Recently a massive debate has emerged in the HBD blogosphere about the existence of ethnic genetic interests, and scientist Greg Cochran seems to be arguing against their existence. He asks the following excellent question:
All mammals are more closely related to each other than they are to any bird. That’s why an otter or a porcupine will instinctively help a rabbit that’s being chased by a hawk.
Except that they don’t. Why not?
In my humble opinion, there are two answers to this question:
1) A porcupine that helps rabbits escape hawks will increase its inclusive genetic fitness relative to non-mammals, but it will not increase its genetic fitness relative to other porcupines (who are focused on their own safety), thus such inter-species altruism genes would become an increasingly small percentage of the porcupine gene pool.
2) Porcupines lack the intelligence to recognize the physical similarity between themselves and rabbits relative to hawks.
Then Cochran elaborates in the comment section of his blog:
An altruistic gene focused on near kin has a chance of getting started, because your near kin will have a fair chance of carrying it if it’s managed to hang on for even two or three generations.
As for ethnic genetic interests, what this says is that there’s no way for that kind of altruism to evolve. Nor does the world look as if it has: consider Malinche, or Ephialtes, or everything else that has ever happened in history.
Now it is possible to have a rational motive for favoring or disfavoring some population, maybe even the one you’re from: but there’s no natural, innate tendency to do so. Nothing like mother love.
But ethnic groups, races, and species for that matter, start out as near kin. For example, all modern humans are said to be descended from a single black woman who lived in Africa 200,000 years ago (the mitochondrial Eve). Now what if she had a gene that caused her to favor anyone that looked like her kids. Her kids would also have the gene that caused them to favor anyone who looked like her kids. Within a few thousand generations, you could have an entire race of people who favor anyone who looks like Eve`s kids.
Elsewhere in the comments Cochran says to one of the proponents of ethnic genetic interests:
You’re wrong. As I said, it’s impossible for this sort of thing to evolve.
A gene that caused this sort of behavior would not increase its own frequency. If someone in China had such a gene, and sacrificed himself in a way that saved half of the population of China, the gene frequency would go DOWN, not up. It only works if the group the gene targets has a significantly higher-than-average frequency of that same altruistic gene – true of close kin, but essentially nothing else.
But Cochran seems to be assuming the person who sacrifices his life to save half of China is the first Chinese person with the pro-Chinese gene. Then I agree the gene would end with him because he sacrificed his life. But what if the gene had already spread through much of China for some random reason, unrelated to selection. Then the person who saves half of China has indeed caused the pro-Chinese gene frequency to go up because a certain percentage of Chinese people have the gene so by saving half the population of China, he has saved half the people that carry that gene.
The otter or any other non-human mammal is not thinking about increasing their reproductive fitness. Simply because they are not as complex as human beings. They have few choices. Also do not forget the personality variation within nonhuman species.
Mammalian species do not help other species when they are in danger by a predator from another class. *** And Chinese do not help abandoned children.
Usually when someone sacrifices himself in relation to his group, takes place through a bleak scenario. But people always tended to relate in small groups, related or not. We need to contextualize the world before the Internet and the illusion of ” international community ”.
People perceive over time, different types of behavior, level of intelligence, culture, compared to other groups. So they tend not to cooperate with strangers.
And it happens to our own friendships, which tend not to cooperate with those who are very different from us, in fact, internally, we hope that disappear if possible.
He who sacrifices themselves for their group is an idealist. a hyper-rational will wonder if it is worth doing it.
The idea that there are genes for self sacrifice is pure genetic determinism, misunderstood. Sure, there are predispositions, but that does not mean they have to be ” genes for this type of attitude ”. If so, then will relate to idealism or idealistic personality.
People tend to relate to similar, first in behavior, then in terms of appearance. Ethnicity was merged into culture. In fact, it may be possible that culture also affects the physiognomy of a people, see Sparta and Athens. I think. A culture of warriors select warriors, health rather than the intellect.
For most of human history, people have developed locally, rarely coming out of your site. The reduction of distances, is a very important factor for altruism demonstration for ” cultural ” similarities, than by ethnic similarities. However, every population group comes from a very small group of individuals. Therefore, some essential similarities will make a white guy, more comfortable with another white guy behaviorally similar than an individual of another race, of similar behavior. It can be said that individuals of the same personality, motivations and the same race, tend to be more comfortable with each other than with identical individuals in behavior but different in ethnicity.
We do not practice empathy, but self projection, most of the time and is much easier, a white person putting yourself in another white person than with a person of a different race from yours. This is self projection, we put ourselves in the shoes of a person, but not as if we were her, but as if we were ourselves, but in a different perspective than we are in right now, where we conduct self projection.
Someone who was able to self sacrifice for his group, tend to be considerably different from other groups, thus demonstrating great biological disparity. Idealism appears as an important psychological factor, because as I said, the most rational always question certain attitudes more aberrant and potentially harmful to themselves.
I think this analogy is out of place, my opinion.
Clearly ethnic genetic interests can and did evolve. But that doesn’t mean genetic interests for larger taxonomical categories (mammals vs nonmammals) evolved. Everything has its limit.
Cochran believes genetic interests extends only to family. Others believe it extends to race. Others believe it extends to species.
If ethnic genetic interests exist, then why has most of the violence in history been intra-racial? Even in modern societies when people have plenty of opportunity to hurt people inter-racially?
Well most violence occurs within families (i.e. parents abusing kids) but no one disputes that family genetic interests exist. People are most violent to those they live near.
People in all societies throughout the world, both past and present, are far more likely to cause harm to strangers than to their own children. This is not in dispute.
And here’s my personal advice to the author of this post, along with just about everybody else who is terribly confused about this issue — read a book, nigga!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GlKL_EpnSp8
Regarding ethnic interests: It doesn’t work, even if the gene is common. *Everyone* gets the benefits of being in an altruistic ethnic group, but only those with the altruistic gene pay the cost. Thus, the altruistic allele is selectively disfavored, and shrinks in frequency.
Now, prior to its extinction, the altruistic population (China, in your example) may spread and displace other groups because the group is more cooperative. That’s group selection – generally not thought to be an important force for genetic change in most animals.
BTW, “inclusive genetic fitness relative to non-mammals” isn’t a thing.
Correct.
But even among the altruistic Chinese population, there would be shirkers who are less likely to sacrifice themselves than their neighbors. Since they benefit from the altruism of others (yet refuse to waste their own lives or resources helping strangers), their fitness should be significantly higher than the average — and hence their selfish genes would start increasing in frequency. You can kiss the altruistic population goodbye.
This would be like a communal bank account in a society where everybody donates whatever they please, but are free to withdraw as much as they want, whenever they want. The balance would never stray far above zero.
Of course, you could pass laws mandating that people pay X per year, and can only withdraw Y in benefits, following a Byzantine system of complex regulations that is largely impenetrable to the common man — and all shirkers are to be penalized by death/expulsion/imprisonment/public humiliation, or whatever. And that’s the only way this sort of system works… And even then, it fails miserably in various places throughout the world (e.g. Argentina, Greece). It’s not any kind of biological instinct whatsoever.
If political correctness were abolished tomorrow, and white Americans were free to establish a “whites only” college fund on behalf of the less fortunate among their own race, the sum total of benefits would still be a pittance compared to what white people receive in Pell grants, scholarships, etc. on an annual basis. You know this to be true, without ever having to conduct this experiment.
” the sum total of benefits would still be a pittance compared to what white people receive in Pell grants, scholarships, etc. on an annual basis. ”
And an even smaller pittance compared to what white people (or people of any race), on average, spend on their own children, from the cradle to the grave.
