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Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

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Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#151

Post by zozbot234 »

EnPissant wrote: post #149
zozbot234 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notion that you can only find a high-trust society among Europeans looks like transparent bunk to me, easily refuted by looking at other highly developed countries. And the notion that this might be a matter of genetics even more so. Sadly, we won't be able to use CRISPR therapy as a way of improving social trust anytime soon!

And yet when you look at corruption perception indexes, they largely track the Hajnal line. As do so many other graphs.

Ireland and Eastern Europe are outside the Hajnal line, and yet they're one of the biggest growth success stories. I suppose we'll get our answer soon enough as to whether it really matters. Do note however that a late marriage age for females (the key finding of the Hajnal line) implies that they have to be enabled to self-support via work, which was a key step towards modern bourgeois norms and was also inherently correlated to general prosperity.

Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#152

Post by pegasus »

matt-attack wrote: post #139
pegasus wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seems to me, that we divide other animals based on some of the most minor of phenotypic expressions It might seem like that to you, but you'd be wrong. Taxonomy prioritizes genetic distance and reproductive isolation over superficial visual traits that humans happen to find striking. While phenotypic variations like skin color or facial structure are highly visible, they represent a microscopic fraction of the over…

I’ve heard this argument but it sounds factually incorrect to me. Take for example: Icterus gularis [1] vs Icterus galbula [2] Are you really going to tell me that: 1. They’d refuse to have sex with each other or could not procreate And: 2. Someone bothered to check if they’re sufficiently distinct genetically? I suspect these species were deemed “distinct” by early naturalists like Carl Linnaeus or Charles Darwin ne…

1. They might not, but that's not decisive for reproductive isolation. Basically, those two populations have diverged enough that we know, from studying speciation in general, that they are on separate evolutionary trajectories never to join again. That's the decisive factor - they are two distinct branches of the tree of life. That's not the case with any two human populations. Human history shows that we are different from all other animals in this sense: no matter what obstacle – weather geographic or otherwise – separates us from each other, we ultimately find a way to overcome it.

2. You might have picked a bad example with these two species, since they appear to be surprisingly far apart genetically, a lot of their common appearance being explained by convergent evolution not by shared ancestry.

PS: A lot of this stuff is counterintuitive and understandably perplexing, but scientists have worked hard to get to the bottom of things and deserve a bit more credit for it. You base a lot of your arguments on suspicions and gut feeling. I recommend measuring those misgivings against the freely available AI chat apps, it will help you get a grip on both the depth and complexity our scientific understanding of this domain. Ask it for sources, go check those sources, ask deeper question, push back as much as you need. Here's my interaction with Claude on these questions:

https://claude.ai/share/bea11195-731b-4301-a2f5-fb669961a60e

Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#153

Post by pegasus »

like_any_other wrote: post #137
pegasus wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seems to me, that we divide other animals based on some of the most minor of phenotypic expressions It might seem like that to you, but you'd be wrong. Taxonomy prioritizes genetic distance and reproductive isolation over superficial visual traits that humans happen to find striking. While phenotypic variations like skin color or facial structure are highly visible, they represent a microscopic fraction of the over…

> Taxonomy prioritizes genetic distance [..] Two humans from opposite sides of the planet are generally more genetically similar to each other than two chimpanzees from the same patch of forest. Do you have a source? I've tried looking in the past, but couldn't find good "genetic distance" metrics that could be compared between humans and other species.

AI is great at these kind of searches. Here's what Claude found:

https://claude.ai/share/bea11195-731b-4301-a2f5-fb669961a60e

And Gemini:

https://gemini.google.com/share/bfe9c3d5a2de

TLDR: it checks out.

Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#154

Post by pfdietz »

daveguy wrote: post #127
pfdietz wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and there are also wide swaths of genetic traits that we have in common with other species. But it would be senseless to propose we're the same as chimpanzees. The point is it doesn't take much in the way of genetic differences, as a fraction of the total genome, to make a very large difference in phenotype.

Well, if the phenotype or trait due to any random gene was the differentiation between race, species, or anything else besides that specific trait, you might have a point in support of OP. But unfortunately for racist ducks there are so many differences, and similarities , that have nothing to do with hair color or height. Any given swath is it's own mosaic of combinations, no matter what we label it.

I read what you wrote there several times and can't make heads or tails of what you're trying to say. Are you claiming genetic differences aren't why species are different? Are you claiming chimps and humans don't share most of their (protein coding) genes? Are you attacking a strawman where you think the people you are attacking are claiming specific single gene differences are why they claim races are genetically different?

I'll add that "racist ducks" is a bad sign there, since arguments about facts don't have anything to do with motivation, and bringing up motivation is an ad hominem argument. "Argue like this and you are a bad person."

Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#155

Post by glerk »

rolph wrote: post #131
greazy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The definition of what constitutes a species is a human construct. Two bird populations living in the same locale but divided by a mountain range therefore not naturally breeding with each other would classify as a different species, even if they could breed with each other. So your question is hard to answer.

"The definition of what constitutes a species is a human construct." speciation is reproductive incompatability. geographic isolation is more like founder effect than speciation.

