Donald Trump and Ethnic Genetic Interests
1300 words
I don’t post about politics here because this is a HBD and evolution blog, but I figured I’d weigh in on Trump and ethnic genetic interests (EGIs) since the election is today. My co-writer and I proved the existence of EGIs back in May (see comments for discussion) so we know that EGIs exist. Does Trump exhibit EGIs? Yes, he does. But for who?
Donald Trump, in his own words, “is a big fan of Israel” and boasted about being the first celebrity to endorse Bibi Netanyahu. This is very telling for his EGIs, however, he isn’t Jewish so how does this help his EGIs?
Easy. His daughter converted to Judaism back in 2009, and had a child by Jew Jared Kushner. Most Jews don’t look at converts the same as those who were born Jewish, i.e., those who have a bloodline to Israel. However, in a generation or two, no one will know that Kushner’s child is a non-Jew genetically.
Donald Trump has been very critical of Obama who is very anti-Netanyahu. Trump says about Obama:
“I think President Obama is one of the worst things that’s ever happened to Israel. I think he’s set back [Israeli] relations with the United States terribly, and for people and friends of mine who are Jewish, I don’t know how they can support President Obama. He has been very bad for Israel.”
Yes, very bad for Israel. This was said last September before he knew he was going to run. Trump loves Israel and the Jewish people. In his own words:
“I know so many people from Israel. I have so many friends in Israel. First of all, the Israelis are great businesspeople. They have a natural instinct for business and their start-ups are fantastic. I deal with the Israelis all the time, and I deal with people who are Jewish all the time, whether they are Israeli or not.”
Now, you have his daughter who converted to Judaism and married a Jew. Judaism is passed down through the mother, so the fact that she converted before she had her babe means that the kid is officially a Jew.
Moreover, his son, Eric Trump, married a Jewish woman back in 2014. Knowing this—that his adult-aged children have wed Jews—would you say that he has EGIs for his people (Scots-Irish/Germans) or for Jews?
Trump has had contradictory statements regarding the German Chancellor Angel Merkel. A month and a half ago he compared Hillary Clinton, his opponent tonight, to Angela Merkel. However, he recently said that Angela Merkel is “his favorite leader”. But back in August, Trump said “Germany will never be the same again“, alluding to this ‘migration’ crisis.
Back in March, Trump assured that his election would be “good news for Israel“. So knowing all of his comments on Israel as well as his children’s marriage choices, where do Trump’s EGI loyalties lie?
With Israel. I’ve shown that he loves Jews; that two of his children have married Jews; and I’ve shown that, while having contradictory statements against Jews (telling Jewish donors that he doesn’t want their money), can you say that Trump has EGIs for his ethnicity OR his family’s new ethnicity—Jewish?
Finally, back in July, his son-in-law Jared Kushner wrote an op-ed in the Observer, the online webzine that he owns, called “The Donald Trump I Know“, in which he says:
My father-in-law is not an anti-Semite.
…
This is not idle philosophy to me. I am the grandson of Holocaust survivors. On December 7, 1941—Pearl Harbor Day—the Nazis surrounded the ghetto of Novogroduk, and sorted the residents into two lines: those selected to die were put on the right; those who would live were put on the left. My grandmother’s sister, Esther, raced into a building to hide. A boy who had seen her running dragged her out and she was one of about 5100 Jews to be killed during this first slaughter of the Jews in Novogrudok. On the night before Rosh Hashana 1943, the 250 Jews who remained of the town’s 20,000 plotted an escape through a tunnel they had painstakingly dug beneath the fence. The searchlights were disabled and the Jews removed nails from the metal roof so that it would rattle in the wind and hopefully mask the sounds of the escaping prisoners.
My grandmother and her sister didn’t want to leave their father behind. They went to the back of the line to be near him. When the first Jews emerged from the tunnel, the Nazis were waiting for them and began shooting. My grandmother’s brother Chanon, for whom my father is named, was killed along with about 50 others. My grandmother made it to the woods, where she joined the Bielski Brigade of partisan resistance fighters. There she met my grandfather, who had escaped from a labor camp called Voritz. He had lived in a hole in the woods—a literal hole that he had dug—for three years, foraging for food, staying out of sight and sleeping in that hole for the duration of the brutal Russian winter.
