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The Twists of History and DNA
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times has a piece today talking about the possible connection between genetic evolution and history." From the article: "Trying to explain cultural traits is, of course, a sensitive issue. The descriptions of national character common in the works of 19th-century historians were based on little more than prejudice. Together with unfounded notions of racial superiority they lent support to disastrous policies. But like phrenology, a wrong idea that held a basic truth (the brain's functions are indeed localized), the concept of national character could turn out to be not entirely baseless, at least when applied to societies shaped by specific evolutionary pressures."
I expect in a while people will start complaining about our unfounded notions of temporal superiority, and we will have to stop believing we are superior to past civilisations.
DOn't forget that France and all the other countries in Western Europe that were occupied (including West Germany) benefited from Marshal Plan money that bought them new steelworks, railways, etc to replace the old ones that were destroyed. Britain on the other hand got squat from the Marshal Plan, and struggles to this day with pre-war infrastructure that in nearby countries was destroyed and subsequently replaced.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
Yet you would be drawn and quartered if you said that from any position of authority on a college campus, as Larry Summers discovered. Indeed, suggesting that there may be genetic differences to explain any collective group's below the average showing in any endeavor would preclude you from ever obtaining any sort of achievment in the academic world. However, if you can state that genetics might explain how one particular named group (better known as dead white guys) have unfairly gained advantage in history due to a gene of violence, or whatever, then you can write your own ticket.
Here we go again. This reminds me of the not-incorrect observation by a certain Harvard dean that women, in general, tend to be better in areas not related to math and science. Regardless of the merit of such a claim, the current political climate is such that any observation other than the obvious is regarded as demeaning. Even obvious differences are often taboo. It would be fine to observe, for example, that asians tend to excell at math and science, but mentioning that they're generally shorter than their european counterparts would be considered insulting by some, regardless of the fact that being smaller has many advantages for survival.
I suppose though, in light of our inability to view differences objectively, that it's probably for the best. Invariably, when someone points out differences, one group will use those differences to assert some sort of supreriority over the other. While it would be nice if we could discuss differences with scientific detachment and actually learn something, it seems that the most common trait among humanity -- our desire to be the best; to feel superior -- prevents such objectivity.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Never trust work that moves from the digestion of milk (dependent on a single enzyme in adulthood) to broad cultural generalizations. Why would anyone think that East Asians have been selected for intelligence, unless they buy into a particular cultural stereotype that has been common only in the past few decades, as the East has sent its best and brightest to the West for education? A generation ago East Asians were considered much less mentally capable than Europeans. Both stereotypes are fact-free.
Here's a real howler from the article:
"It is easy to imagine that in societies where trust pays off, generation after generation, the more trusting individuals would have more progeny and the oxytocin-promoting genes would become more common in the population."
Easy to imagine, yes, at least if you are completely ignorant of how societies have actually behaved in history. It's easy to imagine the Earth is flat, if you are sufficiently ignorant.
Trust pays off most in societies that trade under the rule of law, like Rome. And we all know that generation after generation Roman families grew and grew, especially amongst the most properous classes, who benefited the most from trust...
Except they didn't.
Certain types of benefit to individuals result in decreased procreation, as we see in modern developed societies. Rome struggled with declining population amongst the middle and upper classes throughout most of its history, to the extent that laws and other social pressure requiring marriage and progeny were common features even during the late Republic.
Local genetic adaptation to a rice-based diet I can believe. Adaptation to cow's milk is plausbile. But until you show me quantitative, unbiased performance measures of "cultural types" I'll say you're telling the kind of just-so story that faux-evolutionists have been foisting off on the public for generations, starting with Spencer and coming down to the present day in the form of statistically illiterate dunderheads like Charles Murray.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
What the poster fails to mention is that the pendulum has swung to an opposite extreme that isn't good either. We're not all biochemically equal, and that should be at the foundation for our belief that all people are deserving of equal rights. Each life has its own individual existance, even twins.
