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The Resilience
Personality Spectrum Tapestry |
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Dear Noel,
I am beginning to work on a new chapter for the ConserveLiberty Personality Division called The Resilience Personality Spectrum Tapestry.Conversation #1:
Each time another chapter topic gets picked, it turns out unintentionally to be the most challenging topic picked thus far. I do like "the hard stuff", but then I pick one which I think will be easier, to take a break. And the cycle unexpectedly repeats!
The last chapter The Humor Personality Spectrum Tapestry was like that. Thought it would be fun over the holiday break, and turned out to be the most challenging, fascinating, and intriguing chapter developed thus far. Again. So now I thought I'd back off a little bit, for a break, and address "resilience." Now that I've started into it, I'm getting the feel it could even outdo "Humor" for the challenge and inate fundamental impliciteness. Like, to All That Is.
If you decide you have a little time to throw a few insights my way as the chapter unfolds, then WE will see how this actually manifests itself. If not, we'll still see!
This one may unfold all the way from The Beginningthru the emergence of life, through synergies all the way from insects in Africa to the wonders of the Galapagos, and maybe touch on the relatively minor examples of human achievement that humans consider important to move forward through.
Note → ConserveLiberty's The Big Bang Essentials ← Note
Amused,
David
→ Note #1 to Noel was last updated 13 Feb 2018 12:55 PST ←
Conversation between Noel and David:
- David:
- Hi Noel. I was wanting to get your perspectives on an aspect that I wanted to develop for the Resilience chapter I was writing.
Initially, I thought the topic of Resilience would be a challenging one. A fun one. And yet the more I got into it, the more profound and fundamental I realized it was. I thought of it at first as more of a Human Personality thing. Yet as time went by I realized that Resilience is something that one finds as one looks to all of nature. All of The Living and even the aspects of Nature that we don't consider alive in the same way that we consider what we consider to be The Living alive.
First, I should take a step back and mention that I define the term Resilience a little differently than many might think of it. That's typical for me. My thinking of the word is still consistent with what other people think. I'm just a little more restrictive.
Most people probably think of Resilience as the ability or behavior that people use who win or conquer something that looked very difficult or highly unlikely to be successful with. They win by being resilient. They see the resilient as not quitting when others would have quit. The resilient persevere and succeeded. Many think of Resilience also in terms of the success.
- Noel:
- Yep. That's right.
- David:
- Rather, I think of Resilience as the behavior itself, whether or not one actually succeeds. Some might succeed, and if they do the resilience was a large part of why that happened. They didn't quit before they succeeded. But others may not succeed. The resilient behavior is simply the behavior that manifests itself as "not quiting, not giving up ... until there is absolutely no other thing left." Perhaps the game ended. Or time was up. Or perhaps you were resilient all the way until you died, and never gave up until you died. You didn't actually give up. You got to the end.
Fire is the same way. It just keeps on burning until there is nothing more left to burn. It doesn't quit. All that was flammable is no now longer available. Fire is Resilient.
- Noel:
- Survival. It just doesn't want to stop. The only thing it does is keep on going. Survives.
- David:
- Exactly! So this is why I wanted to talk to you. The mechanism of Random Evolution basically has the same impact. The reproductively living replicates. That mechanism generates genetic changes, nothing occurs perfectly. The changes are random, and so are the environmental changes that an organism is faced with. So if there is enough replication, then enough changes are generated that there is bound to be a next in line that will be adapted to the new environment. That's survival as opposed to extinction. And so that's another example of Resilience.
- Noel:
- Yes. We are dealing with this kind of thing in my projects all the time. It's not the individual organism that is resilient, although they may be. What you are talking about is that the evolutionary process makes their species Resilient. Or whatever comes after them.
- David:
- That's why I was wanting to talk to you. The mosquito and malaria project you were working on. It's fascinating to me, and I was wanting to use it as an example of Evolutionary Resilience. Can you explain it for me?
- Noel:
- Anopheles mosquitos are typically night biters. The day biters transmit all the virus mediated diseases, such as yellow fever, denge, and West Nile. These are the flaviviruses.
Anopheles carries the parasite causing malaria. Malaria is not caused by a virus, but rather by a Plasmodium. There are lots of different Plasmodium parasites that infect lots of species besides humans. Only about five infect humans, all transmitted by mosquitos. The most common one is falciparum. Almost all malaria deaths are caused by that one.
What is interesting is that the genetic variability in falciparum is very low. And the whole genome has been sequenced.
The "gold standard" for diagnosing Plasmodium infection causing malaria has been microscopy. However, that is expensive, and there is a tendency to misdiagnose. The primary area my project is concerned with is in Africa, so a less expensive and more easy to use alternative was needed.
A rapid diagnostic blood test was developed using the detection of HRP II. Since HRP II is only made by falciparum, then you know that folks testing positive for it have the malaria Plasmodium. It is a one drop blood test and you get your diagnosis in a couple of minutes.
- David:
- Wow! That's great. So, as I recall there was something selective going on that was starting to confound the use of the tests for detection. What was that?
- Noel:
- Well, it turns out there are all kinds of reasons for getting false negatives. You get false negatives and then you don't pick up the malaria infections when people actually have them. There are still a lot of "human error" problems with regard to handling the tests properly and so on. But there is also a genetically related reason that is occurring.
- David:
- Genetic?
- Noel:
- Yes. There are mutations in the HRP II gene in some Plasmodium falciparum that either changes or deletes the epitope that is detected by the test! This genetic diversity is often correlated with location. You would imagine that different strains would localize in different areas depending on population mixing due to travel.
So, some of the false negatives are because even though the test may be handled properly, it may not be able to detect the malaria Plasmodia that have sufficiently altered genotypes.
And then, there is another issue. The one you're probably interested in.
Since the patients with the Plasmodia that the tests DO pick up get treated and cured, that means that we are actually selecting genetically for the survival of the Plasmodia that DON'T get picked up. As that population grows over time, we'll have a much larger pool of malaria causing Plasmodia that we need an accurate test for.
- David:
- Awesome! Not that that is a good thing. But what you just described, though not intended by humans, is random evolution manifesting itself as enabling the Plasmodium species to survive even though facing the onslaught of humans directing everything they have been able to imagine and develop so far against it. Resilience!
- Noel:
- Yep. Survival!
- David:
- Thanks Noel. I'm glad we found time to chat. Another perfect example of Resilience manifesting itself within the domain of random evolution!
→ Conversation #1 between David and Noel was last updated 06 Apr 2018 13:30 PDT ←
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