
The Neanderthal correlation (2008) - Digit-Al
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7194/full/453562a.html
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mabbo
Just to be clear, is this fiction, or a dramatization of reality?

Both would please me, but not knowing which does not.

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skywhopper
Fiction. See the author's website:
[http://www.jeffhecht.com/fiction.html](http://www.jeffhecht.com/fiction.html)

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bjourne
To put it bluntly, the "you can't handle the truth!" bit is because
Neanderthal genome is present in European and Asian populations, but _not_ in
Sub-Saharan African populations. But that analytical intelligence would have
been a "gift" from the Neanderthals, like the article states, is afaik not
backed up by any data.

Here is one interesting TED talk by Svante Pääbo, one of the leading experts
on the Homo Sapiens/Neanderthal link:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/svante_paeaebo_dna_clues_to_our_inn...](http://www.ted.com/talks/svante_paeaebo_dna_clues_to_our_inner_neanderthal)

Edit: eggs on me, I didn't get that the text was fiction

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faitswulff
As per skywhopper's comment
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8607542](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8607542)),
this piece is fictional.

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chestervonwinch
_> ... she smiled so broadly that she looked almost attractive despite her
unkempt red-grey hair and nondescript clothes._

Why is this necessary?

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waterlesscloud
It's necessary. Read the story again and see if you realize why.

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rgrieselhuber
Feeling kind of dull, but I still don't get it...

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jndsn402
The gang gets DNA tested and discover Sheldon is descended from cavemen, while
Penny is related to Einstein! Meanwhile, Leonard and Raj have a run-in with
the building super (Harrison Ford guest stars)

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3solarmasses
I don't understand the appeal of that show. I almost cringe every time I see a
clip, and the popularity suggests that the world actually thinks nerds are
like that.

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TeMPOraL
I watched the first few seasons and really liked them; they resonated with my
inner geek pretty well. Actually, at some point I got quite worried about the
extent to which I can relate to the main characters. I also liked the fact
that I could actually understand the quantum physics jokes that to most people
sounded like "blablabla science blablabla hahaha" ;).

~~~
T-hawk
There's a disconnect in the show's treatment of parts of the characters'
lives, which accounts for the divisive polarity of opinions on it. The show
manages to be both pro-intellectual and anti-intellectual in different areas.

The _professional_ side, the _science_ , is held up with great respect and
considerable accuracy. These guys are doing really neat stuff at the
university and we get to see their enthusiasm and success with it. That's very
cool and appealing and a positive light on STEM professionals that's uncommon
in popular culture.

The _personal_ side, the _geekdom_ , is held up for mockery. The show brings
up comics and science fiction and video games mostly as punching bags for the
girls to trash and feel socially superior. That's the negative vapid
stereotyping that critics complain about.

Whether you like TBBT depends on which of those has more impact on you. If you
like the science and don't mind the anti-geekery, you'll like the show. If the
anti-geekery hits too close to home, you'll hate it.

(Side note, I'm conflicted on whether to participate in this subthread. It's
Reddit-style topic drift on intentionally misinterpreting the submission title
and ignoring its content. But there's good discussion happening here anyway.)

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kyberias
These are wonderful! They recently had a micro-short-story competition (200
chars or less). This was one of the runners up:

"off that switch, Professor! Your time machine can't travel back in time past
the moment of its own creation and instead will trap the Universe in an
endlessly recursive time-like loop! Take your hands"

[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v508/n7494/full/508144a...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v508/n7494/full/508144a.html)

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barbudorojo
Spoiling the joke at the end of the article:

"I don't know how you'll survive when our genes are gone."

The woman has the genes of the Neanderthal that is the mathematic and logic
skills, while the boss has the genes of social intelligence. May the day come
when she pass away, no intelligence will be left, so he will be in trouble.

Edited: Grammar 3 or more times. I have an additional theory, that allow you
to classify yourself, those without Neanderthal genes would never read the
last lines since that is too much to ask to such a social intelligence
creature. (Just want to add my own joke, sorry for that).

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PabloOsinaga
Could this explain the exponential growth in ASD diagnoses we are observing?
(i.e., neardenthal genes are dominante and we are becoming less and less
sapiens as times go by) ?

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barbudorojo
I don't think being an intelligent and logical parent is correlated with
having children with ASD. It could be that nowadays exigent jobs, with long
hours for parents and stress, can contribute to less time for the family and
this one can be a source of disorders.

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6fBliuulVsmTCe8
> I'd always succeeded before; that was why after two decades at the
> university I was department chair and Beth was still a research assistant.

Maybe it's because she is a woman.

