In case any readers have an interest, I have a paper which covers some of the same ideas as in Winergard's piece, but from a slightly different more statistically focussed perspective. My paper only covers cognitive ability differences between biogeographic ancestries so it is a bit more narrow. https://psyarxiv.com/863cv
It's quite an indictment of the current state of academia that such obvious truths (e.g., that differences in mean IQ among various ancestral groups have a strong genetic component) are so "controversial".
As the Academy has become increasingly feminized, postmodernist ideas have leaked out of the Humanities and parasitized STEM. Scientific truth has now been subjugated to concerns about feelings... I'm not sure how we can turn the ship around.
"Whereas earlier scholars of human diversity sometimes argued that modern humans evolved independently in various regions, most scholars today believe that all modern humans stem from ancestors who evolved in East Africa somewhere between 300,000 and 100,000 years ago. This means that instead of evolving in disparate areas around the globe, humans from this one population migrated to all of them. According to researchers, humans likely began this long exodus from Africa into the Near East and across the planet approximately 150,000 years ago. "
would change this a bit
1) we don't know east african so much anymore
2) the most recent split of modern lineages probably 150K, others argue 200K
3) non-africans left btwn 100K and 60K BP, closer to latter
You mean now we are divided between thinking East Africa and thinking South Africa? But still a bottleneck of some sort, and then a subsequent bottleneck in that only a small number of us made the big out-of-Africa migration, no?
there is no consensus on where in africa (this includes even what is now north of the sahara) our lineage emerged as modern humans with our face shape, etc. many ppl now believe east africa was fixed on because the economists were busy looking under the lampost.
additionally, there are now serious entertainment of the idea that there wasn’t a singular region of africa that our modern lineage emerged. it could have been a mix of various african lineages in different parts.
within africa there is a mild bottleneck, so it’s not like pure multiregionalism. but there seems to have been lots of gene flow within the continent.
then, btwn 50 and 75k a small east african related lineage got isolated, underwent a massive population crash, and produced the ‘out of africa’ population (some of whom probably did move back into africa later as well muddying the signal)
Due to the incidiary nature of speculation about intra-species variation in humans, especially for cognitive traits, I think it'd behoove a piece like this to be more exacting and careful. Greater deference to mainstream conclusions from genetic/genomic research is a wiser course even if one has some evidence they may be informed by political sensitivities. Greater evidence has to be presented. For instance, a complete catalog of all known and hypothesized local selection events with citations should be presented and ranked by robustness. Also, using a single polymorphism example (i.e. candidate gene era dubious studies) isn't going to be persuasive with field experts. It will look like motivated reasoning or sloppiness to them even with the caveat.
Additionally, the refutation of counterarguments against race as a classification with biological relevance wasn't thorough and is somewhat inconsistent with the best available data from population genetic research (even the account provided in Human Diversity by Charles Murray).
Thanks for writing the provocative piece. Have plenty of thoughts. Just thought I'd share some.
C'mon, Stetson, this article is careful in acknowledging where the science is unsettled in areas of this field of study, and is intended clearly as a overview of the field of human biodiversity, not a academic paper of scientific detail.
Maybe my bar is high (I don't think this is a bad thing), but this is also the bar that claims about human diversity will inevitably have to clear with the educated public, neutral and opposed experts, and outright hostiles.
It would have been useful to explore in greater scientific detail what real cases of local adaptation have actually looked like.
A honest question: what is the artificial (or sociopolitical) solution to the problems downstream of low IQ (individual or group) if indeed IQ is primarily a function of genes? Generally, in life we all want to be able to compete for the best things (eg prestige and wealth). It may be a near consensus that IQ predicts all manners of life outcomes, but it's hardly anywhere proven that it can be artificially boosted. If it's accepted that you can't do much to boost IQ level over a lifetime, then what becomes the fate of those who have been identified to have IQ below the competitive threshold? I think this is the heart of the fierce resistance some people put up against the mere suggestion that (1) IQ is largely genetically determined, and (2) IQ determines how well you do in many life domains.
I just discovered this magazine. It is well written and the writers represent themselves well. I agree that we must have open discussions. The difficulty is that the people we most need to persuade, will not be persuaded. They will only be incensed.
I found my way here because I am an Indo-European tumbling down rabbit holes. We are clearly in a perilous situation - an existential crisis. Our biggest problem does not seem to me to be the HBD claims and persuading people of their validity. Rather, it seems that our biggest problem is that we are Morally Subjugated. We live with a hand clenched upon our throat. I feel that the front that will turn the tide is this front where we end our Moral Subjugation. Speaking truthfully on topics is a sign that there are still spiritually healthy people who are not so subjugated. I don't think it is enough to use reason. We must rouse ourselves and stop using proxies to speak on our behalf. We must rise and assert our moral goodness and do so without apology or the need for anyone else's approval. When that happens this all stops.
Of course we have a headwind in that massive commercial/financial interests are incentivized to obliterate and subsume all identities and differences - ours first since they have wrung all of the alpha out of us. So to the trash heap we go. I think this stops when the reality of what they are doing to Occidental Man and his civilization is the loudest moral claim in the room. After all, isn't what they are doing to us exactly what they say they oppose doing to any other people?