…
The fact is that my father in law is an incredibly loving and tolerant person who has embraced my family and our Judaism since I began dating my wife. His support has been unwavering and from the heart. I have personally seen him embrace people of all racial and religious backgrounds, at his companies and in his personal life. This caricature that some want to paint as someone who has “allowed” or encouraged intolerance just doesn’t reflect the Donald Trump I know. The from-the-heart reactions of this man are instinctively pro-Jewish and pro-Israel. Just last week, at an event in New Hampshire, an audience member asked about wasting money on “Zionist Israel.” My father-in-law didn’t miss a beat in replying that “Israel is a very, important ally of the United States and we are going to protect them 100 percent.” No script, no handlers, no TelePrompter—just a strong opinion from the heart.
It seems that every Jew has a Holocaust story that “they’ve never told before.” The Holocaust is really beyond the scope of this blog, however, you can check this out from CODOH on the Novogroduk “graves”. Moreover, here’s a nice thread from CODOH that talks about another “Holocaust miracle” where Trump’s son-in-law says that his Grandfather “lived in a hole in the ground in Russia for three years“. This is all I will say on the matter and I hope you do your own research into these claims from Jared Kushner.
The video that Kushner alludes to is here. The man spoke the truth about Israel. We DO waste our military on behalf of the “Zionist” Israelis. Trump shoots back and says “We will protect them 100 percent.” He calls them “our true friend.” It was just announced back in September that we will be giving Israel 38 billion dollars over the next ten years. OF COURSE they think of us as a “true friend”. We send our people to the Middle East so they can die for Israel in their quest to expand for Greater Israel—war is realizing the Israelization of the world.
Now, PumpkinPerson believes that Trump shows his EGIs through wanting to build a wall and keep out illegal Mexican immigrants. However, I’ve shown above that while he “”MAY”” have the best interests of the American people in mind, he has far more loyalty and allegiance to Israel and the Jewish State.
Does Donald Trump show EGIs? YES! But while he does show EGIs towards his own people, he clearly shows his EGIs more towards the people who his children have chosen to marry. Also, Lion of the Blogosphere, who is a Jew, is voting for Donald Trump, which is protecting his EGIs.
And before anyone asks—yes I voted for Trump. I just hope he does what he says for us and doesn’t pull an Obama and be Hope and Change 2.0 on us.
“Racial Realities of Southern Europe”: Nordicist Fantasies Redux
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I came across this garbage from the DailyStormer the other day, Racial Realities of Southern Europe that has, of course, huge misconceptions on the genetic history of Southern Europe. This “Sven” guy–like most Nordicists–cherry-picks to prove his idiotic and untrue points, like most Nordicists. I won’t be going through the garbage video on the site (since it’s too boring and his fake voice irritates me) but I’ll go through the comments section.
Italy once contained Rome, but Rome lost its racial purity when it made citizens of all races, only later to be rescued by the invasion of new and vigorous barbarian stocks.
Stupid. No basis in reality–only has a basis in Nordicist fantasies.
The crazies in the comments ramble on and on about “blonde-haired Jesus”, the founding Romans having blonde hair, Spartans and Macedonians had blonde hair (wut?), Iberians were blonde (as if they don’t have a sizeable population that is blonde today). All idiotic garbage that no serious person who has ever read any serious genetic studies takes seriously.
“His Name is YHVH” says:
And I’m not going to debate this. I’ve read meticulous translations of Homer, and Arthur Kemp, and the viking invasion of Greece after the volcanic eruption.
Who in the hell cites March of the Titans seriously for genetics or anything else for that matter? He has such a warped view of history, muh Nordics was Egyptians, muh Nordics was Native Indians, muh Solutrean Hypothesis, muh blonde-haired, blue-eyed Greeks and Romans. Idiocy with no basis in reality. It’s funny. Nordicists get on Afrocentrists for attempting to steal European history, yet Nordicists DO THE SAME THING. Nordicists and Afrocentrists are two sides of the same coin. Yet neither of them realize that. Come on guys, #its2016 don’t cite trash like MotT and expect to get taken seriously by anyone who knows what they’re talking about.
So, you want to be superior to the niggers and the mestizzos and the chinamen but then you don’t want to be inferior to anything above you, thus acknowledging superior and inferior exist on the one hand when it suits you conveniently and then arguing against it when it does not. Now which is it?
These things don’t exist in in evolutionary biology.
This “Sven” guy thinks that the Nordic race originate in North Africa. But what do genetic studies tell us? I’ll quote Razib here:
read this paper: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1502.02783.pdf i have blogged extensively on this, i’m not going to repeat myself at length. #becauseIts2016 and the data is out there.