Regarding ethnic interests: It doesn’t work, even if the gene is common. *Everyone* gets the benefits of being in an altruistic ethnic group, but only those with the altruistic gene pay the cost. Thus, the altruistic allele is selectively disfavored, and shrinks in frequency.
But many forms of ethnic nepotism have no cost. If you have more than enough food to feed yourself and your family, what does it cost you to give the remaining food to a co-ethnic instead of a member of a rival race?
“If you have more than enough food to feed yourself and your family”
Where was this ever the case throughout the vast majority of recorded history? Cloud cuckoo land?
Even in the wealthiest society throughout the history of the world, ansolutely none of this will work without a mechanism that ensures reciprocity. People punish cheaters, shirkers, and liars in just about every society throughout the world, and evolutionary biology predicts that this should be the case. Sure, Minnesotans are likely to help you if you are standed in the middle of the road during winter — but they also expect the same treatment from their fellow Minnesotans… and they’re hardly nice to people who repeatedly violate their unspoken rules of social conduct. It’s hardly a form of self-sacrifice.
It would do just as much good as giving it to a non-coethnic. I.e. None. If your main competitors for mates are your co-ethnics (which is usually the case) then helping a coethnic is just helping your competitors.
“Altruism” usually implies a cost, btw.
“Altruism” usually implies a cost, btw.
Okay, but there’s a difference between arguing that ethnic altruism didn’t evolve and ethnic favoritism didn’t evolve. Ultimately this discussion is about ethnic genetic interests in general. There are thousands of ways you can help your co-ethnics without any significant cost.
But what if the gene had already spread through much of China for some random reason, unrelated to selection.”
How on earth is the gene supposed to increase in frequency, even within the confines of an isolated mountain village, if it is so obviously detrimental? (And certainly not in a place like China — you only need one migrant per generation, which eliminates just about every square km of cultivated land in western Europe or east Asia.) You do realize that self-sacrifice on behalf of non-relatives causes a permanent decrease in fitness, right? Even if the gene diminished fitness by a mere one percent, you should expect natural selection to weed it from the gene pool within a matter of generations. It’s never going to gain a foothold. Forget about random strangers. They’re never worth it, from an evolutionary perspective.
Then the person who saves half of China has indeed caused the pro-Chinese gene frequency to go up because a certain percentage of Chinese people have the gene so by saving half the population of China, he has saved half the people that carry that gene.
But the guy’s relatives, statistically speaking, are far more likely to bear the gene (or any kind of gene you can think of) than non-related Chinese strangers. I wonder which is a winning strategy — staying alive and taking care of your kids (75% of whom are likely to inherit the gene), or committing suicide in battle (to save three of your best buddies, each of whom is 1% likely to bear the gene)? The math never works out, even in this absurd scenario.
And it is important to remember that the odds of the gene leaking out, and successfully infiltrating the entirety of China is virtually zero. There are far safer evolutionary strategies. You know, like considering that your family comes first, and not spilling your blood on behalf of complete strangers.
By the way, since the vast majority of people throughout all of recorded history have never had any meaningful social interactions with anyone from a different race, just how would the selective pressures operate in this scenario? How is the altruist gene supposed to distinguish between slant-eye and round-eye people in 8th century Chang’an, where there are precious few round-eye people? Is the gene even worth it?
And why on earth would it care about miscegenation? What prevented the Jews of Kaifeng from intermarrying with their neighbors, to the point of near-extinction? Progeny is progeny, from an evolutionary perspective — and the gene itself has no reason to care about everything else in the genome. Absolutely nothing stopped the lactase persistence allele among Indo-Europeans from leaking out and infiltrating other races, as far south as Nigeria. Any gene that (say) prevented somebody from mating with unlike people would be an evolutionary loser.
How on earth is the gene supposed to increase in frequency, even within the confines of an isolated mountain village, if it is so obviously detrimental?
It’s possible to imagine genes for ethnic nepotism that aren’t especially detrimental. Genes that simply cause one to favor a co-ethnic over a member of a rival race.
You do realize that self-sacrifice on behalf of non-relatives causes a permanent decrease in fitness, right?
What if the gene simply caused ethnic favoritism not self-sacrifice, or perhaps the self-sacrifice didn’t kick in until after the person had exceeded reproductive age. I’ve noticed people get more ethnocentric when they’re older. Celebrities get more ethnocentric after their careers have peaked and they have nothing left to lose.
But the guy’s relatives, statistically speaking, are far more likely to bear the gene (or any kind of gene you can think of) than non-related Chinese strangers. I wonder which is a winning strategy — staying alive and taking care of your kids (75% of whom are likely to inherit the gene), or committing suicide in battle (to save three of your best buddies, each of whom is 1% likely to bear the gene)? The math never works out, even in this absurd scenario.
Because you designed a scenario where the math doesn’t work out. Suppose you see a stranger about to roll a boulder over a cliff that will land on your entire tribe. You could either risk your life trying to stop him, or you could do nothing and guarantee that your entire tribe (who carry copies of your genes) goes extinct.
By the way, since the vast majority of people throughout all of recorded history have never had any meaningful social interactions with anyone from a different race, just how would the selective pressures operate in this scenario?
Certainly in prehistoric times people were confronted all the time by humans of very different genetic backgrounds (neanderthals, denisovans) so we would have evolved a tendency to favor our own kind over out-groups. What likely evolved in general is a tendency to help people who look like us and hurt people who look different, and this tendency gets applied whenever we meet a new race.
Any gene that (say) prevented somebody from mating with unlike people would be an evolutionary loser.
From an evolutionary perspective, mating with a different race is better than not mating at all, but we likely evolved a tendency to mate with co-ethnics so that our kids would be as genetically similar to us as possible. Indeed couples and even best friends tend to be most similar on the most heritable traits.
The coefficient of relatedness between a Swede and a non-related Swede is zero.
The coefficient of relatedness between a Swede and a black African is also zero.
You simply do not seem to understand this. And a behavior does not count as “altruistic” (from an evolutionary perspective) if the “altruist” has something to gain personally from the sacrifice, or at least something to lose if he fails to abide by the customs of his society. A mutual exchange that benefits both parties, under a set of socially circumscribed rules, hardly counts as serving the “racial genetic interest” — and it just so happens that the people who are most likely to exchange their services in a peaceful manner tend to belong to the same band, tribal unit, ethnic group, or nation-state, speak the same language, and are similar in physical appearance. Monkeys and apes understand how to do it.
And people just about everywhere will happily betray their nation / tribe / culture if they know they can get away with it, and if they understand that the benefits far exceed the costs — and especially if the lives of their own children are at stake. There is no “race preserving instinct”, period. Just about the entirety of recorded history is a testament to the fact that one does not exist.
The coefficient of relatedness between a Swede and a non-related Swede is zero.
coefficients of relatedness are relative:
In his 2003 book On Genetic Interests, Frank Salter, a political ethologist at the Max Planck Institute in Munich, extrapolated genetic similarity theory and the logic of taking all shared genes into account to also explain ethnic nepotism. He showed how Hamilton’s (1964, 1971, 1975) coefficient of relatedness (r) equated to the FST estimates of genetic variance (on average r 2 FST ) that had become available (e.g. Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994). Since FST provides both a measure of genetic distance between populations and of kinship within them, it followed that in comparison to the total genetic variance around the world, random members of any one population group are related to each other on the order of r 0.25 or 1/4 or about the same as halfsiblings. (A general rule would be: If a fellow ethnic looks like you, then on average, he or she is genetically equivalent to a cousin.)
There is no “race preserving instinct”, period. Just about the entirety of recorded history is a testament to the fact that one does not exist.
Just the opposite. There’s perhaps no great theme in history than ethnic and religious conflict.
