Bad Science: Harper's article, "Mighty White of You"

[Alex78]

"those who are not required to breed"
oh my god.... you certainly are not one of those that should get children.

 

[derek]

"those who are not required to breed"
oh my god.... you certainly are not one of those that should get children.

You sort of missed the point. Eugenics is not a clinical form of facism, Its generally an informed point of view that advocates only folks of good stock can breed. Not necessarily only smart people, but just people who can raise a healthy child that can benefit society in a positive way.

 

[infoterror]

And one more thing Norsemaiden:

White civilization if you will--and by that I mean Scandinavian, Celtic, and Germanic civilization--really didnt get started until the late middle ages.

This isn't as cut and dry as one might think. First, there's India. Second, there's the long record of civilization in Finland. Then there are other indicators from the center of Europe, not to mention Solutreans found in the USA at 13,000 years ago. My guess is that Spengler was right: the bravest civilizations don't leave monuments or bother to write much down in "permanent" form.

 

[speed]

This isn't as cut and dry as one might think. First, there's India. Second, there's the long record of civilization in Finland. Then there are other indicators from the center of Europe, not to mention Solutreans found in the USA at 13,000 years ago. My guess is that Spengler was right: the bravest civilizations don't leave monuments or bother to write much down in "permanent" form.

Yes, civilization is much older than previously thought. The Minoans, or Minoan-related people that lived on Santorini--which is thought to be Atlantis, built such complex houses and plumbing, art work, that is hard to fathom how advanced they were 4,000 years ago. The Minoans had trade paths that have been discovered to reach all the way to the tin in Cornwall 4,000 years ago. And I just read remnants of a city older than UR, were found in northern Syria.

But, although the Celts were somewhat organized, that still doesnt change the fact that the Germanic peoples were in their infancy from Roman times all the way up to Charlemagne--and even then to essentially the Renaissance, and the Faustian--or Germanic peoples scientific age we now reside at the tail end of.

 

[derek]

It's always usual to remind ourselves how old the planet it. We always assume our narrative to be the only one, however...I'd posit it is one among many - and most likely far from being the most glorious.

 

[LORD_RED_DRAGON]

You sort of missed the point. Eugenics is not a clinical form of facism, Its generally an informed point of view that advocates only folks of good stock can breed. Not necessarily only smart people, but just people who can raise a healthy child that can benefit society in a positive way.

so should the people incappable of raising a healthy child be sterilised???

 

[the alumnus]

But I was asking you a question, not making an argument, so where is your answer? Did I sum up your position correctly? Are you a Jehovah's Witness or something like that? Strawmen don't come into it!

really? i saw no question marks or any other indication that it was an interrogative sentence. it looked rather declarative.
1)no answers until i read questions
2)no, you didn't
3)no, i'm not

 

[Norsemaiden]

really? i saw no question marks or any other indication that it was an interrogative sentence. it looked rather declarative.
1)no answers until i read questions
2)no, you didn't
3)no, i'm not

The question was this. You are the first person in the world that I have ever heard suggest that evolution happens by means of species mixing. If it were true that this were the mechanism for evolution, then rather than start with few species which separate over time into further species (each adapting to its own environmental niche) - which is the method of evolution that all scientists agree happens - rather than this ARE YOU SAYING that there would have been many species originally and evolution is all about the many merging together and reducing in number?????!
If this is wrongly presumed on my part, please explain how the Earth ended up having so many species while at the same time evolution happens by species mixing (according to you).
And try to calm down. It's not worth getting stressed about. It's only a debate!

 

[Norsemaiden]

"those who are not required to breed"
oh my god.... you certainly are not one of those that should get children.

LOL Someone's got a chip on their shoulder!
I'm not suitable to breed because I advocate eugenics in other words!

 

[Norsemaiden]

And one more thing Norsemaiden:

White civilization if you will--and by that I mean Scandinavian, Celtic, and Germanic civilization--really didnt get started until the late middle ages. The Germans, Celts and Scandinavians were all rather savage people, tied to tribal loyalties, with few if any cities nor scientific discoveries. It took contact with the Romans to start this civilizing process, and even then, it took them more than a thousand years.