The tendency I have notice is that those who preach the idea that we're all equal, instead of all equally worth human dignity, is that they tend to favor control of others. In the name of "equality," people have been turned into cogs to fit into some sociologist's "scientific" organization of a corporation or society.
That's why libertarianism is so hard for liberals to swallow. We don't believe that all people are equal. In fact we do believe that some are born with clear advantages over others, and the opposite is equally true. Instead, what should be emphasized is that no one is born with the inherent right to control others, and all arguments for controlling others ought to be based in the highest standards of morality and reason.
Besides, I have been around enough foreigners to know that the majority around the world doesn't really believe this bullshit Western idea that we are all born equal, save for an equal right to be free from all arbitrary controls. Instead of focusing on equality, perhaps we should be focusing on the more pressing need to make the government work more efficiently and in a fairer way, that does not (as it has always happened in the past) end up making it simply a powerful means for the strong to control the weak.
Fitness is purely a function of how well you pass on your DNA. This is mostly, but not purely, about making children. Protecting close blood relatives, including siblings and grandchildren, counts toward your fitness because your close blood relatives share lots of DNA with you.
Our current environment doesn't typically feature starvation, so it's no problem to have more babies than most people consider sane. Welfare can help. You just need to make the babies. Major medical defects like diabetes are no problem. So, fitness today...
Lovely world, huh? Evolution doesn't stop, and it sure doesn't obey our desires.
> Not all men are created equal.
> This is a big moral problem for liberal Western democracies. Most
> European and North American states, and a good portion of nations in
> the rest of the world, are founded on the basis that every person is
> entitled to the same basic rights as the rest. The philosophical
> rhetoric that underlies these claims needs the postulate that all
> human beings are somewhat equal--nobody is so much better
> equipped, morally or intellectually or otherwise, that he can
> take away the political rights of self determination from other men.
Well, actually it's not such a problem. To be "created" equal requires a creator. The idea is that, since none of us is the creator, we have no rights over the lives of one another, except insomuch as we mutually agree. Jefferson was not talking about intellectual, muscular, or moral equality--certainly he knew that some of us are smarter, more powerful, or more virtuous than others.
..with examples like
men who had killed in battle had three times as many children as those who had not.
and
East Asians tend to be more interdependent than the individualists of the West, which he attributed to the social constraints and central control handed down as part of the rice-farming techniques Asians have practiced for thousands of years
I have to say it is pretty badly written. Asians are indeed more community/ society-oriented than westerners who are more individualistic (look at our emphasis on personal freedom and privacy), but that may not all be based on genetics. The level of priority for an asian is Country-> Community -> Family -> ME whereas westerners are traditionally more of ME->Family -> Community -> Country. The asian argument is that without a strong country there cannot be a safe family. However the western priority list above is not something inherent in all westerners, it is just more obvious these days and mostly only in America which the researcher assumes applies to the rest of the western civilisation. A Glance through history would reflect that the Ancient Greeks, Romans, Vikings and even the more modern Britains and Americans have accepted that the country's welfare is in fact more important than their own personal ones, or else nobody (almost) would want to voluntarily enter the Armed forces.
A community-based individual is the by-product or perhaps even the pre-requisite of ancient civilisations. The asians were amongst the first to realise this and never found any reason to change their believe. Thats why they are what they are.
To attribute everything asian to rice is rather immature. This article tells us what we already know - adaptation and evolution happens. But nothing else is new or even believable.
I love humanity, it is people I hate
One can also only wonder at the evolutionary pressures producing large numbers of white boys obsessed with comparing their penis sizes to males of every other culture.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Parent was pointing out a contradiction in the article, in which the statement "unfounded notions of racial superiority" is clearly refuted by the article's subsequent arguments which any thinking individual would interpret as a partial founding of the previously unfounded notions.