“we likely evolved a tendency to mate with co-ethnics so that our kids would be as genetically similar to us as possible”
That tendency exists, but it has nothing to do with ensuing “genetic similarity” — look, do you understand how meiosis works? Every time a man mates with a female, his chromosomal fragments get broken up and re-assembled into unique patterns that are (more or less) randomly. And it doesn’t matter if the other half genetic half of his offspring comes from a member of his own race, or an Mbuti pygmy, or a Ukrainian gypsy. If the gene manages to successfully replicate more copies, it INCREASES in frequency. It matters not one whit if the children are all dusky mongrels. Any competing allele at the same locus that reproduces itself less often, but keeps itself within a “purer” gene pool of other loci found most commonly among members of a single race, would be an evolutionary loser.
Evolution does not give a damn about which genes “belong together” with other genes, as long as those combinations are of little importance to fitness* — and there is no magical “law of nature” ensuring that epicanthic folds go best with jet black hair, or that a gene that confers resistance to vivax malaria originating in Africa can’t possibly be useful in southern Italy. This is a kindergarten-level understanding of basic evolutionary science.
*sometimes, they are. For example, interspecific hybrids in nature (e.g. Anubis and Hamadryas baboons) frequently have a lower evolutionary fitness than either parental group, simply because the two genomes aren’t very compatible when put together. But that still doesn’t stop useful genes from “infiltrating” one species from another through introgression. (E.g. why all humans whose ancestors left Africa have Neanderthal genes.) You see it all the time in nature. And barring social ostracism of mixed-race children (which most certainly isn’t a human universal, by the way — there are entire ethnic groups of people, such as the Uighurs and the Hazaras, that are the product of rampant miscegenation during recorded history), very little of this is of any relevance to human biology. You might think otherwise, but that’s just your opinion.
Again, natural selection doesn’t give a shit about your “purity” — you might value it personally, and for very logical reasons, but what does that change about the natural laws of the world? Nothing.
Conflating FST and r is a sure sign that someone hasn’t the foggiest clue what he is talking about.
“Just the opposite. There’s perhaps no great theme in history than ethnic and religious conflict.”
Yeah, and that occurred because people were so concerned about the fitness of their own race. Not.
“random members of any one population group are related to each other on the order of r 0.25 or 1/4 or about the same as halfsiblings. ”
This is pure nonsense — and I know this because if it were true, the frequency of birth defects would be much higher than it is currently. Paternity tests wouldn’t be very accurate, and finding suitable matches for bone marrow donors would be a lot easier than it really is.
Zero equals zero.
This is pure nonsense — and I know this because if it were true, the frequency of birth defects would be much higher than it is currently.
I don’t think you understood the quote. They’re talking about genetic relatedness relative to the entire human population. Relative to the specific ethnic group, relatedness would be zero.
I know of no population genetics model in which selection favors endogamy on grounds of genetic similarity alone. The question to ask is “Why would an allele that prefers to breed endogamously tend to spread in the population?” Unless you think that different human ethnic groups are so diverged that interbreeding causes developmental problems (hybrid breakdown), there is essentially no positive selective effect. This doesn’t happen, as far as I know. In fact, the opposite seems more plausible.
I haven’t read Salter’s stuff. I’ve seen him cited on blogs a lot recently. The problem with the arguments, as I understand them, is that mate competition isn’t a global process. We don’t compete much with folks of other races for the same mates, at least in much of human history. So all the “relative to the total genetic variance in the world” stuff is irrelevant. People in fact compete most strongly with co-ethnics for mates. This HAS to be true – if it weren’t, then different ethnicities couldn’t have been created in the first place! Therefore the “baseline relatedness” is that of your coethnics – which means their “r” is effectively 0. Hence no altruism.
Racism and suchlike is surely a common sentiment. It’s just not clear that inclusive fitness has anything to do with it.
Evolution does not give a damn about which genes “belong together” with other genes, as long as those combinations are of little importance to fitness* — and there is no magical “law of nature” ensuring that epicanthic folds go best with jet black hair, or that a gene that confers resistance to vivax malaria originating in Africa can’t possibly be useful in southern Italy. This is a kindergarten-level understanding of basic evolutionary science.
Did evolution select organisms to pass on as many of their genes as possible? Yes or no? Who is more likely to pass on more of his genes? A man who mates with a woman who shares lots of copies of his genes or a man who mates with a woman who shares very few?
“Certainly in prehistoric times people were confronted all the time by humans of very different genetic backgrounds (neanderthals, denisovans) so we would have evolved a tendency to favor our own kind over out-groups. What likely evolved in general is a tendency to help people who look like us and hurt people who look different, and this tendency gets applied whenever we meet a new race.”
You keep saying “us, us, and us”, as if the will of the collective is a paramount concern when a member of the tribe upstream is wary of people from the tribe downstream, because the two tribes have a history of violence and bloodshed (which was actually common throughout most of human history). Because, of course, the individual has nothing to gain whatsoever from his own prejudice. It’s all about the tribe!
Well what about “ME”? Shit, even New World monkeys demonstrate similar tendencies — but even they will happily betray their own bands and defect somewhere else, if it suits their selfish individual needs. As do most human beings everywhere. People don’t participate in society because of “racial” genetic interests.
“Did evolution select organisms to pass on as many of their genes as possible? Yes or no? Who is more likely to pass on more of his genes? A man who mates with a woman who shares lots of copies of his genes or a man who mates with a woman who shares very few?”
Entire genomes do not replicate themselves perfectly — every single time you ejaculate into a sock, you release millions of sperm that are missing large chunks of your genome. Read a high school biology textbook. From the perspective of any one of your genes, who cares if the other half comes from a German or an Arab? How on earth is the gene supposed to know this (The other half might matter, say, if mixed-ethnic offspring automatically had a lower fitness for biological or even social reasons, but that’s hardly a constant throughout human cultures. There are hundreds of millions of mestizos in the world today.)
Two random strangers from a single race share very few genes that are identical by descent — yes, they are still far more related to each other than they are to members of a foreign race, but that’s only when you aggregate large numbers of loci that have nothing to do with one another. Natural selection does not a give a shit about combinations of genes. Do you seriously think the lactase persistence gene would be more successful at reproducing itself if, say, Indo-Europeans had a biological aversion to mating with other races?
Read a high school biology textbook. From the perspective of any one of your genes, who cares if the other half comes from a German or an Arab? How on earth is the gene supposed to know this
The same way our genes know the difference between our son and our nephew, and cause us to favor the former over the latter.
You and your son actually share genes that are identical by descent. This why it makes rational sense for parents to sacrifice their lives on behalf of their children. Your own genes continue to exist within your progeny.
There is absolutely no such benefit for sacrificing yourself on behalf of a stranger within your own race. (Mutually beneficial exchanges, or acts performed under some kind of duress or coercion, e.g. the court martial for soldiers who flee from battle, do NOT count.)
By definition, any new genetic mutation has to start with a frequency of near zero — and yes, if it originated in a Swedish village, it would just as rare everywhere else in Sweden as it is in Uganda. This is why “racial altruist” (remember, something doesn’t count as altruism if both parties benefit from the exchange) genes cannot rise in frequency in the long term. And even if, say, by some stroke of magic, the frequency of such a gene rose to 5, 10, 25, or 60 percent in China, so what? The relatives of the gene bearer are still far more likely to carry the gene, statistically speaking, and his kids could benefit from his sacrifices a lot more. Anybody who went around sacrificing himself for complete strangers would be an evolutionary loser. Under no set of ordinary circumstances is such a genetic adaptation possible.
