Does the internet lead to better Ameican language?

[Hobbes' Choice]

The genes you are born with are the genes you die with.

This is almost but not quite true and the distinction is not a trivial one. Structurally the genes will be essentially the same, however how those genes act in determining the electro-chemical processes of your body changes throughout your life. This even changes from day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute, etc. Your genes DO NOT determine who you are or how you function in a way which is independent of the rest of the biosphere. There are an almost infinite suite of potential causal factors which determine both the chemistry and the physical topology of the proteins which genes encode for. The STRUCTURE of the genes remains very constant but the FUNCTION of the genes is a movable feast. It is the proteins which drive our cell chemistry, not the DNA.

It is also utterly untrue that human haploid germ cells remain unchanged throughout the life of the individual. This has been known for almost a century.

Hobbes. You have a very unattractive habit of abusing people who disagree with you and you embarrass yourself by doing so on this occasion. I am a highly regarded and influential contributor to the theoretical foundations of biochemistry and have been scrupulous in keeping abreast of the literature all my life. I will not be spoken to in this manner by you or anybody else.

I trust this will not affect the useful communication we are able to enjoy on other subjects.

Unless you cite some of this you are just blowing hot air.

[Hobbes' Choice]

The genes you are born with are the genes you die with.

This is almost but not quite true and the distinction is not a trivial one. Structurally the genes will be essentially the same, however how those genes act in determining the electro-chemical processes of your body changes throughout your life. This even changes from day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute, etc. Your genes DO NOT determine who you are or how you function in a way which is independent of the rest of the biosphere. There are an almost infinite suite of potential causal factors which determine both the chemistry and the physical topology of the proteins which genes encode for. The STRUCTURE of the genes remains very constant but the FUNCTION of the genes is a movable feast. It is the proteins which drive our cell chemistry, not the DNA.

It is also utterly untrue that human haploid germ cells remain unchanged throughout the life of the individual. This has been known for almost a century.

Hobbes. You have a very unattractive habit of abusing people who disagree with you and you embarrass yourself by doing so on this occasion. I am a highly regarded and influential contributor to the theoretical foundations of biochemistry and have been scrupulous in keeping abreast of the literature all my life. I will not be spoken to in this manner by you or anybody else.

I trust this will not affect the useful communication we are able to enjoy on other subjects.

I hope you never stop posting. As for Hobbes, I suspect he has ginger hair and dour Scot ancestry. The poor sod can't help himself.

Wrong.I not a racist **** like you either.

[Arising_uk]

The genes you are born with are the genes you die with.
The sperm and eggs contain a stripped down thread of RNA which is unlaced from the double helix.

Ah! My apologies I was thinking about the different DNA in one's sex cells compared to one's own. It is different is it not?

[Hobbes' Choice]

The genes you are born with are the genes you die with.
The sperm and eggs contain a stripped down thread of RNA which is unlaced from the double helix.

Ah! My apologies I was thinking about the different DNA in one's sex cells compared to one's own. It is different is it not?

Well it is a half copy of your own code. It is the RNA of your DNA. The uniqueness of the progeny is a function of the bond of the two threads of RNA to make a new DNA code.

... though I suspect that someone on the Forum is going to tell me that I am out-of-date or some sort of scientistic moron!!

[Obvious Leo]

Haploid germ cells are constructed of DNA, not RNA. They are a single strand of the double helix and thus contain only a single set of chromosomes rather than the two sets which are contained in all our other cells (diploid).

The easiest way to visualise the process of fertilisation is to imagine ordinary DNA as the zipper on your jeans. Sperm and egg cells are only one half of the zipper and in the process of fertilisation the single half from two different individuals meet up and zip together.

RNA has no role to play in reproduction but it is a critical molecule in all other aspects of our cellular biochemistry because it regulates the way genes are adapted and expressed.

[Philosophy Explorer]

Haploid germ cells are constructed of DNA, not RNA. They are a single strand of the double helix and thus contain only a single set of chromosomes rather than the two sets which are contained in all our other cells (diploid).

The easiest way to visualise the process of fertilisation is to imagine ordinary DNA as the zipper on your jeans. Sperm and egg cells are only one half of the zipper and in the process of fertilisation the single half from two different individuals meet up and zip together.

RNA has no role to play in reproduction but it is a critical molecule in all other aspects of our cellular biochemistry because it regulates the way genes are adapted and expressed.

To confirm, isn't RNA also regarded as a sort of messenger?

PhilX

[Obvious Leo]

To confirm, isn't RNA also regarded as a sort of messenger?

It most commonly acts as such in our cellular chemistry by instructing the ribosomes which proteins to make for a given cellular function. The primary instructions come from the DNA within the cell nucleus, where DNA is transcripted into RNA through the action of an enzyme called RNA polymerase.

