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North/South Differences in Italian IQ: Is Richard Lynn Right? Part II
1500 words
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.
Progressive Evolution Makes No Evolutionary Sense
“It’s possible to believe some are “more evolved” without believing evolution is progressive. In fact that’s probably the position of most biologists.”
See, more evolved IMPLIES progress which I’ve said numerous times.
“I think it’s perfectly valid to describe some animals as “superior” to others though I concede it’s a difficult thing to prove.”
If it’s difficult to prove (re: impossible), how is it perfectly valid? You agree that organisms evolved bases on their environment, so what kind of unbiased metric would there be to denote “superior organisms”?
“No purpose means the progress happened because someone or something INTENDED it to happen. Progress in evolution is the ultimate example of UNINTENDED consequences.”
Progress implies that an organism or set of organisms are “progressing” somewhere or to some ultimate form. There is NO progress in evolution. I have three articles on that in the past week. Progress in evolution implies a “great chain of being”. You’re attempting to rehash this which has no basis in biology. You may not be saying “great chain of being” word for word, yet that’s what you are implying.
“I’m simply using species as a unit for measuring morphological change. Yes it’s arbitrary but so are all units of measurement. Why are there 12 inches in a foot instead of 20? An arbitrary decision, but once the decision is made, it’s a valid measurement as long as it’s applied consistently.”
Differing morphological traits come about due to differing environments. Your definition of species is kinda weak compared to Wright’s Fst. Degree of morphological difference is not an appropriate species definition.
“Frequently fails to produce unidirectional trends != never produces unidirectional trends.”
Showing all the variables on how you can’t show an evolutionary trend was the meaning.
“This is an implied concession that evolution DOES have large scale patterns (i.e. progressive trends), only the cause is disputed.”
There are local changes, such as changes in brain size and the like, but there are no large-scale patterns. Moreover, complexity can’t be defined scientifically. The ’cause’ is natural selection, mutation, genetic drift and migration. That’s what causes evolution, however it is NOT progressive.
“The non-African branch has many splits and the African branch has none. This suggests there was more morphological changes over the duration of separation in the non-African branch because splits are a good proxy for evolutionary activity. This is because some environmental pressure or environmental change is usually what CAUSED the splits in the first place, though not always.”
All of your misconceptions are addressed in this paper.
1) The placement of a taxon is not an indication of how specialized, advanced or extreme its traits are.
2) Evolutionary change may occur during any part in the line; the offshoot isn’t always phenotypic change.
3) Morphological change still occurred in Africa. If you say no you’re fooling yourself.
4) Environmental pressures always don’t mean changes in the visible phenotype; it may mean something like better oxygen absorption in the Tibetan, which is caused by the introgression of Denisova-like DNA.
5) Morphological changes occur in Africa due to long-term selection from the environment. For example, the Pygmy. Their short stature is due to the CISH gene, which is linked to resistance from malaria and tuberculosis. Mice that are engineered to produce more of the CISH protein are smaller in stature. CISH regulates height and since it helped them survive better they became shorter due to the malarial resistance.
You’re acting as if absolutely no changes occurred in Africans after the split.
“You ARE a layman. I’m reading the trees correctly, you simply don’t understand the inferences I’m making from them.”
I won’t be a layman soon. You’re reading them wrong and I’ve shown you how multiple times. I understand the inferences you’re making from them, and they’re common intuitive misconceptons reading phylogenetic trees.
“But why would so many environments so consistently select for increased encephalization unless intelligence was an unusually versatile trait? This proves my point that some traits are useful in many different kinds of environments than others, and the long-term selection of said traits creates progressive trends in evolution.”
One of the biggest reasons we have big brains is due to how many kcal we ingest. If that were to drop definitively, like say we go from eating 2300 kcal a day to 1100 kcal average per day, both brain size and stature would decrease. That’s a selection response due to the environment. Without the amount of kcal we consume, we wouldn’t be able to support our brains as they consume at least 25 percent of our daily energy.
Selection against eyesight has happened. This happened in the cave fish and other organisms I brought up. Eyesight is only needed where it’s an advantage; without that, like in pitch black environments, it’s not a useful trait so it gets selected against. One good reason is energy doesn’t have to be diverted to eyesight and it can use what energy it does consume for other pertinent functions.
“There’s no strong evidence that brain size decreased before 10,000 years ago. Indeed John Hawks’s chart showed brain size INCREASING from 15,000 to 10,000 years ago.”
Your buddy John Hawks says that human brain size started decreasing 20 kya going from 1500 cc to 1350 cc.
“You shouldn’t BELIEVE anyone. You should think about it logically and come to your own conclusion, independent of what others say.”
Believe people whose job it is to read them and teach them how to be read correctly. The people who draw them up. Or an intuitive interpretation of the trees. Hmm…
I am thinking logically. I know how to think logically. You’re reading trees wrong and I’m showing you how.
Natural selection is local adaptation; not progress.
I wish people would learn how to read trees correctly and not use their intuition on how to read it. He’s committing a very common mistake, so common that papers have been written on the exact matter. Yet he seems to think that he, a layman, knows how to read a tree better than biologists who make them and teach about them for a living. I’m sure that’s it. You must know all the answers and they must be trying to lead the public astray from the truth of “more evolved”, “more superior”, and “more progressed” organisms. I’ve documented more than enough evidence the last week and a half to disprove PP’s crazy belief that evolution is “progress” or that species can be “more evolved” or that organisms are “superior” to one another is not warranted by the data. He has flaws flimsy understanding of the word “species” (thinks morphology defines species when it doesn’t) and basic evolution as a whole (more evolved, superior and progressive evolution).
Maybe one day he can join us in the real world.
Evolution is *NOT* Progressive: Part Two
3800 words
Previous articles here, here, here, here, and here.
PP is moderating my comments again, posting response here.
When exploring such intuitive reasoning, it’s important to note first that the idea of evolutionary “advancement” is not a particularly scientific idea. It is tempting to view organisms that are more similar to humans as more “advanced”; however, this is a biased and invalid perspective. There is no universal scale for “advancement” that favors human-like traits over spider-like, whale-like, or fir-like traits.
“Postmodernist egalitarian propaganda has even spread to zoology.”
Strawman.
You damn well know my politics, so you can’t say that I hold this view because I’m a postmodernist egalitarian spreading this to zoology.
Good comeback.
You can use those words all you want, that doesn’t say anything to what is written. You’re just politicizing this conversation when I’ve brought no politics into it.
I guess Darwin was one of those too since he wrote a note to himself to never call species “higher” or “lower” than one another; but what does he know?
“When you’re comparing life forms of equivalent taxa, you can not arbitrary reorient the tree. You have a common ancestor A. A splits into branches B and C. If B does not split, but C splits into D and E, then D and E are typically more evolved than B, because each split typically (not always) represents an evolutionary development like speciation.”
Still repeating the same garbage.
This is so funny and so wrong. An organism may have “more advanced” (whatever arbitrary trait you want to use) than another and be “lower” on the tree.
A population splitting off from another and becoming a founder population for a new species don’t mean that the new species is “more evolved”; it just means a gross misunderstanding of reading evolutionary trees and thinking about evolution.
The tree doesn’t equal “A < B < C < D”. This is what you don’t understand.
“I thought you said there was no such thing as “more evolved”. So you now admit you were wrong.”
No no. I still used “quotes” for “more evolved”. Just showing what the article said. Of course popular science articles use shitty, attention-grabbing titles; that’s how they get clicks.
“Your Berkeley quotes are way too sophomoric for a blog as advanced as this one. You need to step your game big time if you wan to continue this discussion.”
I laughed. I love your blog and there’s great conversation and you have good ideas, but you’re wrong on somethings and progressive evolution is one of them. You can say I “need to step my game up if I want to continue discussion”, but I’m bringing up good points. I’m directly showing how you’re wrong in reading these trees. Read the papers they cite, surveys were taken on how people read these trees and many people, like you, read them the completely wrong way. The biologists corrected it. You calling it postmodernist egalitarian propaganda is meaningless because I’m not pushing an egalitarian argument, I don’t believe in egalitarianism at all. I believe each organism is “good enough” for its environment and when the environment changes for good, it will change and develop new phenotypic traits. That doesn’t mean that the new species is “more evolved”, it means that evolution occurred to better survive. That’s it. Any reading into trees like you do is wrong and has been pointed out. You’re just repeating the same tired things that have been rebutted. But I need to step my game up. OK.
“Chimps could be more evolved than humans but it’s pretty unlikely, given their inferiority. I would have to examine their taxonomical history to be sure though, to see which lineage has travelled through more equivalent level taxa.”
Chimps are suited to their environment. That’s not an ‘egalitarian statement”, that’s the truth. The term has no biological basis. It’s ‘good enough’ for its environment. You’re just rehashing the great chain of being which is garbage.
“We hate things we can’t understand.”
I completely understand it. I’ve shown there’s no unidirectional trends in evolution due to the frequency of environmental change, the multitude of factors underlying fitness, the possibility of frequency-dependant epistatic interactions amongst features, and selection occurring within population. But I don’t “understand” it.
“Actually it’s brilliant conjecture. I’m sorry if it’s just too subtle for you.”
Too subtle? I just showed you how to read it and you’re saying it’s “too subtle” for me? You’re the one with fantasies of evolution being progressive and “more evolved” organisms. This has no evolutionary basis. I’ve established that. Rushton=psychologist. Not evolutionary biologist. I love Rushton, but of course by going outside of his field he’d make wrong conjectures. Do you believe everything that Rushton ever wrote? Do you think he was wrong on anything?
“Duh! But the concept you can’t seem to grasp is equal time evolving != equal amount of evolving.”
No way to quantify this. Any traits chosen will be arbitrary. This is what you don’t seem to grasp. Which of Darwin’s Finches are ‘more evolved’? You read trees so horribly wrong. Please go tell Razib how you read these trees. I want to see what he says.
“It’s like saying, Usain Bolt and I both spent an hour running. We must have travelled the same amount of distance. Don’t be stupid, RaceRealist!”
Wow, you win. sarcasm
Read up on muscle fiber typing and get back to me.