“Did evolution select organisms to pass on as many of their genes as possible? Yes or no? Who is more likely to pass on more of his genes? A man who mates with a woman who shares lots of copies of his genes or a man who mates with a woman who shares very few?”
In fact, this does not work. It only causes positive assortment (higher homozygosity), but does not impose a change in allele frequencies. So alleles that lead to endogamy are not selectively favored by this mechanism alone. This is another misunderstanding that arises from an incomplete grasp of Hamilton’s rule. (There are mechanisms that can favor endogamy, but this isn’t one.)
misdreavus,
The coefficient of relatedness between a Swede and a non-related Swede is zero.
The coefficient of relatedness between a Swede and a black African is also zero.
You simply do not seem to understand this.
This is exactly the misapprehension I just got done correcting for JayMan: http://racehist.blogspot.com/2015/02/kinship-coefficients-and-ethnic-genetic.html
The coefficient of relationship is simply twice the coefficient of inbreeding between the hypothetical children of two individuals. Inbreeding is defined relative to some population. It’s often convenient to disregard non-recent inbreeding in calculating coefficients of relationship, but this only makes sense with respect to a particular population, and, holding the base population constant, a Swede absolutely does not have the same coefficient of relationship to a sub-Saharan as to another Swede. Nor is there any difference in kind between the type of relatedness indicated through Fst and the type shared by close family members.
Your other comments are filled with similar misunderstandings.
Wrong. F-ST (and other measures of genetic divergence) are only meaningful when you aggregate large numbers of loci that have little to do with one another — loci that splinter apart in every new generation, and rearrange themselves with other genetic material through a process that is biologically identical for all human races. These combinations are only relevant to the extent that they are important to fitness (say, for example, a mulatto in West Africa might have inherited malaria resistance genes from his maternal ancestry, but still has higher odds of developing skin cancer due to his European genetics), but this is the hardly the case under all circumstances. Furthermore, to the extent that combinations do matter, meiosis will break down the genome of an unfit hybrid into still smaller and yet smaller subdivisions, allowing selection to preserve what is useful while discarding the rest. Examples of this phenomenon occurring are virtually ubiquitous in nature. You owe your very existence to hybridization.
And from the perspective of a novel genetic polymorphism, overall genetic similarity is even less consequential. By definition, all novel mutations begin with a frequency of near zero. Zero as in zero in Uganda, zero in Mongolia, and zero in one’s own neighborhood. What would be the benefit of sacrificing yourself on behalf of your race, if nobody else shares your gene? And what’s the point, when under any set of circumstances, you can guarantee that the frequencies are much higher among your extended kin than they are among strangers?
In short, there is absolutely no biological interest in ensuring “purity” — you might value it for personal reasons (e.g. you’d rather not see the average IQ in Germany decrease), but what on earth does nature care about your personal preferences? Nothing. What biological interest does a genome have in replicating every single chromosome faithfully? None, because such a thing a impossible.
By the way, how on earth is an allele supposed to help a farmer in 13th century England “understand” that its frequency is 0.5 in western Europe, yet only 0.3 in east Africa — therefore it must be in the best interest of the farmer’s daughter not to mate with any of those wogs?
Also, you have a lot of chutzpah trying to give “remedial lessons in population genetics” to Cochran. I doubt you’d recognize the Jukes-Cantor model if it took a piss on your front lawn.
Read a book, nigga. Preferably one written after the battle of Stalingrad.
Misdreavus
Isn’t the definition of genetic fitness passing on as many of your genes and alleles as possible? If you have mixed race children than your kids have fewer of your genes & alleles than if you have monoracial kids who shares your ancestry on both sides of the family.
What part of that do you not understand?
Now I’m saying genetic fitness is good or desirable but if that’s the definition, that’s the definition,
Nope. Your kids inherit 50% of your genes under any circumstance. It doesn’t matter whether you marry a Chukchi, a Tamil Brahmin, or a Malaysian Orang Asli. You can’t change meiosis.
Of course, people from your own race are (statistically speaking) more likely to share polymorphisms derived from a distant ancestor — but what does that matter to you, or to anyone else? The path of inheritance is convoluted, and in the case of two unrelated individuals from the same race, there is absolutely no mechanism by which your genetic inheritance can alter that of your partner. (Of course, you might have a say in your mating choices, but that’s a completely different matter.) On the other hand, children and close relatives always inherit meaningful segments of your DNA. Sacrificing yourself on behalf of your own children is exactly the same as sacrificing yourself on behalf of your own genes. You can’t really can’t say the same for Geert in Rotterdam and Yulia in Lviv. If Geert sacrifices his life on behalf of 1000 Ukrainians, there goes his contribution to the gene pool. He does absolutely nothing on behalf of his own genetic inheritance by discarding his own body.
And nothing would change, either, if the Ukrainians and the Dutch were both warring with an invading negro army — Geert would have a much higher fitness taking care of his own kids, and trying to avoid the draft, than sacrificing his life on behalf of complete strangers. He might join the army out of concern for his own children, fear of social ostracism, government coercion, sentimental love for his own culture, etc. but that’s a totally different story. There would be no need for the court martial, food rationing, or a centralized state if such a thing as a “race preserving instinct” were really that important. People would volunteer of their own accord.
Furthermore, selection doesn’t give a damn about “similarity” — it cares about fitness, and there is no guarantee that fitness bearing traits are perfectly concentrated within your own race. It really is impossible to assume such a thing a priori — let’s say that the French have an allele with a frequency of 0.3 that boosts your odds of surviving the plague by 3% — and an Arab boy down the street has a new polymorphism that confers virtual immunity to the disease. Is intermarriage really so bad under such a circumstance, when the next epidemic arises? What does it matter how similar the parents are?
Or take the opposite case — we know that women in all societies discriminate against shorter men in dating and marriage. So when white women in the United States are statistically less likely to marry oriental men, who are shorter on average than white men — is it because of their “racial preserving instincts”, or because they value tall stature? The genetic distance is only incidental in this case.
And absolutely nothing is going to stop the reverse — say, east Asian women from marrying white men, because in the absence of social ostracism (which is hardly a cultural universal), absolutely nothing is going to stand in the way of such a union. And if there were some invading race of conquerers that white women found more attractive than white men –that’s just too bad for them. They never had any biological “instinct” that demands purity at the cost of individual needs and concerns (the way parents will suffer on behalf of their children). It is impossible for such a biological compulsion to evolve.
hysterical faggot,
Your hero is fully aware of what I just explained to you. Go ask him.
It’s not up for debate. This is extremely basic population genetics. You’re the one who needs to pick up a book and/or work on comprehending what you read.
Of course, people from your own race are (statistically speaking) more likely to share polymorphisms
A heck of a lot more likely!
– but what does that matter to you, or to anyone else?
Idiot! You could say the same about having kids. What does it matter to you or anyone else whether you have kids? What the fuck’s the difference?
On the other hand, children and close relatives always inherit meaningful segments of your DNA
What the fuck is meaningful DNA? DNA is DNA. Evolution doesn’t give a fuck if its in my kid or if it’s in a stranger I help survive. Whoever replicates the most genetic material has won the evolutionary game, even if they sacrafice themselves, their kids & their grand kids in the process, because that’s the definition of genetic fitness.
Not a “hell of a lot more likely”.
The vast majority of polymorphisms are either 1) largely irrelevant to fitness, 2) only differ in frequency by a couple percentage points between races, or 3) aren’t under a great deal of selection, to begin with. Do you really think black people are a totally different species? Human races typically vary by 1-2 standard deviations for most quantitative traits — breeds of dogs can vary by up to 20 or more, and even that doesn’t stop my shih tzu from humping whatever he can.
