Ignorit: Ask Dr. Thomas

mico saudad · Post by **mico saudad** » Tue Mar 11, 2008 10:26 pm

After being told one too many times that I should 'be a sex therapist' or 'start an advice column' I've decided to test the waters.

http://ignorit.blogspot.com/

Until I start getting actual questions I'll be posting answers to questions that friends have asked me over the years. So if you have any questions that have been burning in the back of your mind here's an opportunity to air it. Complete anonymity assured.

Mostly I'm looking to cater to the 'I'm a little quirky and don't seem to get much from typical advice columns' crowd.

As I'm new at the whole publicity thing any advice on that could be helpful too. Hey the guy offering advice is also asking for advice!

Billy's Little Trip · Tue Mar 11, 2008 11:31 pm

Are you a real doctor, or just good at helping people?

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 12:08 am

Can you spell "therapist" without spelling "rapist?" ("therapy practitioner" is cheating)

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 12:10 am

Hey, when did you get your PhD (congrats!) and postdoc (congrats!)? I thought you were working at some sort of bioinformatics place.

adrift in a draft · Post by **adrift in a draft** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 12:22 am

dear DR Gene Ome,

these are things I wonder - and although they suggest topics of contention they are in no way meant to be disrespectful of any group. that is just what makes them hard questions to get answered.

If my little toe, tonsils, and glossery are all vestigial and no longer needed, are there any brain structures that I no logner need? (Like my "damn that wilderbeast makes me want to do wind sprints" lobe)

If there is a gene that predisposes one to homosexuality wouldn't it get selected against in natural selection?

if I park on the driveway and drive on the .... ohh never mind

If the government subsidises single mothers over a long enough time won't that cause natural selection to favor promiscious males who abondon their children?

is ameloid angiopathy mutualy exclusive from alshiemers or a coindicator of the same condition that medicine hasn't named?

Have you stopped beating your wife?

Hoblit · Post by **Hoblit** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 6:13 am

adrift in a draft wrote:dear DR Gene Ome,

If the government subsidises single mothers over a long enough time won't that cause natural selection to favor promiscious males who abondon their children?

This one is already proven correct.
Its almost desired by both parties at this point.

adrift in a draft wrote: Have you stopped beating your wife?

Have you told your mom that you're gay?

HeuristicsInc · Post by **HeuristicsInc** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 6:50 am

adrift in a draft wrote: If my little toe... vestigial and no longer needed

I seem to remember reading that those that have lost their little toes in accidents or whatever have a lot more trouble balancing on their feet than those of us with full complements of toes, so I don't think it is vestigial.
-bill

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 8:54 am

Yeah, supposedly the only two toes that even matter are the big one and the littlest one.

Rabid Garfunkel · Post by **Rabid Garfunkel** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 9:22 am

adrift in a draft wrote: Have you stopped beating your wife?

I've also heard "When did you stop beating your wife?" Was just talking with my wife about that ambush question, actually. Weird, heh.

ABSaudarian wrote: ...advice and stuff...

At the PDX show I'll introduce you to my wife, who does this sort of thing. She may be able to give some assistance.

mico saudad · Post by **mico saudad** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 11:41 am

BLT wrote: Are you a real doctor?

Yes, and I have Arnold Swarzennegger's signature on my degree. how cool is that?! (He's the president of the UC system).

fluffy wrote: the-rapist

I do a mean Sean Connery impersonation

adrift wrote: vestigial things

Wow there are so many things I want to respond to about this so I'll just make a couple of points:

I prefer to think of vestigial things as opportunities for evolution to find some new cool function. Vestigial things that don't have immediate uses can aquire mutations and you can get interesting new things happeneing without immediately affecting the fitness of the organism. Then later when your appendix evolves into a ballast and allows you to sink or float in the water as sea levels rise you will be that much better off.

Think of any organism as a giant bundle of backup parachutes. For anything that it does there is almost certainly a method of getting around it. Those backups may not be in use every moment, but they are by no means vestigial. Extra toes, extra kidneys, extra brain matter. Not vestigial but a little maleable evolutionarily. And all of this tinkering will be subject to the changing demands of the world around the organism.

adrift wrote: genetics of homosexuality and natural selection

The answer is one of two things: 1.) yes it is selected against, but the mutations that cause it must occur at an extremely high rate to have so many gay people for so far back in history. 2.) no it is not necessarily selected against. I doubt scenario number 1 because of the mathematics involved.

So why might homosexuality not be selected against? There are two situations I can suggest: 1.) Some people sneeze when they look at bright light. This is because of anatomical constraints that put the optical nerves in proximity to certain nerves involved in the sneeze response. There's no benefit or lack of benefit to it, it's just an interesting byproduct of how our biology is put together. So gay or straight may be similar to sun-sneezer or not 2.) It's possible that homosexuality actually provides a direct benefit to society, and natural selection can act on higher levels than just the individual. Social insects have peculiar behavior that may not seem beneficial to anyone if you look at them alone, but somehow their individual behavior has been selected such that they perform together in very adaptive ways. There may be a benefit to society that is easy to overlook when you look at it from one perspective.

