Genomes is a cutting-edge, introductory genetics text authored by an unparalleled author team, including Nobel Prize winner, Leland Hartwell.

GENERAL BIOLOGY TEXTBOOKS|

It is not a secret that the Bible of Biology is Campbell Biology (11th Edition). It is a good book and it covers all fundamental biology topics, nevertheless, some topics are discussed only concisely so some good books in addition to Campbell’s could come in handy.

HUMAN ANATOMY |TEXTBOOKS

For human body anatomy and physiology great books are Human Physiology: An Integrated Approach (7th Edition) by Dee Unglaub Silverthorn or  Vander’s Human Physiology. 

MOLECULAR AND CELL BIOLOGY|TEXTBOOKS

My top choice for molecular biology is Molecular Biology of the Cell by Bruce Alberts, et al. This is book is a big one, a hard one, an interesting one, a useful one. From my point of view, current and upcoming IBOs are focusing on molecular and cell biology because these fields are developing so rapidly and thus these branches of biology are perfect source for olympiad problems. So try to read it and understand it. If you want something cheaper than Alberts but equally useful, try Molecular Biology of the Cell, Fifth Edition: The Problems Book

PLANT BIOLOGY|TEXTBOOKS

Many past biology olympiad questions contain quite a lot of problems about plant anatomy and physiology. Thus, I suggest to read Stern’s Introductory Plant Biology.  Another amazing book for plant biology is Biology of Plants by Peter H. Raven, Ray F. Evert, Susan E. Eichhorn.

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TEXTBOOKS FOR AND PROBLEM SOLVING|TECHNIQUES

Science competitions test a student’s level of knowledge, power of scientific reasoning, and analytical thinking outside of the regular school curriculum. A systematic approach and smart study regimen are both required to get good results in science competitions. This is where my book How To Prepare for the Biology Olympiad And Science Competitions by Martyna Petrulyte comes into the picture.

Sexual selection can lead to a trait that makes genes more likely to be passed on, but doesn’t help an individual’s survival.

For example, a peacock’s tail improves his chances of finding a willing peahen and passing on his genes, but the vibrant plumage may put him at greater risk of being caught by a predator.

It makes sense to think of it from the gene’s point of view. “What would make a gene more likely to be passed on?” is a better question than “What would make an individual animal survive.”

> Detailed balance only applies to individual games. It makes no statement at all about the collective pool of players.

Detailed balance is a property of the system as a whole. The Elo system is based on the principle that you can define a means of exchanging points that leads to an equilibrium distribution of ratings, where differences in ratings correspond to expected outcomes of games.

> Additionally, I've already proven to you, via the actual FIDE rules, that this condition doesn't always hold.

You've shown that FIDE imperfectly implements the Elo system, and that in absurd situations (e.g., Magnus Carlsen playing a 101-game match against a player ranked more than 1000 Elo points below him), FIDE ratings would be affected by these implementation details.

> Additionally, I've already shown via the rules that detailed balance falls apart with the FIDE implementation (which is actually the real world implementation, hence, rating inflation is guaranteed)

Only in situations where players play huge numbers of games against opponents who are rated more than 400 points above or below them. That doesn't happen in the real world.

> The lower rated players contribute to the higher rated players ratings, either directly (i.e., Caruana, So, Kramnik playing 1800 rated players in a few Open tournaments last year) or indirectly (1800's playing 2400's in an open, and the 2400's playing 2600's, and the 2600's playing 2700's).

What percentage of games are between players that are more than 400 rating points apart? The FIDE implementation works just fine if an 1800 player plays a 2200 player, who plays a 2600 player, who plays Carlsen. In that case, FIDE's rules implement Elo almost exactly. The only inaccuracy is in circumstances like an 1800 player playing Carlsen directly, and even then, the impact on FIDE's Elo system is minimal (one Elo point might be generated, which will quickly get dispersed throughout the entire pool of players worldwide).

> So, again, you don't have a clue about what you're talking. Literally everything you've written has been wrong, especially your assumptions.

Except that between us, I'm the only one who's actually demonstrated that I know how the Elo system works. I don't think you know what "detailed balance" means, or that you understand what it means for the Elo system to be an equilibrium process. If you had studied physics at university, you'd know these concepts.

> This is why you're a 1200 rated liberal arts student with a bachelor's degree and not someone who does more important things. You are incapable of understanding relatively simplistic concepts. Stick to reading blogs and wikipedia pages.

It's funny that you keep falling back to this supposed insult. First of all, I have nothing against liberal arts students with a bachelors degree. But most smart liberal arts students I know would have recognized long ago in this conversation that the person talking about stat mech and detailed balance probably isn't a liberal arts major. I cited Wikipedia to you because that's more useful than telling you to go read Kittel and Kroemer. But by all means, if you really want to jump from this Reddit thread into a full-blown study of thermodynamics, read the latter.

