https://x.com/jollyheretic/status/1826136690571747739
"Race Science": Accepting that human adaptation doesn't stop at the neck and that humans are animals, adapted to their assorted ecologies. In other words, actually accepting Darwinian Evolution rather than being a Neo-Creationist.
According to the authors, this change also led to the reappearance of significant genetic differences among human populations. Humans who adopted agriculture and experienced the resulting population growth became genetically different from those who did not. “This picture of adaptation to agricultural diets,” so the authors claim, “has two important implications: Populations today must vary in their degree of adaptation to such diets, depending on their historical experience, and populations must have changed over time.” In other words, humankind was again divided in two. Only this time, claim Cochran and Harpending, the genetic gap didn’t close. On the contrary, it widened, and new genetic gaps appeared. Humankind was divided into three, four, five, and so on. The crucial factors in this unprecedented process of genetic differentiation were the adoption of agriculture and population size.
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Cochran and Harpending argue that the genetic gap between agriculturalists and non-agriculturalists is still with us, though it is closing as the genes of the former spread to the genomes of the latter. But they also claim that new gaps have occasionally appeared within agricultural populations themselves. Some of these populations—civilizations, empires, societies, and nations—have grown very large and very complex. Both of these characteristics increase the probability that some sub population—a territory, class, ethnicity, or profession—will become genetically different. Large, complex populations create the “space,” so to speak, in which sub-populations can become genetically distinct. The force that differentiates them is, of course, natural selection, but here the selection is engineered by other human beings in the same population. Socially induced selection pressure can be subtle, as when one class oppresses another, and not so subtle, as when one race tries to exterminate another. The important point is that socially induced selection pressures accelerate genetic change in the affected sub population and move it toward a new local optimum balance, one that is similar to that of the general population but adapted to local circumstances.
Wade would go further. He offers the self-evident observation that human societies differ significantly, then argues that civilizations “have been deeply shaped by their respective histories as each responded to the specific challenges of its environment.” In particular, the institutions of individual societies are rooted in and grow out of our social behaviors—ranging from an instinct for cooperation to a willingness to fight to the death to protect group members—and these have, to one degree or another, a genetic basis. Though genes merely provide us with a predisposition to act in certain ways (we’re not always cooperative, obviously), and many individuals chart their own courses, when a significant portion of a population carries with it a predisposition toward certain actions, the results are profound.
Wade might have stopped here, having provided enough controversy to last a lifetime, but he ploughs on with a series of speculative observations. In a chapter audaciously titled “The Recasting of Human Nature,” he expands on his observations about how natural selection shapes societies by drawing on the works of economists like Thomas Sowell on ethnic minorities (especially in Sowell’s books Conquests and Cultures and Migrations and Cultures) and Daron Acemoğlu on nations (Why Nations Fail, written with the political scientist James Robinson). Observing that experts still argue over what forces produced the Industrial Revolution, Wade magnifies the ideas of economic historian Gregory Clark, who suggested that an evolutionary behavioral change might have triggered the great economic advances that began in the late eighteenth century. Wade admits that there is no direct evidence of any genetic link—no “capitalist gene” that science has uncovered, if you will—but he does his best to shape a plausible scenario anyway. As if this isn’t enough, Wade’s penultimate chapter, “The Rise of the West,” argues that natural selection similarly helped produce European societies that were open and innovative, which enabled them to “achieve a surprising degree of dominance in many spheres.” Given the influence that multiculturalists have on today’s American campuses, it’s unlikely that Wade will be delivering any commencement address anytime soon.
“The thesis presented here assumes . . . that there is a genetic component to human social behavior; that this component, so critical to human survival, is subject to evolutionary change and has indeed evolved over time; that the evolution in social behavior has necessarily proceeded independently in the five major races and others; and that slight evolutionary differences in social behavior underlie the differences in social institutions prevalent among the major human populations.”
To develop his case, Mr. Wade draws from a wide range of technical literature in political science, sociology, economics and anthropology. He contrasts the polities and social institutions of China, India, the Islamic world and Europe. He reviews circumstantial evidence that the genetic characteristics of the English lower class evolved between the 13th century and the 19th. He takes up the outsize Jewish contributions to the arts and sciences, most easily explained by the Jews’ conspicuously high average IQ, and recounts the competing evolutionary explanations for that elevated cognitive ability. Then, with courage that verges on the foolhardy, he adds a chapter that incorporates genetics into an explanation of the West’s rise during the past 600 years.