One may say “The Nordic traits are recessive so it’s impossible for us to have been a result of mongrelization”.
one may say that if you are retarded. i can name two “nordic traits,” lactase persistence and skin color, which are not recessive. the former is mostly dominant (h ~ 1) while the latter exhibits midparent parent values closer to light than dark (h > 0.5). others, like eye and hair color are more recessive (h < 0.5). but one can not say that an individual is mostly recessive or dominant, as that is not even wrong.
if you are a “racerealist” you should know these basic facts of human population genetics in 2016. otherwise you are a racemythist.
(of course, anyone who has seen my son would laugh at the idea that “nordic traits” are recessive
like ~20% of northern europeans he is a het. on KITLG locus with one loss of function allele)
(oh, and also, nordic traits are recent anyway, so ancestry is less important than you think: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v528/n7583/abs/nature16152.html)
Nordicists et al, it’s #2016, please get up to speed on the latest studies and data. If you won’t get up to speed on the matter, don’t even call yourself a ‘race-realist’, you’d be better off calling yourself a ‘race-mythist’ as Razib says.
“Menhir” says:
No, I believe Aryan originated in central asia, and migrated to Europe.
Nope. Originated in the Caspian steppe.
“Wesley Lysander” says:
Combined data from two large mtDNA studies provides an estimate of non-Caucasoid maternal ancestry in Italians. The first study sampled 411 Italians from all over the country and found five South Asian M and East Asian D sequences (1.2%) and eight sub-Saharan African L sequences (1.9%). The second study sampled 465 Sicilians and detected ten M sequences (2.2%) and three L sequences (0.65%). This makes a total of 3% non-white maternal admixture (1.3% Asian and 1.7% African), which is very low and typical for European populations, since Pliss et al. 2005, e.g., observed 1.8% Asian admixture in Poles and 1.2% African admixture in Germans. (Plaza et al. 2003; Romano et al. 2003)
Similar data from the Y-chromosome reveals Italians’ even lower non-Caucasoid paternal admixture. Both studies obtained samples from all over the mainland and islands. No Asian DNA was detected anywhere, but a single sub-Saharan African E(xE3b) sequence was found in the first study’s sample of 416 (0.2%), and six were observed in the second study’s sample of 746 (0.8%). The total is therefore a minuscule 0.6%, which decreases to 0.4% if only Southern Italians are considered and 0% if only Sicilians are considered.Again, these are normal levels of admixture for European populations (e.g. Austrians were found to have 0.8% E(xE3b) by Brion et al. 2004). (Semino et al. 2004; Cruciani et al. 2004)
An analysis of 10 autosomal allele frequencies in Southern Europeans (including Italians, Sicilians and Sardinians) and various Middle Eastern/North African populations revealed a “line of sharp genetic change [that] runs from Gibraltar to Lebanon,” which has divided the Mediterranean into distinct northern and southern clusters since at least the Neolithic period. The authors conclude that “gene flow [across the sea] was more the exception than the rule,” attributing this result to “a joint product of initial geographic isolation and successive cultural divergence, leading to the origin of cultural barriers to population admixture.” (Simoni et al. 1999)
More Nordicist idiocy with no basis in reality.
“Crowley” says:
Science proves Mediterranean people are exposed to sun radiation more often, and that’s it. Scandinavian people get their pale features from being exposed to colder climates more often. Any pan-Nordic theory that all other Europeans are icky tainted negroes has long been debunked.
So you need science to tell you that Meds are exposed to more sun from being closer to the equator? ….I see.
“Sven” says:
Right at the beginning of the chapter he explains that the only true Mediterraneans left are the Welsh and the Irish.
This guy is such an idiot. I guess the Germans are negro because they have 1.2 percent negro admixture. “Through DNA research”. He doesn’t keep up on the latest studies. Dumb prole. Moreover, Mediterranean peoples stretch from Southern Europe to North Africa to the Middle East; they are all Mediterranean people. Though, people who don’t keep up on the latest studies and only retarded dogma think otherwise.
“Eric Stryker” says:
Another weird thing is that Stoddard himself looks almost textbook Mediterranean.
Then “Sven” says:
What he looks like bears no relevance to his work at all.
I see you are now reduced to ad hominem equivalent in your quest to discredit his work.
This is GOLD coming from someone like him. I wouldn’t doubt that this guy is one of those people to throw away a source because it comes from a leftist magazine or throw something away and disregard it because a Jew wrote it. Such hypocrisy.
