> We finally observed signals of selection for combinations of alleles
that today are associated with three correlated behavioural traits:
scores on intelligence tests (increasing γ = 0.74 ± 0.12), household
income (increasing γ = 1.12 ± 0.12) and years of schooling (increasing
γ = 0.63 ± 0.13). These signals are all highly polygenic, and we have
to drop 449–1,056 loci for the signals to become non-significant
(Extended Data Fig. 10). The signals are largely driven by selection
before approximately 2,000 years )*, after which γ tends towards zero
Presumably pressure in different regions lead to different combinations of those alleles, which I think they are shorthanding a bit, but the fact that those alleles exist makes blank slate theory a kind of rough assumption
No, this paper doesn't seem to talk about regional differences. The implication seems to be that it wouldn't be surprising to find differences between groups that separated more than 2kya, as there was active changes going on before that time. Not that it predicts any specific differences
> If anything they seem to support homogenization of intellectual capacity/mental health in Eurasia since 2kya.
I would be interested in how you came to that conclusion, unless I'm misleading your post and you specifically mean West Eurasia
> Just because an allele, SNP, or trait swept into or out of West Eurasia during this time doesn’t mean this happened only in West Eurasia. Researchers can use the new computational methods to look for directional selection in other populations worldwide that have enough ancient DNA sequences and construct a clearer picture of what’s unique to different groups and what generalizes across populations.
> Reich expects that future studies will show that shared selective pressures acted on some of the same core traits across diverse human groups, even as those groups split off and migrated to different parts of the world over tens of thousands of years.
There is a graph arguing “intelligence” has been positively selected in west Eurasian population in this paper according to a polygenic score (page 8 fig. 4)
Now I would be quite curious to know how they constructed this polygenic score
To be clear: most people who are keen on making such an argument, or who are identifying racial genetic differences as the primary takeaway of studies like this, are doing so to justify racism, either implicitly or explicitly.
But that's a strawman. Racism is wrong, even if there are minor genetic variances across populations (which... seems obvious?) Variance within a population strongly dominates the weak cross-population effects, and personal history (nutrition, education, etc) strongly dominates that.
And that's setting aside the moral implications of judging someone or changing your behavior towards them even if you have somehow measured them to be "less intelligent," as if that was a single axis of worth.
> most people who are keen on making such an argument, or who are identifying racial genetic differences as the primary takeaway of studies like this, are doing so to justify racism, either implicitly or explicitly.
That may certainly be true.
(Not OP, but) I always shutter when we want to deny scientific results because it might be "helpful" for someone making a racist argument.
My personal belief is that truth is the goal of science. Even in cases where the truth is uncomfortable.
It's very nice to believe in a pure system that exists outside of politics, but that's simply not how the world works, and it never will be.
There is no scientific breakthrough that has occurred sans politics. Politics choose the winners and the losers, and the realm is science is no exception.
All science is political, because the scientific institutions are made up of people, who are political. Your research project lives and dies by politics, as does your dissertation, who gets published, who receives awards, etc.
So when it comes to research of limited utility that has a nasty cadre waiting in the wings to pounce upon it, the wise person would think twice.
As I said to another person on this thread: if scientists let their political views override their pursuit of truth, the public will (rightly) lose faith in science.
So when you tell them to "trust the science" -- be it vaccinations, climate change or something else -- they have no reason to trust that science.
There are a few scientific topics that are too easily manipulated by bad actors who ignore all the nuance. You have to tread very, very carefully on those and ask yourself what good vs. what harm can come from it. We know from history that giving opportunist leaders a chance to classify humans into distinct sub-groups based on intelligence and other key traits ends in catastrophe.
I understand what you are saying and I don't disagree with the idea that bad actors will use science in bad ways.
But I think going down this path of denying (or hiding) science that can be used for bad ideas ends up causing (rightly, imho) a distrust of science -- which is far worse.
A distrust of science (not saying it was caused by this particular issue) is how we ended up with so much anti-vax sentiment in the US. And that is the reason we are seeing outbreaks of diseases that used to be minimal.
I think if you want people to "trust the science", you have to trust the people.
This interest in IQ has a negative effect on the concept of intelligence, never mind human unity. It attaches exaggerated importance to test scores, jobs, and school. It tends toward snobbery.
I think the discussion in recent years has refocused, embracing ethnonatalist implications and challenging the core assertion that "racism is wrong".
My main resistance to that is much the same as yours: the differences are so small, that re-architecting society around them is not going to be enough juice for the squeeze.
But one could also argue that the juice is not even the point: by re-architecting society in this way, you "pre-brutalize" your population so that their threshold for violence against "others" is lowered. Thus your population is closer to being wholly militarized, and theoretically is more effective in war, and is less captured by "weak" or "unmanly" moral ideals, such as empathy.