There's a huge amount of evidence for altruism.

Seems like you need to educate yourself a bit more before you go about flippantly tossing out such wide sweeping declarations about the nature of reality.

Good book for you to read: The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Amazing work that helped revolutionize the modern view of Biology. This will likely turn your understanding of the nature of behavior inside out and will hopefully give you a new appreciation for the miracle that is humanity.

I am using Conquering the Physics GRE as an overview, but I really enjoy anything from David Morin and David J. Griffiths for the level of questions and explanations (and in-book/online solutions manuals that go a long way towards showing you how to think like a physicist). But my "library" for preparing for the physics GRE is:

CM: Morin, Problems and Solutions in Introductory Mechanics and Introduction to Classical Mechanics

Gregory, Classical Mechanics for extra explanations and problems

EM: Griffiths, Introduction to Electrodynamics 3e

QM: Griffiths, Introduction to Quantum Mechanics 3e

Thermo/Stat.Mech: Schroeder, An Introduction to Thermal Physics

Kittel and Kroemer, Thermal Physics

Waves: Morin, on his website are ten chapters to what appears to be a Waves book in the making

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~djmorin/waves/

Atomic, Lab Methods: Conquering the Physics GRE and any online resources I can find.

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If you email Case Western, they send a link to some amazing flash cards!

Specifically, it shows that there is a qualitative difference between those with and without the disorder, both physiologically and in drug response; thus, whether you want to call it a disorder or not, it does describe a distinct subpopulation that it is meaningful to discuss as a group, distinct from other individuals who may share some traits with members of the group - that is, that it exists. You say that we know it exists (which is true!) and suggest that the debate is on classification of that subpopulation (reasonable!), but I don't think that's universally true. I don't really have any evidence to offer other than anecdotes, so take that as you will.

Incidentally, the question of "is it really a disorder or just a normal variation, possibly with a purpose?" is really, really interesting. There's a book called Survival of the Sickest that makes some very interesting connections between ostensibly-harmful disorders and possibly historical (or current!) benefits that derive from the same trait/gene/what have you.

> Do you have any idea how much money can be gained by being the poster boy scientist for a YEC organization?

Yes, because creationists get all the research grants :P I expect most to all of these organizations are 503c's which puts such info into the public domain. Have you looked up any numbers? Why would it be more profitable writing books in support of Darwinism or any other topic?

How do you explain John Sanford? Cornell geneticist and atheist, founder of two biotech companies, dozens of published papers and patents, his invention of the gene gun is now responsible for most of the world's GM food. Then he becomes a creationist because of the genetic entropy argument we're debating in the other thread. His book on amazon is ranked at 905,000, which means there are that many books that have sold more copies than it.

Here are CMI's tax returns. On page 7 you can see their president gets $71k/year and the other employes listed, with notable names such as Carl Weiland and Don Batten (author of the article being discussed here) are $0. Now I'm definitely no accountant and may be reading this wrong, so I invite you to show me otherwise.

I'm an MD in emergency medicine. Here is a broad list of things to choose from since your post is somewhat vague and I don't know your educational background from general public education (top of list) down to ultra detailed pathology textbooks and texts designed for specific specialties (which is like 12-16 years after high school)....

If you can give me an idea if any of this is near what you're looking for, I can expand that area x 10 easily. Off the top of my head:

1)There is a group who has created what is essentially some of the first medical podcasts and has grown into a massive platform. The original creator has since created a fairly casual podcast called "this won't hurt a bit" - it's an "edutainment" podcast around medical stuff.

http://www.wonthurtabit.com/season-one

2) This is a human physiology textbook (but kind of applies to animals as well), it's basically like a middle-college/university level knowledge base and provides fundamentals of how the body works, I actually used a version of this in my 2nd year of college in a class full of pre-med/vet/biomed researchers

https://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Human-Physiology-Lauralee-Sherwood/dp/0840062257/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2B3Q8XWOX2KJ2&keywords=fundamentals+of+physiology+sherwood&qid=1566022964&s=gateway&sprefix=sherwood+fundamental%2Caps%2C157&sr=8-1

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3) If you're looking for a 1st/2nd year medical student level information in video review format (this is like a review format of the text below in #4):

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-oN4AbdB4jdbFVCHMSrxNg/videos

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4) If you're looking for seriously intense detail at a medical school level (this would be seriously overkill and probably difficult to digest without a college background but you mentioned textbook that goes into specific things):

https://www.amazon.com/Robbins-Cotran-Pathologic-Disease-Pathology/dp/1455726133

This textbook basically explains the basis of most diseases from a pathologic basis. You essentially have to memorize most of this textbook in med school. This is the basis for every specialty of medicine.

