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Comment by madethemcry | Hacker News Reader

I first wondered if OP means that first answer with the obscure and horrible programming analogy then I found the real answer by Suzanne Sadedine which is an amazing read.

That was the creepiest part:

Some fetal cells find their way through the placenta and into the mother's bloodstream. They will grow in her blood and organs, and even in her brain, for the rest of her life, making her a genetic chimera

and this is a wonderful summary of evolution:

In other words, it's just the kind of effect natural selection is renowned for: odd, hackish solutions that work to solve proximate problems

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I came across this essay a while back titled "War in the Womb" which brings up game game-theory components to the two systems "fighting".

https://aeon.co/essays/why-pregnancy-is-a-biological-war-bet...

Previously posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8155153

I reposted it before seeing your comment because it has been 4 years. My how time flies.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16464485

I doubt it's all black and white as you tell it: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21185-fetus-donates-s...

If the mother's body leaves fetal cells alone, they have can act as essentially free stem cells, helping repairs.

I forget the exact journal, but women that had like two or three kids, live longer on average than those that didn't.

> women that had like two or three kids, live longer on average than those that didn't

Can't have 3 kids if you died at age of 10.

While that's true, the context of the statement makes it clear that's not what's being discussed at all.

I assume they looked at groups of women, and controlled for partner presence.

Perhaps it was this article -- where analysis of age-50+ members of a particular Amish community showed that lifespan of mothers increases linearly up to 14 children, and increases with later age at last birth:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16510865

(Interesting... it also shows a positive -- but lower/noisier -- effect for fathers as well, so there may be more at work than just stem cells.)

Just a friendly reminder that correlation != causation. Personally, I would bet that what's happening here is that healthier individuals choose to have more children, rather than that having more children increases life span.

Almost.

An evolutionary theory based guess is that healthy long lived individuals are more attractive in the mating arena and therefore have more children.

I think the Amish get married young and then stay married for life, so not sure if attractiveness plays a factor (since more or less everybody gets a mate).

That is an amazing explanation of primate pregnancy and menstruation. Another extremely creepy aspect is how the placenta burrows into the endometrium.

It sounds a lot like tumor angiogenesis, doesn't it? Indeed, the fetus sounds like the alien ones in Alien. An unwanted fetus is rather like an attacker. Especially in light of conflicting selection pressure.

Funny that you should mention tumor angiogenesis. Two of my female friends were diagnosed with Uterine Fibroids [1] in their 30s, and both their doctors said basically the same thing in recommending hysterectomy - paraphrasing:

"The uterus is good for two things, growing babies and growing tumors."

Apparently these are extremely common, and hormonal birth control exacerbates the problem by making the body behave as if it's constantly pregnant. Both of my friends were angry about having been casually prescribed birth control pills as teens without being clearly informed of it increasing the probability of this outcome.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uterine_fibroid

Intuitively, it makes sense. Life and growth are inextricably linked, as are death and destruction. Unrestricted cellular growth leads to cancer/tumors, unrestricted cellular destruction also leads to cancer, but of autoimmune origin.

On the topic of birth control, your Wikipedia links though says that "The incidence of uterine fibroids in Europe is thought to be lower than the incidence in the US."

Since hormonal birth control is much more common in Europe than in the US, that would seem to hint that uterine fibroids are not directly linked to hormonal birth control.

On the contrary, the pill seems to help prevent them instead[1].

When I lived in Canada I was always surprised how much people seemed to fear the pill when it has been something completely normal in Europe for two generations already. I'm still not sure why there is this difference of attitude between the two sides of the Atlantic.

[1]http://www.bmj.com/content/293/6543/359

This is not a topic I have researched one iota. My post was simply sharing what these women shared with me about their experiences with their respective doctors.

However, it takes little effort to find contradictory information on the subject via google:

"Medical practitioners believe and research has recognized the increased levels of estrogen generated by the body preparing for pregnancy and preventative medicines like birth control have a correlation between the cause and effect of uterine fibroids."