As for the rest of your reply — if you are incapable of understanding my posts, I won’t bother wasting my time. I’m here to amuse myself, and nothing else.
“Whoever replicates the most genetic material has won the evolutionary game, even if they sacrafice themselves, their kids & their grand kids in the process, because that’s the definition of genetic fitness.”
A German has absolutely nothing to gain genetically by being altruistic to a Russian, or even to an unrelated German. Sure, the two of them might become friends — but all that is context dependent, and both sides typically benefit from any exchange. Unless he has some sort of mental disorder, no German is ever going to tolerate a Russian mooching off his benevolence while giving nothing back to their parents, which is how the vast majority of kids behave until they are adults. (And it seems a significant minority behave that way long into adulthood.) That is “altruism” — allowing Russian immigrants to join your chapter of the White Aryan Resistance is not.
And the German might even have a higher average fitness by marrying another German (instead of an Ethiopian) — but even that is context dependent. There is no such thing as biological tendency to preserve similarity, for similarity’s sake.
By the way — why are white American elites such royal assholes to the poor and unfortunate among their own race? From lobbying for more H1B visas, to amnesty for illegal Hispanic immigrants, to slashing public benefits, to poisoning and maiming white miners in Appalachia (then discarding them like used tissue paper once they have exceeded their use), to anti-unionization, to dodging their taxes, to stashing all their earnings overseas, etc. — they don’t seem to very enamored of John Smith and Jane Doe, true redblooded Americans. I suspect that extirpating the Ashkenazi element among them wouldn’t change much of anything at all. Go read any history of the United States during the Gilded Age. That wasn’t a very pleasant time in history to be poor and white, and virtually all of their exploiters were their fellow white Americans.
Well it seems this is exactly how the rich and powerful want to behave in just about every country in the world, so you can hardly fault rich Americans for their chicanery. (In fact, you could even make a case that they are less likely to become scumbags compared to the global average, especially considering their wealth and privilege.) But some people so desperately want to believe that a mysterious biological urge exists dormant in the white race, to be resurrected like Lazarus in the grave once the Jew media / political correctness / cultural marxism / “blue pill ideologies” are abolished forever. This is about as delusional as Communists who predict the impending arrival of a “stateless utopia” once they eradicate all the bourgeois and retrograde elements within their society. Well I’m sorry to tell you that this is not how the world works.
Sure nationalism and racism are real phenomena, and are partly rooted in biology. But they don’t exist because of the genetic overlap among strangers within a race. In order for you to convince Cantonese, Hui Muslims, and Manchurians that they belong to a single nation worth dying for, you need something far more relevant to ordinary human concerns. (Of course you share a common ancestor with heroin addicts in Russia, but what on earth do you care about them?) Like appealing to potential benefits for their own progeny, brainwashing, social shaming, or the threat of execution. And even then there will be plenty of shirkers.
Of course people hurt members of their own race all the time. That’s not the question. The question is, all else being equal, are most people throughout most of history more likely to help a co-ethnic than a member of a different race? I would say yes.
Remember ethnic genetic interests are only one variable in predicting a person’s behavior. There are many, many, other variables and motives at work. Humans are extremely complex.
“Remember ethnic genetic interests are only one variable in predicting a person’s behavior. There are many, many, other variables and motives at work. Humans are extremely complex.”
Apparently, this impulse is so weak that it never stopped the wealthy from causing misery for the poor among their own race, by importing massive numbers of slave laborers from another race. (Happened multiple times throughout history.) Or members of a certain ethnic group from procuring help from a distantly related ethnic group in genociding a rival, but more closely related ethnic group. Or people from immigrating and migrating all over the place when their nation turns into shit, rather than staying behind to help their ethnic brethren.
Or maybe it’s just that this instinct doesn’t exist at all. At least not the way you describe it.
Apparently, this impulse is so weak that it never stopped the wealthy from causing misery for the poor among their own race, by importing massive numbers of slave laborers from another race.
Did they know it would supposedly cause misery for the poor in their own race? Ethnic genetic interests exist in my opinion but they are trumped by individual interests and family interests. But even within the same family, one sibling will betray another. Some parents even kill their own children, but as another commenter said, we don’t use these examples to deny the existence of family genetic interests.
Throughout the vast majority of human history, it has always been the norm for individual and family interests to override “racial” fitness, whatever the hell means.
It was never the norm for parents to kill or hurt their own children. At least not intentionally, anyway.
Throughout the vast majority of human history, it has always been the norm for individual and family interests to override “racial” fitness, whatever the hell means.
I agree, but that doesn’t prove race is not a genetic priority. It just proves that self and family are higher priorities, and indeed they should be since we are more related to ourselves and our family than we are to our race.
“Relatedness” between members of a race, by the way, only makes sense when you aggregate large clusters of genes that have little to do with one another — and the vast majority are either irrelevant to fitness, or only vary in frequency by a few percentage points between races. So Salter and Rushton have completely missed the mark here.
Population geneticists don’t give a damn about which genetic fragments “belong” where, unless combinations of genes happen to be critical to fitness (and they aren’t, all the time). There are indeed orgasnisms for which entire genomes matter, but we are not one of those. Every single act of meiosis results in the decomposition of your genome into something unique or new. There is absolutely no law of nature that says genes only work well within certain racial boundaries. In fact the very opposite is true.
Of course — there is the question of whether miscegenation is a good thing for society as a whole, but natural selection doesn’t care about that. If Europeans mated with Sub-Saharan Africans to the point where all of their children become mulattos at some point in the future, the average IQ in Europe would diminish considerably (which would be a great detriment to the civilized world), but of what relevance is that to evolutionary fitness? Genomes do not have an intrinsic tendency to maintain their own “purity” — and such a tendency is impossible to evolve, unless you want to violate the entire process of meiosis.
miss dreavus is a meth head,a faggot, and a chinaman btw.
Only one of those is correct.
The old problem of ”all genes need to be DIRECTLY selected”…. in evolutionary psychology.
Personality and intelligence levels are very important too. Remember ”humanity” or ”the men” aren’t there. You are generalizing human beings patterns as universal. (the recurrent problem in ”human sciences”)
Other problem. When human build their own artificial environment, this environment tend to acquire metaphorically speaking, own life. Social rule orders is imposed from top from bottom. Old americans create Harvard. Harvard today is a jewish institution.
This is indirect genetic factors (social orders are built by biological beings, aka, genetics) or environmental factors.
And humans are more individually adapted than other non-human animals because most them tend to be own individual behavioral plasticity, in other words, more variable reactions (as reply for actions).
There are genes for slavery*** Nope. But, stupid people can ”accept” its own slavery** Yes, they can. Docile people also can ”accept” its own slave condition** Yes, they can. ”There are” ”genes” or phenotypes to determined social conditions. When personality marry perfectly with culture (slavery, a social ‘model’)
Some people ‘use’ the chameleon ‘strategy’. The less important the person, the better.
All complex societies is based on hierarchy, ”even” in non-human social species.
Long term endogamy tend to reduce this behavioral plasticity, because same related people are marrying each one other. The idea that endogamy always cause more problems than exogamy don’t seems convincent. In the begin can be really true, but if endogamic people is selecting by health, a warrior caste** The problem is not endogamy, is the excessive endogamy.
”Altruism” need to be literally conceptualized. People here seems talk about altruism without to say what really is. As all on abstract world, altruism have a spectrum too. Altruism as help kin can be altruistic or selfish. (and both can be the true)
People who really sacrifice your own to their own people are rare, look today about white nationalism. If whitehood had a lot of Kevin McDonalds… Jeanne Darks tend to be a extreme personality, specially kind of ”idealistic”. Extreme personalities are all indirectly selected.