5) for your own curiosity, then every specialty basically has one or two major texts for their education, one of EM's happens to be (I do not remotely recommend buying this but if you find something to preview or such it gives you an idea of how far the info wormhole goes): https://www.amazon.com/Tintinallis-Emergency-Medicine-Comprehensive-Study/dp/007179476X/ref=sr_1_2?crid=21G3EWBKYQ2PO&keywords=tintanelli%27s+emergency+medicine&qid=1566022753&s=gateway&sprefix=tintanelli%27s%2Caps%2C153&sr=8-2

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6) Here is an EM youtube person who has been putting out really high quality educational content for years, lots of actual video from patients and explanations of what is going on if you're interested in just like... general random medical stuff in an educational entertainment video format:

https://www.youtube.com/user/lmellick

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Also don't forget there are other fields in medicine such as nursing, paramedic, PAs, bio-med research but I can't really speak towards those well.

I found The Tangled Bank is an excellent introductory college-level textbook. Easy reading, with lots of nice diagrams, pictures and data!

Also, Relics of Eden is a great book, which focuses on the genetic evidence that shows how humans are undeniably linked to other primates (e.g. shared mutations etc), it is kind of narrowly focussed on that side of things, but worth reading, and interestingly written by a Mormon academic (so goes against their general belief).

The fact that we can have this discussion and debate over reason and primal urges is to me proof of the power of our reasoning. That does not mean it is absolute nor are we never incorrect. Fundamentally, we may be disagreeing about human nature. There was and still is a debate on whether human nature is greedy, selfless, or a mixture. I tend to side more on humans, on average, being good. There is a recent book by Yale professor Nicholas A. Christakis titled Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society, which attempts to argue that natural selection pre-wires us for peaceful co-existence.

As for the desire to eat, as I mentioned, humans are able to choose not to eat. They, of course, cannot suppress the desire. You may have heard of the event that occurred in Pavlovsk Experimental Station during WWII. 12 scientists died of starvation while being surrounded by edible berries and seeds in order to protect the valuable collection for genetic variation and scientific knowledge. By explaining greed as genetics and protective nature as genetics, this explanation has explained nothing at all, at least to me. In other words, for genetics to be both altruistic and selfish does not get into the underlying substance. Again, this is the tendency towards over-reduction. I believe inexperienced researchers and scholars tend to over-reduce the world down to their respective fields, viewing the world in overly chemical terms, economics terms, biological terms, historical terms, and etc.

We are also dancing around the topic of free will. If I have gathered correctly, we disagree on this topic as well. For me, as long as a being is sentient and can choose between various actions, then it has free will. Just because there are physical limitations does not mean there is no free will. You may believe the opposite. That is, you may be firmly in the deterministic camp--at least biological determinism.

Well, unfortunately it sounds like you want two different things -- a "deeper" dive into thermo with more abstraction, and an elaborated look at applications to biology. It would be hard to find a text that really gets you both, I think.

I can't help with the biology thing, but a deeper abstract look at thermo would definitely be covered in Thermal Physics by Kittel: https://www.amazon.com/Thermal-Physics-2nd-Charles-Kittel/dp/0716710889

This book starts from the deepest most abstract foundation of thermodynamics, a field called Statistical Mechanics. Are you familiar with that topic at all? If not this text may be a tad challenging. It is also very abstract. Many find it to be a boring book but I find it challenging, interesting, and rewarding.

link studies on what...genetic component to altruism? here, read this:
https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Richard-Dawkins/dp/1491514507

IQ and genetics?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/10/genes-dont-just-influence-your-iq-they-determine-how-well-you-do-school
http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/v20/n1/full/mp2014105a.html
Deary IJ, Johnson W, Houlihan LM. Genetic foundations of human intelligence. Hum Genet2009; 126: 215–232. | Article | PubMed | ISI |
Plomin R, DeFries JC, Knopik VS, Neiderhiser JM. Behavioral genetics, 6th edn. Worth Publishers: New York, 2013.
https://www.amazon.com/IQ-Wealth-Nations-Richard-Lynn/dp/027597510X
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121002150027.htm

I dunno...do you need more sources? This is a good intro reading, there are many thousands more studies...

they all contradict the politically correct narrative, and they all suggest that importing 3rd world immigrants into wealthy nations is an excellent way to destroy those nations. This is not controversial speculation...for actual scientists it is a known fact. This should make you feel a bit uncomfortable...unless you live in israel or china of course.

There are not three major groups of humans. This information is outdated; it does not take modern genetics into account.

Based on recent genetic research, if we were to split the world population into a handful of major lineages, there would probably be just two still living today: the San people and everyone else (Asians, Aborigines, Caucasians, Native Americans, the vast majority of Africans, Polynesians, etc.). (If you want to learn more about this, The Journey of Man by Spencer Wells is a good start.)