In terms of cultural achievement, it has been argued that the strong K-selection of East Asians means that they have a very "small gene pool," that is, a low level of genetic diversity not, of course, a small number of people. This is because their ancestral environment was so harsh that there was relatively little room for any deviation from the optimum. They are also extremely high in altruism (Agreeableness) and rule following (Conscientiousness). Cultural achievement is predicted, substantially, by national average IQ. Indeed, this strongly predicts many measures of civilization, such as literacy, education level, health, wealth, sanitation, low child mortality, low religiousness, and so on.9 Equally important to a nation’s cultural flourishing is its "smart fraction"—its innovators, the geniuses who come up with highly original ideas. These people are the motors of civilization, driving the crucial breakthroughs that allow all of us to progress.10 As mentioned earlier, scientific geniuses typically combine outlier high IQ with moderately low Conscientiousness and moderately low Agreeableness.11 Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727)—an obsessive eccentric, unworldly, and cold-hearted—is the prototypical example. He would become lost in thought on the stairs for hours at a time, even while entertaining guests. Newton had very few friends and, in an argument with his mother, once threatened to burn her house down.12 As already noted, the scientific genius’s outlier high IQ means, of course, that he can generate highly original and important ideas. His moderately low Conscientiousness makes him creative; able to "think outside the box." Breakthroughs almost always offend vested interests. But, low in Agreeableness, the genius simply doesn’t care—he might not even be able to anticipate that he would cause offense, due to his lack of empathy. He may even enjoy triggering the powers that be; his contrarian nature being part of the reason why he questions everything he is told and thus makes new discoveries.
The East Asians’ smaller gene pool means they are less likely to produce people with outlier high IQ, let alone produce people who combine this with a moderately anti-social personality. Moreover, the flip-side of geniuses would be high IQ dreamers, who are parasitic on the society, as well as low IQ, anti-social people—in other words, criminals or malcontents. And you can’t have the good without the bad. For East Asians, the selection pressure for cooperativeness in such a harsh ecology would be so strong that it would be dangerous to risk producing geniuses. We’re reminded of the Japanese proverb, "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down." For these reasons, it is the Caucasians—not the extreme K East Asians—who have the greatest cultural achievements.
The “Looming Crisis” That Lies Beyond the Dairy Cow
Make no mistake, evolutionary changes like the capability for lifetime dairy consumption are important occurrences in their own right, but these changes beg an obvious question. Should we assume that natural selection has only affected genes related to drinking milk (or skin pigmentation and resistance to certain types of disease)? For this to be true, it would have to mean that natural selection somehow managed to ignore our central nervous system (CNS) and, by extension, genes that are connected (directly and indirectly) to human personality and temperament. Temperamental and psychological traits are strongly related to survival and reproductive success in humans, moreover. Even slight differences in psychological propensities (being slightly more or less impulsive, or slightly more of less inclined to seek out new experiences, for example) might have had large effects on the survival and reproduction of our ancestors in the different environments they encountered.
What would be convenient at this point is if I could point you to five traits—or even one—and be able to say with a high degree of certainty that this trait differs across racial or ethnic groups because those groups encountered different selection pressures across the history of our species. One could certainly try and speak definitively, but it would still only amount to informed speculation, as the empirical jury is still out at this juncture. Some titillating possibilities exist, nonetheless, including the cognitive differences between Ashkenazi Jewish individuals and other ethnic groups. Some researchers have argued that the high IQ of Ashkenazi Jewish people — relative to other groups — is at least partially genetically caused, owing to intense selection pressures for intellectual capacity over the last several thousand years. Gregory Cochran, Jason Hardy, and Henry Harpending, specifically, have written on the topic. Yet, much more research is required.
As good fortune would have it, the technology available to ask and answer questions like these is rapidly advancing. The evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller, some years back, wrote about the advances being made, for example, in gene sequencing technology. These “quantum leaps” forward are allowing researchers to resequence large portions of the genome rapidly, and for not much money. Miller, of course, was completely aware of what this meant for research into the sources of human differences, thus the “looming crisis” that the title of his article alludes to. Miller notes:
We will also identify the many genes that create physical and mental differences across populations, and we will be able to estimate when those genes arose. Some of those differences probably occurred very recently, within recorded history. Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending argued in “The 10,000 Year Explosion” that some human groups experienced a vastly accelerated rate of evolutionary change within the past few thousand years, benefiting from the new genetic diversity created within far larger populations, and in response to the new survival, social and reproductive challenges of agriculture, cities, divisions of labour and social classes. Others did not experience these changes until the past few hundred years when they were subject to contact, colonisation and, all too often, extermination.
Given the rapid pace with which we know biological evolution can take place, the vastly different environments that humans encountered across the course of our history, and the unlikelihood that natural selection would skip over traits that were psychological and temperamental in nature, it’s simply a reasonable bet that some of the differences that emerge across human groups have been at least partly shaped by natural selection. Miller makes a final point, however, that resonates with a theme embedded in the start of the essay, and in part I.
