Comment by Retric
2 days ago
> Both of which you've failed to quantify, so you have no answer as to why stop at millions and not thousands or billions.
I already quantified it relative to the metabolic cost on an organism the size of a human. There’s a big difference to us between 10 calories (more specifically 5 to 25 calories) and 10,000 there’s not a big difference between 10 calories and 0.01. Thus we spend a relatively but not actually trivial amount of resources for minor benefit.
A fruit fly by necessity operates at a different scale. It would help if you read my posts here.
> How do tiny variations in mobility help.
Mobility is a complex test of a wide range of cellular machinery. Which means that cellular machinery works well.
Lifespan is similarly a great test for the ability to maintain cellular homeostasis.
> I already quantified it relative to the metabolic cost on an organism the size of a human
You haven't, there isn't a single number in that reference. Even now you can't, you completely avoided quantifying the benefit and created a strawman for the costs.
> There’s a big difference to us between 10 calories and 10,000
What about the small difference between 10 and 200? That would move you from 50 mil to 1 bil. What does your "cost/benefit" formula say?
> It would help if you read my posts here.
The opposite - because I did and saw you unable to justify the results even after you tried to expand the original point several times. What would help instead if you tried to focus on a coherent argument instead of making up false claims about the other person.
> Mobility is a complex test of a wide range of cellular machinery. Which means that cellular machinery works well.
So again you have nothing specific to say, what you actually need to prove is that probability of live birth is part of that causal "wide range" of complexity. It could very well be that high mobility comes at the expense of that probability.
Analogy: you can make a car more mobile at the expense of driver safety/comfort while the same generic "mobility complex test wide range engineering machinery" would be true.
> What about the small difference between 10 and 200?
So wait now you want a justification for low millions vs high millions? Trying to move the goalpost isn’t an argument. You wanted justification for why not thousands or billions and I provided it.
That said, 200 is ~10% of daily calorie needs directly plus all the cellular machinery to produce sperm, that’s a big deal especially with some reserves for multiple ejaculations. Isn’t it interesting how science actually provides understanding here.
> you actually need to prove
IVF studies have proven this stuff, I’m referring to actual research here. There’s a ton of studies trying to recreate this kind of filtering. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7365522/
PS: That’s exactly the kind of thing I would have brought out sooner if I realized you where so emotionally invested.