But within these two groups, there are still a great many only-distantly related lineages. Africans in particular are an exceptionally diverse group of people—which makes sense, because Africa has been populated for the longest period of time by far, which means there have been many more generations of people there diversifying. There are African lineages that are more closely related to Asians and Caucasians than they are to other African lineages. This makes sense if you think about it; by the time the ancestors of Asians and Caucasians crossed into the new continents, Africa would have already been well populated (perhaps overpopulated, driving these migrations), and only a few African families would have spawned the Asians/Caucasians, not all of them.

As you can see, the Fula people have very different facial features and skull shapes from the Mongo people, who are distinct from the Igbo people, and so on. Don't be fooled by the similar skin colors; dark skin color is an adaptation to the sunny conditions in Africa and does not imply genetic relatedness.

And just because people make this error a lot, I want to point out that African Americans do not represent Africans, and any study that attempts to make this connection is flawed. African Americans are derived almost entirely from a small proportion of the African population—and from a relatively small corner of that vast continent—plus Caucasians to a lesser extent (white slave owners often fathered children with their female slaves, and plenty of intermixing has occurred since then). Africa is drastically more genetically diverse than that.

(Edited to fix link)

I'm no expert in systems biology (I am just interested in it) and I have no idea about the answers to your questions, but I can suggest you a very nice book about systems biology..https://www.amazon.com/Systems-View-Life-Unifying-Vision/dp/1107011361

Also, the book is available for free online if you can find it ;)

In the episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Nicholas Christakis about his new book, Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society.

Nicholas Christakis is a sociologist and physician known for his research in the areas of social networks and biosocial science. He is the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University, where he directs the Human Nature Lab. His books include Death Foretold: Prophecy and Prognosis in Medical Care and Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives (coauthored with James H. Fowler). He was on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2009.

Website: humannaturelab.net

Twitter: @NAChristakis

If you haven't yet read them, Dawkin's The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype are excellent overviews of the unexpected intricacies of the operation of evolution, with the target audience of the educated layperson. 40 and 30 years old, respectively, but still hold up. Well worth your time if you're interested in such things!

> You didn't answer the second part of the question.

Micro-evolution is small changes within a species. For example the finch's beaks in the Galapagos Islands. This part I agree with. Macro is everything else. For example single cell organisms evolving and giving us the diversity of life we see today.

> Let me ask you this, you believe in an old earth. You do not believe in evolution is responsible for the changes in "kinds" over time.

See above.

> We have evidence of living organisms on the earth for the past 3.7 billion years or so. During this time there are many different species that arose, the died out. Do you believe that these species are just spontaneously appearing every X number of years?

You're asking me to guess? Okay :-)

My answer is sorta. While mutations allow adaptability they are also harmful [1]. After enough harmful mutations a species will become extinct. This means that in order for a species to evolve new information must be injected into the genome, or the DNA needs re-engineered. This is at the hand of the designer. What's the best way for a designer to do this? Some predict the designer would use retroviruses to insert genes that cause the spawning of a new species, or whatever the designer wants. Note that human designers already use RV's to insert foreign genes into the genomes of genetically modified foods.

[1] The primary thing that is crushing to the evolutionary theory is this fact. Of the random mutations that do occur, and have manifested traits in organisms that can be measured, at least 999,999 out of 1,000,000 (99.9999%) of these mutations to the DNA have been found to produce traits in organisms that are harmful and/or fatal to the life-form having the mutation! (Sanford; Genetic Entropy page 38)


Sanford; Genetic Entropy p.38 http://www.amazon.com/Genetic-Entropy-Mystery-Genome-Sanford/dp/1599190028

A lot of the GC textbooks will be pretty pricey, since they're textbooks lol.

A Guide to Genetic Counseling, is like the Genetic Counseling bible. It's pretty expensive, but I think a lot of programs use it, so it probably wouldn't go to waste. I think it's also available online in a journal, but I don't remember which one since I have the physical copy.

Ethical Dilemmas in Genetics and Genetic Counseling, I read this before interviewing and found it really interesting. It's only $40 and has some case examples and makes you think a lot about how the field functions. I haven't taken the ethics course yet, so I'm not sure if my program uses it.

Facilitating the Genetic Counseling Process: A Practice Manual, we also use this one a lot. It's available online from Springer if you have access to a journal subscription.

The Red Limit: The Search for the Edge of the Universe by Timothy Ferris and Strange Matters: Undiscovered Ideas at the Frontiers of Space and Time by Tom Siegfried are great reads on cosmology and physics.

Martin Gardner is always good. The New Ambidextrous Universe: Symmetry and Asymmetry from Mirror Reflections to Superstrings is on physics.

You may also be interested in Chaos by James Gleick and the books of Richard Feynman.

Kittel - Thermal Physics.

My favorite undergraduate physics text, is beautifully and simply written with intuitive examples and problems that are easy to relate to. Explains entropy (from a quantum POV) on the first page. You don't need a teacher (my prof at berkeley who taught this class was god awful) for this subject: you need to be open-minded and patient. Work your way through with discipline and you'll see the pay-offs.