Most American institutions are now “Jewish”, and soon to be black.
I will summarize my arguments in this thread thusly:
1) It is impossible for such a thing as a “race altruist gene” to evolve, because sacrificing yourself on behalf of strangers does nothing to increase the frequency of the gene under any set of circumstances. It doesn’t matter if the frequency of a such a gene “magically” originated with a frequency of 4 in 10 Chinese people. The Chinese who don’t have the gene, on average, would have a higher fitness, resulting in the frequency decreasing monotonically over time.
2) On the other hand, it is entirely possible for complex social arrangements to evolve between completely unrelated people — and the more that strangers have in common culturally (e.g. speaking a common language, sharing a common religion, etc.) the stronger such ties will be. But that has absolutely nothing to do with “altruism”, in the strict evolutionary sense. All participants in the social network either have something to gain (e.g. the help of one’s neighbours during a famine), or at least something terrible to lose (e.g. being sent to a prison camp for insulting Kim Jong Un). And all societies, virtually everywhere, have social mechanisms in place that penalize shirkers, cheaters, moochers, and all other people who do not uphold their end of the social bargain.
3) Once any such social bargains erode away, there is absolutely stopping individuals from betraying their “racial interests” [sic] to enrich themselves and their close kin, or any other people with whom they have arranged better social bargains. Sincere idealists of any stripe are a relatively small minority among any population. The entire sum of human history of a testament to the fact the vast majority of people stop giving a damn about their tribe when the going gets tough — just what do their “genes” have to gain by not betraying important secrets to the enemy army, in exchange for an important official post?
3) Assortative mating is real thing, but that has nothing to do with “racial interests”, either. If you’re a pretty white women who happens to love handsome white men — that has absolutely nothing to do the degree of genetic overlap, especially not if you reject short, ugly white men who are just as related to you. (And before you retort with something like “beautiful people are more likely to have genes in common” — well ugly people don’t seem to be very keen on each other in any society. Why not, similar genes and all?)
And that also applies in the opposite direction — for some people, their best bet really is to mate with someone of a different race, “purity” be damned. Fifty percent is a lot better than zero.
4) Throughout the vast majority of human history, the vast majority of people never even saw someone of a different race. Forget about “racial genetic interests”. That’s like suggesting that human beings have evolved a congenital distaste for three-eyed creatures from the Andromeda Galaxy, during the event of an invasion of Earth by extraterrestrials — except no we haven’t. Sure, the tendency exists, and must be partly rooted in genetics, but it is virtually impossible for it to have evolved that way.
* correction:
“3) Once any such social bargains erode away, there is absolutely nothing stopping”
Impossible??? Really??
Look, a single gene need others genes to express itself.
Idealistics “today” have very higher power even if they are a minority.
Phenotypes or not adapt in different human social environenments, but different kind of self interests there, including racial interests, when you do would like that your son to be similar than you.
Impossible??? Really??
Look, a single gene need others genes to express itself.
Idealistics “today” have very higher power even if they are a minority. Aka, the useful idiots.
Phenotypes or not adapt in different human social environments, but or and different kind of self interests there, including racial interests, when you do would like that your son were similar to you.
As i said above, people use self projection than real empathy. Deny genetic racial interests is like to say 4+4=5. The fact that human societies is very complex don’t mean that racial genetic interests no there. Specially for leftists it can be true.
People thinking in some lines:
help or cooperate with people who are phenotypically similar using self-empathy or self projection, when you put in the place of other as if he were like you. And if the other is similar to you, will be MORE EASY to down the vigilant behavior.
Help people who are behaviorally similar or neutral to you, and dress ( cultural symbols), body type, facial expressions are very important as sinals.
First and predominant contact is visual. Phenotypical traits are reverberation, expression of genetics. Pseudo twin perspective. All of us would like to have a clone. In our own perspective, we are perfect.
Most of us are essentially selfish, self preservation. Racial self and a personal transcendence to this end, is a natural path, one of many others.
People who are more genetically or behaviorally different from outsiders, non-kin people, are less apt to trust someone who aren’t genetically or behaviorally similar. All the time, people are creating tribes, genetic interests, to Interact with similar cultural and or racial phenotypes. Racial enphasis is a kind of culture too. But culture Always is derived direct or indirectly by genes frequency.
Here’s a concrete example of how ethnocentrism could evolve:
https://pumpkinperson.com/2015/03/03/how-ethnocentrism-can-and-does-evolve/
I will summarize my arguments in this thread thusly:
1) It is impossible for such a thing as a “race altruist gene” to evolve, because sacrificing yourself on behalf of strangers does nothing to increase the frequency of the gene under any set of circumstances. It doesn’t matter if the frequency of a such a gene “magically” originated with a frequency of 4 in 10 Chinese people. The Chinese who don’t have the gene, on average, would have a higher fitness, resulting in the frequency decreasing monotonically over time.
The Chinese people who don’t have the gene would have higher fitness relative to the Chinese people who do have the gene, but BOTH the Chinese people who do have the gene and the Chinese people who don’t, would have higher fitness relative to non-Chinese people who don’t because the selection has occurred at the group level.
The point is that genes can decrease their frequency in one population (i.e. the Chinese), while also increasing their frequency in the broader population (humanity).
Further, there are plausible green beard type scenarios where Chinese with the gene would be able to recognize other Chinese who have the gene (equally ethnocentric co-ethnics) and only help other Chinese who were carriers.
Also “altruism” is only one form of ethnocentric behavior. Other forms of ethnocentrism (hiring a co-ethnic for a job) are not altruism in the strict sense (self-sacrifice) and thus have very low fitness costs to the individual.
2) On the other hand, it is entirely possible for complex social arrangements to evolve between completely unrelated people — and the more that strangers have in common culturally (e.g. speaking a common language, sharing a common religion, etc.) the stronger such ties will be. But that has absolutely nothing to do with “altruism”, in the strict evolutionary sense. All participants in the social network either have something to gain (e.g. the help of one’s neighbours during a famine), or at least something terrible to lose (e.g. being sent to a prison camp for insulting Kim Jong Un).
Do Palestinian suicide bombers have much to gain, commensurate with their loss of life?
And all societies, virtually everywhere, have social mechanisms in place that penalize shirkers, cheaters, moochers, and all other people who do not uphold their end of the social bargain.
And this is precisely why some sociobiologists believe that group selection and ethnic favoritism is especially likely to have evolved…because humans are unique in their ability to penalize cheaters, so the typical argument made against group selection in the animal kingdom (it would breakdown because of cheaters) don’t apply in humans. So once again, you are arguing only against a very extreme form of evolved ethnic nepotism (strict altruism) and ignoring the plausibility of milder forms evolving.
3) Once any such social bargains erode away, there is absolutely stopping individuals from betraying their “racial interests” [sic] to enrich themselves and their close kin, or any other people with whom they have arranged better social bargains.
There’s also absolutely nothing stopping people from betraying their brothers and sisters which happens probably far more often than racial treason, yet it doesn’t stop you from believing immediate family nepotism evolved.
Sincere idealists of any stripe are a relatively small minority among any population. The entire sum of human history of a testament to the fact the vast majority of people stop giving a damn about their tribe when the going gets tough
Duh! Ethnic genetic interests yield to family genetic interests which yield to individual genetic interests, but the fact that individuals favour their siblings over their race in tough times, no more debunks the evolution of ethnic nepotism than the fact that individuals favour themselves over their siblings in tough times, debunks the evolution of family nepotism.
And the entire theme of history has been one of ethnic and tribal conflict. People betraying their race are the exceptions, not the rule.
— just what do their “genes” have to gain by not betraying important secrets to the enemy army, in exchange for an important official post?
