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Comment by moralestapia | Hacker News Reader

>and has in fact shown that larvae do not carry over memories through metamorphosis

Nope.

The 2008 study is "the first to demonstrate conclusively that associative memory survives metamorphosis in Lepidoptera".

The article you cited does not disprove this, but rather it shows the brain structure of (some, at least) insects get completely re-arranged before/after their transition to adulthood.

For me, this only makes the 2008 study more interesting, since the memories could still persist, even after a completely new brain architecture (!).

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That 2008 study has never been reproduced and the piece in Quanta points towards it being impossible. Our current understanding of memory is that it has a physical basis, so that 2008 study is likely wrong.

Appealing to authority is one of the most primitive logical fallacies out there.

But if we're going to do that, let's do it properly and choose the peer reviewed article written by experts in the field over a blog post written by a "science communicator".

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Ha. You tried to appeal to authority by insinuating you’re a professional biologist. First, you’re not. You appear to be primarily an app developer, not a researcher. Which is why I mocked you by pulling my 30 years on you.

I definitely would not call myself a "professional biologist" as that would make a whole room burst with laughs, lol. So, you're right on that.

But I do work as a researcher, publish some interesting papers from time to time and, yes, I think I'm also an "app developer", in the sense that I've made some apps?

These kind of arguments you make really come across as quite infantile, to be honest. I'm going to have to stop engaging with you because no substantial value is added to the conversation while you already crossed the line to personal attacks, several times, even after you've been told about it and pointed to this site's rules. Find somebody else to engage with your tantrums, I'm out.

You serve up a distasteful dish of arrogance and ignorance. You drop into a conversation implying you’re a professional biologist (“Source: biologist for 20 year”) when you’re not - that’s the arrogance. You then make wildly inaccurate statements any real life scientist knows isn’t true for cheap internet points from software folks who don’t know any better- that’s the ignorance. You finish it off with a dollop of childishness on top by complaining when actual scientists call you out on your nonsense. Do better. I know you can.

Again the 2008 study has never been reproduced to my knowledge and defies everything we know about how memory is stored, so I think skepticism of such an incredible claim is warranted.

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