“Sven” then says:
We dont all seek to bend the truth to try and make it suit ourselves.
I can’t stop laughing! This is coming from the prole moron who says all of these lies SEEKING TO BEND THE TRUTH TO TRY AND MAKE IT SUIT HIMSELF. People’s idiocy and lack of introspection into their views never ceases to amaze me.
Soooooo why should any other sources be thrown away for where they come from? People say “H-he’s a Jew don’t listen!!!” But that has “no relevance to his work at all.”
“Eric Stryker” says:
Obviously Sven, you are a person with a very low IQ, so I think continuing to debate your Biblically Nordic Spartans is a waste of time. Good luck in your self-esteem rehabilitation and guidance from vile trecherous little Jew rats like Josephus, Sven Jones. I can’t get angry at you, you’re too stupid to hate.
Truest thing said in that thread. Biblical Nordic Spartans? Who the hell believes this garbage?
“Sven” says:
Just like a Jew you try to smear White racial researchers like Stoddard and claim Josephus as one of yours.
Hey, let’s go of some old book and not modern-day genetic studies! You’re a Jew because you disagreed with me.
This Sven moron thinks that Nords originated in North Africa!! My sides!!!
Anyone reading this, to see the true origin of the Nords, read this.
“Sven” says:
Nordics were not in pre-historic Germania in large numbers when Rome was being built, they were mainly in the Levant, North Africa and southern Europe.
I am convinced that this guy is retarded. Nordics came from North Africa, the Levant and Southern Europe? CITATION NEEDED. I already showed that Nordic traits are recent, so how the hell could they originate in MENA countries and South Europe?
“Sven” then says:
I guess you must think Nordics were sitting in the ice, freezing their asses off doing nothing and leaving no trace until they suddenly discovered civilisation in Europe in the first millennium.
This is one of the only things he said that’s true in this thread. That’s pretty much how it went down. What’s funny is that your ideological brethre–the Afrocentrists– call whites “cave beasts”. Who were these “cave beasts”? Nords! They were “living in caves” before Rome cultured and civilized them. Both the Romans and Greeks had pretty unkind words for the barbarians to the North.
Then “Sven” cites all of his garbage “Radio Stormer” podcasts as proof. Where are the genetic studies from Pubmed and PLOS Genetics? The fact that this guy had to link to his garbage and untrue radio show speaks volumes.
“Sven” then says that Copts and Berbers were Nordic. Ha! These Nordicists, man. They’ll say anything to grab others’ history, just like their cousins the Afrocentrists.
“His Name Is YHVH” comes back and says:
Correction, my uneducated friend, Nordics DID build Rome. They also built the pyramids, or didn’t you know, didn’t you see the blond hair mummies?
Why don’t you go read March of the Titans and learn about it?
“Go read MotT bro!! It’s the truth of European history and the white race!!” No serious person takes that book seriously. Hey didn’t you see the blonde hair mummies!!?? It’s not like the racial phenotypes we code aren’t recent or anything!!
I LOVE how these morons link to backwater websites and not Pubmed or PLOS Genetics for their information. Shows what they read!!!
“Sven” says:
The Bible itself tells you Jesus ancestors were White, fair, ruddy and blue eyed. It also tells you that the Spartans were descended from Judah in the book of Maccabees and Flavius Josephus Histories.
“Believe the Bible about genetics.” I wonder if these people read what Biblical scholars say on interpretations of the Bible. You know they don’t so, like their cousins the Afrocentrists and “black Israelites”, they take Bible verses and warp them to suit their needs. Isn’t it funny how these groups all hate each other but they’re cut from the same ideological cloth?
People like this guy just push anything that affirms their ideology. It’s not based in science–it’s based in fantasy. To see the true origin of the Nordics, see here, here, and here. Most of what Nordicists say–just like their ideological cousins the Afrocentrists–is not based in reality but based in fantasies.
This article from the Unz Review, What Race Were the Greek and Romans? harps on and on about the same things that “Sven” does. However, the author gets summarily dismantled in the comments.
“Progressive” Evolution: Part III
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PumpkinPerson seems to be making his blog “more politically correct“. So he seems to be removing his posts that he may deem “insensitive” to certain people. You run a (mostly) HBD blog. People who go to a HBD blog must know that they may come across certain truths that they may find uncomfortable–and even ‘offensive’. This seems like it’ll be my last reply to PP on this matter as he has removed the thread we were conversing about this matter in. Now that PP is becoming more ‘PC’, is he going to disavow his views on “progressive” evolution, “superiority and inferiority” when speaking about organisms and human races and “the concept of ‘more evolved'”?