> speciation is reproductive incompatability

This is not necessarily true, even under a very strict definition of reproductive compatibility (offspring is itself not sterile, which excludes mules or ligers). For example, feral dogs, wolves and coyotes regularly mate and produce 100% viable offspring. You could argue that these are not really different species, but they are usually classified as such.

Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#156

Post by glerk »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #40
like_any_other wrote: post #7

Is there any species, other than humans, that is found all across the globe (i.e. geographically separated), and has not differentiated into subspecies? Wolves, elephants, tigers, bears, and foxes have all been categorized into multiple subspecies each, distinct but able to interbreed.

Do humans not fit the standards for being broken into multiple subspecies? I assumed that they would but "the science community" is too scared of the implications when idiots learn about it. I look at a sumatran tiger and a Siberian tiger and I see a lot less variance than I see when I look at a pygmy, a Norwegian, an sentinel islander, and a han Chinese person

You are free to create your own human classification scheme with k sub-species and try to popularize it, there's nobody stopping you and there isn't some authority out there called "the scientific community" that's going to send you cease and desist letters.

There's just not much to gain from the exercise and there are better things to spend your time on.

Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#157

Post by [deleted] »

krapp wrote: post #117
naasking wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However race is a cultural and social construct. [...] The superficial variations in average height, skin color, etc. do not vary enough to constitute species differentiation Species is also a social construct. Calling race a social construct isn't the persuasive argument people seem to assume. > the vast majority of genetic variation exists within populations (in other words, within "races") and not between them.…

It's the established scientific consensus. Obviously it isn't convincing to racists, but no argument would be given that racists don't approach the subject in good faith to begin with. I think you're being too pedantic, though, because the statement "the average Norwegian and the average Pygmy are more alike than any individual Norwegian is to any other Norwegian" is perfectly sensible within the context of this thre…

[deleted]

Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#158

Post by pipes »

zozbot234 wrote: post #148
EnPissant wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are multiple factors at play: - Among those who believe in intellectual differences among human groups, very few believe Europeans are the most intelligent group. The prevailing opinion you would find is that both Ashkenazi Jews and East Asians (your second example) are more intelligent on average. - Northwest Europeans encountered intense selection over a Millennia starting around 300AD through a couple of mec…

The notion that you can only find a high-trust society among Europeans looks like transparent bunk to me, easily refuted by looking at other highly developed countries. And the notion that this might be a matter of genetics even more so. Sadly, we won't be able to use CRISPR therapy as a way of improving social trust anytime soon!

Which other developed countries do you mean? The only ones I can think of, have westernised on purpose. E.g. Singapore and Japan.

Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#159

Post by tptacek »

EnPissant wrote: post #147
tptacek wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how that argument could even work. Since the dawn of recorded history there has been (1) wildly varying levels of civilizational achievement depending on the era and (2) not nearly enough time for meaningful selection effects to be the cause of those variations. We could get into the reasons why physiological differences ("height") behave differently in genetics than behavioral differences ("cognit…

There are multiple factors at play: - Among those who believe in intellectual differences among human groups, very few believe Europeans are the most intelligent group. The prevailing opinion you would find is that both Ashkenazi Jews and East Asians (your second example) are more intelligent on average. - Northwest Europeans encountered intense selection over a Millennia starting around 300AD through a couple of mec…

You're not even responding to the question. You're describing (what you believe to be) features of global civilization today, projected out from "300AD". But at various points over that interval, European civilization wasn't on the leaderboard, and was being outcompeted by the Khmer, Mali, China, you name it.

You see this all the time in these kinds of discussions, the assumption that because "western" civilization possesses X, Y, and Z traits, history must consist of a linear progression towards realizing those traits. Obviously, no. For many centuries the west was brutal, illiterate, tribal, and chaotic, primitive in ways other cultures were not.

It's just a tedious history lesson except that it abruptly falsifies the idea that you can look at "civilizational achievement" and reason back to genetic superiority. Obviously you cannot. You could come up with some other evidence for genetic superiority! But this particular argument is patently wrong.

Re: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

#160

Post by rolph »

glerk wrote: post #155
rolph wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The definition of what constitutes a species is a human construct." speciation is reproductive incompatability. geographic isolation is more like founder effect than speciation.

> speciation is reproductive incompatability This is not necessarily true, even under a very strict definition of reproductive compatibility (offspring is itself not sterile, which excludes mules or ligers). For example, feral dogs, wolves and coyotes regularly mate and produce 100% viable offspring. You could argue that these are not really different species, but they are usually classified as such.

"For example, feral dogs, wolves and coyotes regularly mate and produce 100% viable offspring" citation required.

"You could argue that these are not really different species, but they are usually classified as such."

you could argue, but i not, me. reproductive compatability means wild type organisms not artificially coerced.

there are tiers of incompatability, biochemical, physiological, anatomical, behavioral, geophysical, geographical.

incompatability on any of those levels, drives speciation.

once again speciation is not about artificial [anthropogenic] induction of reproductive function, it is about wild type incompatability.

no you cant argue. but your forgiven for not having the knowledge, and being fed half knowledge out of brevity.

evolution is real, speciation is real, saying let it be so, and it will manifest itself, is not real.

oh by the way, we are a species of primate, not dust, and rib bones.

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