Remember that there are a few interpretations of entropy: ask a chemist and you'll initially get a different answer than a classical physicist, who will initially give you a different answer than a quantum physicist. Eventually, they will all agree that they are saying the same thing, but it takes some working.

http://www.amazon.com/Thermal-Physics-2nd-Charles-Kittel/dp/0716710889
Note, you don't need to get the second edition, or a new book. Go pick your self up a nice used copy of the first edition for like 25 bucks, or the second (if you want) for like 60.

Alternatively, you MAY be able to find it here in the first two non-sponsored links on this page: http://rapidlibrary.com/index.php?q=kittel+thermal+physics+solution

BUT that is probably piracy or evil or something and I don't condone or suggest you do it at all. I just put the link there for your information, so you know.

The fact that arguably the greatest scientific human achievement to date was half a century ago back in 1969 (i.e. putting a man on the moon and bringing him back alive and well) and furthermore achieved with less computing power than a single smartphone today kind of supports the idea that we are, as a species, indeed becoming less intelligent. The handful of geniuses that may still linger or lurk among us are likely in environments less suitable for them to really excel.

I recommend neurosciences. A good book will do the trick. this book seems like a swell choice. https://www.amazon.com/Optics-Science-Vision-Vasco-Ronchi/dp/0486668460/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1522255720&sr=1-5&keywords=dover+neuroscience&dpID=41BP29CAP2L&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch

also here
https://www.amazon.com/New-Ambidextrous-Universe-Reflections-Superstrings/dp/0486442446/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1522255720&sr=1-3&keywords=dover+neuroscience&dpID=5160gAyCoYL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch

I think you have touched on something very important. There is a really good book on this called Facts Can't Speak for Themselves by the nationally known and respected jury consultant Eric Oliver.

His theory is that we are hardwired for story telling and that we have to frame facts that can be conveyed in a narrative manner that touches the stories that people have internally. It is a method for tapping into a type of confirmation bias. Essentially, framing facts in a narrative in such a way that we are preaching to the choir even if they disagree with us. But, you have to listen to discover the song they are singing.

I think if we all learn to listen more to discover the stories that people have internally, it opens a door to communicate with people through story telling to get our points across no matter what it is.

Most people operate in an analysis fact free world and make decisions based on the narratives they have constructed from personal experience. This is a mental shortcut in all of our brains that allow us to survive and not drown in the incredible amounts of data we experience from birth to death. It allows us to survive by deciding what is an immediate issue, like the danger of rattle snake right next to you rather than a lion half a mile away.

Then the use of language is how we survive as a group by relating stories to other people. Those stories propagate and rise in importance in how is is perceived to aid in survival. If we can connect and share experiences, we can move people in our direction.

Two other books worth reading is Dawking, The Selfish Gene and The Culture Code by Clotaire Rapaille.

I enjoyed the book Survival of the Sickest by Sharon Moalem. It's all about the evolution of diseases and using that information to diagnose and cure them. It was surprisingly gripping!

The gold standard in emergency medicine is Tintinalli's (https://www.amazon.com/Tintinallis-Emergency-Medicine-Comprehensive-Internal/dp/007179476X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1504698322&sr=8-1&keywords=emergency+medicine+study+guide) although it is a massive book both in size and in depth.

Physiological medicine (https://www.amazon.com/Physiological-Medicine-Clinical-Approach-Physiology/dp/0070381283/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1504698440&sr=1-1&keywords=%22physiological+medicine%22) is amazing.

Pathophysiology of Disease is also good (https://www.amazon.com/Pathophysiology-Disease-Introduction-Clinical-Medicine/dp/0071806008/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1504698512&sr=1-1&keywords=pathophysiology+of+disease).

Check out this book. It is fascinating and one of my faves of all time. Easy to read and understand too if you aren't very keen on science speak. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0060889667 sorry for the long link, I'm on mobile.

> Where is the SCIENCE that shows beneficial mutations outweigh negative ones?

https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Species-150th-Anniversary/dp/0451529065

And if you want more:

https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Popular-Science/dp/0192860925

https://www.amazon.com/Extended-Phenotype-Oxford-Landmark-Science-ebook/dp/B01K2BLPN2/

> Who discovered it?

I already told you: Charles Darwin. And then Richard Dawkins filled in the most important details. (That's actually the reason Dawkins is famous, BTW, not because he's an atheist.)

Have you actually read "Origin of Species"? Or "The Selfish Gene"? Or "The Extended Phenotype"?

> He had virtually nothing original to offer

Then why do you think he gets all the credit?

It's possible that the credit should go to Blyth. I don't know, I'm not a historian. But either way, it doesn't matter. Someone discovered evolution, and if it wasn't Darwin then it was Blyth, and if it wasn't Blyth it was someone else. What difference does it make who it was? It's like arguing over whether Samuel Pierpont Langley was really the first to demonstrate powered flight and not the Wright brothers. Airplanes are going to fly either way.