"There are two major components known for stimulating the growth of fibroids; estrogen and progesterone. Birth control pills contain both of these elements causing the medical industry to take additional steps in studying the levels of estrogen and the potential rate of fibroid enlargement caused by a women’s use of prescribed birth control pills."

taken from https://fibroids.com/blog/fact-fiction-birth-control-can-cau...

Considering the amount of revenue hormonal birth control generates for pharmaceutical companies, it would not surprise me in the least to discover behaviors resembling the tobacco industry's misinformation campaigns to protect those revenues.

Birth control pills are mostly generic and super cheap. The name brand ones are expensive due to the click wheel package.

I assume, perhaps wrongly, that any prescription drug a large swath of the population is taking continously is a cash cow by multiplication alone.

You are incorrect. I researched DIY HRT for a trans friend of mine. It turns out that in most countries estrogen is so cheap to manufacture, that it is cheaper to manufacture estrogen than it is to replace it with a low-cost alternative. [You can dig https://www.reddit.com/r/TransDIY for sources, this was written from memory]

It's a pure commodity.

I recall when my wife was moved to the generic the out of pocket cost was like $8, which was under the copay. The pharmacist said that the placebo pill that is there for the last days of the cycle was more expensive than the actual drug!

"Global contraceptives market size in 2015 was USD 19.8 billion and is projected to increase at 6.8% CAGR throughout the next seven year timeframe."

"Contraceptive pills is identified to be the most lucrative product segment in the contraceptive drugs market, estimated to grow at a CAGR of 5.3%, from 2016 to 2023. The industry is majorly driven by the presence of favorable government initiatives and regulatory framework."

https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2016/05/19/841462/0/e...

Your blog article does say that under a section called "facts", but it is still nothing more than an unsourced blog with an agenda that might be even more questionable that that of pharmaceutical companies, so I am not going to trust it above a research publication that found birth control pills reduce risk.

Awesome and chilling read. I'm so not sharing this with my wife until after we have our second and final baby in a few weeks. ;)

In other words, it's just the kind of effect natural selection is renowned for: odd, hackish solutions that work to solve proximate problems

Funny, this is industry-accepted programming practice too. I'm going to call it "evolutionary programming" from now on :D.

Arm the teachers?

> I first wondered if OP means that first answer with the obscure and horrible programming analogy

It's also factually wrong.

> Ever heard of the concept of interrupts? Basically these are functions that are executed immediately, whenever a specific condition occurs. These are one of the better ways of responding to a stimulus.

> Now, our body (the female's body) does not have interrupts.

> So what it does it set a while loop and in each while loop it checks for the presence of a fertilized egg.

We do have "interrupts". The brain floods the blood vessels with all kinds of hormones for an immediate call to action all the time. It's called the fear response. We'd be completely screwed if we had to rely on a "while loop" for that: getting run over while crossing the street would be the norm, because we'd lack the impulse to draw our attention away from our thoughts.

In theory, females could spontaneously ovulate when they have sex. Heck, in theory the brain could have evolved to decide whether or not it wants to. Nothing in Suzanne Sadedin's explanation gets in the way of this either. That would be an interesting shift in power balance - it's like the pill, but without hormonal hacks or dependency on external support.

This may be the best example of mansplaining I have ever seen: a tech guy posts a completely unsourced hypothesis as fact, but if you're a nerd with déformation professionnelle, it has a compelling narrative[0]. A woman who is an expert in the matter (PhD in evolutionary biology!) posts a long explanation with sources, the topic is female physiology. Yet which answer is shown first?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9formation_professionnel...

> mansplaining

Don't be sexist. Maybe it's because his answer is shorter and hers exceedlingly long? Or is it because people like analogies (even wrong ones) more than scientific references?

What you are talking about is that people decided his answer is the best one. Which is the part where society encourages mansplaining. Note that this is Quora, supposedly a place where people have higher education and understand the importance of references and fact-checking.

There is an important distinction between structural sexism and individual sexism. And doing something that is sexist, racist, homophobic, you name it, is not necessarily tied to intent nor to consciously believing women/ethnic minorities/LGBTQ people are worth less than straight cis-male white guys.

