Bird account
banner
dialecticbio.bsky.social
Bird account
@dialecticbio.bsky.social
The "The Dialectical Biologist" account.
Structural biology & anti-racism.
Loves: birds, proteins, Linux, Lewontin
Hates: race science, racists, transphobes
Rapture, but for guys really into ChatGPT
January 10, 2026 at 11:05 AM
Bret complains that he "got a lot of crap" for his idea of "explorer modes". Hmmm, care to elabolarte on that part a bit more pal?
December 18, 2025 at 6:47 AM
Bret does not seem to understand that there's this thing in evolution called variation. Instead, he's come up with his own idea called "explorer modes", which allows organisms to deliberately (not randomly) traverse the fitness landscape. In other words, Lamarckism
December 18, 2025 at 6:46 AM
Bret reveals that he uses to brush off Intelligent Design people as religious cranks, but now sees that they actually have some pretty good points. He even hangs out with a bunch of them.
December 18, 2025 at 6:38 AM
Bret seems to be one of those guys that think "junk DNA" must have a purpose/function. Not this again
December 18, 2025 at 6:20 AM
So Bret's big hypothesis is that "integers" are encoded on the genome, and it is these integers that tell the cell how many times to divide or not, akin to telomere lengths and their shortening putting a limit on the number of cell divisions. And he thinks microsattelites encode these integers
December 18, 2025 at 6:10 AM
Although Bret mentions Evo-Devo, it seems like he has not bothered reading any papers from the field, because I'm pretty sure they have a good explanatiin for the evolution of the bat wing already...
December 18, 2025 at 6:02 AM
Bret complains that "his" field of Darwinian evolutionary biology is stagnant (she_doesnt_even_go_here.gif), but that the field of Evo-Devo is on the up. Not sure what he thinks those big differences are exactly
December 18, 2025 at 5:55 AM
Bret talks to Joe about about protein evolution and how protein evolution has failed to explain the evolution of such large changes in morphology, like the bat wing from a shrew foot. Has this guy never heard of genomic regulation, and how it too can evolve?
December 18, 2025 at 5:50 AM
Another example of this weird crackpottery Bret has with shrew evolution that makes even Geoffrey Miller of all people look reasonable
December 18, 2025 at 5:46 AM
Sidebar, but I am reminded that this bit about bat wings evolving from shrew foots has been a long-running thing with Bret, and he really does seem to think that such morphological evolution has not been, or cannot be(?), explained by textbook evolutionary science
December 18, 2025 at 5:41 AM
He keeps saying that Darwinian evolution is incomplete and has failed to explain certain things. Ok? Those things being the evolution of a bats wing from an ancestral shrew-like foot. Pretty sure Darwinian evolution succeeded to explain that one
December 18, 2025 at 5:34 AM
Bret starts off by saying that he has decided to present his incredible new hypothesis now because AI is getting very good and will likely soon beat him to the punch I guess. Lol. Lmao.
December 18, 2025 at 5:31 AM
You can have all the lip service to not doing stigms, but by the act of sensationalising Hitler's DNA, the message here is pretty clearly "but... here me out ok... WHAT IF genes for X made Hitler a Nazi?"

Second: this quote is so dumb. No, he wouldn't have. You think Nazis operate in good faith?
November 12, 2025 at 9:03 PM