[Hobbes' Choice]

The big question is RNA relevant to "Does the internet lead to better Ameican language?:"

[Dalek Prime]

I think we should stop, and define better for any natural language. Is it a communicative standard? If yes, then the Internet does lead to better natural language, providing communication does improve. If, on the other hand, it obfuscates communication, than no, it doesn't. And then we have to decide what activities on the Internet lead to this, and what detract.

[Hobbes' Choice]

I think we should stop, and define better for any natural language. Is it a communicative standard? If yes, then the Internet does lead to better natural language, providing communication does improve. If, on the other hand, it obfuscates communication, than no, it doesn't. And then we have to decide what activities on the Internet lead to this, and what detract.

Obviously "improve" is as value laden as "better".
In terms of vocabulary, grammatical precision and quality of construction the Internet does not encourage improvement at what you might call a higher level of language. And I mean by that the communication of ideas that are difficult to grasp.

What the Internet seems to have provided for is "more". More people are writing every day, more are communicating with an ever widening audience, about a wider group of topics. But generally the topics are simple and straight forward and it tends to encourage the most superficial understanding. Communication promotes rabble rousing, agreement and identification of a group of like minded people rather than a critical examination of the things talked about.
Twitter is possibly the worst offender in the superficial, but FB and other clones are much the same.

As for the Title of the Thread - I can only react with utter contempt and regard it as an illustration of the worst possible consequence of the Internet.

[Dubious]

In terms of vocabulary, grammatical precision and quality of construction the Internet does not encourage improvement at what you might call a higher level of language. And I mean by that the communication of ideas that are difficult to grasp.

What the Internet seems to have provided for is "more". More people are writing every day, more are communicating with an ever widening audience, about a wider group of topics. But generally the topics are simple and straight forward and it tends to encourage the most superficial understanding. Communication promotes rabble rousing, agreement and identification of a group of like minded people rather than a critical examination of the things talked about.

A bang-on summary not easy to argue with. Equally prolific on the Internet and adding to its distortions are the wisdom-ware know-it-alls always advertising their superiority without any backup. Too many are impressed and succumb to this kind of ego manifestation without making the slightest effort to digest the data themselves ... following when they should be thinking. It's always been that way only to a far lesser degree. The Internet by providing everyone the means to comment, only serves to make the mental subtraction more obvious.

[Hobbes' Choice]

In terms of vocabulary, grammatical precision and quality of construction the Internet does not encourage improvement at what you might call a higher level of language. And I mean by that the communication of ideas that are difficult to grasp.

What the Internet seems to have provided for is "more". More people are writing every day, more are communicating with an ever widening audience, about a wider group of topics. But generally the topics are simple and straight forward and it tends to encourage the most superficial understanding. Communication promotes rabble rousing, agreement and identification of a group of like minded people rather than a critical examination of the things talked about.

A bang-on summary not easy to argue with. Equally prolific on the Internet and adding to its distortions are the wisdom-ware know-it-alls always advertising their superiority without any backup. Too many are impressed and succumb to this kind of ego manifestation without making the slightest effort to digest the data themselves ... following when they should be thinking. It's always been that way only to a far lesser degree. The Internet by providing everyone the means to comment, only serves to make the mental subtraction more obvious.

Indeed there is a lot of unthinking anti-science: GMO, Vaccines, Anti-cancer treatments, uncritical support of GW, excessive reliance on "natural", "homeopathy" ad nauseam.
These topics are mobilised to gather the converted.

But on the language issue, the nuance of definitional differences between say "I shall", or "I will"; are likely to be lost under the pressure of misunderstanding. Using 'are' in place of 'our". The loss of the meaning of "literal" to mean exactly what it was designed to avoid: "figurative".
As language inexorably passes to those with little respect, or less understanding, from those who took the trouble to learn the intricacies the likelihood is that the language will be diminished, like a blunted tool.
I did an Masters 4 years ago, having been out of education since the late 1990s. I noticed two things. First was the amazing change in the accessibility of source material. Even primary sources (I studied history), had been photo-scanned and or CRS digitised, with the secondary sources from 2000 all available for download. With each month back catalogues of academic journals were being converted to digital print. All searchable through keyword, title etc.
(In the 1990 this process was only just being started. I was amazed, then to have available the entire cannon of all ancient Greek literature could be put onto a single CD ROM.)
The second thing was a drop in grammar, and less attention to the details of spelling and clarity. Given the ubiquity of word processing this is unforgivable. I've noted, in academic journals and papers a more lazy style; shorter sentences; less precision.
It just seems a bit ugly.

Darwin was not known for readability, but his style conveys a lot of thinking and content..

When we compare the individuals of the same variety or sub-variety of our older cultivated plants and animals, one of the first points which strikes us is, that they generally differ more from each other than do the individuals of any one species or variety in a state of nature. And if we reflect on the vast diversity of the plants and animals which have been cultivated, and which have varied during all ages under the most different climates and treatment, we are driven to conclude that this great variability is due to our domestic productions having been raised under conditions of life not so uniform as, and somewhat different from, those to which the parent species had been exposed under nature.