> Darwin knew nothing of genetics

That's like saying that Einstein knew nothing of relativity.

The fact that parents pass traits on to their offspring has been known since ancient times. Not only did Darwin know of genetics, he actually uses the word "genetics" in Origin of Species!


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Posted by: l****r

> Where is the SCIENCE that shows beneficial mutations outweigh negative ones?

https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Species-150th-Anniversary/dp/0451529065

And if you want more:

https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Popular-Science/dp/0192860925

https://www.amazon.com/Extended-Phenotype-Oxford-Landmark-Science-ebook/dp/B01K2BLPN2/

> Who discovered it?

I already told you: Charles Darwin. And then Richard Dawkins filled in the most important details. (That's actually the reason Dawkins is famous, BTW, not because he's an atheist.)

Have you actually read "Origin of Species"? Or "The Selfish Gene"? Or "The Extended Phenotype"?

> He had virtually nothing original to offer

Then why do you think he gets all the credit?

It's possible that the credit should go to Blyth. I don't know, I'm not a historian. But either way, it doesn't matter. Someone discovered evolution, and if it wasn't Darwin then it was Blyth, and if it wasn't Blyth it was someone else. What difference does it make who it was? It's like arguing over whether Samuel Pierpont Langley was really the first to demonstrate powered flight and not the Wright brothers. Airplanes are going to fly either way.

> Darwin knew nothing of genetics

That's like saying that Einstein knew nothing of relativity.

The fact that parents pass traits on to their offspring has been known since ancient times. Not only did Darwin know of genetics, he actually uses the word "genetics" in Origin of Species!

It's symbolism. Period. Did God actually remove a physical rib and mold it like silly putty into the shape of a woman? That's just ridiculous. There are plenty of faithful mormons who "believe" in evolution. Check our Relics of Eden by Daniel Fairbanks. Fairbanks is the former dean of undergraduate education at BYU. In his book, he doesn't talk at all about mormonism, but he basically shows, using DNA evidence, that evolution of man is supported by science.

Kittel and Kroemer! This is a great Stat Mech book starting from first principles that I just had a semester of. You'll be able to derive all sorts of gas laws.

http://www.amazon.com/Thermal-Physics-Edition-Charles-Kittel/dp/0716710889

Not OP, just helping out with some formatting (and links!) because I like these suggestions.

> 1) The Magic Of Reality - Richard Dawkins
>
> 2) The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins
>
> 3)A Brief History Of Time - Stephen Hawking
>
> 4)The Grand Design - Stephen Hawking
>
> 4)Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari (Any Book By Daniel Dennet)
>
> 5)Enlightenment Now - Steven Pinker
>
> 6)From Eternity Till Here - Sean Caroll (Highly Recommended)
>
> 7)The Fabric Of Cosmos - Brian Greene (If you have good mathematical understanding try Road To Reality By Roger Penrose)
>
> 8)Just Six Numbers - Martin Reese (Highly Recommended)

Sit spots are an incredible exercise. Enjoy!

You also may want to read Richard Louv's The Last Child in the Woods together. Another one is Fritjof Capra's The Systems View of Life which is less psych and more just about systems thinking and encompasses concepts that are directly and indirectly related.

Not specifically about the Caucasian migration, but The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey is an interesting read on human migration in general. Or you could check out Journey of Man video

>one huge evil being with a bunch of disposable bodies

That being is called a meme. Intersectional social justice is one of the most contagious, and in some senses effective, memes of all time.

If you're interested in reading about such a thing, check out https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Anniversary-Landmark-Science/dp/0198788606

You should read Dawkins's book

https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Anniversary-Landmark-Science/dp/0198788606/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1510064662&sr=8-2&keywords=dawkins&dpID=41BSMHjI39L&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch

and you will be amazed how close you are.

https://www.amazon.com/Relics-Eden-Powerful-Evidence-Evolution/dp/1616141603

This is one of my favorite books on evolution. It is written by a Genetics professor who is also a Christian.

"Rosenallie" as FOAMcast suggest it :)
Start with https://www.elsevier.com/books/rosens-emergency-medicine-concepts-and-clinical-practice/walls/978-0-323-35479-0
And then proceed to Tintinalli's book
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/007179476X/ref=pd_aw_sbs_14_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=8JGCGZ3GQVR3DWPBQSM7&dpPl=1&dpID=51o4olrw4hL
Your library must have access to one of those.

Relics of Eden: The Powerful Evidence of Evolution in Human DNA written by Daniel J. Fairbanks formerly a dean of Undergraduate Education at BYU.

Wow! The eloquence and complexity of your counter-argument leaves me blindsided!
Without sarcasm or satire, I strongly recommend you read (and if you haven't done so, you're doing a poor job of being an atheist) The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. It will illuminate the answer that I gave (perhaps more than "Nope. It isn't") to this question.