Furthermore, civilization was started by Semitic peoples not whites--although there are remains of civilization in Western India, and the Minoans are of unknown ancestry.

Thus, perhaps it will take a long amount of time for the Africans? They really havent been in contact with a civilized country for some time; really since the 1500's and the Arabs/muslims in Eastern and Western Africa.

As Infoterror pointed out, there were civilisations started by whites before celtic and Germanic civilisations. The earliest white civilisations always ended up being less and less white. Just as our civilisations of today are likewise becoming less white. You must surely know about the Aryan influence on India and the caucasian mummies found in China. Infoterror mentioned the Solutreans, and what about the Kurgans? http://www.iras.ucalgary.ca/~volk/slvia/Kurgans.htm This link is failing, but it is easy enough to find at the top of the list if you google: Kurgan culture.
Kurgans were a 3rd to 5th century BC civilisation (predating the Minoans) who are the proto-Indo-European culture from which all Indo-European cultures decend.
Personally I regard the Minoans as having been white (having considered the frescos). I am sorry that the idea offends people and I stress again that this is not intended as any kind of supremacist argument - as I consider civilisation to be rather like a nasty virus that takes hold of people, weakens them, kills them and then moves on to claim further victims.
There would be little impetus on blacks to evolve civilisation, it is just as well if they instead resist the monoculture international civilisation that threatens to envelope everyone in the world, with a MacDonalds in every town, etc.

Now I've gone and put three post in a row, sorry about that but it is all just answering points about subjects I raised.

 

[the alumnus]

The question was this. You are the first person in the world that I have ever heard suggest that evolution happens by means of species mixing. If it were true that this were the mechanism for evolution, then rather than start with few species which separate over time into further species (each adapting to its own environmental niche) - which is the method of evolution that all scientists agree happens - rather than this ARE YOU SAYING that there would have been many species originally and evolution is all about the many merging together and reducing in number?????!
If this is wrongly presumed on my part, please explain how the Earth ended up having so many species while at the same time evolution happens by species mixing (according to you).
And try to calm down. It's not worth getting stressed about. It's only a debate!

i don't understand why you would think i am not calm, you use far more capitals that i...

no, you misunderstand. i did not mean to suggest that mixing of species is the only mechanism for evolution. but it is one way that it happens, and is easily observable. rather, i was try to disprove the statement "Undoubtedly there is far more homogeneity amongst individuals of a wild species of animal than there is in a race of humans. Wild animals speciate (seperate themselves into further different species) that is how evolution happens. Only domesticated animals interbreed". i was also demonstrating the values of outcrossing, which not only occurs in the wild, but occasionally can be beneficial.

 

[Norsemaiden]

i don't understand why you would think i am not calm, you use far more capitals that i...

no, you misunderstand. i did not mean to suggest that mixing of species is the only mechanism for evolution. but it is one way that it happens, and is easily observable. rather, i was try to disprove the statement "Undoubtedly there is far more homogeneity amongst individuals of a wild species of animal than there is in a race of humans. Wild animals speciate (seperate themselves into further different species) that is how evolution happens. Only domesticated animals interbreed". i was also demonstrating the values of outcrossing, which not only occurs in the wild, but occasionally can be beneficial.

Yes the misunderstanding was becaue you said that species mixing was the way evolution happens, rather than just one way that it happens. However I still think that it is very rare for this kind of mixing to occur in the wild, and that it is like a mutation, most mutations are fatal, but occasionally they are beneficial. Natural selection has honed every animal to be particularly suited to its environment, to the last detail.
I was just concerned that you seemed to be saying that mixing is especially favoured by nature and that not mixing is freaky and unnatural.

 

[infoterror]

i was also demonstrating the values of outcrossing, which not only occurs in the wild, but occasionally can be beneficial.

Only in selected situations, most of which are simpler than the human situation.

And still people claim not to believe that race exists, on the basis of science.

Here's a couple threads of SciForums trashing:
Let's Stop Racism
Refutation of Lewontin's arguments against race

All of Scott W's arguments are debunked here:

Race and Culture FAQ

...as mentioned, perhaps.

