/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.3818654]

Just wondering, some people seem to be inferring that there's no "significant" biological differences between different populations. Is this an idea spawned from fear of being branded racism or can you offer an explanation for why you think that (if you do.)
Different populations cultivated and domesticated different vegetation and animals and developed resistances to different diseases and some stayed hunter gatherers. Surely these diversions applied different selective pressures among populations.
pic related.

[Anonymous No.3818701]

>>3818654

Warning, this thread is going to become full of dumbassery on every side, fast.

First off, the timescale for population variation is in the 10000s of years, or say 500 to 2500 generations. 2500 generations of pure separation would do the trick but at the interface of each pair of {Europe, Asia, Africa} there was no separation - continual migration and interbreeding. It is astronomically unlikely that any two people on the earth have to go 500 generations back to find a common ancestor.

Nonetheless, some regional specialization absolutely occurred. Peoples in Scandinavia developed lighter skin and better vitamin D production. People in Africa got malaria resistance (at the cost of sickle cell anemia for some).


I am always surprised, given the evolutionary-scale small numbers, that even the changes that did occur took place. However any talk of an effective racial strategy goes out the window because of a few caveats:

1. The differences ARE very minor compared to any true speciation.
2. Genetic diversity within a population is generally positive for species survival; no population is more diverse than Africa.
3. The phenome changes are mostly (or entirely?) distinct of skin color - e.g., you could trivially set up an ancestry which would give a mostly-white baby sickle cell anemia.

[Anonymous No.3818699]

Forgot no biologists on /sci

[Anonymous No.3818704]

>>3818654
>>3818701

Part II

4. Variations in aggregate aren't justifiable for policy concerning individuals. This is mainly what I wanted to say:

Suppose an experiment where 100,000 Europeans and 100,000 Africans were gathered, raised from birth, identically educated, and identically well-fed and medically cared for. (This should eliminate most of the flaws of regional comparisons in the real-world: due to political reasons many Africans have been malnourished and that drags them down despite no actual genetic causation. Etc. etc.) ***

Suppose, also, a "perfect" IQ test, which I will not even begin to try to define, but the result that I want to get at is, say the Europeans averaged 103 and Africans averaged 97.

That is an aggregate result and shouldn't mean dick in decision-making for individuals. Now make them all take the SAT: a score under 600 probably correlates with a lower IQ average than a score over 1200, but you can't predict any one individual with a good or bad score will be intelligent. Moreover few would campaign for preventing intermarriages between sub600s and supra1200s, or sub600 sterilization, or any of the other BS that has been perpetrated in the name of racial variation. Racism stems from historical hatred of the other, nothing more.

*** To get back to the "real world", one other point I wanted to make is that variability in terms of nurture is hugely wider than variability in terms of nature - i.e., better schooling and nutrition will make a difference orders of magnitude bigger than any properly-controlled racial characteristic will alone.

[Anonymous No.3818710]

http://www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm

[Anonymous No.3818712]

>>3818701

I like you.

[Anonymous No.3818717]

The thing is, all humans are so similar that even minor differences such as IQ and behavior are nowhere near enough to classify them as separate species, or even subspecies. They'd be sub-strains within the same subspecies, which is so similar it doesn't even NEED to be acknowledged.

You can say niggers are retarded all you like, they're not really that far from you in intelligence. The world's smartest man and the world's dumbest retard are closer together than man is from any other animal.

[Anonymous No.3818716]

>>3818701
>>3818704

Wow, a real, reasonable, detailed, non-abusive answer. Are you sure this is the place for you?

[Anonymous No.3818754]

>>3818701
I dont mean race if thats even a scientifically acceptable term and I dont mean that different populations were different species as that would fly against the point of all homo sapiens being able to interbreed.
Potentially the only reason the americas were conquered is because the american Indians did not have the immunity to the European diseases (small pox for example) that the Europeans had.
In this vain as well the expeditions deeper into Africa were initially brought to a halt due to the local diseases killing off explorers.
Also despite not having a large reference of time for significant beneficial mutations to happen wouldn't it be a higher chance of happening due to there being more Humans and not just a small increase in population.
Different selective pressures on different populations encourages diverse ways of adapting to situations and choosing to bolster certain immunity paths leaves you weakened in other areas?

[Anonymous No.3818774]

>>3818754
What I'm trying to partially ask is, is there an opinion from the public that if you say American indians are more likely to develop type 2 diabetes you're racist and causing racial differences, that makes finding genetic difference between populations harder or more of a taboo subject.

[Anonymous No.3818780]

Black people are a species.

Their main goal is survival isn't being civilized, it is fucking non-stop not even AIDS gets in their way.

[Anonymous No.3818791]

>>3818780

you are a Narcissistic Underachiever. Stop blaming other people for your failure to do anything meaningful with your life.