You have very thoughtful writers here. Well done. I wonder if there are some who have ideas not necessarily about why we are Morally Subjugated, but how we can put an end to it. At some point, wondering why you are pinned down against a cliff and surrounded on all sides is pointless. What is important is getting yourself out of such a colossal mess while it is still possible.
On race and IQ: basically I am not very impressed with early Indo-European, say, Yamnaya material culture at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yamna03.jpg , Egypt or Mesopoamia was making cooler things. They don't look like smart innovative people to me at all, with one big exception: horse carts. Whether that truly counts as galaxy brain or just lucky to lived where wild horses lived, dunno. Those absolutely dominated the battlefield, combining mobility with range. That, combined with the strength from drinking milk (modern body builders like whey protein too), led to a lot of success in war, which created the whole Aryan superiority mythos, but really it was milk and carts, not much else. Egypt still looks like the more innovative civ to me.
And this keeps on and on. Corded Ware and Hallstatt were not particularly impressive. Mycenean Greece is not particularly impressive.
It was only at the invention of the phalanx and philosophy is when Greeks seem to pull away from other civs a bit. And Celtics and Germanics and Proto-Slavs keep being not particularly impressive for a long time. Whites were distinct latecomers in the advanced-civilization game.
And really we know the history of Aryan-myth-making, largely 19th century. I think in the first version it did not want to be very obnoxiously racist, it was just about bragging about ancestors. They picked and chose the most impressive elements, early Indo-European cart-and-milk conquests, Greek philosophy and tactics, Roman architecture etc. and ignored all the inconvenient data, like how Scandinavians, the whitest whites, did not do a single interesting thing until the Viking Age.
I strongly suspect that there is a non-random distribution of genes between 'groups' that in some way impact upon IQ or personality traits. However I more strongly suspect that its real world significance is dwarfed by inter-individual genetic variation and especially the impact of culture, history, individual life experience, sociology, wealth, politics, climate and ecology etc. on groups of people. The epistemological framework for such thinking is complex systems. I don't think there is remotely enough work being done (with some notable exceptions) to convert these intuitions into serious theory, maybe because it's so difficult and forbidding. And crosses too many disciplinary boundaries
In case any readers have an interest, I have a paper which covers some of the same ideas as in Winergard's piece, but from a slightly different more statistically focussed perspective. My paper only covers cognitive ability differences between biogeographic ancestries so it is a bit more narrow. https://psyarxiv.com/863cv
It's quite an indictment of the current state of academia that such obvious truths (e.g., that differences in mean IQ among various ancestral groups have a strong genetic component) are so "controversial".
As the Academy has become increasingly feminized, postmodernist ideas have leaked out of the Humanities and parasitized STEM. Scientific truth has now been subjugated to concerns about feelings... I'm not sure how we can turn the ship around.
This is why it is controversial: https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/human-biodiversity-a-moderates-manifesto/comment/67882804
"Whereas earlier scholars of human diversity sometimes argued that modern humans evolved independently in various regions, most scholars today believe that all modern humans stem from ancestors who evolved in East Africa somewhere between 300,000 and 100,000 years ago. This means that instead of evolving in disparate areas around the globe, humans from this one population migrated to all of them. According to researchers, humans likely began this long exodus from Africa into the Near East and across the planet approximately 150,000 years ago. "
would change this a bit
1) we don't know east african so much anymore
2) the most recent split of modern lineages probably 150K, others argue 200K
3) non-africans left btwn 100K and 60K BP, closer to latter
Comment from Bo:
Hi Razib,
Good comment. The 150k must have been a typo -- I meant to write 50k. We'll correct it now. Many thanks!
You mean now we are divided between thinking East Africa and thinking South Africa? But still a bottleneck of some sort, and then a subsequent bottleneck in that only a small number of us made the big out-of-Africa migration, no?
there is no consensus on where in africa (this includes even what is now north of the sahara) our lineage emerged as modern humans with our face shape, etc. many ppl now believe east africa was fixed on because the economists were busy looking under the lampost.
additionally, there are now serious entertainment of the idea that there wasn’t a singular region of africa that our modern lineage emerged. it could have been a mix of various african lineages in different parts.
within africa there is a mild bottleneck, so it’s not like pure multiregionalism. but there seems to have been lots of gene flow within the continent.
then, btwn 50 and 75k a small east african related lineage got isolated, underwent a massive population crash, and produced the ‘out of africa’ population (some of whom probably did move back into africa later as well muddying the signal)
Due to the incidiary nature of speculation about intra-species variation in humans, especially for cognitive traits, I think it'd behoove a piece like this to be more exacting and careful. Greater deference to mainstream conclusions from genetic/genomic research is a wiser course even if one has some evidence they may be informed by political sensitivities. Greater evidence has to be presented. For instance, a complete catalog of all known and hypothesized local selection events with citations should be presented and ranked by robustness. Also, using a single polymorphism example (i.e. candidate gene era dubious studies) isn't going to be persuasive with field experts. It will look like motivated reasoning or sloppiness to them even with the caveat.
