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Memes with the Watson keyword “traits”

1–6 of 6

Gender is Not Binary

he gender binary is the artificial division of the world into things that are "masculine" or "for men" and things that are "feminine" or "for women". One of the starkest ways to think of this is to consider the phrase "opposite sexes/genders" (as opposed to "different sexes/genders"), when both men and women are human…

Harry Potter and the Fundamental Attribution Error

“You saved them from You-Know-Who,” McGonagall said. “How should they not care?” Harry looked up at McGonagall and sighed. “I suppose there’s no chance that if I said fundamental attribution error you’d have any idea what that meant.” McGonagall shook her head. “No, but please explain.” “Well...” Harry said, trying to…

Robert Boyle's Definition of a Good Hypothesis

The Requisites of a good Hypothesis are: That It be Intelligible. That It neither Assume nor Suppose anything Impossible, unintelligible, or demonstrably False. That It be consistent with Itself. That It be lit and sufficient to Explicate the Phaenomena, especially the chief. That It be, at least, consistent, with the…

"Natural" Classification of Species as Evidence for Evolution

Actually, the nested arrangement of life was recognized long before Darwin. Starting with the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in , biologists began classifying animals and plants, discovering that they consistently fell into what was called a “natural” classification. Strikingly, different biologists came up with…

Convergent Evolution in Cacti and Succulents

Let’s begin with one observation that strikes anyone who travels widely. If you go to two distant areas that have similar climate and terrain, you find different types of life. Take deserts. Many desert plants are succulents: they show an adaptive combination of traits that include large fleshy stems to store water…

Clarification of the Term "Vestigial"

Opponents of evolution always raise the same argument when vestigial traits are cited as evidence for evolution. “The features are not useless,” they say. “They are either useful for something, or we haven’t yet discovered what they’re for.” They claim, in other words, that a trait can’t be vestigial if it still has a…