Furthermore, the whole gay *or* straight thing is just plain wrong. It's not a light switch, there are all sorts of greys and interesting things going on with human sexuality. There is also the interplay between innate desire, human will, and happenstance. 'Gay' men have fathered children with women. 'Lesbian' women have married just to be able to have a baby. There are people who are bisexual but only when the moon is full and the person they're attracted to has a Bentley. The human mind likes to cluster, but biology is never quite so easy to divide up in neat piles. That would destroy all of the lines to the backup parachutes.

adrift wrote: Alzheimer's question

Amyloid proteins can form clumps in the blood vessels of the brain. These are called cerebral amyloid angiopathies (CAA). One study showed that 25% of people with Alzheimer's also have CAA. So you can get one without getting the other. The reality is that there are different types of CAAs, some types that are heritable some that seem more random. Same with Alzheimer's. Aside from these heritable types to which we can pin down mutations in certain genes as the causes, it seems that the two diseases are distinct but share extremely similar risk factors. That's the limit of my knowlege on the subject. If you're interested I can do some research and find out more.

anti-m · Post by **anti-m** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 1:13 pm

I just wanted to put in a plug for this AWESOME book -- it is an evolutionary biology book disguised as sex advice.

And hey! It addresses such questions as "what evolutionary purpose does homosexuality serve?"

Definitely a must-read... especially for you, Sean!

Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex

by Olivia Judson

mico saudad · Post by **mico saudad** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 6:26 pm

yeah! I'd been meaning to read her book. For those that haven't heard of it, she details all of the wonderful variety of getting-it-on that's done by all known organisms.

It's hard sometimes to make inferences about human behaviour from that of other organisms (slightly different rules can mean completely different functionality for very similar behaviors) but if you're cautious I think you can learn a lot.

thanks all for the input

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 7:03 pm

Regarding the genetics of homosexuality, there is some evidence (although not particularly strong) that a lot of aspects of sexual orientation, gender identity, personality, etc. are all a result of what hormones are prevalent at what stage in the foetal development, i.e. there is no genetic component at all aside from how genes code for the general aspect of things but everything else is up to chance. Sort of like how our genes code for there to be fingerprints, but the exact prints are an emergent pattern of those genes. This is also why cloned cats (especially splotched ones) generally look nothing like their source cat, because while the various genes for the traits are there, they only code for the trait as a whole, not for the specific expression of the trait.

So, our genes code for the ability to have a sexual orientation, but what the exact orientation IS depends on things that aren't strictly controlled by the genes.

Similarly, some of us don't have much in the way of a sexual orientation at all. I am basically asexual in that I don't really feel much of a sexual attraction to anyone to begin with, and while asexuality is generally believed to be much less common than homosexuality, some surveys indicate that perhaps asexuality is just as common but unrecognized as such, i.e. "I'm not attracted to women so I must be gay." Clearly this isn't a trait which would be very successful at propagating naturally, so there must be something else at play.

Märk · Post by **Märk** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 7:35 pm

fluffy: totally serious question here- do you get horny? (putting aside orientation altogether)

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 7:58 pm

On occasion. Why, do you?

Caravan Ray · Post by **Caravan Ray** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 8:15 pm

anti-m wrote:I just wanted to put in a plug for this AWESOME book -- it is an evolutionary biology book disguised as sex advice.

And hey! It addresses such questions as "what evolutionary purpose does homosexuality serve?"

Definitely a must-read... especially for you, Sean!

Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex

by Olivia Judson

Do you get Dr Tatiana's TV show over there? It is great

Märk · Post by **Märk** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 8:21 pm

All the time. The reason I asked is, on these occasions, are you horny for women or men? (or other species/inanimate objects/other)

I am intrigued by this 'asexual' label. Not trying to be creepy or an asshole, it's all in the spirit of learning something new.

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 8:31 pm

That really isn't any of your business, and anyway I believe my prior response already covered that territory.

Märk · Post by **Märk** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 8:33 pm

fair enough.

mico saudad · Post by **mico saudad** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 9:33 pm

Just like there are varying degrees of gay or straight, fluffy is absolutely right that there are varying degrees of sexuality as a whole. It's not perfectly clear to what degree sexual differences of any sort are are genetic, 'epigenetic' (the twins are different phenomenon), environmental, or psychological. At this point I wouldn't put any faith whatsoever in any single study I've seen except to say that it is complex. And complexity means that it's likely to be an interplay between these forces.

A tendency towards asexuality is not rare but I believe this to be an oversimplification and an underestimate.

anti-m · Post by **anti-m** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 9:45 pm

Caravan Ray wrote:
anti-m wrote:I just wanted to put in a plug for this AWESOME book -- it is an evolutionary biology book disguised as sex advice.

And hey! It addresses such questions as "what evolutionary purpose does homosexuality serve?"

Definitely a must-read... especially for you, Sean!

Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex

by Olivia Judson
Do you get Dr Tatiana's TV show over there? It is great

Really? There's a TV show? No way. I'll have to check the torrents!

Caravan Ray · Post by **Caravan Ray** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 11:17 pm

anti-m wrote:
Caravan Ray wrote:
anti-m wrote:I just wanted to put in a plug for this AWESOME book -- it is an evolutionary biology book disguised as sex advice.

And hey! It addresses such questions as "what evolutionary purpose does homosexuality serve?"

Definitely a must-read... especially for you, Sean!

Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex

by Olivia Judson
Do you get Dr Tatiana's TV show over there? It is great
Really? There's a TV show? No way. I'll have to check the torrents!

http://www.enhancetv.com.au/shop/produc ... 321&page=5

Ignorit: Ask Dr. Thomas

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Ignorit: Ask Dr. Thomas