Mansplaining is when a man does not realise that they don't know what they are talking about and just posit their own narrative as fact. It is a result of society's gender norms training them to do so. For men to be considered "real men", telling a compelling story with confidence is more important than bing correct - the scientifically appropriate level of self-doubt and "well this is what we know, here are my sources" is not "manly".

This is Toxic Masculinity in a nutshell: societal norms for what it means to be a "real man" that are detrimental to society and all genders - there are plenty of things that guys should do to prove they are "real men" that are detrimental to them too.

His answer and the societal norms that lead him to that thought process to post that answer, are an example of a toxic norm that most people aren't even consciously aware of. The sooner we acknowledge that and fix this, the sooner we are all liberated from structural sexism and toxic masculinity (and I do mean all - I feel very inhibited by toxic masculinity as a guy, and I think all men are).

Arush's answer is an example of mansplaining. The fact that it is about menstruation makes it even more ironic. That does not make him an asshole, nor someone who believes women are inferior to men - he acknowledges Saredin's answer as excellent. It just makes him unaware of all the structurally sexist norms that he subconsciously is bound to. And the same applies to the people who voted for his answers unaware.

> For men to be considered "real men", telling a compelling story with confidence is more important than bing correct - the scientifically appropriate level of self-doubt and "well this is what we know, here are my sources" is not "manly".

Well, I guess I'm not a real man then. Thanks for your mansplanation!

Before continuing the conversation, can I ask you to take a moment to step back and ask yourself with honesty whether you think that these statements imply that I am saying that you are not a good person because you also behave this way.

Because if so, there is a - perfectly reasonable - misunderstanding of my intent here. Read what I wrote again, more closely: all it is describing is a societal norm that I would like to get rid of. If you think you don't act that way, great!

This is not an accusation, it would be a perfectly understandable response (I get defensive all the time when my GF points things out to me).

At no point am I talking about you, nor saying that you are "not a real man". At no point am I saying that you are a bad person if you do or do not act this way. I'm sorry that you feel defensive, but there really is no need to. I'm not accusing you, nor would I blame you or any man for having toxic masculine behaviours. It's not your fault to be raised in a society with those norms, after all.

If you have the time, please watch Why Are You So Angry? by Innuendo Studios[0]. It also goes into how societal norms about good and evil train us to think things are about us and personal attacks when they aren't (the video highlights gamergate, but the process is not gender specific).

But the short version is: people tend to get very defensive about topics like sustainability, feminism, racism, animal rights, etcetera, because it makes them question whether they are good people or not. But ultimately, that is a self-centered response. Whether or not one's actions make them a good person is ultimately less important than whether or not what they do is the right thing to do.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y8XgGhXkTQ&list=PLJA_jUddXv...

Right thing as decided by whom? E. g. I think that to eat meat is a right thing for himans to do. Not imagining things and forcing your imagined world on others is also the right thing to do.

Ironically, the right thing as decided by the meat eaters who feel uncomfortable around vegetarians. Watch the video to see the explanation, but the whole point is that vegetarians who don't enforce their views on others still have to deal with people getting defensive around them.

I had a similar experience when I refused to drink alcohol as a student: I don't mind others enjoying it, I just happen to not like it. Yet a lot of my friends in college felt like I was judging them.

What if the same answer was posted by woman?

It wasn't.

people decided his answer is the best one.

Click on "View Upvoters" in each answer. His has 98. Hers has 21432.

I don't know WTF is Quora basing their raking on; apparently it's an algorithm that combines a bunch of factors: https://www.quora.com/How-does-the-ranking-of-answers-on-Quo...

Please don't brings facts into an ideological discussion! /s

I was just making a small factual note; I don't think it changes vanderZwan's overall point vis-a-vis the answer itself.

Thank you, I was not aware of this.

Or maybe the other one was posted first and collected a lot of upvotes despite being factually wrong. I responded to a question once simply because the one being upvoted was so factually inconsistent and impossible. My answer has been upvoted a lot, but not as much as the other due to it being live longer.

Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Thank you, I was not aware. Corrected.

So a part of me is literally attached to my mum's brain?

The wallet-controlling part I'm guessing.

Please don't do this here.

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