“he runs faster than me for a short amount of time; this proves that there are ‘more evolved’ organisms than others”. How stupid does that sound? Don’t be stupid, PumpkinPerson!
“Good comeback.”
I showed how you’re wrong the evolutionary tree.
An organisms placement on the tree is arbitrary, the trees branches can be rotated, blah blah blah. There’s so much information for you to read about this out there. Here.
Let me Google that for you, PP.
“You continue to miss the point. See my Usain Bolt analogy above. Two people can run for the same amount of time but when can have traveled through more spatial distance. Similarly, two lineages can evolve for an equal amount of time, but one has evolved through more taxonomical distance.”
I do not miss the point. Your Usain Bolt analogy is garbage. Just because one “evolves through more taxonomical distance” doesn’t mean that it’s “more evolved”. Email any evolutionary biologist or stop by Razib and tell him what you think on this matter.
There is one species. One small subset of that one species diverges 500 miles away into a completely different environment. Selection only occurs on heritable alleles. Over time since this species isn’t adapted to that environment, those who can’t survive die. Those who survived incurred mutations to help them survive and through natural selection they passed on the heritable gene variants to help them survive. They turn into a new species. The same thing happens again. The third species is not “more evolved” than the two previous ones. It went through different selection pressures and thus different heritable phenotypic traits occurred in that organism so it could survive. Just because an organism goes through different selection pressures doesn’t mean it’s “more evolved” because of differing selection pressures.
Let’s say that whites and East Asians died out one day, only leaving the equatorial races. Are they still “more evolved”. Do you see how retarded that is now?
“More evolved only means superior or more complex if you believe evolution is progressive, the very assertion you deny.”
I do deny. I said that as “more evolved means superior or more complex” because they would logically follow. That’s the logical progression. As I’ve said, you’re rehashing the great chain of being.
“But without the assumption of progress, more evolved simply means having undergone more evolutionary change.”
Not quantifiable. I’ve written at least 20,000 words on this on why you’re wrong.
The ‘more evolutionary change’ occurred due to a different environment. ‘More change’ isn’t ‘more time’ evolving. This isn’t scientifically quantifiable.
“No you’ve misunderstood my argument. If H floresiens evolved from H erectus, then by definition it is more evolved because it has evolved into one extra taxa then its ancestor.”
This is baseless in biology. It’s ‘more evolved’ yet smaller in stature and with a smaller brain; the thing that “more evolved” organisms don’t have. You just said that brain size and intelligence correlate with the tree branches, which is implying brain size and intelligence to be the traits you’ve chosen. Well, I choose the ability to breath underwater naturally. Who’s ‘most evolved’ then? Ask any biologist about this, see what they say.
“My argument is (1) some extant organisms are more evolved than others”
This is a premise, not an argument.
“More evolved organisms are ON AVERAGE superior to less evolved organisms, but there are lots of exceptions to this general trend.”
This is a premise, not an argument.
“You keep conflating argument 1 with argument 2. Please read more carefully before belabouring this point.”
Those are premises, not arguments. Please learn the difference between premises and arguments. They are wrong.
“Yes, I’m well aware of that theory.”
This is one reason why it occurred, the ‘devolution’ of H. floresiensis, AKA evolving to adapt to its environment.
“My definition is having undergone more evolution, full stop. So a monkey that evolves into a human and then evolves back into a monkey is more evolved than a monkey that merely evolves into a human. But as far as I know, examples of backwards evolution are relatively rare (homo florensis is the only documented case among primates, and even it is extremely controversial) but Mugabe has implied it’s common in simpler organisms. But perhaps once you get beyond a basic threshold of complexity, it becomes very unlikely to go backwards.”
Monkeys don’t “evolve” into humans!!! You have a Pokemon-like understanding of evolution. It’s pretty concrete. They had to have come from somewhere and I documented great evidence that shows it’s true. It is ‘common’ in ‘simpler organisms’. And it’d be common for humans too, the ‘most evolved’ ‘most adaptable’ species. We will respond to our environment.
An asteroid crashes into earth and blocks out the sun. Then what? We’d evolve differently. We wouldn’t be ‘more evolved’ if we changed into a new species if that pressure was long enough. ‘Complexity’ is not definable!
“The latter. If an organism has to evolve into a new species to adapt to its environment, then obviously the original species was not very adaptable. Humans are arguably the most adaptable organism precisely because we’re one of the few organisms that doesn’t have to evolve in order to adapt. We don’t need to change our genes because we can change our behavior, and now we’ve even learned how to change our behavior to change our genes.”
What do you mean? The founding population of the new species was the same as the old species. But through natural selection (and even when NS is weak as I’ve shown), changes occur. But that doesn’t mean “more evolved” or “more adaptable”. It means an organism survived because it was “good enough”.
When humans die out for good and other organisms are still here, will we still be ‘more evolved’?
I’ve shown 6 million times that we aren’t as ‘complex’ as you think we are.
He approved it, replied, and I gave him this reply.
The people you are citing are brainwashed by postmodernist views and you accept their interpretations uncritically.
Not an argument. I can say that Rushton is brain washed. Where does that get us?
Of course. But generally speaking, the more splits on the evolutionary tree you’re descended from, the more evolved you are.
Not quantifiable. Any trait chosen is arbitrary.
Of course. But generally speaking, the more splits on the evolutionary tree you’re descended from, the more evolved you are.
No one looks, except laymen, look at a tree like that and see what you’re seeing. Email Cavalli about that.
Of course it does. More evolved means having undergone more evolution. How do you know when you’ve undergone more evolution? When you’ve evolved into something new.
RaceRealist is saying “just because we ran a mile, and you split off and ran another mile, doesn’t mean you’ve run more miles than me!”
Yes it does.
Evolving into something new, speciation, occurs due to pressures from the environment. You’re trying to throw a mask of evolutionary progress there, but it doesn’t work like that.
Splitting off means nothing.
But ‘progress to adapt’ doesn’t always mean ‘gets better’, in the grand, anthropomorphic scheme of things. Cave animals for example have evolved to lose their sense of sight (because mutations that negatively disrupted vision were not detrimental, and actually allowed them to save energy that otherwise would be spent towards maintaining vision systems). They’re better fit for living in caves, but I think one could easily argue that that adaptation significantly reduced their ability to survive elsewhere. Similarly, a polar bear putting on extra padding and thicker fur makes it better suited for the arctic, but strikingly less suited for further south ranges, and not surprisingly, you don’t see polar bears in the US.
Evolution pressures organisms to become better fit to the environment they’re currently in, because those organisms that are better suited than their competitors are the one’s that produce yet more competitive progeny to continue the process. Evolution doesn’t care about more evolved Zorn progress, or your masked great chain of being. It’s an ongoing process, whether there is speciation or not. That’s what you don’t understand.
No, RaceRealist, I’m not merely reading from left to right. What I’m saying is A < B = C < D = E
Splits on a tree typically indicate speciation. So whatever species is descended from the greatest number of splits, typically has the most species in its ancestry. Since evolving into a new species reflects evolutionary change, whoever is the descendent of the most species (within a given taxa) has experienced the most evolutionary change. Most evolutionary changed = most evolved.
Trees are read in terms of most recent common ancestors. The ancestor before is not more or less evolved. And when you bring this argument to human races you’re most definitely applying superiority here which I’ve shown doesn’t exist in biology. You’ve basically just read left to right. You’re saying a is better than b who’s better than c who’s better than d who’s better than e. Each one is set for their environment. Saying one is more evolved is a stealth way to say “superior” and “progressive” evolution.
When the biologist say it doesn’t matter which species is on the left or right of the tree, they are correct. However my point is that whichever species is descended from the most SPLITS on the tree is TYPCALLY the most evolved. If you don’t like the term most evolved, then can we at least agree they’ve generally undergone the most evolutionary change?
And other times you’d be wrong. Because trees aren’t just not typically read like that, they are never read kkk that. It’s in terms of common ancestors.
Yes actually that’s exactly what it means. Undergoing more evolutionary change makes you more evolved. It doesn’t matter WHY you’re more evolved.
This is such a 5th grade understanding of an ultra complex concept. Evolution is an ongoing process. So one species isn’t more evolved than its predecessor. This is where your misconceptions are huge.
If they’ve been rebutted, explain the high correlation between number of splits each of these populations is descended from, and brain size/IQ. If number of splits is completely meaningless, no such correlation should exist:
This is an utterly ridiculous claim, because ‘number of splits’ has literally nothing to do with ‘duration of separation’, and everything to do with A ) resolution used to depict the tree, and B ) number of offshoots. For example, monotremes are one of the three original mammal offshoots, and there have been very few offshoots from that lineage relative to marsupials or eutherians. Explain the high correlation? Because those groups went to colder climates. Simple.
More evolved is quantified by the number of taxa you’re descended from within a given taxa. The traits favoured are not arbitrary, they’re decided by examining the most evolved specimens.
But they would be arbitrary. Because organisms survive with the traits they have. Natural selection selects from the current heritable variations already in that species. Therefore any traits you choose will be arbitrary. You can’t say E is more evolved than A because it comes from more splits. Please ask Razib Khan if that’s correct. Or email a biologist. I’d love to see the response.
Yes they are, until the equatorial races catch up to where the Eurasians left off.
Evolution is not a linear line. It won’t happen the same for others. What do t you get about that? Evolution isn’t linear.
Correlation != PERFECT correlation
If it happened once it’ll happen again. The fact that it happened to H. erectus, one with a bigger brain, it throws a wrench in your theory. Island dwarfism is also another reason why they changed that abruptly. That doesn’t mean more evolved. It mean different selection pressure.
But according to you evolution is not progressive so why would more evolved imply superior? If evolution is completely directionless as you imply, then more evolved organisms would be just as likely to be inferior as inferior.
RaceRealist logic: “people don’t walk in any direction, but the people who’ve walked most have walked most North”
“More evolved” implies “superior”. If the “more evolved” organism is “more evolved” than the “less evolved” organism, that means its “higher” than the other organism. That’s “superiority”. It doesn’t exist in biology. Yes more “evolved organisms” are just as likely to be “inferior” than “less evolved” organisms. Because evolution has no direction. No organism is worse or better than another. No organism is “more or less evolved” than another.