RR: You’ve stated numerous times that evolution is progressive. Which is why I assume you’re equating “progress” with “more evolved”. Do you believe that more evolved implies progress or that progress implies more evolved?
PP: I PERSONALLY believe more evolved life is on average, superior to less evolved life, but there is nothing intrinsically progressive about being more evolved, and there’s no reasons for opponents of progress to avoid the term. In some cases, the more evolved form is clearly inferior such as when a dog evolved into a cancer.
That’s the point. The ‘more evolved’ organism is more often than not ‘inferior’ compared to its predecessor. This shows that there is no ‘progress’ to evolution. And the “more evolved” form became “inferior” to its predecessor due to changes in environment. If those environmental pressures were different, a whole slew of phenotypic changes would have occurred to have the “less evolved, inferior” organism be “superior” to its predecessor. This line of reasoning shows how idiotic of a concept “progress” in evolution is.
RR: Moreover, ancestral state reconstructions of absolute brain mass, body mass and EQ revealed patterns of increase and decrease in EQ within anthropoid primates and cetaceans.
PP: But the OVERALL pattern has been one of increase. The average brain size of ALL living mammals has TRIPPLED in 65 million years.
I just showed that there are increases AND decreases in the fossil record. No one denies that there has been an upward trend in brain size. However, as I’ve said to you previously, our brains have been shrinking for 20ky, with there being evidence that it’s been decreasing for 20ky. Sure, the trend over the past few million years shows an increase, but the trends for the past 30k years or so show a decrease and this is due to agriculture.
RR: Just showed this is wrong. (On morphology being an indicator of speciation)
PP: No you just cited a paper that agrees with your definition of species. That’s not an argument.
I cited this paper by Ernst May, What is a Species, and What is Not? where he says:
I analyze a number of widespread misconceptions concerning species. The species category, defined by a concept, denotes the rank of a species taxon in the Linnaean hierarchy. Biological species are reproducing isolated from each other, which protects the integrity of their genotypes. Degree of morphological difference is not an appropriate species definition. Unequal rates of evolution of different characters and lack of information on the mating potential of isolated populations are the major difficulties in the demarcation of species taxa.
Just because you believe that speciation is based on morphology doesn’t make it true, PP.
RR: Sure they are CORRELATED, but it doesn’t imply a cause. A relationship is not a cause. I just showed you a paper that shows you’re wrong but whatever.
PP: But a correlation is enough to show that evolution is progressive. Evolution correlates with progress = evolution is progressive.
Now he explicitly says that evolution is progressive. No matter how many times I point this out to him, he still wants to believe this idiotic notion that has no basis in evolutionary biology.
RR: How would this be gauged? Would you say to look at the LCA and gauge morphological changes?
PP: That’s one way.
Well, now the onus on you is to provide evidence for your claim that there was no–or ‘hardly’–any morphological changes in equatorial populations. You have to prove that they stayed similar to the LCA. Good luck!
PP: No I’m arguing that FEWER changes occurred in Africa because there were fewer splits in the African branch (at least as conceptualized by Cavalli-Sforza)”
This is MEANINGLESS. This is a HUGE intuitive misconception on how people read phylogenies. Just because Africans didn’t ‘split’ based on phylogenies DOESN’T MEAN that they had little to no morphological changes. The racial phenotypes we code are recent, so this throws a wrench into your intuitive misconceptions on phylogenies.
RR: Prove it!
PP: The proof is that those humans who scientists believe have preserved the phenotype of the earliest modern humans (i.e. Andaman islanders, Papua New Guineans) all look very Negroid, as do those forensic reconstructions of ancient skulls you reject.
This isn’t proof. Just because scientists (like who?) ‘believe’ that Andaman Islanders and Papuans (no, no and no!!) “preserved the phenotypes of ancient humans” doesn’t mean that they are in any way, shape, or form SIMILAR to the original populations who migrated out of Africa 70kya!!!
Ancient skull reconstructions are meaningless. You cannot infer what type of lips an ancient human had. There are numerous problems with facial reconstructions, most specifically for this conversation, you cannot gauge certain things JUST from a skull:
The finished product only approximates actual appearance because the cranium does not reflect soft-tissue details (eye, hair, and skin color; facial hair; the shape of the lips; or how much fat tissue covers the bone). Yet a facial reconstruction can put a name on an unidentified body in a modern forensic case—or, in an archaeological investigation, a face on history.