[Anonymous No.3818794]

interesting fact

people in north korea that have survuved the famine in the 90s are five inches shorter than their south korean neighbors

in less than 100 years the average height dropped 5 inches. this is almost all directly because lack of nutrition. BUT if north Korea doesn't open back up in the near future, the entire population will continue to drift downward height, and upward in food gathering skills.

the only people who survive a famine are the ones who can lie cheat or steal, and the ones who are small enough that their bmr can safely drop to a level appropriate with the food supply.

[Anonymous No.3818817]

>>3818794
Agriculture brought together communities larger then hunter gatherers would.
Would there be situation in which there was a selective advantage for certain behavioral traits and would that lead to physiological changes?

[Anonymous No.3818824]

>>3818754

lines 1, 2, 3 all true

line 4: Human population growth increases the raw number of mutations, which intuitively should increase variation, but I don't want to say so without considering selective pressures, and I have a test in an hour. :( BTW If you want some rough estimates on population growth, try 100M in 1 AD, 1B in 1800 AD, and 30K in -70000 BC. (The fabled "human population bottleneck" )

line 5: Bolstering certain immunities does not necessarily "weaken" you in other areas. When your threats are also evolving (other predators, bacteria, and virii) there is a complex interplay of strengths and weaknesses over time. Think of a species as having a per-individual energy budget: the new mutation would only be "harmful" to other areas if it requires more energy, thus draining energy from the construction or operation of other parts of the organism.

>>3818774

Depends on context. It is true that there is a line you can leap across and offend people if you couch what you're saying in a certain way. Compare the awareness campaign for Black men being more likely to develop prostate cancer - I'm not aware of anyone calling it racist but a badly-worded ad could start that.

As far as, is it an impediment to science, I would say no. The actual work and funding decisions are being made by people who have a firm grasp on things. But that becomes a sociological question and you could certainly find examples of anti-racist thought being used to both quell and promote study of genetics.

[Anonymous No.3818835]

>>3818791

Not only are black people definitely a species, it is obvious that they are evolving at a slower rate.

Average mother in Nigeria:

- IQ 60
- Children, 6
- Possibility of having HIV, 25%
- Number one method of preventing HIV, rape babies
- Main religion, witchcraft

[Anonymous No.3818837]

>>3818817
sure.

example here, weird one but I have thought about a lot.

if you are a male with a strong immune system, it is in your benefit in a agricultural society not to cover your mouth when you cough/sneeze. doing this would cause more competing individuals to get sick and die.

[Anonymous No.3818886]

>>3818824
Thanks for responding, This area really interests me despite the fact Im only an outsider looking into your world as it were, reading books an articles.
The book I've just finished re-reading to try and understand better is talking about 15,000 years ago the american indians migrated from north asia through siberia and alaska which was frozen so they didn't take with them crowd diseases that arose after the birth of agriculture (or diseases that had complex life systems or are waterborne) and so in effect they also didn't take with them the genetic defenses to such things and also since the new world they went to hadnt been settled by hominids or great apes so there were very few pathogens preadapted to them.
The conclusion was that since there wasn't a selective pressure for disease resistance that american indians are/were more vulnerable to disease they looked at there HLA alleles and there was very little diversity many tribes have a HLA allele with a frequence of over 50%, when in other humans other than most identical twins it's almost certain they'll be different because they are codominant.

[Anonymous No.3818889]

in case this topic should, you know, ever come up again
(yeah right!)

[Anonymous No.3818890]

>>3818837
It's also in your benefit as a member of a participating community to have enough labor to feed the other people. You kill off all other males you lose labor you lose food, you lose viable mates.

[Anonymous No.3818904]

>>3818890
you forget, I think, that males are also the biggest consumers of food.

the point wasn't that its best for society either, its that the general immune level would rise as a result.

[Anonymous No.3818905]

>>3818886

You mean "The 10000 Year Explosion"? I'll check it out, thanks for the tip.

If a book spent any amount of time at all on NAs and diseases, they probably mentioned this, but Syphilis is said to have been an Old World disease which explorers actually took back with them to Europe. Resistance to and history of syphilis in the separate populations would be a fascinating study (I expect).

[Anonymous No.3818906]

>>3818889
>blindly accepting 1 version of events

[Anonymous No.3818939]

>>3818905
Yeah I got the 10,000 year explosion for around £9.99
It's broadly about the agricultural revolution changing humanity with the tag line "how civilization accelerated Human evolution"

>>3818904
Males more than likely were larger consumers however I get the feeling without the kind of hygiene we have and without our understanding of germ theory I dont think they'd care much for covering. It's inevitably why so many died of infectious diseases.

[Anonymous No.3818986]

>>3818939
lol he thinks civilization came from explosions