Whoever has gone through the most evolutionary change since the shared common ancestor.
Whoever goes through evolutionary change has to to to survive. Evolutionary trees are read in terms of most common ancestors. That’s it.
You have a concrete definition of a monkey. Broadly speaking, a monkey is any sub-human higher primate, including the anthropoid apes
They still don’t evolve into humans.
Under extreme cases we’d evolve drastically, but unlike other animals, we went from sub-Saharan Africa to the arctic without evolving into a new species. That’s an incredible accomplishment.
Sewall Wright believed the Fst value to be great enough between the races to call them separate species. He would know because he kinda invented the concept. Of course we’d evolve drastically, because we’d have a new change to the environment. That’s what happens. It doesn’t mean more evolved. That more evolved organism will die in an environment where its no suited. It’s that simple.
Yes we would because in order to evolve into something new, you have to do MORE EVOLVING!
In order to evolve into a new species, new selection pressures are needed. Why you’re using these terms, I don’t know why.
Sure it is. Most people would agree that angiosperms are more complex than slime molds and that multicellular organisms are more complex that prokaryotes with no nucleus, and that the human mind is more complex than a snake’s brain.
Who is “most people”? Average Joe and Jane? Why should I care what a layperson thinks? Read the paper I linked and get back to me.
If the founding population were able to adapt as it was, changes would not have needed to occur.
Where do you get these ideas about evolution?
The founding population adapted genotypically which obviously after that occurs the phenotype is affected. Then speciation occurs after long enough. Remember Punctuated Equilibria. Long time in stasis, quick jump to a new species. Most fossils have been in stasis. When an organism moves into an area, it either adapts or dies. Those traits are already in the population, natural selection selects for alleles that are beneficial to that organism. If the founding population can’t adapt, it wouldn’t have turned into the new species anyway. This is where you’re confused.
Yes, but maybe in another few million years, something else will have experienced even more evolution than we have.
Why should I care about “maybe”? I care about what’s quantifiable. From what I’m seeing, you’re attempting to revive the great chain of being. It’s a junk argument. Time matters, not amount of splits, for evolution. You looking at a tree, seeing more splits and saying aha!! More evolved! Shows a rudimentary understanding of evolution.
The human mind is the most complex known object in the universe.
The universe is the most complex known object in the universe
Why PP doesn’t grasp this yet is beyond me. Maybe it’s Rushton hero worship. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t want to be wrong on something he’s so invested in. Whatever the case may be, he’s persistence in repeating the same things that have been shown to be false is pretty damn annoying. It shows he doesn’t care about the actual data and how trees are read, for one, and call it Marxist propaganda that I’m pushing on zoology. As if I’m a Marxist. I’m the direct antithesis of Marxist. His strawmen don’t mean anything, I’ve more than made a good enough case that what he’s saying has no basis in evolutionary biology but he continues to push it. Hopefully one day he understands how wrong he is here.
Most people become blind and have tunnel vision with their beliefs. No matter how many times they’re shown that they’re wrong and here is why they still hold on to their beliefs. People don’t like to hear that they are wrong. When people are presented with contrary information, they gather support for their beliefs with “paradoxical enthusiasm”.This is because people have become so invested in their worldview that when provided contradictory evidence they lack the self-esteem to admit they were wrong and change their view. There is also something called “the backfire effect“, in which correcting of a wrong perception actually increases misperceptions. The tunnel vision that people with huge misconceptions have, in this case progressive evolution and “more evolved” organisms, leads to them attempting to find anything they can to substantiate their claims, even if they’re objectively false. This is the perfect example of that in effect in action. People don’t want know that their worldview is wrong. They don’t want to alter it, even when shown factual information that directly refutes what they say.
Blacks Are Not Stronger Than Whites
1950 words
Blacks being stronger than whites (on average) is one of the most common misconceptions around. People assume that since blacks are, on average, more muscular and have less fat mass they are stronger than whites and East Asians. However, when looked at physiologically, the frequency of muscle fiber types (Type I, Type II and Type II A) differ between the races. The differing somatypes (mesomorph, ectomorph and endomorph) also show how there are differences in strength between races due to leverage.
Some people, like PumpkinPerson, fall prey to this simplistic, yet with great explanatory power for a lot of things, Rushton’s Rule. Rushton’s rule dictates that there is a gradient of traits that some races perform statistically better or worse on with Mongoloids at the top, whites in the middle and blacks on the bottom. PP assumes that blacks should be stronger than whites who would be stronger than East Asians due to this rule. He also assumes that since blacks have slightly more testosterone on average that they would be the physically strongest race. This, however, is not true.
PP says:
One reason they believe this is because of Allen’s Rule, a theory claiming that body types evolve to become more linear in warm climates and more rounded and compact in cold climates. Round forms, having smaller surface area to volume ratios, are thought to freeze less easily. There’s also Bergmann’s Rule which asserts, for similar reasons, that body size evolves to be large in cold climates and small in warm climates.
Somatype has more to do with it than Allen’s Rule. Blacks are more mesomorphic whereas whites are more endo.
One reason Allen’s rule makes sense to people is their image of black physiques comes from Third World African countries where malnutrition is rampant. Of course people in those countries are especially skinny, but when you compare blacks and whites reared in the same country, blacks are heavier, despite being a bit shorter.
On the contrary. As I’ve covered here before, black American men with more African ancestry are less likely to be obese. Still, racial differences in strength come down to leverage as well as muscle fiber typings which I’ve discussed a few times here.
Of course weight and strength are not the same thing. In order to compare the races in strength, I found a study of police officers which compared the bench pressing ability of black and white officers, both at the time they were recruited, and after years on the job. The study found that upon recruitment, the average white man could bench press 84.2 kg (standard deviation = 21.2), the average black could bench press 95.1 kg (SD = 24.6). In other words, black men are 0.51 SD stronger than white men. If we convert strength to farmilliar IQ scale, where the white mean is set at 100 and the white SD is set at 15, then white men have a (sex adjusted) SQ (Strength Quotient) of 100, and black men have an SQ of 108.
Both races improved after years of on the job training, but the gap remained. Black women could also bench press more than white women, both at recruitment, and especially after training in both groups.
From the discussion of the study:
“The literature suggests that increases in body mass correspond with increases in
lean mass by as much as 44% (11). The officers in this study gained a significant amount of body mass and correspondingly, a significant amount of lean mass. Lean mass is associated with increases in strength (11, 25, 27). Therefore, we would expect to see an increase in absolute bench press strength related to lean mass gain alone. However, the strength gains were negated when dividing the body mass of the officers into their bench press scores. This pattern was not seen in the black males, where they actually decreased in the bench press/body mass ratio. Even though the bench press/body mass measure did not increase over the 12.5 years for black males, it also did not decline as indicated in cross-sectional research (42).”
It seems this is anomalous. The researchers say this is the only study looking at this, and from what I can tell, they didn’t ask about dietary and or exercise habits, correct me if I’m wrong. They also say that blacks were heavier in BMI at the onset, but not in the follow-up.
I’d like to see another study like this before any conclusions are drawn. Because what I see in actual powerlifting competitions from people who go above and beyond their genetic potential when everyone is using, Caucasians (whites, MENA people) and East Asians are consistently always stronger than blacks.
Moreover, it seems PP didn’t read the full paper because they say in the discussion that blacks had a greater weight gain over the ten-year period. They had a greater body mass gain which corresponded to a loss in bench press as well as a loss in lean mass. However, even with these losses in the black subjects in this cohort, they were still stronger than whites, but the difference was not significant. Further, blacks decreased in strength in the 12.5 year period while the whites increased in strength. Blacks were STILL stronger than whites at the end of the study, but this difference was not statistically significant.
This study was anomalous and goes against everything I’ve personally seen in my time lifting and my career as a PT. Caucasians and East Asians are stronger than blacks. The differences come down to muscle fiber typing as I’ve said numerous times.
There is a correlation between strength and mortality. With a sample of 8762 men between the ages of 20 and 80, it was found that muscular strength was inversely and independently associated with death from all causes and cancer in men even after adjusting for cardiorespiratory fitness and other possible confounders. From the discussion of the paper:
The analysis on the combined effects of muscular strength and cardiorespiratory fitness with all cause mortality showed that the age adjusted death rate in men with high levels of both muscular strength and cardiorespiratory fitness was 60% lower (P<0.001) than the death rate in the group of unfit men with the lowest levels of muscular strength. These results highlight the importance of having at least moderate levels of both muscular strength and cardiorespiratory fitness to reduce risk of death from all causes and cancer in this population of men.
The point of bringing this paper up is that Caucasians and Asians are stronger than blacks, and also live longer. This is just like the correlation between IQ and life expectancy. Since men with higher levels of strength live longer than men with lower levels of strength, this strengthens my hypothesis for strength-based competitions and the racial mix of the competitions. Caucasians and East Asians, who have higher IQs than blacks, are also stronger than them on average, which also correlates with life expectancy.
I already covered the above here.
PP says:
2) The average white is weaker than the average black, but there might be certain white ethnic groups that are especially strong
Northern Europeans dominate in Strongman. Blacks are more lanky, yet they are also more mesomorphic which correlates with strength so it cancels out. From what I see at my own gym I go to, which is a powerlifting/bodybuilding gym, Caucasians and East Asians are consistently stronger than blacks. I’ve been lifting going on ten years and this is my personal observation. I’ll see the outlier here and there, but the whites and East Asians are consistently stronger. Southern Europe does do bad in Strongman, so it may be that only Central and Northern Europe are more strength oriented, probably coinciding with Rushton’s Rule.
3) whites have lower mean strength but might have a greater standard deviation; however the police study above did not find this, and it fails to explain why black dominate body building
No way do whites have a lower mean strength. From what we can see from the genetic freaks of nature, the best of the best, Caucasians and East Asians dominate in these types of competitions.
Strength doesn’t matter in bodybuilding, PP.
