alt Hacker NewsThis is getting downvoted for the same underlying reason I’ve already pointed out elsewhere in the thread: it follows the same red flag "I’m not $1, but $2" pattern, just expressed in a different form.
"Maybe won’t be viewed favorably by the HN crowd, but..." is a rhetorical hedge that serves the same function: preempt criticism, then introduce a claim framed as rescuing evolution from an implied flaw. That’s social weasel-wording, not epistemic caution, and HN reliably downvotes it.
On top of that, citing an uncritical Bret Weinstein interview on Joe Rogan is about as many red flags as you can stack in one sentence. As you must know but don't state, both are infamous for repackaging long-settled evolutionary biology as contrarian insight, often using the same "search space", "random walk", and "junk DNA" language that shows up in intelligent-design adjacent arguments.
Nothing described here is new or controversial. Regulatory DNA, morphological variation on shared templates, and highly constrained evolutionary pathways have been mainstream biology for decades. Presenting them via a podcast anecdote, framed as a fix for "pure random walk", just reintroduces the same strawman of evolution that people have already corrected multiple times in this thread.
And recommending a Joe Rogan interview with somebody like Bret Weinstein, after admitting you know it won’t be viewed favorably (for very good but unstated reasons), is a disrespectful waste of people’s time.
That’s why it’s being downvoted.
1) No one asked why it's being down voted (to... -1, the horror). I'm not here for internet points.
2) This isn't my field - I am not making any claims, merely relaying what I thought was an interesting concept/mechanism I hadn't heard of before, that I thought other curious individuals here might also think was interesting. Isn't that the entire point of HN? I would have very much appreciated links or something to Google over this bizarre analysis of why my comment is downvoted. I didn't know this wasn't novel and was accepted science.
3) I understand Bret/Joe aren't looked upon favorably by certain crowds, particularly on this forum. I tried to get ahead of the "but didn't you know they can't be trusted!" comments and attempt to focus on the substance. If the substance is wrong, great! Let's talk about that.
4) You are assuming malice where there is none, and calling me disrespectful and insisting I must know things. I find that quite disrespectful and uncalled for. Not everyone has your opinions or knows what you know. 10k a day and all that https://xkcd.com/1053/
HN guidelines: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."