Additionally, the refutation of counterarguments against race as a classification with biological relevance wasn't thorough and is somewhat inconsistent with the best available data from population genetic research (even the account provided in Human Diversity by Charles Murray).
Thanks for writing the provocative piece. Have plenty of thoughts. Just thought I'd share some.
C'mon, Stetson, this article is careful in acknowledging where the science is unsettled in areas of this field of study, and is intended clearly as a overview of the field of human biodiversity, not a academic paper of scientific detail.
Maybe my bar is high (I don't think this is a bad thing), but this is also the bar that claims about human diversity will inevitably have to clear with the educated public, neutral and opposed experts, and outright hostiles.
It would have been useful to explore in greater scientific detail what real cases of local adaptation have actually looked like.
Could start here - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05010-7
Brilliant essay.
A honest question: what is the artificial (or sociopolitical) solution to the problems downstream of low IQ (individual or group) if indeed IQ is primarily a function of genes? Generally, in life we all want to be able to compete for the best things (eg prestige and wealth). It may be a near consensus that IQ predicts all manners of life outcomes, but it's hardly anywhere proven that it can be artificially boosted. If it's accepted that you can't do much to boost IQ level over a lifetime, then what becomes the fate of those who have been identified to have IQ below the competitive threshold? I think this is the heart of the fierce resistance some people put up against the mere suggestion that (1) IQ is largely genetically determined, and (2) IQ determines how well you do in many life domains.
I just discovered this magazine. It is well written and the writers represent themselves well. I agree that we must have open discussions. The difficulty is that the people we most need to persuade, will not be persuaded. They will only be incensed.
I found my way here because I am an Indo-European tumbling down rabbit holes. We are clearly in a perilous situation - an existential crisis. Our biggest problem does not seem to me to be the HBD claims and persuading people of their validity. Rather, it seems that our biggest problem is that we are Morally Subjugated. We live with a hand clenched upon our throat. I feel that the front that will turn the tide is this front where we end our Moral Subjugation. Speaking truthfully on topics is a sign that there are still spiritually healthy people who are not so subjugated. I don't think it is enough to use reason. We must rouse ourselves and stop using proxies to speak on our behalf. We must rise and assert our moral goodness and do so without apology or the need for anyone else's approval. When that happens this all stops.
Of course we have a headwind in that massive commercial/financial interests are incentivized to obliterate and subsume all identities and differences - ours first since they have wrung all of the alpha out of us. So to the trash heap we go. I think this stops when the reality of what they are doing to Occidental Man and his civilization is the loudest moral claim in the room. After all, isn't what they are doing to us exactly what they say they oppose doing to any other people?
You have very thoughtful writers here. Well done. I wonder if there are some who have ideas not necessarily about why we are Morally Subjugated, but how we can put an end to it. At some point, wondering why you are pinned down against a cliff and surrounded on all sides is pointless. What is important is getting yourself out of such a colossal mess while it is still possible.
On race and IQ: basically I am not very impressed with early Indo-European, say, Yamnaya material culture at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yamna03.jpg , Egypt or Mesopoamia was making cooler things. They don't look like smart innovative people to me at all, with one big exception: horse carts. Whether that truly counts as galaxy brain or just lucky to lived where wild horses lived, dunno. Those absolutely dominated the battlefield, combining mobility with range. That, combined with the strength from drinking milk (modern body builders like whey protein too), led to a lot of success in war, which created the whole Aryan superiority mythos, but really it was milk and carts, not much else. Egypt still looks like the more innovative civ to me.
And this keeps on and on. Corded Ware and Hallstatt were not particularly impressive. Mycenean Greece is not particularly impressive.
It was only at the invention of the phalanx and philosophy is when Greeks seem to pull away from other civs a bit. And Celtics and Germanics and Proto-Slavs keep being not particularly impressive for a long time. Whites were distinct latecomers in the advanced-civilization game.
And really we know the history of Aryan-myth-making, largely 19th century. I think in the first version it did not want to be very obnoxiously racist, it was just about bragging about ancestors. They picked and chose the most impressive elements, early Indo-European cart-and-milk conquests, Greek philosophy and tactics, Roman architecture etc. and ignored all the inconvenient data, like how Scandinavians, the whitest whites, did not do a single interesting thing until the Viking Age.
I've also written an introduction guide to Human Biodiversity. It's pretty comprehensive and concisely written: https://zerocontradictions.net/FAQs/race-FAQs.
I strongly suspect that there is a non-random distribution of genes between 'groups' that in some way impact upon IQ or personality traits. However I more strongly suspect that its real world significance is dwarfed by inter-individual genetic variation and especially the impact of culture, history, individual life experience, sociology, wealth, politics, climate and ecology etc. on groups of people. The epistemological framework for such thinking is complex systems. I don't think there is remotely enough work being done (with some notable exceptions) to convert these intuitions into serious theory, maybe because it's so difficult and forbidding. And crosses too many disciplinary boundaries
Race seems to have more to do with IQ differences than wealth: http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/sftfi1%7Bimage1%7D.gif