This is the perfect example of one who thinks that blacks are stronger because of their domination in bodybuilding. BUT, actual strength competitions tell us the opposite.
4) whites dominate strongest man competitions because they’re not athletic enough to do anything else, while the strongest blacks play lucrative sports like boxing, football and basketball instead.
You’re right; whites dominate Strongman because of a genetic predisposition, Type I muscle fibers. This is why whites aren’t as athletic as blacks, muscle fiber typing and the fact the whites, on average, hold more body fat than blacks, as seen above in the article of mine that I linked.
It’s not about blacks playing the more lucrative sports. Blacks gravitate towards sports where they can showcase their athleticism and people pay to see that.
Here’s a BB.com thread. Of course ‘da socialization!!’ trots out and at least one person says genes and another says ‘speed’. Which is the correct answer. You didn’t bring up muscle fibers either PP. For instance, as I said, Type I fibers lead to more strength and muscular endurance as they are slow to fire off, while Type II fibers fire quicker and tire faster. This is why West African blacks and their descendants dominate in sprinting and other competitions where fast twitch muscle fibers dominate in comparison to slow twitch. The two fibers also fire through different pathways (aerobic and anaerobic) which also dictate the rate of force production, muscle contraction, and whether or not the muscles fire off fast or slow.
Araujo et al (2010) analyzed “racial/ethnic differences and racial/ethnic group-specific cross-sectional age differences in measures of muscle mass, muscle strength, and physical function among men.” They obtained the data from the Boston Area Health and Bone survey. There were 1,157 subjects in the cohort between the ages of 30-79, and a mix of blacks, whites and ‘Hispanic’ men from Boston who were randomly selected. They measured upper body strength with a hand dynamometer while lower extremity functioning was measured with walking and chair tests. The only thing, however, was that there was no statistical difference between whites and blacks in the grip strength test, however whites edged out blacks slightly.
The authors state:
In contrast, grip strength/arms lean mass differed significantly by race/ethnicity, with higher estimates observed among white compared to black and Hispanic subjects (p < .01). However, further adjustment for composite physical function score and LMI confounded this association (p = .15).
This proves my point (along with my years of anecdotal experience) that whites are stronger than blacks.
Finally, the authors state in the conclusion:
Further exploration of why higher lean mass in non-white subjects do not appear to translate into higher strength and physical function is warranted.
The difference is muscle fiber typing!!! This, PP, shows that blacks are not stronger than whites, despite blacks ‘looking stronger’.
In conclusion, blacks aren’t stronger than whites. Check out any strength competition or and WSM competition and you’ll see exactly what I’m describing here. The people in those competitions are genetic freaks of nature, the best of the best. If there is a difference between races in these competitions, it would come out at the elite level. Like with football, baseball, and swimming, there are racial differences in strength which clearly come down to genetics and muscle fiber typing. Everything doesn’t fit into Rushton’s Rule as there are more complicated differences between the races that need more complicated explanations. Strength is one of them. This is just like how the Alternative Hypothesis thinks they “solved Gary Taubes’s race problem in regards to diet“. However, both PP and the guys at TAH don’t know enough about nutrition nor strength training to make these judgements.
Evolution is *NOT* Progressive
4200 words
PumpkinPerson still believes that evolution is progressive. What exactly is evolution through natural selection ‘progressing towards’? Some, like PP, may say it’s progressing towards a better organism for that specific environment. However, there is no end game. That organism will still continue to change based on whatever changes in its environment. One of the most common misconceptions about evolution is that it’s progressive. One assumes that by looking at the progression from the earliest forms of life to today, that humans must be at the top of this ‘evolutionary ladder’ so to speak. However, evolution has no end game, nor is it conscious to be able to have humans be at the top of this ‘evolutionary ladder’. I’ll take the last thing that PP said to me on his blog and reply to it here as well.
Evolution can happen in four ways: migration, mutation, genetic drift, and natural selection (NS). Evolution is a non-conscious, non-linear event that occurs to make an organism more fit for its environment. Progressive evolution assumes that it’s linear and so evolution is a straight line from ‘more evolved to less evolved’. Would that make sense? For evolution to be in a straight line? Or would a branching tree make more sense? PP knows this fact, yet still attempts to say that the ‘newest species are the “most evolved”‘. We can take 2 genetically similar organisms and put them into one cold environment and the other a hotter environment. Will one of them be “more evolved” than the other in a few generations? Or does evolution dictate what changes occur and there is no “more evolved” because each organism is suited to its environment?
PP says:
No that’s not the point. If two populations are both descended from a common ancestor, and population A remains more similar to that common ancestor than population B, then population A is less evolved, because it’s done less evolving from the common ancestor. Why can’t you grasp this concept, RR?
I do grasp it, it just makes no sense. Because even that organism that “stayed close to the common ancestor” is still markedly different than the common ancestor.
Actually that’s not true. Humans are close to reaching the point where we no longer evolving in the conventional sense. Any further genetic change will be self-directed, via genetic engineering, and not the product of natural selection and genetic drift. And progress needn’t imply an end point, it only implies more recent forms will on average be more adaptable than life from millions of years ago.
This was in response to me saying that evolution would continue until all organisms die out or the Sun explodes. Even the with the genetic change we bring about ourself with CRISPR, we would still be evolving genetically. Umm progress DOES imply an end point. Progress means progression, what is an organism progressing towards? Being more efficient? No. Progression denotes an end game. There IS NO endgame with evolution. Evolution just happens to increase fitness for an organism and population.
I don’t have any misconceptions when it comes to evolution RR. It’s you who is confused. And I’ve seen Dawkins talk about evolutionary progress. He shows some understanding of the concept, but it’s not complete.
Yes you do have misconceptions when it comes to evolution, PP. There is no way to quantify progress in regards to evolution. You can choose some arbitrary traits, but that’s just our perception of it. You cannot objectively say that one organism is “more evolved” than another based on those traits.
I forgot that Dawkins believes in evolutionary progress. That doesn’t change my mind on this matter. I’m sure that Dawkins of all people knows that each organism is suited for its environment, not perfectly, but good enough. Evolution makes organisms good enough in order to transmit its genes to the next generation. How can you say that there is progress when each organism is fit for its environment? How can you believe in this notion when evolution through NS, migration, mutation and genetic drift make each organism unique in order to survive in its own specialized niche? As I will say below, Darwin’s Finches are the perfect example of how evolution is not progressive. They are fit for each environment. The tree finch has a blunt beak for tearing vegetation, the ground finch has a broad beak for crushing seeds, and Warbler finch’s small beak makes it good for eating insects. Each bird evolved from the same ancestor, each evolved in different ecosystems on the same island, but they evolved to do different things based on what they had to do to survive in that ecosystem. This very simple example shows that evolution is not progressive, and that these mutations occur to better help an organism in that niche in the ecosystem.
Next PP quotes Rushton from Race, Evolution, and Behavior where he says:
In their reviews, Lynn (1996a) and Peters (1995) both referred to my ranking of species on evolutionary scales. For Peters, this was a highly contentious idea but in Lynn’s positive review, he described me as proposing that the K-strategy was “evolutionarily more advanced” and that the Oriental race was “the most evolved.” In fact, I did not use either of these phrases in the book, although I had alluded to similar ideas in previous writing. Regardless, the topic of evolutionary progress provides an intellectual challenge of the first order and needs to be addressed. Figure 10.2 (p. 202) does imply a move from simple r-type animals producing thousands of eggs but providing no parental care to more complex K-type animals producing very few offspring.
In his book Sociobiology (1975), E. O. Wilson also promoted the idea of biological progression, outlining four pinnacles in the history of life on Earth: first, the beginning of life itself in the form of primitive prokaryotes, with no nucleus; then the origin of eukaryotes, with nucleus and mitochondria; next the evolution of large, multicellular organisms, which could evolve complex organs such as eyes and brains; and finally the beginnings of the human mind. (Rushton, 1997: 292-3)
I still don’t see how it’s “progressive and more evolved”. Each organism is suited for its environment to make sure that it breeds and continues its genetic lineage. I see how one could say that newer organisms are “more evolved”, however, each organism is suited for its environment.
You have no idea what you’re talking about. Humans who left Africa 60,000 years ago looked like Andaman islanders who clearly look like modern Africans today. Further, facial reconstructions of the African Eve from 125,000 years ago also looks like modern Africans. The notion that modern looking Africans are only 10,000 years old is INSANE. Did they look EXACTLY like Africans today? No. Were they close enough that no one would think twice if they walked down the street in modern clothing? Yes.
I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT, yet PP thinks that damn reconstructions mean ANYTHING!! Forensic facial reconstruction is one of the most subjective techniques in forensic anthropology. The skin thickness is subjective to the forensic artist, but I’m sure that that means that the facial reconstruction of Mitochondrial Eve is even a close representation of what she actually looked like. The fact of the matter is, facial reconstructions are highly subjective to the individual forensics artist. There is a great example in the link about how facial reconstruction isn’t anywhere near perfect:
A second problem is the lack of a methodological standardization in approximating facial features. A single, official method for reconstructing the face has yet to be recognized. This also presents major setback in facial approximation because facial features like the eyes and nose and individuating characteristics like hairstyle – the features most likely to be recalled by witnesses – lack a standard way of being reconstructed. Recent research on computer-assisted methods, which take advantage of digital image processing, pattern recognition, promises to overcome current limitations in facial reconstruction and linkage.
Keep in mind that PP believes that Australasians are Negroid, despite the fact that I’ve shown him wrong on that time and time again. Phenotype does not always equal genotype. Just because one group is phenotypically similar to another DOES NOT MEAN that they are genetically similar. It’s PP that doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
How is the notion that modern-looking Africans are 10k years old insane? I see PP doesn’t keep up with the latest studies. Is the notion that modern-day Europeans are 6500 years old insane as well?
It shows that there are lineages that become very adaptable despite not being very evolved, and some that don’t need to be adaptable because they lucked into a fixed ecological niche. But generally speaking, across all lineages, more recent forms of life are more adaptable than more ancient forms of life.