If the shift from GWAS [genome wide association studies] to sequencing studies finds evidence of such politically awkward and morally perplexing facts, we can expect the usual range of ideological reactions, including nationalistic retro-racism from conservatives and outraged denial from blank-slate liberals. The few who really understand the genetics will gain a more enlightened, live-and-let-live recognition of the biodiversity within our extraordinary species — including a clearer view of likely comparative advantages between the world’s different economies.
Miller’s essay ends on a decidedly upbeat note, but what if he’s wrong about something? What if people fail to adopt a “live-and-let-live” type of response? There is a human side of human biodiversity to worry about, and it is this topic that we turn our attention to next (Prior work offers arguments that dovetail generally with those presented here, and which offer far more detail than can be covered in a short, informal essay).
Wade admits that much of his argument is speculative and has yet to be confirmed by hard, genetic evidence. Nevertheless, he argues, “even a small shift in [genetically based] social behavior can generate a very different kind of society,” perhaps one where trust and cooperation can extend beyond kin or the tribe—thus facilitating trade, for example, or one emphasizing punishment for nonconformity—thus advancing rule-orientation and isolationism, for instance. “It is reasonable to assume,” the authother writes, “that if traits like skin color have evolved in a population, the same may be true of its social behavior.”
But what profound environmental conditions could possibly have selected for more progressive behavioral adaptations in some but not all populations? As the climate warmed following the Pleistocene Ice Age, Wade reminds that the agricultural revolution erupted around 10,000 years ago among settlements in the Near East and China. Increased food production led to population explosions, which in turn spurred social stratification, wealth disparities, and more frequent warfare. “Human social behavior,” Wade says, “had to adapt to a succession of makeovers as settled tribes developed into chiefdoms, chiefdoms into archaic states, and states into empires.”
Meanwhile, other societies transformed far less dramatically. “For lack of good soils, favorable climate, navigable rivers, and population pressures,” Wade observes, “Africa south of the Sahara remained largely tribal throughout the historical period, as did Australia, Polynesia, and the circumpolar regions.
”Citing economist Gregory Clark (2007), Wade then postulates that, during the period between 1200 and 1800 ce—twenty-four generations and “plenty of time for a significant change in social behavior if the pressure of natural selection were sufficiently intense”—the English in particular evolved a greater tendency toward “bourgeoisification” and at least four traits—nonviolence, literacy, thrift, and patience—thus enabling them to escape the so-called “Malthusian trap,” in which agrarian societies never quite learn to produce more than their expanding numbers can consume, and, finally, to lead the world into the Industrial Revolution.
In other words, according to this author, modern industrialized societies have emerged only as a result of two evolved sets of behaviors—initially, those that favor broader trust and contribute to the breakdown of tribalism and, subsequently, those that favor discipline and delayed gratification and lead to increased productivity and wealth. On the other hand, says Wade, sub-Saharan Africans, for example, though well-adapted to their unique environmental circumstances, generally never evolved traits necessary to move beyond tribalism. Only an evolutionary explanation for this disparity, he concludes, can reveal, for instance, why foreign aid to non-modern societies frequently fails and why Western institutions, including democracy and free markets, cannot be readily transferred to (or forced upon) yet pre-industrial cultures.
Ashkenazi Economic and Social History
https://methalashun.blogspot.com/2022/04/not-never-joe.html
OK. Scroll about three-quarters of the way down this blog post (just past the photos of the nude Natives). Why did I upload those paragraph long passages? To highlight how the environment (ecological, social, cultural environment) selects for certain traits and how the full-blooded Native Hawaiians were maladapted* (psychologically and behaviorally) to the European influenced social and cultural environment that began to spread throughout the islands from about the mid-19th century onward leading to their (Native Hawaiians) lesser reproductive fitness. Which races are better adapted (psychologically and behaviorally) to this new social and cultural environment (European styled government, European styled legal system, European styled economy, European styled social system (non-kinship based), European styled mating system, etc.)? Western Europeans and East Asians. Why do whites and Japanese dominate Hawaii's economic and social spheres? Why do the remaining modern Hawaiians overwhelmingly possess European and Asian physical traits (e.g. European and Asian facial features)? because those that dominate the financial market will dominate the sexual market. - Peter Dagampat Ph.D.
*Read the above excerpts to get an idea about what psychological and personality types are adaptive in socially, technologically, and economically modern environments (e.g. Western Civilization). Nearly overnight Hawaiian society transformed from a subsistence-based culture to a market-based culture and full-blooded Native Hawaiians weren't adapted to a market-based economy! This is the type of economy that Native Hawaiians are adapted to From Then to Now A Manual For Doing Things Hawaiian Style | Native Books !
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P.S. Later today I'll speculate as to why the height of Natives has decreased over the past 175 years.