 

[Blaphbee]

Still Evolving, Human Genes Tell New Story

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/07/s...7e91d5d4&ei=5094&partner=homepage&oref=slogin

Providing the strongest evidence yet that humans are still evolving, researchers have detected some 700 regions of the human genome where genes appear to have been reshaped by natural selection, a principal force of evolution, within the last 5,000 to 15,000 years.

The genes that show this evolutionary change include some responsible for the senses of taste and smell, digestion, bone structure, skin color and brain function.

Many of these instances of selection may reflect the pressures that came to bear as people abandoned their hunting and gathering way of life for settlement and agriculture, a transition well under way in Europe and East Asia some 5,000 years ago.

Under natural selection, beneficial genes become more common in a population as their owners have more progeny.

Three populations were studied, Africans, East Asians and Europeans. In each, a mostly different set of genes had been favored by natural selection. The selected genes, which affect skin color, hair texture and bone structure, may underlie the present-day differences in racial appearance.

The study of selected genes may help reconstruct many crucial events in the human past. It may also help physical anthropologists explain why people over the world have such a variety of distinctive appearances, even though their genes are on the whole similar, said Dr. Spencer Wells, director of the Genographic Project of the National Geographic Society.

The finding adds substantially to the evidence that human evolution did not grind to a halt in the distant past, as is tacitly assumed by many social scientists. Even evolutionary psychologists, who interpret human behavior in terms of what the brain evolved to do, hold that the work of natural selection in shaping the human mind was completed in the pre-agricultural past, more than 10,000 years ago.

"There is ample evidence that selection has been a major driving point in our evolution during the last 10,000 years, and there is no reason to suppose that it has stopped," said Jonathan Pritchard, a population geneticist at the University of Chicago who headed the study.

Dr. Pritchard and his colleagues, Benjamin Voight, Sridhar Kudaravalli and Xiaoquan Wen, report their findings in today's issue of PLOS-Biology.

Their data is based on DNA changes in three populations gathered by the HapMap project, which built on the decoding of the human genome in 2003. The data, though collected to help identify variant genes that contribute to disease, also give evidence of evolutionary change.

The fingerprints of natural selection in DNA are hard to recognize. Just a handful of recently selected genes have previously been identified, like those that confer resistance to malaria or the ability to digest lactose in adulthood, an adaptation common in Northern Europeans whose ancestors thrived on cattle milk.

But the authors of the HapMap study released last October found many other regions where selection seemed to have occurred, as did an analysis published in December by Robert K. Moysis of the University of California, Irvine.

Dr. Pritchard's scan of the human genome differs from the previous two because he has developed a statistical test to identify just genes that have started to spread through populations in recent millennia and have not yet become universal, as many advantageous genes eventually do.

The selected genes he has detected fall into a handful of functional categories, as might be expected if people were adapting to specific changes in their environment. Some are genes involved in digesting particular foods like the lactose-digesting gene common in Europeans. Some are genes that mediate taste and smell as well as detoxify plant poisons, perhaps signaling a shift in diet from wild foods to domesticated plants and animals.

Dr. Pritchard estimates that the average point at which the selected genes started to become more common under the pressure of natural selection is 10,800 years ago in the African population and 6,600 years ago in the Asian and European populations.

Dr. Richard G. Klein, a paleoanthropologist at Stanford, said that it was hard to correlate the specific gene changes in the three populations with events in the archaeological record, but that the timing and nature of the changes in the East Asians and Europeans seemed compatible with the shift to agriculture. Rice farming became widespread in China 6,000 to 7,000 years ago, and agriculture reached Europe from the Near East around the same time.

Skeletons similar in form to modern Chinese are hard to find before that period, Dr. Klein said, and there are few European skeletons older than 10,000 years that look like modern Europeans.

That suggests that a change in bone structure occurred in the two populations, perhaps in connection with the shift to agriculture. Dr. Pritchard's team found that several genes associated with embryonic development of the bones had been under selection in East Asians and Europeans, and these could be another sign of the forager-to-farmer transition, Dr. Klein said. . .

Bad news for egalitarians.

whole study: http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0040072

PDF of study: http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-pdf&file=10.1371_journal.pbio.0040072-p-S.pdf