This was in response to what I said to him about there being mosses and fungi who’ve stayed pretty similar. This SHOWS that evolution is not progressive. More recent forms of life are more adaptable? You mean that more recent forms of life incurred more mutations to be more adaptable.** Evolution through NS is about being good enough to pass on your genes, that’s it. Whether or not one species is “more evolved” (whatever that means) over another is meaningless as all that’s occurring is genes passing to the next generation. Break down all of these processes to the simplest possible level and this is what we are left with.
Then I cited two links which said:
“There is no ‘progress’ in evolution. No living thing is trying to get anywhere,” Zuk said. “And humans are not at the pinnacle of the evolutionary ladder.”
…
Evolution, she said, is no engineer, building the perfect organism from scratch every time the environment changes. Rather, evolution is the ultimate tinkerer, always having to make do with the parts on hand. Its creations tend to be imperfect, just fit enough to survive.
To which PP replied:
WRONG! Humans are the highest branch within the homo evolutionary tree which is the highest branch within the primate evolutionary tree which is perhaps the highest branch of the mammal evolutionary tree, which is perhaps the highest branch within the animal evolutionary tree etc. This can be seen in phylogenetic diagrams.
PP, it specifically said evolutionary ladder. Phylogenetic diagrams prove that evolution is non-linear and does NOT go in a straight line. Phylogenetic diagrams prove that evolution is a tree and not just a straight line of ‘progress’.
And yet evolution has created the human brain, the most complex known object in the universe.
That doesn’t say anything to the fact that evolution is not an engineer making perfect organisms for their environment. All an organism needs is to be “good enough”. It’s not survival of the fittest as much as survival of the good enough. Sure evolution ‘created’ the human brain. But that doesn’t make evolution, a non-conscious event, an engineer. Why do so many atheists have so much faith in evolution, putting human qualities into it when evolution through natural selection is just a process of making sure that an organism passes its genes on? It is one hundred percent correct that evolution is the “ultimate tinkerer”, making organisms “just fit enough to survive”.
And the other link I cited, which uses Darwin’s finches as an example of the non-linearity of evolution says:
A study of the DNA of Darwin’s finches on the Galapagos Islands (Petren et al. 1999) provides a good example of why the idea of progress makes no sense in evolution. The study’s findings suggest that the first finches to arrive on the islands were the Warbler finches (Certhidea olivacea), whose pointy beaks made them good insect eaters. A number of other finches evolved later from the Warbler finches. One of these is the Geospiza ground finch, whose broad beak is good for crushing seeds, and another is the Camarhynchus tree finch with its blunt beak which is well adapted for tearing vegetation.
..
Even though biologists reject the Great Chain of Being or any similar ladder-of-progress explanation of evolution, the idea still persists in popular culture. A more accurate analogy would be that of a bush that branches in many directions. If we think of evolution over time in this way, we’re less likely to be confused by notions of progress because the branches of a bush can grow in various directions in three dimensions, and new branches can sprout off of older branches without implying that those farther from the trunk are better or more advanced than those closer to the trunk. A more recent branch that has split off from an earlier branch-like a species that has evolved from an ancestral species-does not indicate greater progress or advancement. Rather, it is simply a new and different growth on the bush, or more specifically, a new species that is sufficiently adapted to its environment to survive.
To which PP replied:
The idea of progress makes sense when you look at the grand sweep of evolution across BILLIONS OF YEARS. We’ve gone from simple, restricted life forms that could only survive in the ocean, to complex adaptable GOd-like life-forms like humans, that can live in virtually any environment, and travel to space.
This doesn’t say anything to what was quoted, PP. The fact that Darwin’s Finches each evolved on the same island, yet have completely different phenotypes depending on what they have to do to survive shows that evolution is not progressive and that there is no “more evolved” life form, just life forms surviving. Love how you sidestepped that quote.
This is the same tired nonsense. In evolution, almost every time one branch splits into two, it means evolutionary growth has occurred. So if you’re the first branch, and you don’t do anymore branching, you’re less evolved, and typically less complex and versatile than branches that split off after much branching occurred.
Yes PP. Keep repeating the “if you’re the first branch and you don’t do any more branching than you’re less evolved” canard. PP is confusing “more evolved” for more complex.
Let me repeat this quote again because it’s perfect for this discussion:
If we think of evolution over time in this way, we’re less likely to be confused by notions of progress because the branches of a bush can grow in various directions in three dimensions, and new branches can sprout off of older branches without implying that those farther from the trunk are better or more advanced than those closer to the trunk.
But I’M the one who doesn’t get it. Just because changes occur to make new species does not mean that the common ancestor is “less evolved”, it just means that there were different selection pressures that forced these changes to happen!! That’s it!
Just because your teacher told you something years ago doesn’t make it true, PP. It doesn’t mean that your teacher “got it” while everyone else is blinded to the fact of “organisms being more evolved than others”.
Level 1: People who don’t believe in evolution
Level 2: People who think evolution is progressive because they don’t understand the random nature of natural selection (most secular non-scientists fit in this category)
Level 3: People who think evolution is NOT progressive because they understand natural selection is random and geared to specific environments(most scientists and science writers and bloggers fit in this category)
Level 4: People who realize that even random processes will eventually show progress through billions of years of trial and error, and no environment is 100% specific (many of the greatest minds in history reached this stage: E.O. Wilson, Darwin, Rushton)
You’re stuck on Level 3, RR, and so are all the people you quote. I hope your mind can one day make the leap to Level 4.
This is hilarious. The fact that NS is random SHOWS that evolution is not progressive. PP may say “over billions of years through trial and error it made ‘more evolved’ organisms”. I love how PP’s speculations are the final word and what I say and who I quote are conveniently a level below his little hierarchy.
On PP’s “Level 4”:
NS, migration, mutation and genetic drift are how organisms evolve. Changing the mix of the 4 will lead to different outcomes each time. What PP is trying to say here is that I’m conveniently below the level that he’s at because he recognizes evolution as being “progressive” “progressing to be the ultimate organism in that environment”.
On the non-linearity of evolution:
“The idea of sharing a common ancestor leads to the second major misunderstanding inherent in the question,” says Dr Willis, “that evolution is a linear process where one species evolves into another.”
Evolution is really a branching process where one species can give rise to two or more species.
“The fallacy of linear evolution is most clearly illustrated by the analogy of asking; how can I share common grandparents with my cousins if my cousins and my grandparents are still alive?,” says Dr Willis.
“The answer is of course that your grandparents had more than one child and they each went off and started their own families creating new branches of your own family tree.”
The same thing happens in evolutionary families. A species can split into two or more descendant species and they can split again and again across the generations.
But PP would say that the organism who branched into the new one that stayed the same is “less evolved” than the other, when the only difference is that the newer organism faced different pressures which led to different changes!
Let me repeat: evolution is not progressive. Each organism is suited for its environment so that it can pass its genetic code to the next generation. Even an earlier organism is not “less evolved” than one that came after it, because it still has to survive in that ecosystem. The process of evolution leads to a branching pattern of relationships amongst similar organisms.
Ever since Aristotle, people have had an inclination to rank living things in a single dimension of “lower to higher” or “primitive to advanced”. Such rankings have a name, “the Great Chain of Being” or “the Ladder of Life”. But such rankings have no basis in evolutionary biology. All living organisms occupy equivalent positions on the tips of the latest twigs in phylogeny. The “lowliest” worm or microbe is just as “advanced” (i.e., has been just as successful at adaptation and reproduction throughout its lineage) as is the ‘highest” primate or social insect. “Progress” was an essential feature of some pre-Darwinian evolutionary theories, notably Lamarck’s believe in evolution driven by inward striving toward improvement. But modern evolutionary theory supports no clear expectation of progress, at least not in any dimension that has yet been explored.
Isn’t there an obvious sense in which evolution MUST be progressive? Doesn’t natural selection assure that species are always becoming better adapted, so that degree of adaptedness must be increasing over time? Doesn’t the fossil record document continuing advancement toward improved design and complexity? Doesn’t the process of adaptative radiation (continuing speciation with adaptation) guarantee that the ecological world will be ever more precisely subdivided into niches occupied by ever-increasing numbers of species?
In short, no. No one has yet demonstrated any measureable parameter that shows a consistent, reliable increase over time as evolution proceeds. This is an important point. Belief that evolution is always necessarily “improving” something can interfere with clear appreciation of the actual mechanism of evolution, which is simply the replacement of one heritable variant by another because, in specific conditions which include the presence of both variants, one does better than the other.
Concepts and Questions in Evolutionary Biology. Is evolution progressive?
As I keep saying to PP, each organism is fit for its environment. You can use some arbitrary things to say “this more evolved than that”, but evolutionarily speaking it doesn’t make sense, as I keep saying, because each organism is perfectly suited to its environment.
Yes, bacteria is simpler than a hawk, but that doesn’t mean that it’s any less adapted to its environment than a hawk is.
Evolution arises from mutation, genetic drift, migration and finally natural selection. This leads to large random variations amongst individual organisms. Natural selection then acts upon those random variations and over time this leads to differences between organisms which lead to them eventually becoming different species. How one can then make the leap in logic to say that evolution is progressive due to that is beyond me.
We only ASSUME that evolution is progressive because we look at traits that have been selected for and we don’t look at the traits that have been made negative due to the positive selection. Another point that PP likes to bring up is that the increasing complexity and increase in brain size shows how it’s progressive. However, our brains are shrinking. So if evolution was ONLY PROGRESS, why is the “most complex thing in the known universe” getting smaller? And with a decrease in brain size comes a decrease in intelligence. Such progress PP!!! Evolutions has no direction so it CANNOT be progressive. Most people want to assume that evolution is linear and thusly we were here BECAUSE we’d have been here regardless of what happened. This is not true. The fact of the matter is, evolution is a random process. The only reason there is a belief that evolution is progressive is because we strive to make meaning in everything in our lives even when there is nothing there.