It can ‘put a face to history’, however this reconstruction of, for instance, Mitochondrial Eve DOES NOT show what she actually looked like, specifically her lips, as seen above.
RR: I fully understand what you’re saying. Except I’ve shown how it’s wrong! You can’t say one branch means morphological change AND EVEN THEN, morphological change does not equal speciation as shown in the Mayr paper.
PP: You can say that if one branch has lots of splits, it implies environmental changes and pressures (since generally speaking, that’s what causes splits) and environmental changes generally cause morphological changes, which is one definition of species.
But this definition of species is wrong as I’ve just shown. Ernst Mayr shows, in the paper of his linked above, that morphology is not enough to denote speciation.
RR:Do you know better than people who do this for a living? There are multiple papers on misconceptions of cladograms and the like. I get its original nd I respect that. You’re a smart mother fucker pp. But that doesn’t mean you’re right here.
PP: I understand why you think I’m reading the trees wrong. I used to think the exact same way as you, and the sources you cite. Laymen shouldn’t make the simplistic assumption that higher branches = more evolved and that’s why scientists try to dispel that notion. Because the tree is just there to show relatedness, and evolution can happen or not happen at any point in the tree, no matter how many splits or non-splits occur.
Now you’re getting it!
PP: However once we understand all that, we have to ask ourselves, even though IN THEORY, any branch on the tree can evolve in any direction, and there’s nothing about the tree that implies a hierarchy, IN REALITY, is there a correlation between tree position and brain size and other measures of “progress”? I’ve provided evidence that there is. You can either ignore the evidence because it doesn’t fit the theory that branch placement is irrelevant, or you can realize that evolution is a little more nuanced than some simplistic introductory Berkeley paper implied.
Now you’re not. First off, the Berkely paper is not ‘simplistic’, nor is one of the papers that the Berkely papers cites, Understanding Evolutionary Trees by Gregory (2008). He shows the most common misconceptions one has on reading phylogenies. And most–if not all–of your misconceptions on phylogenies are brought up in the paper with great detail into the misconceptions as well as how to correct the misconceptions that one has while reading phylogenies. I’ve said to you, time and time again, that brain size is PREDICATED on the amount of kcal that one consumes. If were to eat 1000 kcal a day for, say, 2000 years, what would happen to our brain size as well as our body size? Would they stay the same, grow bigger or get smaller? Adequate kcal–as well as adequate nutrients–are the driver of brain size. Without those two variables, brain size wouldn’t have been increasing. Moreover, as I’ve documented two weeks ago, H. floresiensis showed a decrease in brain size as well as body size, having evolved from either H. erectus or H. habilis. This directly shows that brain size is dependent on the surrounding environment as well as the quality and quantity of the food that the organism consumes. Branch placement IS irrelevant. You can rotate the branches all around and that would throw your theory out the window. This is what you don’t understand.
Evolution IS NOT PROGRESSIVE. However, this scala naturae belief is still with us today, as documented by Rigatto and Minelli (2013). They say:
Background
Professional papers in evolutionary biology continue to host expressions in agreement with the pre-evolutionary metaphor of the scala naturae (the great chain of being), when contrasting ‘lower’ to ‘higher’ representatives of a given branch of the tree of life. How pervasive is the persistence of progressionist, pre-evolutionary language in contemporary papers?
Results
We document here the prevalence of this unexpected linguistic survival in papers published between 2005 and 2010 by 16 top scientific journals, including generalist magazines and specialist journals in evolutionary biology. Out of a total of 67,413 papers, the unexpectedly high figure of 1,287 (1.91%) returned positive hits from our search for scala naturae language.
Conclusions
A quantitative appreciation of the survival of progressionist language in scientific papers is the first step towards its eradication. This will obtain by improving skills in tree thinking as well as by more careful editorial policy.
Wow! 1.91 percent, 1,287 papers returned positive hits for ‘great chain of being’ language. These terms need to be removed from evolutionary biology as they don’t allow the appreciation of the randomness in the evolutionary processes.
Evolution is a random process. It’s an unconscious, non-linear event as I have documented extensively over the past month.