~~~
6fBliuulVsmTCe9
I assumed they were both women. Care to point out which part of the text
states otherwise?

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givan
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_accelerated_region_1](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_accelerated_region_1)

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netcan
I have a couple of things I don't understand about the Neaderthal
interbreeding and the Denisovan stuff:

(1) If we interbred, doesn't that mean we're the same species. IE, These were
two subspecies like dogs and wolves. (2) How does the idea of distinct human
populations without Neanderthal DNA work with the genetic bottleneck theory?
Wasn't there a bottleneck after this interbreeding took place>

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Amezarak
I think of it like this: there's not really any such thing as a "species" in
nature. It's an abstraction we developed to make sense of the world. In
reality, organisms exist on a huge continuum composed of individuals which are
more or less genetically similar/related. Often there are huge "chunks"
missing where lines died out or went their separate ways. We arbitrarily
declare that such-and-such collection of organisms between this point and that
point on the continuum are a distinct species. Sometimes, this species can
interbreed with another and even have fertile offspring, but they just don't -
even if they live in the same locale! Sometimes two species are even more
genetically similar than the first example, but they can't interbreed at all.
Sometimes two organisms could interbreed, but it's physically impossible for
some reason (very small dogs and very large dogs) without some kind of
assistance. Sometimes they can, but the offspring is not fertile. And as you
get further and further away on the continuum, the less likely they can
interbreed at all. In nature there's really all kinds of different scenarios
like these and it doesn't necessarily make sense to demarcate the species-line
where we do - but it was done that way for historical reasons or simply
because that's the best we can do with our abstraction.

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guard-of-terra
"There's a gene cluster linked to advanced mathematics skills, information
processing, logic, analytical intelligence, concentration skills,
obsession–compulsion and Asperger's syndrome"

Is there such a gene cluster? I guess that finding such a cluster will be an
enormous discovery on itself.

Otherwise, the plot is pretty obvious. And reeks of New Age mythology.

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tokenadult
Thank you for asking. No, there is no such gene cluster. This fictional story
submitted for our discussion here on Hacker News (I don't like that it was
submitted, really) is much more optimistic about the results of gene
association studies than the actual study results warrant. So far, genome-wide
association studies (GWASes) have proved only that almost any human behavioral
trait of interest is influenced by dozens or even hundreds of genes of small
effect, with unknown interactions among the genes, and most genes still not
detectable with very large sample sizes, because statistical power of GWAS is
weak when gene effect sizes are small, as they always are.

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arbitrage
This would make a great science fiction piece, if elaborated on. The
moralizing at the end, however, was a little heavy-handed.

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sopooneo
The winners create the notion of writing history books.

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happyscrappy
Weird little speculative fiction piece.

From Wikipedia:

Although some populations of modern humans share some nuclear DNA with the
extinct Neanderthals, the two species do not share any mitochondrial DNA,[32]
which in primates is always maternally transmitted. This observation has
prompted the hypothesis that whereas female humans interbreeding with male
Neanderthals were able to generate fertile offspring, the progeny of female
Neanderthals who mated with male humans were either rare, absent or sterile
(in line with Haldane's rule).

While interbreeding is viewed as the most parsimonious interpretation of the
genetic discoveries, the authors point out they cannot conclusively rule out
an alternative scenario, in which the source population of non-African modern
humans was already more closely related to Neanderthals than other Africans
were, due to ancient genetic divisions within Africa.