The fact that you could not tell the difference between what the parent was stating the article supported and what the parent actually believes himself (which was neither stated or implied by any of the parent's statements) is telling. Especially given your apparant predilection toward antisemitism.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Yet somehow "all men are created equal" didn't stop France from imperial/colonial expansion in Africa, nor did it prevent France from trying to conquer Mexico, or the US the Phillipines.
Bypassing that cognitive dissonance is dead simple...you just define the natives/undesirables as "sub-human" and continue on your merry way. Every successful* culture in history did and still does this.
*I think most metrics of cultural dominance can be used here
A few basics:
1. genes govern everything we are and are not, and everybody has a different set of genes (with the exception of twins). Thus, no one is actually created equal, in the sense you are suggesting.
2. although genes on the individual level can vary significantly from another (think John Holmes, think Albert Einstein), there is virtually no difference at all on the group level. This means that if you compare a distinct ethnic group (or "race" as they still call it in the US) with another, you will find a much larger variation within each group than between the groups. This is what scientists mean when they say we are all Homo sapiens sapiens (except for three tiny African tribes, who DO qualify as another sub-species (or "race" as they still call it in the US). What this basically means is that we are all the same on the group level; this is not just politically correct, but also scientifically correct. A few discrepancies such as resistance to malaria, skin color, hair color and other minute genome changes donät change this.
3. we tend to categorize people by their looks. Japanese and Chinese are all small, and this must be because of their genes, right? Did you know that the average height for a European was 150 cm in the 1500s? That it is now 180 cm is of course because of altered diet, and we now utlizie our genetic potential to the maxium. The same goes for modern Japanese and Chinese to a certain extent (do you know who Yao Ming is?), but many Asians have low protein diets and thus don't maximize their genetic potential.
4. TFA mentions that some warriors tend to have three times as many babies as non-warriors, and that this would have a social effect, making the tribe more aggressive on the whole. That is such rubbish that I can't even start to think about its national socialist roots; it doesn't work that way, since others still have babies at a significant rate. If you compare artificial selection measures like milking cows, you would see that one weeds out all the "bad" examples; that doesn't happen in real life, and that is why you don't see natural selection happen before your eyes.
of course
in australia, a bunch of colonists from the murky british isles dropped on a brightly sunlit desert has meant soaring skin cancer cases. am i saying pale people shouldn't wear sunscreen because that would be racist? of course not. that would result in thousands of needless deaths in australia alone ever year
less melanin means you should protect yourself from the sun in other ways. duh. and... what is this supposed to mean to me? what great lessons is supposed to be drawn from this? geographic variations in biochemistry exist
so what? what does it mean? it doesn't have ANY SIGNIFICANCE WHATSOEVER. because race simply doesn't matter
there are many medical conditions which can be shown to be confined historically by geography. sickle cell anemia, thalassemia, lactose intolerance, HIV immunity, rhabdomyelosis vulnerability when on statin drugs, tay-sachs disease, chilblains, vulnerability to gout, etc., ad nauseum. just like nose size (arid or humid conditions), finger length (hot or cold), and skin color (melanin protection from sun), etc., ad nauseum
did you know that on the average, worldwide, men are about 10% darker than females because for females protection from the sun is less important than the critical need for folic acid during early pregnancy, and that can come from the sun? what does this all mean?
nothing!
not a fucking thing! JUST LIKE THIS FUCKING RACIST BULLSHIT
it's little scientific tidbits that don't add up to a whole. all of these little different surface features and biochemical quirks all overlap with each other. you can't draw any lines in the sand that signifies anything meaningful, because all these little quirks you add up have different geographical ranges. it's simply genetic white noise, and it's a quiet signal
meanwhile there is a strong solid tone that is a lot louder: the similarities. so how come the static of surface differences matter so much to some, when if you mapped them they would barely pierce the thick volume of similarities? to focus on these surface statistical perturbations is like someone looking at ripples on the surface of the lake, and completely missing the volume of water in the lake underneath
this is the logical fallacy of racism: ripples on the surface have lessons for us about the volume of water underneath. race is a concept that is silly shallow antiquated nonsense, for if you really truly understood what you were talking about when you bring up medical quirks and statistical anomalies, if you truly had some wisdom behind your words, then the vast volume of medical knowledge and statistics would speak to you of the similarities more than differences, by orders of magnitude
so what the fuck is this article supposed to mean? tell us how ripples on the surface of a lake means something. tell us racists, tell us the deep significance. tell me about sickle cell anemia... what is the lesson for us? what great significance are we supposed to attach to this?