I’ll end with a quote from Ernst May’s book What Evolution Is:
Another widespread erroneous view of natural selection must also be refuted: Selection is not teleological (goal-directed). Indeed, how could an elimination process be teleological? Selection does not have a long-term goal. It is a process repeated anew in every generation. The frequency of extinction of evolutionary lineages, as well as frequent changes in direction, is inconsistent with the mistaken claim that evolution is a teleological process. Also, there is no known genetic mechanism that could produce goal-directed evolutionary processes. Orthogenesis and other proposed teleological processes have been thoroughly refuted (see Chapter 4).
To say it in other words, evolution is not deterministic. The evolutionary process consists of a large number of interactions. Different genotypes within a single population may respond differently to the same change of the environment. These changes, in turn, are unpredictable, particularly when caused by the arrival at a locality of a new predator or competitor. Survival during a mass extinction may strongly be affected by chance. (Mayr, 1964: 121)
North/South Differences in Italian IQ: Is Richard Lynn Right? Part II
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In my first article on this matter, I showed how Richard Lynn claims the average IQ in Italy is around “89-92” for Sicily and the South and around 103 for the North. I showed how he was wrong and what data he overlooked to fit his hypothesis. Lynn’s 2011 article IQs in Italy are higher in the north: A reply to Felice and Giugliano was a reply to Myth and reality: A response to Lynn on the determinants of Italy’s North–South imbalances. Felice and Giugliano brought up Lynn’s four main theses: a) the South’s “economic backwardness” in terms of economics ‘throughout history’; b) the evidence provided by Lynn wasn’t enough to ‘prove’ a cause of lower IQ for S. Italians; c) the evidence provided by Lynn wasn’t enough to show that S. Italians score lower than N. Italians; and d) the supposed ‘high rates of MENA admixture’ in S. Italians. I blew up all of these claims in the beginning of the year, more specifically I blew up up the claims about MENA admixture back in January. I’ll be going through Lynn’s 2010b article correcting any discrepancies. It’s worth noting that he still pushes the so-called ‘MENA admixture’ as being a substantial CAUSAL factor when there is NO evidence for this big of a ‘gap’ between the North and the South. The Lynn quotes will be from his 2010 paper linked above. I had also thought that ‘migrants’ from MENA countries could have contributed to the gap between the North and South, but since this isn’t the case for France then it shouldn’t be so for Italy. However, since Italy is a hub for these people when they first illegally enter Europe, they may stay and get counted as citizens and the children of these immigrants grow up and get accounted in the data. This is plausible, since a lot of ‘migrants’ may stay where they first get which is Southern Europe, mainly Sicily and Southern Italy.
We now present new data showing that IQs are higher in the north of Italy than in the south. In the previous study, data were presented for 12 Italian regions from the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) 2006 study of the reading comprehension, mathematics and science performance of 15 year olds, regarded as measures of intelligence. We are now able to give similar data on the reading comprehension, mathematics and science performance of 15 year olds in 20 Italian regions obtained in the 2009 PISA study (OECD, 2010). These are given in Table 1. This shows, reading from left to right, the latitude of the Italian regions, the mean PISA scores for 12 regions for 2006 given in Lynn (2010a), the mean scores of 15 year olds on reading comprehension, mathematics and science understanding for the 20 Italian regions obtained in the 2009 PISA study, and the averages of the three 2009 PISA scores given because it provides a convenient summary of the scores on the three tests.
I already went through this in my previous article, but for clarity, I’ll go through this again.
Cornoldi, Giofrè, and Martini (2013) showed how there are problems inferring Italian IQ from the very PISA data that Lynn cites. There was a relevant decrease between the North and South. If the PISA test showed genetic proclivities between the North and South, why was there a relevant decrease in the three-year period? Because it is not an intelligence test, but a test of educational achievement. D’Amico et al (2011) conclude:
Our examination of intelligence test score differences between the north and south of Italy led to results that are very different from those reached by Lynn (2010a). Our results demonstrate that by using intelligence tests to assess differences in ability rather than using achievement scores as a proxy for intelligence, children from the south of Italy did not earn lower scores than those from the north of Italy. Rather, they were even higher in Raven’s CPM. However, we see no advantage in claiming that children in the south are “more intelligent” than children in the north, because these groups are different on a number of variables (e.g., environmental factors, educational influences, composition of the samples) that influence differences in test scores.
Either no difference or Southern Italians scored higher. When using purer measures of intelligence (Raven’s Progressive Matrices) so-called “differences” in “intelligence” disappear.