If the enemy army is about to bomb your tribe out of existence, your alleles gain the preservation of countless copies of themselves, and the combination of your alleles gains the preservation of countless copies of that genetic combination.
It’s very simple, alleles, and combinations of alleles, that cause their carriers to preserve copies of said alleles and combinations, will be preserved, and those that don’t, wont. It’s so simple. Even a child can understand this.
3) Assortative mating is real thing, but that has nothing to do with “racial interests”, either. If you’re a pretty white women who happens to love handsome white men — that has absolutely nothing to do the degree of genetic overlap, especially not if you reject short, ugly white men who are just as related to you. (And before you retort with something like “beautiful people are more likely to have genes in common” — well ugly people don’t seem to be very keen on each other in any society. Why not, similar genes and all?)
Just as pragmatic Republicans vote for not the most conservative candidate, but the most conservative candidate who can win, evolution predisposes us to mate with the most genetically similar partner with genes that can win. So there are two factors influencing our mate choice:
1) genetic similarity
2) genetic fitness
Ugly genes might cause ugly people to desire ugly mates, but they are negated by genes that cause us desire genetic fitness in our partners. Because ugly people are less genetically fit, ugly people sacrifice some genetic similarity for enhanced genetic fitness, because what good is it to have genetically similar kids if they lack the fitness to reproduce?
But when you control for genetic fitness, you do find people OVERWHELMINGLY prefer genetic similarity in their partners. This has been documented in the peer reviewed literature over and over and over again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just from looking at married couples on the street, this should be OBVIOUS!!!!!!!!
4) Throughout the vast majority of human history, the vast majority of people never even saw someone of a different race.
But they saw people of other tribes and they saw people of other species and it’s all the same continuum. Where you draw the line between tribe, race, and species is wholly arbitrary.
Population genetics are just models. Technically, a gene cannot exist by itself. The realized phenotype is also not based on single genes working but of all of them together. One gene does hardly ever equal exactly one trait, so to say that genes for altruistic behaviors cannot be spread because some models say so is non-sense. They can, if they also cause other beneficial traits.
Population genetics is based on way to simplistic assumptions.
Cockring is a Panglossian adaptationist fucktard.
that whatever it is can’t be selected for doesn’t mean it isn’t a result of things which have in fact been selected for.
“Except that they don’t. Why not?”
No one is arguing that an animal would risk itself to save an animal of another species. But animals protect members of their own species all the time, particularly herd animals. Animals may not knowingly engage in Nash’s governing dynamics but if the situation is common enough the behavior will still be selected for.
“Nor does the world look as if it has: consider Malinche, or Ephialtes, or everything else that has ever happened in history.”
Actually the world does look like it has. But it’s not the only instinct at play. And there are also exceptions. It may well be that the instinct exists but not everyone possesses it. It’s also likely that a population has evolved multiple instincts. Hawk-Dove is a good example of this.
Consider that a small band of primitive hunters works together to take down large prey. Large prey such as a buffalo is a risky proposition. hunters don’t have to sacrifice themselves but they do have to take the risk in order to be successful. If some of them hold back then they’re much less successful. What’s more, members seen as holding back will face retribution afterwards. So there is definitely a mechanism for promoting ethnic genetic interests. Caeser describes another example in The Gallic Wars. Defenders would stand on ramparts and pour boiling oil on attacking Roman soldiers while archers picked them off as fast as they could. Another defender would instantly take their fallen comrades place. They knew it was a death sentence but did it anyway. According to Cochran, no one would ever sacrifice themselves to save their tribe. Yet they did.
Excellent points.
“What’s more, members seen as holding back will face retribution afterwards. So there is definitely a mechanism for promoting ethnic genetic interests. ”
Which is why you don’t need group selection to explain social behavior across a wide variety of species.
Now, but what on earth does that have to do with the genetic relatedness between members of a race? (The genetic relatedness does matter, but not for the reason most people think.)
“Which is why you don’t need group selection to explain social behavior across a wide variety of species.”
Do you think that explains why herd animals rally to protect calves that aren’t theirs? No. Social pressures among humans merely reinforce the existing instinct to protect other members against outside threats..
Cochran doesn’t say that nobody has ever sacrificed themselves.
Also, a Roman soldier dying in battle was not doing anything for his tribe.
I think you misunderstood. The Roman archers were picking off the Gallic soldiers who leapt to the top of the rampart to replace their fallen comrades.I wasn’t suggested Roman soldiers were dying for their tribe. I was saying that Gallic soldiers were. Rome was probably too large and cosmopolitan by that time for ethnic genetic interests to be their largest motive.
The same critique would apply to the Romans or Gauls. What matters are the kinship coefficients, and an altruism gene in the Roman or Gaul that motivated him to fight would lower in frequency.
“The same critique would apply to the Romans or Gauls.”
Actually, it wouldn’t. Gallic structure was much more kinship based. Immediate families but also extended families, clans and tribes. Ethnicity is extended family after all. I don’t think someone would deny that most people would care more about a cousin than a random stranger from their own ethnicity. The proportional difference between one’s own ethnicity and another would be similar. The actual kinship coefficient isn’t the issue so much as the relative distance. A widely quoted Bedouin saying is “I against my brother, my brothers and I against my cousins, then my cousins and I against strangers”.
“What matters are the kinship coefficients, and an altruism gene in the Roman or Gaul that motivated him to fight would lower in frequency.”
No one said altruism is as strong among co ethnics as among immediate family. Nor does it have to be. Many of our human instincts originated among our very distant primitive ancestors. I would expect this instinct did as well. Then it evolved because groups with an instinct for ethnic genetic interests had an advantage over those who didn’t. Surely, you can see how a population with an instinct to stick together in a large group would have an adaptive advantage over those who don’t. Unless you’re going to argue that a small family group could stand up against an entire ethnic group? Because that’s the implication of your position.
“Then it evolved because groups with an instinct for ethnic genetic interests had an advantage over those who didn’t. Surely, you can see how a population with an instinct to stick together in a large group would have an adaptive advantage over those who don’t.”
People keep saying this, as if it makes group selection on human beings a real possibility. It most certainly does not.
There is absolutely nothing stopping an “ethnic group” from fracturing apart, allying with a distant ethnic group (against closely related competitors), or exchanging genes with a foreign ethnic group (which would arrest the very process of group selection in its tracks). Do you really think there is a genetic reason why people living 20 km away from the Franco-Prussian border were bitter enemies, at one point in history? Why the hell not? Or why south Koreans love Americans more than they love the Japanese (or even their north Korean kin), according to opinion polls?
The actual kinship coefficients are the issue as far as frequencies of altruism genes are concerned.
Older instincts that evolved under conditions of higher kinship coefficients would decline in frequency under novel conditions of lower kinship coefficients, such as the Gallic Wars.
miss dreavus is right for once.
haters is gonna hate.
the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians and Normans and Danes aren’t Huns but the Germans are?
of course a Marxist explanation is a better one for the above poster. the exploitation of the stupid masses by the rich.
but…the more differences there are the easier it is to hate, to dehumanize, to make an enemy of, to make an absolute other of, etc.
the mind says you are a human like me and you speak, but you look so strange to me. my gut tells me you are not like me. you are a competitor. you are an enemy. according to would be man-poodle steven pinker 20% of savages die in war one band fighting another.
“Do you really think there is a genetic reason why people living 20 km away from the Franco-Prussian border were bitter enemies, at one point in history? “
Each had more in common with the rest of their country even if they only lived 20km from the border. Even so, human nature is a little more complicated than what your question implies.