this article is nothing more than a window into the filthy soul of racism, and the fallacies in the reasoning of racists that they overlook to make the evidence fit their presupposed ideas about how much we differ
when the real lesson of all medicine and biochemistry is how similar we are. focusing on the ripples on the surface, versus the volume of water underneath: the fallacy of the "logic" of racism
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Well, not to accuse any culture of having an unusual history... there is a connection between reproductive strategy and penis size in the animal kingdom.
/Not to say there is a real size difference or that this is how it happened.
Promiscuous creatures tend to have large penises. Big schlongs (especially with the shape of the penis head) can remove some competitor's man-juices while insuring ideal placement of his own; and greater numbers of sperm increase his chances of reproduction, rather than some of the other guys working the same womb.
In contrast, creatures that force females into harems have smaller dicks. Males beating each other to gain alpha-male status is where all the pressure is at for these guys. The size of the penis and testicles atrophy to almost the minimum necessary in order to reproduce under nearly ideal (read: sole access to the female) conditions.
While gorillas developed huge upper bodies to do the beating, human beings may have developed culture to do the same thing (kings and the wealthy get lots of women, etc.).
I believe that every human is equal mentally
Sorry, but this isn't true. Genetics does play a major role in mental abilities. Take depression for example. It's a true medical condition that involves a serotonin imbalance. Depression DOES affect ones mental abilities. Thankfully however, the right medication can put your mental status and abilities in the "normal" range if treated. This is just only one example, and there are many more. Point is, everyone has slight differences in brain chemistry that is just enough to affect neural activity.
So yes, some people are better off than others when it comes to processing and storing information. It's a fact of life.
Life is not for the lazy.
in mirror image. libertarianism has as much a tenuous hold on reality as communism, and doomed to just as much miserable failure
communism holds that altruism, working for the benefit of the group, as something that trumps human selfishness. bullshit. likewise, libertariams holds selfishness, working only for your benefit, as something that trumps human altruism
the truth? human nature is a duality of altruism and selfishness, none superceding the other, and one ignored in favor of the other at the peril of creating a philosophy out of touch with real human nature, and therefore bound to fail as a valuable guiding philosophy in leading your life and building a society
the wisest guiding philosphies for capturing the essence of human nature and harnessing it to maximize human wealth and happiness is to be both altruistic and seflish. capitalism, with social safety nets, as in the usa, or socialism, with a capitalist engine, as in europe.
so beware dear impressionable souls: libertarianism is bunk of the same order and magnitude, in mirror image reverse, as communism. libertarianism is nothing but selfishness with a philosophical bumper sticker stuck on its ass that somehow purports to elevate it to respectability. libertarianism will succeed as soon as human nature is purged of empathy, sympathy, love for one's family, love for one's community, love for humanity itself
in other words, never
the only people who take this shit seriously are earnest but naive college students with too much philosophy classes under their belt and no real life experience, 40-something selfish assholes behind on their alimony payments, and nutjobs who horde guns in the woods and consider themselves to be part of the minutement militia, 2 centuries hence
i wish libertarians and the residual communist idiots would get together on some south pacific island, and leave the rest of us more in touch with the altruistic AND selfish parts of our human nature in peace
libertarianism = loud, useless nonsense, utterly out of touch with human nature
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The division of 'male' and 'female' into separate groups for the purpose of study are divisions 'created arbitrarily' ?