Lynn says:
It will be noted that the regional differences in both language and math ability increase with age. For example, in language ability the regional differences in the youngest children (P2) range between 1.6 and −3.8, a difference of 5.4, while the differences in the oldest children (2S) range between 3.6 and −4.4, a difference of 8.0. Similarly, in math ability the regional differences in the youngest children (P2) range between 0.8 and −1.0, a difference of 1.8, while the differences in the oldest children (2S) range between 4.3 and −5.4, a difference of 9.7. These age differences would be predicted from the thesis that the regional differences have a genetic basis, because the heritability of intelligence increases during childhood (Plomin, DeFries, & McClearn, 1980, p. 334).
On other measures of achievement, such as the INVALSI examinations, Southern Italians do not score lower, and in some cases may even score higher (Robinson, Saggino, and Tommasi (2011). Moreover, the N/S differences in ‘cognitive ability’ don’t exist at age 7, the IQ/income relationship didn’t exist in the past, and the MENA admixture in Southern Italians is minute (Daniel and Malanima, 2011). The so-called MENA admixture that Nordicists and Lynn like to say is the subject of my next point.
Lynn says:
Further data for the proportion of North African ancestry in the Italian regions are available in the frequency of the haplogroup E1b1b allele. This is a marker for North African ancestry, where it reaches frequencies above 50% and peaks at around 82% in Tunisia (Zalloua et al., 2008). The frequencies of the haplogroup xR1 and the E1b1b alleles are taken from Capelli et al. (2006), Capelli et al. (2007), Di Giacomo et al. (2003), Balaresque et al. (2010), Scozzari et al. (2001), and Semino et al. (2000). These data are given in columns 11 and 12 of Table 1 and the correlations between these and the other variables are given in Table 2.
As said and cited above, the so-called admixture from MENA populations in Southern Italians accounts for an extremely small fraction of the overall Southern Italian genome. The cause for lower achievement (“IQ” according to Lynn) in Southern Italians rests on this very pertinent point. And it’s wrong. Furthermore, and this is for Sicilians, the contribution of their genome by the Greeks is 37 percent, with the North African contribution being 6 percent. Daniel and Malanima (2011) ask ” Can the Greek heritage to the Western culture really be associated to a lower IQ?” The answer is, clearly, no. Moreover, a Central Italian province has the highest amount of MENA admixture, yet they have higher scores than Southern Italy. What does that tell you?
Richard Lynn’s Italian IQ data is garbage. Purer measures of intelligence such as Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices show a decrease in the “intelligence gap” and in some cases, Southern Italians score higher than Northern Italians. When using measures of “IQ” from PISA data, these so-called differences disappear. Lynn’s data he cites in his 2010a paper don’t control for socio-cultural differences and school quality. There is numerous data that suggests the school quality in Southern Italy is worse than that of the North; this difference in school quality then affects educational achievement. Since PISA is a test of educational achievement and not intelligence (D’Amico et al, 2011), what accounts for these differences in achievement in the various studies may (and in my opinion, does) account for the differences in educational achievement between Northern and Southern Italians. The measurements in various studies may be influenced by the larger between-schools variability that is present in the South (Cornoldi et al, 2010; Daniel and Malanima 2011).
Finally, some people may point to the GDP differences between North and South Italy as proof of genetic/intelligence differences between them. However, the Mafia accounts for around a 20 percent drop in GDP in Southern Italy. To say that any differences in GDP can be accounted for without first controlling for things like this is dishonest. The presence of Mafia in areas shows lower growth and a sharper increase in murders. Each time homicides rise, GDP falls between 16-20 percent (Pinolli 2012). The presence of the Mafia had a devastating effect on the economies in that area between the 70s and 00s.
In sum, PISA is garbage to infer intelligence from as they are tests of achievement and not intelligence. Other tests of achievement show a decrease in the gap and/or Southern Italians scoring higher. Moreover, no substantial genetic differences exist between the North and the South, falsifying Lynn’s thesis for the causality of the differences between the North and the South. The oft-cited GDP difference between Northern and Southern Italy can be accounted for by the presence of the Mafia. Whenever the murder rate rises (due to Mafia activity), the GDP decreases. None of these factors have been taken into account and they explain the difference between the North and the South. It is environmental in nature–not genetic. Lynn’s Italian IQ data is garbage and should not be cited. It’s just a Nordicist fantasy that Southern Italians score lower than Nothern Italians.
NotPoliticallyCorrect 
“eh this seems like more of the usual genetic science which proves that Italians aren’t Caucasian”