Now with the thought that evolution is progressive, comes the thought of more evolved and less evolved races. As I have shown early in this article, Rushton believed that Mongoloids were “more evolved” because they came last. This then assumes that Africans are “less evolved” because they came first. This, however, makes no evolutionary sense. I love Rushton and all he did to bring racial differences to the mainstream, but evolutionary biologist he was not. The assumption here is that East Asians and Caucasians are the newest races, and thusly would have to be more advanced than the Africans. However, these notions are baseless. They are extremely subjective and one cannot say that one race is “more evolved” or “more superior” than another.
As the story is untangled, it will also become obvious how inappropriate it is to talk in terms of the “inferiority” or “superiority” of groups. Consider, for example, the Big Five personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. What are the ideal points on these continua? They will differ depending on whether you’re looking for the paragon of, say, a parent or an entrepreneur.
Nicholas Wade says:
From an evolutionary perspective, African populations were just as well adapted to their environment as were those of Europe and Asia to theirs. Small. loosely organized populations were the appropriate response to the difficult conditions of the African continent. But they were not necessarily well suited to high efficiency economies to which European and East Asian populations had become adapted. From this perspective, if valid, it would be unsurprising that African countries should take longer to make the transition into modern economies. (Wade, 2015: 181-2)
And finally I asked Razib Khan what he thought about this back in August. He said:
people who talk in those terms about population genetics are inferior and less evolved. sabine’s statement in my other posts applies: you’re not a serious thinker and label yourself as stupid or ignorant.
This notion of “superiority” when discussing human races, or even organisms as a whole is baseless. When looking at subjective traits then we can say that. BUT objectively, there is no way to quantify this.
Some people in the HBD-sphere, as well as the Alt-right, may say that Eurasians are ‘superior’ to Africans. On what traits? Because looking at a completely different set of traits would have you come to the opposite conclusion. Like with r/K Selection Theory (now known as the CLASH model). People assume that Africans and others who live nearer to the equator are inferior due to how many children they conceive. However, from an evolutionary perspective, the ultimate measure of human success is not production, but reproduction (van den Berghe, 1981). When that single variable is looked at, they are “more evolved” and if PP were to be believed, evolution is going backward for Eurasians since they have fewer children than Africans.
In sum, evolution is NOT progressive. Mutation, migration, and genetic drift set the stage for differences between organisms, then natural selection selects for those advantageous alleles which then get passed on to the next generation. This notion of progressive evolution is ridiculous. Evolution is a branching tree, not a straight line as is commonly thought. Progressive evolution assumes that we are progressing towards something. This is not the case. Evolution just happens, it’s not attempting to “progress” anywhere as these differences between organisms just happen and thusly you cannot say that one organism is “more evolved” than another nor can you say that this organism showed more “evolutionary progress” over another as changes are random.
Australasians are Not Negroid So Stop Saying It!!
850 words
PumpkinPerson STILL doesn’t want to admit that Australasians aren’t Negroid. No matter how many people, studies or books I cite, he still wants to hold on to this Afrocentric belief of a “large pan-African race“. This is not true. I don’t know how many times I need to type it. Maybe if I type it until my fingers become stubs he will get it?
In fact, Friedlaender et al (2008) agree with me:
Our Structure and tree analyses of the combined microsatellite datasets indicate that Melanesians are quite far removed from Africans, in spite of their superficial similarities in hair form and skin pigmentation [38]. In the initial analysis of the HGDP-CEPH dataset, the placement of the two Melanesian (“Oceanic”) groups was different. There, they split from Eurasia before Asians and Native Americans [39]. This also differed from the result of a genome-wide SNP study [40] on a very small world-wide dataset. The extreme positioning of Melanesians in our tree was not due to our over sampling. Rather, our extensive coverage of Melanesian variation has enabled a clearer resolution of their relationships with populations outside the region.
They cluster nowhere near the vicinity of Africans.
To say that Australasians are Negroid based on phenotypic similarity means the one in question is basically treating race as a “social construct“. Just because two genetically isolated populations look similar doesn’t mean that they are of the same racial grouping.
Since Australoids “look African” as PP claims, would he claim that Middle Eastern people such as the Kalash who look European to be European? I’m sure he would.
But I’ve already quoted Razib Khan as saying:
The final issue is that a lot of the phenotypes that we racially code are recent. This probably explains why groups like the Kalash and Nuristanis can look more like Europeans than South Asians, but they’re genetically more like South Asians.
And when asked the three theories that he thinks falls into the unsupportable category:
“that phylogeny and phenotype track closely. just because you can’t tell the physical difference between two pops (e.g., solomon islanders and sub-saharan africans) they must be phylogenetically close. this is not the case.”
Robert Lindsay gets it and says:
We can also do phenotypes, but the Australoid phenotype is not the same as the African phenotype. There are African phenotypes and Australoid phenotypes, and they plot into separate areas on skull charts with no overlap. On a skull chart, a given skull is either obviously Australoid or obviously Negroid, but in both groups or in an unclear group, and it is always clear which group one is in.
Surface similarities are just that; they mean virtually nothing. In terms of selected DNA, Australoids have selected furthest away from Blacks. As it turns out, features that were selected for in Africa such as non-straight hair, wide noses and dark skin were all adaptive in tropical Australasia also, so these meaningless surface traits were retained.
Are you kidding? You look at an Aborigine and a Nigerian, and to you, they are “just a couple of niggers?” Aborigines do not look like Black people at all. In fact, they do not look like anyone.”
There were 5 principal clusters of CA repeats, formed by people living in 5 of the continental regions of Africa, Europe, East Asia, the Americas, and Australasia. (Wade, 2015: 97) Peoples of the Pacific cluster into their own category. Nicholas Wade reported in 2002:
Scientists studying the DNA of 52 human groups from around the world have concluded that people belong to five principal groups corresponding to the major geographical regions of the world: Africa, Europe, Asia, Melanesia and the Americas.
The study, based on scans of the whole human genome, is the most thorough to look for patterns corresponding to major geographical regions. These regions broadly correspond with popular notions of race, the researchers said in interviews.
This ends it right there. If they even still showed a genotypic resemblance to Africans, they’d still cluster in the vicinity of them. They don’t.
PP then goes on to say that Fst is on “neutral DNA, so they are classifying largely on chronological distance, not genetically preserved phenotype. I’m not saying they’re necessarily wrong, only that we’re talking about two different types of classification systems.” I challenge him to find a study showing that Australoids and Melanesians are anywhere close to Negroids genotypically.
I asked Professor Greg Cochran, co-author of the book The 10,000 Year Explosion with Henry Harpending if Australoids and Melanesians were Negroid and this is what he said:
East Asians, Europeans and ‘Native Americans’ aren’t closely related to Africans either. Just because they “look African” does not mean they are African!
The Kalash people look European, but are they? No. They show similarity to South Asians. They, like Australasians, look similar to other populations because the phenotypes we code are recent. “Phenotypically similar” people are not genotypically similar nor the same racial/ethnic category. I also covered this here last month. Why doesn’t he get it yet?
Stop saying they are Negroid, they are not. They are Melanesian.
Agriculture and Evolution: A Reply to The Alternative Hypothesis
2050 words
I love nutrition science. So much so that I read a new book on it every week. The Alternative Hypothesis has a pretty old video on agriculture and evolution. I strongly disagree with his main thesis. I strongly disagree with his denigration of Gary Taubes. Most of all, I strongly disagree with what he says about the East Asian rice eaters because since that video has been made, the carbohydrate/insulin hypothesis of obesity has changed to the insulin hypothesis of obesity.
In the very beginning of the video he brings up Gary Taubes’s research on low-carb diets and how people tend to be healthier than those who eat higher carb diets. He brings up the East Asians who eat a lot of rice. However, it’s clear he doesn’t know that the percent of carbohydrate intake is nowhere near as important as the absolute amount of carbohydrate consumed:
- They consume a fraction of the sugar we do. More sugar consumption leads to greater insulin resistance, more fat creation, less fat breakdown, and more fat accumulation.
- They consume less total glucose, AND the glucose they consume is accompanied by less sugar (and less omega-6 PUFA, if it matters).
- They consume a ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 PUFA that is much lower than we do. This mayfurther reduce any insulin resistance brought on by the glucose they do consume (in smaller doses and with less sugar).
The fact that East Asians didn’t have high rates of diabesity (diabetes and obesity) was a big blow to the carbohydrate insulin hypothesis. However, the East Asian rice paradox is simply explained by low, if non-existent, consumption of refined carbohydrates. Those populations actually consume fewer total carbohydrates than Western diets, and have lower levels of glycemic load as a result. To quote Mark Sisson:
Before recently, Asians ate less refined sugar and used animal fats for cooking. Sugar intake is rising now, of course, and cooking oils made from corn and soybean have largely replaced lard and tallow, but rice in the context of a low-sugar, no-HFCS (remember, the oft-cited 55/45 fructose/glucose breakdown for HFCS is highly misleading and actually quite often incorrect), low-vegetable oil, nose-to-tail nutrient-dense diet is (or was) acceptable. You can’t reduce a food down to its constituent parts and focus on, say, the bit of fructose in a blueberry and then condemn the entire berry because of it. Similarly, you can’t reduce a diet down to a single constituent food and condemn – or praise – it based on that single food. You have to look at the entire picture, and the Asian diet is largely a nutritious one.
These paradoxes where one population seems to disprove a certain hypothesis are pretty easily explainable with the existing data. There are numerous reasons why East Asian rice eaters have lower rates of diabesity. Dr. Jason Fung also explains why:
Wheat, particularly in the modern iteration may be particularly fattening for numerous reasons. The high level of amylopectin means that most of the starch contained in flour is efficiently converted to glucose. This deadly combination of wheat and sugar has been introduced into the Chinese diet. The result is a Chinese diabetes catastrophe. The prevalence of diabetes in China has now even outstripped the USA.
This is the answer to the paradox of the Asian Rice eater puzzle. Why didn’t the Chinese have a diabetes epidemic in 1990 with all their white rice? Well, because they didn’t eat any sugar (fructose), they were not developing insulin resistance. Because they were not snacking all the time, they had periods of low insulin level that helped prevent the development of insulin resistance. So the high rice intake by itself was not enough to cause either of diabetes or obesity.
Then he says that whites intake more total carbs in comparison to blacks and ‘Hispanics’ (1:32 in the video). This is wrong.