While this might seem a virtue to someone of an expansionist mindset, in application this principle never, ever works well - again, thanks to those tiny differences. If a citizen is pre-brutalized to have a lowered resistance to killing those with curly hair, how long is it before they kill their next door neighbor with wavy hair, over something like lawn furniture?
Pre-brutalizing your populace to killing any sapiens is enough to brutalize them towards harming anyone else. This is the core of the "imperial boomerang", or the colonial boomerang theory, as to why the great wars of the 20th century took on such a nasty character. The ease with which we dehumanized subject populations was - all too easily - redirected against the neighbors, most memorably with Germany trying to re-create the American West to their East.
And yet you are also likely to argue “weather is not climate”. Differences in population characteristics of all kinds have massive societal implications and we should lean into addressing them.
people trying to force everyone else to accept their poorly defended notions of race superiority have a much larger social impact than any quantifiable differences in the genetics of populations.
That doesn’t work if a nation has strong institutions and hierarchies of command. Russia and Nazi Germany (and Iraq) were organized around a strong central leader who personally granted authority to his subordinates, but Iran’s rulers are given authority by a process. If the new supreme leader is killed, they will simply elect another one. Imagine that FDR was visiting Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked. Would the US government have collapsed? How many politicians and generals would the Japanese have had to kill before the US surrendered?
DOW Chemical was producing Agent Orange, but was getting a ton of public pushback - so bad it decided to stop production, forcing the Pentagon to look for an alternative supplier.
That supplier? A German privately owned pharmaco called Boehringer-Ingelheim. It's Chairman at the time? Richard von Weizsäcker, future President of Germany.
The production site was in Hamburg, is contaminated for the next thousand years. Boehringer is legally forced to operate pumps to prevent the dioxins in that site from reaching the water table. If those did, it would wipe out the full population.
"...part of “an insular, hypermasculine culture” in which “women are seen as totally redundant and completely unnecessary.” (A woman who once worked for a gay Republican startup founder describes it like this: “You get about the same amount of misogyny, but not the sexual harassment. So that’s nice.”)"
Tried many times to explain this to women - cis straight men are not your blockers, especially fathers.
Men who legit see you as redundant are.
"Allies" has been such an DEI Orwellian term.
Same with "racism" - up is down, left is right. Discrimination between Asians? Totally fine, zero attention, can't be true.
Unfortunately for Maduro, that operation was run by military professionals rather than directly by Trump's lackeys. But give Hegseth enough time and he'll bring them around to the new standard.
But Iraq, Afghanistan, Grenada, Panama, Vietnam ... were not a problem?
Ahistorical BS, I am sorry. As if Trump is a radical departure of NORMS. Euros were chanting HO HO HO CHI MIN in 1968 in the streets of Berlin and Paris.
There is a long tradition of anti-American feelings outside the US, like with any hegemon.
The global left had to build walls to keep their people IN, crush them with tanks, from Prague to Berlin to Beijing. So there is that.
HN turning so left is weird to watch, I guess a reflection of PG's stances and moderation/group votes. Well, money does not give a fig.
We're not going to debate the measuring stick when the stick itself is incapable of measuring the outcome.
In none of those scenarios provided did a sitting US president come close to insinuating acquisition of land by "hook or crook" - either agree with us or we take it.
The closest modern discussion that comes to mind is the PRC saying they could militarily "walk in and take the whole this afternoon" in regard to Hong Kong.
Thatcher, for all her wrongs, provided a salient response:
"There is nothing I could do to stop you, but the eyes of the world would now know what China is like."
The US has shown the world what we're like with the current administration.
I believe Saddam Hussein would disagree with you, if he could.
Just bonkers how basic history is getting rewritten.
"The great satan USA" has been a slogan since the 1960s. The US dropped napalm and agent orange on Vietnamese civilians en masse - Lyndon B Johnson was what, a good guy?
It will probably get displaced but it will take another 20 years of enshittification and a new generation thinking differently.
But it is more sticky than say a social network like FB. Why? You cant split by age. Make a hip Linkedin but the older people you want to impress, work for or sell to wont be there.
Times New Roman, Arial, Courier New, Calibri, Cambria… all of these fonts are proprietary.
But there are open-source metrically-compatible alternatives to all of them, commonly included in Linux distributions and/or office suites like LibreOffice.
Which in turn were named after the original Jacobins.
...and man, did Haiti turn out to be a perfect example of Third-Worldism. Ethnocide, ecological disaster, full on regression into a post-civilizational nightmare.
Different evolutionary paths between races/regions, with impact on mental health and cognitive performance.
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