At Our Wits' End: Why We're Becoming Less Intelligent and What it Means for the Future (Societas) https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/184540985X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_sw.1Cb3DSQY2F

first heard about it here. Interesting book and ideas.

Survival of the Sickest is a surprisingly accessible piece of non-fiction that covers a lot of modern diseases and their connections to increased survival rates. Two conditions it covered that I remember off the top of my head are cystic fibrosis and hemachromatosis. Some of the conclusions in the book seemed flimsy, but I believe it had a bibliography in the back for further research and fact-checking.

https://www.amazon.com/At-Our-Wits-End-Intelligent/dp/184540985X/ref=nodl_

Ed Dutton has a youtube channel as well where he has a few long form conversations with Michael Woodley among his other videos.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EHEltPuFelQ

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kLQGLXJutfU

>I want some sort of rhyme and reason for creatures to exist where they do, and I'm not too familiar with evolution and how it would factor into this.

I think to some degree you need to "write what you know", that is, write about subjects you're familiar with. However, a bit of research can buff you up quite a bit.

Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene is a transformative popular science book that explains why form follows function, and it's a surprisingly quick read.


Have a look through Dougal Dixon's After Man, The New Dinosaurs, etc. for inspiration. Also, browse Deviant Art and shamelessly steal the ideas of artists creating alien lifeforms.

You should read Survival of the Sickest by Sharon Moalem and Jonathan Prince. It has other explanations of how certain genetic variations helped populations survive.

Interesting reading on the same topic.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/184540985X/

This is the book my program requires https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/007179476X/ref=dp_ob_neva_mobile

Along with recommending the ACLS handbook

You should read the thermal text written by Kittel and Kromer
http://www.amazon.com/Thermal-Physics-2nd-Charles-Kittel/dp/0716710889

We haven't gotten smarter.

Our genes are selfish...

There is a book about diseases and how they benefitted humans throughout history.


Survival of the Sickest

From one of the comments:
Dr. Moalem elegantly explains why medical conditions that are deemed to be diseases today often helped our ancestors survive and reproduce in difficult environments. Take hemochromatosis, a hereditary condition that causes iron to accumulate in a person's internal organs, eventually leading to death. Although the gene that causes hemochromatosis was once thought to be rare, research completed in 1996 found that it's actually surprisingly common. Why wouldn't such a terrible disease have been "bred out" of our species long ago? The answer is that hemochromatosis reduces the amount of iron available to iron-loving bacteria, such as the bubonic plague that depopulated Europe in the mid-1300s. A person living in the Middle Ages with the hemochromatosis gene would have eventually died from iron build up, but in the meantime would have have had a smaller chance of dying from the plague and other iron-loving infections--in an age when few people lived past the age of 50, the disease resistance conferred by hemochromatosis far outweighed the disadvantage that would have materialized if the person carrying the gene had lived to old age. People with hemochromatosis reproduced and passed the gene one to their heirs; those without it died of the plague, without children.

no , just open-minded, what about you ?



EDIT:

here's a quick selection of some of the books from my library list. have you seen/read at least 1 of those?? ;-)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Margins-Reality-Consciousness-Physical-World/dp/1936033003/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Holographic-Universe-Michael-Talbot/dp/0586091718/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Synchronicity-Coincidence-Change-Unlocking-Your/dp/1601631839/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/WILLIAM-WALKER-ATKINSON-Ultimate-Collection-ebook/dp/B01CKHEABK/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Reality-Consciousness-Existence-Paradigm/dp/1590793919/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Course-Miracles-Foundation-Inner-Peace/dp/1883360269/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brief-History-Everything-20th-Anniversary/dp/1611804523/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Biology-Belief-Unleashing-Consciousness-Miracles/dp/1781805474/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Selfish-Gene-Anniversary-Landmark-Science/dp/0198788606/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bhagavad-Easwarans-Classics-Indian-Spirituality/dp/1586380192/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Perceptual-Intelligence-Illusion-Misperception-Self-Deception/dp/160868475X/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brain-Story-You-David-Eagleman/dp/1782116613/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seeing-Myself-Out-body-Experiences/dp/1472137361/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seat-Soul-Gary-Zukav/dp/147675540X/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brain-That-Changes-Itself-Frontiers/dp/014103887X/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Breaking-Habit-Being-Yourself-Create/dp/1848508565/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Works-Swami-Vivekananda-ebook/dp/B073GYW7W2/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eye-Which-Nothing-Hidden/dp/178180768X/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Consciously-Creating-Circumstances-Winslow-Plummer-ebook/dp/B005NWJKDI/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Essential-Writings-Emerson-Library-Classics/dp/0679783229/

How knowledgeable are you ?