Diaz et al (2005) showed that minority populations are more likely to be affected by diabetes mellitus which may be due to less healthy diets and/or genetic factors. Using the National Health and Nutrition Survey for 1999-2000, they analyzed overweight, healthy adults, calculating dietary intake variables and insulin sensitivity by ethnicity. They characterized insulin resistance with fasted insulin, as those who are more likely to become insulin resistant have higher fasted insulin levels (levels taken after waking, with the subject being told not to eat the night before as to get a better reading of fasted insulin levels). Non-‘Hispanic’ whites had higher energy and fat intake while ‘Hispanics’ had higher carb intake with blacks having lower fiber intake. Blacks and ‘Hispanics’ were more likely to have lower insulin sensitivity. However, ‘Hispanics’ were more likely to have lower insulin sensitivity even after controlling for diet, showing that metabolic differences exist between ethnicities that affect carbohydrate metabolism which leads to higher rates of diabetes in those populations.
Diaz et al state in the results of the study:
Dietary differences are seen by ethnicity, with non-Hispanic whites having higherenergy, saturated fat and total fat intake, while Hispanics had higher carbohydrate intake and African-Americans had lower fibre intake.Both African-Americans and Hispanics had higher levels of fasting insulin, demonstrating lower insulin sensitivity in comparison with non-Hispanic whites.
So now that I’ve established that blacks and ‘Hispanics’ consume more total carbohydrates from refined foods, now I’ll show the physiologic effects of insulin.
Insulin inhibits the breakdown of fat in the adipose tissue by inhibiting the lipase that hydrolyzes (the chemical breakdown of a compound due to a reaction with water) the fat out of the cell. Since insulin facilitates the entry of glucose into the cell, when this occurs, the glucose is synthesized into glycerol. Along with the fatty acids in the liver, they both are synthesized into triglycerides in the liver. Due to these mechanisms, insulin is directly involved with the shuttling of more fat into the adipocyte. Since insulin has this effect on fat metabolism in the body, it has a fat-sparing effect. Insulin drives most cells to prefer carbohydrates for energy. Putting it all together, insulin indirectly stimulates the accumulation of fat into the adipose tissue.
Do you see why blacks and ‘Hispanics’ are more susceptible to obesity?
Another glaring error he commits is not separating refined carb consumption with natural carb consumption. Refined carbs spike insulin much more than those foods with natural carbohydrates. East Asians do not have a “higher carbohydrate tolerance than Europeans” (2:06 in the video). This one huge error he commits completely discredits his hypothesis.
He then goes on to talk about India’s diabetes rates. But why is it increasing? Because of Western diets. It’s not about a “lower carbohydrate tolerance” as he says at 3:07, it’s about consuming more refined carbohydrates.
Then at 5:05, he says that he’s “solved Gary Taubes’s race problem in regards to diet”. He did nothing of the sort.
I, of course, have no problem with his IQ data. I have a problem with the conclusions he jumps to in regards to carbohydrates and diabetes. He clearly didn’t look at other factors that would explain why East Asians have lower rates of diabesity (which is increasing as they adopt a Western lifestyle… Weird…). The same thing explains it with the Australian Aborigines.
I have absolutely no problem with the second half of his video. My problem is the first half of it–his denigration of Taubes, non-understanding of insulin spikes in comparison to the quality of carbohydrate ingested and not controlling for refined carbs– as it’s clear he didn’t do extensive research into these populations (which Taubes and others have) to show why they don’t have higher rates of diabesity.
What he doesn’t touch on are “obesogenic environments” which is defined as “the sum of influences that the surroundings, opportunities, or conditions of life have on promoting obesity in individuals or populations”. What a huge coincidence that most of the populations he cited today with higher rates of diabesity live in first-world nations, otherwise known as obesogenic environments.
He should have spoken about the Pima Indians and their rates of diabesity. They didn’t have rates of diabesity as high 100 years ago. Why? The introduction of the obesogenic environment. Prisancho (2003) in his study on the Pima and reduced fat oxidation in first-world countries showed how the Pima preferentially burn carbs and not body fat for energy. Fat-burning would account for 9 kcal lost and CHO for 4. Since they preferentially burn carbs for energy and not fat, this shows why they have higher rates of diabesity. It’s not that it’s a genetic susceptibility to burn CHO for energy over fat (there may be a small genetic component, but it doesn’t override the effects of the actual diet). I’ve shown insulin’s role in fat storage above, do you see why the Pima have this diabesity epidemic after the introduction of refined carbohydrates and the obesogenic environment?
Added sugars and salts in foods causes us to want more of those foods. As I alluded to above, food scientists continuously work to find out which combinations of sugar, salt and fat will be more hyperpalatable to us and make us eat them more. Whites nor East Asians have a ‘higher carb tolerance’, they just eat different types of carbs (mostly unrefined, in comparison to blacks and ‘Hispanics’ anyway). If any individual were to overeat on high carb foods they would become diabetic and obese. Whites nor East Asians are exempt from that.
In sum, he didn’t look at where the carbs came from, only total carb intake. Refined carbs and unrefined carbs do different things in the body. The whiter a processed food is, the more it is refined. The more a food is processed, the more its natural nutrients such as fiber are taken out. These low-fat refined foods are one cause of obesity. However, it’s way too complicated to say that only refined carbohydrates cause diabesity.
I strongly recommend he read Taubes’s and Fung’s books. If he did, he wouldn’t have said what he said about Taubes’s theory and completely disregard the absolute total amount of carb intake and not the total amount of carbohydrates ingested.
Guns, Germs, and Steel: A Refutation
Of course the allegations of “racism” arise, as usual when in discussions of racial differences in intelligence and level of civilizational achievement. Rushton also says:
Racial differences in brain size and IQ map very closely to the same cultural histories Diamond explains. Although Diamond dismisses such research as "loathsome", he fails to tell his readers what, if anything, might be scientifically wrong with any of it. One hundred years of research has established that East Asians and Europeans average higher IQs than do Africans. East Asians, measured in North America and in Pacific Rim countries, typically average IQs in the range of 101 to 111. Caucasoid populations in North America, Europe, and Australasia typically average IQs from 85 to 115 with an overall mean of 100. African populations living south of the Sahara, in North America, in the Caribbean, and in Britain typically have mean IQs from 70 to 90.Racial differences in brain size and IQ map very closely to the same cultural histories Diamond explains. Although Diamond dismisses such research as "loathsome", he fails to tell his readers what, if anything, might be scientifically wrong with any of it. One hundred years of research has established that East Asians and Europeans average higher IQs than do Africans. East Asians, measured in North America and in Pacific Rim countries, typically average IQs in the range of 101 to 111. Caucasoid populations in North America, Europe, and Australasia typically average IQs from 85 to 115 with an overall mean of 100. African populations living south of the Sahara, in North America, in the Caribbean, and in Britain typically have mean IQs from 70 to 90.
Are Australoids and Pacific Islanders Negroid? A Reply to PumpkinPerson
1600 words
I’ve been in a few discussion with PumpkinPerson on phenotype and if the similar phenotype found in Australoids and Pacific Islanders meant they were Negroid. However, just because two *dissimilar groups* look *phenotypically similar*, that doesn’t mean that they are *genotypically similar*. Afrocentrists have also latched on to this ridiculous theory, saying that blacks are ‘all over the world, displaced by whites yada yada yada’. Today, I’ll show that just because those two groups look similar to Africans doesn’t mean that they are similar on the genotype.
PP wrote an article last week, The importance of leaving Africa, which I will be quoting from for the remainder of this article.
The root of this debate is not so much genuine scientific disagreement, but ethnic genetic interests. The black Afrocentrists believe it’s good for black people to be seen as part of this larger, global black community, thus dispelling the claim that blacks only left Africa in chains. For leaving Africa was one of the milestones that separates humans from our closest living relatives (chimpanzees), so the claim that blacks never left Africa is seen as racist indeed.
I agree here that Ethnic Genetic Interests is the main driver of the dispute.
But if the mere leaving of Africa did indeed screen for IQ, why do the Australoids score even lower on IQ tests than sub-Saharan Africans do, and have somewhat smaller brains
Because the environment is similar it would select for similar phenotypes, but just because the environment is extremely similar doesn’t mean that no genetic change occurred in the 70 ky that Australoids left Africa in.
By contrast, the non-black HBDers think it elevates their racial status to promote the idea that their ancestors did something that blacks couldn’t accomplish: leaving Africa.
Well, as I’ve covered here last year (time flys), those who left Africa had specific alleles, the DRD7 and DRD4 alleles, which are absent from SSA populations. This ‘wanderlust’, due to the DRD7 allele, is the *cause* of the migration OoA. It has nothing to do with being more intelligent than those who stayed, it has to do with the genetic mutation that arose from a common ancestor around the time of the OoA migration. The cause of the migration does come down to genetic differences in the founder population (s), but not intelligence differences.
Two notes on the DRD4 allele: populations with a history of migration have a higher chance of having the allele in comparison to sedentary populations. And: a correlation of .85 was found between km traveled and the rate of DRDR4 allele frequency distributions. These alleles are more prevalent in South America, which is not surprising since they had to travel the furthest.
PP then starts talking about why Australoids have lower IQs, saying:
With agriculture/civilization, the dark caucasoids traveled the World, spreading their high IQ mutation to every corner of the globe except those that are most isolated. So the mean genetic IQ of the entire World increased by 13 points, with the exception of places that were too hard to get to, such as Australia and Papua New Guineas, the Congo rain forest, the Southern tip of Africa, and the Americas. Since most of sub-Saharan Africa got the genes, they suddenly leaped from having lower IQs than the Austaloids, to being smarter (only the bushmen and pygmies, who like the Australoids, were too isolated to get the genes, remained behind the Australoids).
This is a great hypothesis. It makes a lot of sense. The ‘Dark Caucasoids’ as PP calls them, better known as Anatolian/Neolithic Farmers could have had a higher chance for more high IQ mutations due to the fact that they could farm and thus have a higher population giving more of a chance for higher IQs.
