I had to look it up. If you search Lamarck you find the guy, but the wikipedia page is massive. But searching 'Lamarck theory' brings up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism . TL;DR: inheritance of acquired characteristics.
I mean, it wasn't a horrible theory at the time, and there was even some evidence for it (because the blacksmiths sons were very likely also blacksmiths, and thus also muscular). Even Darwin couldn't explain HOW his theory evolution was actually supposed to function, he basically just said that it did.
Unfortunately, even after we discovered genes, people were still following Lamarck, and it's offshoot, Lysonkoism got a LOT of people killed, despite by then being verifiably false.
There’s also epigenetics, which could be described as a very limited version of Lamarckism that actually holds water. That’s stretching definitions, but it does involve lifestyle conditions in one generation that affect future generations. So far, it’s mostly restricted to things like famine in one generation leading to increased fat storage in future generations, iirc.
interesting
Lamarkism is a basic correlation / causation mix-up to be fair.
So could have been Darwinism before the discovery of the genes.
I mean, that's basically halfway to pokémon evolution already. I'm in.
What happens when the giraffes get over 500m tall?
If it's a cube, I'd have questions before they got to 8m.
If it's 1m², but 500m tall, I'd have ... different questions.
What if the region is just giraffe-shaped?
Then I guess you can fit about 500 tons of giraffe in it.
ChatGPT tells me that a giraffe-shaped region of volume 500 cubic meters would be 27.5m tall.
Im pretty sure I'm not using AI the way the founding fathers would have approved of.
Reminds me of Biotopia! Such a great and hilarious radionovela!! (But only if you understand Spanish)
damn shame i don't speak spanish.. what's it about?
It's a fictional news bulletin that is supposedly only for this small community of mad scientists all living together. And since they all have their over the top projects, it never gets boring. Like, you have the abogato (a cat that is also a lawyer), someone clones themselves way too many times, an artificial intelligence that is making a radio drama about this community but is digging up too many secrets. And hundreds of other funny stories.
Since this is for the benefit of non Spanish speakers, I feel the need to point out that the word "abogato" is a portmanteau of "abogado" (lawyer) and "gato" (cat).
Haha yes, I wasn't sure how much into detail I should go into. And it has been some years so I didn't remember his origin story that well. I guess it was based on Schroedinger's cat, right? Time to listen to it again!
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
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