Archives for the links in comments:

• By fre3k (amazon.com): http://archive.fo/LoAEA
  
• By missbp2189 (reddit.com): http://archive.fo/dL5s7
  
  
• By missbp2189 (reddit.com): http://archive.fo/9vdtm
  
• By NeoNGANGSTA (knowyourmeme.com): http://archive.fo/tfo7Z
  
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If you look at the link I gave, there's a number of specific studies where they look at one specific problem in college-level physics. If you look at the one of your choice, you'll likely see that after they studied the problem and how students respond to it, the approach changed substantially. The careful studies they do requires a lot of time, so they don't come out with new editions of their text every year. In the case of the University of Washington, once they have a new version of their material, they supplement the classroom with handouts of the new text.

There's no need for hyperbole. Yes, new textbooks in the US are quite expensive. Do you have any source for the claim that any substantial amount of textbooks which are used at the college level publish new editions every year? That frequency disagrees with my experience.

I can name some texts which have had absurdly small changes to them. E.g. Statistical Physics by Kittel and Kroemer. They released a 2nd version of their second edition with only a couple pages about BEC and the Greenhouse Effect. But I have also seen textbooks which vary greatly between editions and have a long shelf lifetime.

You appear to neither be aware of this book (http://www.amazon.de/The-Selfish-Gene-Richard-Dawkins/dp/1491514507) nor the definition of a meme (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme).

Furthermore, which right would that be? The right to lie in public with the intent to mislead people? I am sorry, this right does not exist in Europe, therefore this also no rights violation.

Errr, why not just label them as sort of mistakes of nature, by definition they won't directly propagate their genes, and most of the ones we talk about won't help propagate genes they share with their relatives.

(Which is one reason a "gay gene" could have survival value; if you want a great introduction to this, read The Selfish Gene, you will understand a lot more about the world afterwords. Also where the meme meme was launched. :-)

Eugenics is entirely unnecessary in a sane society where these people can be ignored, kept in the closet enough to not cause many problems (well, aside from Catholic Church...), or institutionalized if they cause enough problems. The problem is the Left is now using them as shock troopers in World War T, now that they've used up gays having achieved "gay marriage" and gays in favor of Muslims who are dedicated to preventing them from committing suicide by throwing themselves off high buildings, but who are just not very good about it. But if our society was sane, we wouldn't have made a fatal epidemic disease a civil right in the 1980s.

There is actually a genetic theory about that. It says that as time roles on with new generations, each generation sees a decay in the genetic code, i.e. each new generation is dumber (in theory) than the last.


Here's a book written on it: http://www.amazon.com/Genetic-Entropy-Mystery-Genome-Sanford/dp/1599190028

Evolution is not a one-way street of "progress to better". It is just adaptation, nothing more. Yes you know, you think. But adaptation works equally way in the other direction.

The consequences of "all out war" among species is a full concentration of all efforts on just that "war". You will NOT get better. You may actually LOSE. Sure, you'll be able to withstand some diseases. I recommend the book "Survival of the sickest" (#). Each time you gain something, you lose something else in the process! If your body needs to fight diseases much harder other things will suffer. The result of such selection will NOT be some "super-man". Look around you - we ARE the result of such ruthless selection.

And by the way (an aside), if you believe the fairy tale that selection has stopped and we now live much longer because of medicine in his lecture "Return of the Microbes" Professor William Ayliffe, he made an aside about life-expectancy in 19th century England:

> Now, look at the modern day. Look where cancer is now. But, guess what? We still die! And what is interesting, if you take out the childhood mortality, the Victorian person between 1850 and 1880 lived slightly longer, if he was a male, than you do today. So, your life expectancy at five, in England, as a male, in 1870 was slightly longer than it is now, which is an extraordinary statistic, slightly shorter then if you were a female.

So our biggest achievement for life-expectancy is lowering child mortality. The pills for the older generation don't seem to do that much (for life-expectancy, they may still be good for quality of life).

---
(#) I have read the most highly rated negative review on that page and I have no idea what book it is talking about. It seems the reviewer has taken issue with some minor side-issue that I can't even remember having read. So he may be right about that, but as I said, I can't even remember it was in the book. So while I usually like those negative reviews more, this one is completely bogus. So read the book and decide for yourself based on its actual contents. The comments to that review are completely insane, they have nothing at all to do with the book. People are just going off on their own discussions, ignoring that it's supposed to be about that book. And I followed that review's advice and googled tha author. The anti-blog posts I read had not a single substantive argument, they were all ad-hominem attacks. So the author may be all they call him, but none of the links I followed to see their prove bothered to show any. Besides, having read that book some time ago I'm quite baffled what the big deal is? Those "anti" voices are so extremely venomous, I have no clue what got under their skin. It doesn't look like scientific well-reasoned argumentation is their strong suite.
Here's one of those anti-voices. What am I supposed to make of that??? And again: The things they criticize may be right, but they are no substantial part of that book (hey, I read it). So if something is substantially wrong with it, why do they attack points I can't even remember he made?