The downfall for the dark caucasoids was spreading these genes to whites and East Asians. Because of cold winters, East Asians and whites were smarter than pre-mutation dark caucasoids, and now with these mutations, they were smarter once again.
I’m confused here. What we call whites today did not exist that far back in the past. Europeans are an amalgamation of four different ancient populations, basically are an amalgamation of ‘Dark Caucasoids’. Is he also saying that the Neolithic Farmers were more intelligent than East Asians?
Eurasians didn’t become a distinct breeding group until the end of the last Glacial Maximum. This is why there is ‘genetic similarity’ to modern-day Europeans with some old, 10k year plus peoples in the Americas. Because the two groups didn’t split into distinct populations, they show a similar genotype. This is what proponents of the Solutrean Hypothesis need to get through their heads. (I recently got into a nice discussion over at The Alternative Hypothesis, scroll down for comments. I’m going to make a more comprehensive post on the SH in the near future as I have come across even better data on it.)
We can see from this PCA graph (from Zainel Abidin et al) that Australoids don’t even cluster in the vicinity of Africans. They are on the complete other side of the graph, showing how great of a genetic distance there is between these two populations. You can see the other Oceanic peoples (the orange dots, who Afrocentrists and others say are Negroid, Abos, Papuans, Melanesians, etc) are also clustered away from Africans. PCA graphs show that the three populations are not genetically similar and that phenotype, sometimes, isn’t enough to show who belongs to what racial grouping. PCA analysis refutes peoples ‘feelz’ on what they believe with their eyes. Even with this data, their ‘feelz’ still overrides the truth and they still believe lies.
While on this subject of similar phenotype not meaning one population is racially the same as another, people use this same fallacious reasoning for ‘white-looking’ peoples in the ME.
Quoting Razib Khan:
The final issue is that a lot of the phenotypes that we racially code are recent. This probably explains why groups like the Kalash and Nuristanis can look more like Europeans than South Asians, but they’re genetically more like South Asians.
What does any of this have to do with non-scientific things? I don’t really know. My interest in population structure is intellectual, not personal. But a certain type of person should probably stop talking about how white people have been in Europe for 40,000 years. First, the ancestors of modern Europeans 40,000 years ago were almost all residing outside of Europe. An assertion that holds until 15,000 years ago. And most would still be resident outside of Europe 8,000 years ago as depending on how you count/calculate. *** And, perhaps more importantly, the typical phenotype of Northern Europeans probably really coalesced only around ~5,000 years ago. ***
How can there be such phenotypic similarity in two populations separated by thousands of miles?
Easy. The Kalash and other ME ‘white-looking’ populations have ancient Siberian ancestry. As shown in my linked article, modern-day Europeans have a great deal of Siberian ancestry, mostly from the true Aryans, the Yamnaya peoples.
And in the comments Razib was asked:
“Could I bother you to list the top three theories/positions that you see falling into this unsupportable category?”
To which he responded:
“that phylogeny and phenotype track closely. just because you can’t tell the physical difference between two pops (e.g., solomon islanders and sub-saharan africans) they must be phylogenetically close. this is not the case.”
Pretty much seals the deal.
Just because populations look similar on the outside doesn’t mean they are genetically similar. As shown from Razib’s post, the phenotypes that we code are relatively recent, which is why there are some populations separated by thousands of miles yet look extremely similar.
Bonus:
This was said in the comments:
I can’t really tell about the genetics since I don’t have the scientific background, but my impression is a lot of those white identity guys have an extremely mythologised view of the past. This seems to be true even of the smarter ones; e.g. I recently read a bit of Richard Spencer’s twitter account (out of interest in the alt right phenomenon) and he throws out such totally retarded comments as “Europe has always been unified, even before Christianity” (totally ignoring what is known about the ancient Greeks’ intimate links to the Near East, the Greeks’ and Romans’ unflattering view of the northern barbarians, the emergence of Latin Christendom in the middle ages and the fairly late rise of the concept of Europe etc.) or “Europe is a nation”. There seems to be little awareness of the complexities of historical change because everything is reduced to some supposedly unchanging racial essence reaching back into the mists of prehistoric times. Now I’m pretty far right and “racist” myself, but a lot of this really seems pretty stupid…like myth-making for identity politics.
i knew the pre-WN richard spencer (we lost touch after his ideological changes ~2010). he’s smart. i have a hard time believing he doesn’t know the latest research, which was evening starting to be evident back then. so i think it’s myth-making.
p.s. a friend of mine sent me a link to a richard spencer interview with kevin macdonald last year i think, pointing to a specific segment of the podcast talking about ancient genetics. kevin was telling richard how europeans 40,000 years ago were white, and those are the ancestors of europeans. that’s wrong.
Europeans 40kya were not white those in the area at that time are *not* the ancestors of today’s Europeans.
Both Afrocentrists and Nordicists need to keep up with the new information that’s constantly coming out. Because what they say in regards to genetics and/or anything else is mostly wrong.
The Concept of “More Evolved”: A Reply to Pumpkin Person
1000 words
Recently, PumpkinPerson has been stating that one population can be ‘more evolved‘ than another which doesn’t make any biological sense. PP’s basic thesis is that since we are the last branch on the tree in comparison to the lifeforms that came before Homo Sapiens, that due to that, we are ‘more evolved’ than other organisms on the planet. I get where he’s coming from; he’s just extremely wrong.
Organisms evolve to better adapt to their environment through Natural Selection (NS). NS does select for positive traits, however, evolution is not a linear process. PP also claims that “evolution is progressive“. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Stating that evolution is “progressive” means that evolution through NS is progressing to an “endgame”. Though, we know there is no “endgame” with evolution, as evolution just happens.
Evolution is not progressive. NS may select for traits not suitable for that environment, as NS is “not all-powerful”. Selecting for one advantageous trait may change another trait for the worse. (See “Misconceptions on Evolutionary Trees“, which is what PP did, from Berkely).
PP asks “Who is most evolved?”
No organism is “more evolved” than another. NS selects for traits that are advantageous to that current environment (it selects for negative traits as well). Due to this, the word “superior”, the phrase “more evolved” is meaningless comparing human races to one another and humanity as a whole to the other lifeforms on the planet.
PP quotes Rushton as saying
“One theoretical possibility is that evolution is progressive, and that some populations are more advanced than others.” J.P. Rushton, 1989
We know that evolution is not progressive, so due to this, some populations are not more advanced than others. Genetic superiority can be measured subjectively, but not objectively, as each organism has different strengths and weaknesses due to its environment.
PP then implies that bacteria are “less evolved” than we are. However, with recent breakthroughs in the HMP (Human Microbiome Project) we see the huge role that gut microbiota play when it comes to communicating with the brain, how antibiotics that kill gut microbiota also stop the growth of new brain cells, and how altered gut microbiota cause obesity. With more amazing uses and benefits we find involving gut microbiota and human health, can we really say that we’re “more evolved” than these organisms when they account for a huge amount of positive benefits for as a whole.
For another example, cows using their own genes wouldn’t be able to extract the fiber out of the food they eat. They would need special enzymes to break down the cell wall to extract the nutrients from the food. Though, evolving the genes to do this would take an extremely long time. This is where gut microbiota come in. Trillions of microbiomes live in the cows’ 4 stomachs. The microbiomes living in the cows’ gut processes the food back and forth through the mechanical grinding of the cows’ mouth and thus, the nutrients are extracted by the microbiomes that way.
In this instance, is a cow superior to its microbiomes if a cow’s microbiomes make it possible for it to digest its food?
PP then asks “Does more evolved mean superior?”
No, it doesn’t. There is no way to quantify this, as evolution is not progressive. Furthermore, saying that one organism is “more evolved” than another doesn’t make any sense since, as noted earlier in this article, each organism is suited to the environment it evolved in through NS.
PP then says that he prefers a 3 race model, when a 5 race model makes more sense. These populations are “Africa, Europe, Asia, Melanesia and the Americas.”
I assume he would put ‘Natives’ with Asian Mongoloids, but ‘Natives’ have been genetically isolated in the Americas for so long that they formed their own distinct clade away from other populations due to no introgression between them, when other populations have admixture from other parts of the world:
Significant genetic input from outside is not noticed in Meso and South American Amerindians according to the phylogenetic analyses; while all world populations (including Africans, Europeans, Asians, Australians, Polynesians, North American Na-Dene Indians and Eskimos) are genetically related. Meso and South American Amerindians tend to remain isolated in the Neighbor-Joining, correspondence and plane genetic distance analyses.
Hence, a 5 race model makes more sense as these populations show genetic differentiation between each other.
Still, others may take the concept of “more evolved” and believe that one race is “more evolved” than another. That’s another wrong statement.
The assumption here is that populations that evolved closer to the equator had evolution “stop” for them due to “ease of lifestyle” (life is easy nowhere). That too makes no evolutionary sense. If that were so, how did Africans evolve the sickle cell trait? Evolution is a constant, ongoing process and does not ‘speed up or slow down’ based on the environments in which ancestral evolution has occurred.
Moreover, r/K selection theory does dictate fast and slow life history strategies, but it has nothing to do with ‘fast or slow evolution within human populations’.
To state that evolution ‘is faster or slower’ in certain populations of humans is like saying ‘evolution has slowed for man since 50kya’ as anti-human-evolutionists have said:
“Something must have happened to weaken the selective pressure drastically. We cannot escape the conclusion that man’s evolution towards manness has suddenly come to a halt.” – Ernst Mayr
“There’s been no biological change in humans in 40,000 or 50,000 years. Everything we call culture and civilization we’ve built with the same body and brain.” – Stephen Jay Gould
Stating that evolution occurs faster in certain populations is on the complete opposite of the “evolution stopped for humans 50kya” camp, which we know is not true and evolution has sped up in the last 10kya.
To say that one organism, or population for that matter, is more evolved than another makes no biological sense. Each organism is suited to its own environment and where it evolved. Even then, different organisms evolve different traits depending on what they have to do in that ecosystem to survive. Darwin’s finches are a perfect example of that.
NotPoliticallyCorrect 
They are not closely related to Africans.