**
“Older instincts that evolved under conditions of higher kinship coefficients would decline in frequency “
Without selective pressures to reinforce them. No one has said otherwise. But it would take quite a while. People still have genes to eliminate toxins from when they were hunter gatherers eating wild plants. I’m not sure what effect current selective pressures are having. There are likely multiple forces at work.
**
“the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians and Normans and Danes aren’t Huns but the Germans are?”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germans#Origins
blockquote>The arrival of the Huns in Europe resulted in Hun conquest of large parts of Eastern Europe, the Huns initially were allies of the Roman Empire who fought against Germanic tribes, but later the Huns cooperated with the Germanic tribe of the Ostrogoths, and large numbers of Germans lived within the lands of the Hunnic Empire of Attila.[35] Attila had both Hunnic and Germanic families and prominent Germanic chiefs amongst his close entourage in Europe.[35] The Huns living in Germanic territories in Eastern Europe adopted an East Germanic language as their lingua franca.[36] A major part of Attila’s army were Germans, during the Huns’ campaign against the Roman Empire.[37] After Attila’s unexpected death the Hunnic Empire collapsed with the Huns disappearing as a people in Europe – who either escaped into Asia, or otherwise blended in amongst Europeans.[38]
of course a Marxist explanation is a better one for the above poster. the exploitation of the stupid masses by the rich.
*rolls eyes*
I can see there’s no point in having a rational conversation with irrational people.
destructure has never read Marx. he’s too dumb. yet he freely abuses people with the epithet “Marxist”.
he’s an expert on un-reason and irrationality.
I’m gonna try to explain here why the high F_ST between Swedes and Nigerians (to take an example from above) does not imply that selection will favor altruism between large ethnic groups.
The basic reason is that relatedness has to be measured relative to the mating pool in which one competes (see Queller, 1994, Genetic Relatedness in Viscous Populations). Most mating competition occurs within large ethnic groups – which is another way of saying that most matings occur within large ethnic groups. This has to be the case, or else the ethnic groups would never have diverged in the first place. Now if the vast majority of mating competition occurs within large ethnic groups, then the “r” (in Hamilton’s rule) of your ethnic group is ~0. This means that any appreciable altruism isn’t going to evolve: selection within groups causes the altruistic alleles to shrink to 0 in all groups. It doesn’t matter if average F_ST across the genome is .99, between the groups of interest (e.g., between long-separated species!).
This point is well understood by folks who work on the pop gen of social evolution.
This doesn’t mean that ethnocentrism can’t evolve. There are other mechanisms by which it can arise. It clearly exists. The point is that it is very unlikely to have arisen by ethnic-group-level kin selection (AKA group selection) alone.
As I explained to you: you seem to be imagining an ancestral environment in which groups had no opportunity to compete with genetically differentiated groups, but this is almost certainly wrong. Human prehistory is likely to have featured highly inbred bands or villages in direct competition with one another. Yanomama villages show FSTs on the same order as continental races.”
Considering that Yanomamo villages fission into new villages so quickly that anthropologists witness it happening multiple times within the span of a career*, and since there is intermittent gene flow between neighbouring villages (a lot, actually), of what relevance are the Yanomamo to group selection?
None, actually. The high F-ST values are a complete artifact — you’re interpreting exactly what you want from the evidence, as usual.
*See “The Impact of Group Fissions on Genetic Structure in Native South America and Implications for Human Evolution”, K.L. Hunley, et al.
Yes, n/a, we’ve been over this elsewhere. Competition between ethnic groups occurs where they meet – this is clearly true. But I’ve argued that competition at the level of ethnic groups (usually implying language differentiation – say, Yanomamo and whatever neighboring ethnic group they have) is simply too weak in comparison to within-ethnic group competition. The size of and level of endogamy (the latter of which implies that mate competition is mostly local) between these groups makes this so. I’d welcome evidence to the contrary (and don’t just list FST’s – we’ve been over this). This is a different situation to band-level competition, which is much more plausible.
Others have argued that ethnocentrism could be a misfiring extension of this adaptive kin- or band-level favoritism. If my argument above is right, then this would be a maladaptive use of such sentiments (not in “genetic interest”), but of course the result would be the same: innate tendency to be ethnocentric. I’m skeptical, but it’s more plausible.
RCB,
“But I’ve argued that competition at the level of ethnic groups (usually implying language differentiation – say, Yanomamo and whatever neighboring ethnic group they have) is simply too weak in comparison to within-ethnic group competition.”
You’re getting hung up on labels that don’t matter. From the standpoint of evolution, it makes no difference if a group of Yanomama is competing with a genetically distinct group of Yanomama or with a village from an entirely different “ethnic group” (other than that with greater genetic distance, competition may be more intense; and that selection has no doubt also operated at levels higher than bands/villages). We have plausible conditions for group selection leading to ethnocentrism.
“misfiring extension of this adaptive kin- or band-level favoritism. If my argument above is right, then this would be a maladaptive”
You have not made any meaningful argument that ethnocentrism is maladaptive. It obviously depends on the population structure, level of sacrifice, etc.
misdreavus,
Your level of understanding here is very low. You just cited a paper showing perfect conditions for group selection in the Yanomama, and ask me “of what relevance are the Yanomamo to group selection?”
James Neel:
The kinship system plus the role of chance ensured that human bands or groups of allied bands–the basic units of human competition-differed remarkably from one another. Kinship may create a sense of group coherence, which at the same time intensifies the competition with nonkin groups. The “kinship effect” may be stronger in human evolution than in the evolution of other animals and would, in a technical sense, represent an extensions of the Wright model as applied to human evolution. Earlier, I suggested that in the course of human evolution new tribes probably arose from old because a band became so detached from the parent tribe that it became the basis for a new tribe. Some of these tribes survived and some did not. Visualize this process repeated thousands of times, with the offshoot village each time being as nonrepresentative of the total tribe as any single Yanomama village would be of the whole Yanomama tribe. Given that natural selection favored the band-tribe with the best complex of genes, then we have the basis for what can be termed rapid step-wise evolution, although each step would be relatively small. When a population is expanding, as when Homo sapiens moved out of Africa, the opportunities for step-wise evolution are especially prominent.
n/a –
(This will be last last comment. I promise!)
“You’re getting hung up on labels that don’t matter.”
The level of selection does matter, to some extent. If the vast majority of competition for mates and resources over human history has been with people who speak (approximately) the same language, wear the same clothes, worship the same gods, and use the same economic system as you (again – this has to be the case for mating competition, otherwise groups wouldn’t diverge), then it would be hard to evolve a genetic instinct to behave altruistically toward these folks, contra others. In other words, if group selection occurs at the level of small bands of the same ethnicity, then it probably won’t select for the same behavior as it would for large-scale, inter-ethnic group selection. Maybe I’m wrong. And again, whatever biases do evolve could be extended across ethnic groups, which would result in ethnocentrism. If I’m right, this would be maladaptive: selection didn’t favor large-scale ethnocentrism directly, so it’s not going to suddenly favor this misapplication. The practical result would be the same, though. (For the record, I’m not against the idea that we have innate tendencies toward ethnocentrism. Just not convinced by the arguments made here. There are other possibilities: e.g., what if we evolved to prefer not to trade or mate with foreigners who are poorly adapted to local social environments, who therefore suffer lower fitness? Even if selection is weak, this behavior it would carry no altruistic cost.)
“(other than that with greater genetic distance, competition may be more intense)”
I’m surprised you said this; I think you’re confused. The level of competition is a separate measure from genetic distance. Increasing the latter doesn’t increase the former. More likely, they are negatively correlated, because genetically distant groups are more likely to be far away and/or have a separated mating pool. E.g., see our long discussion about viscosity models elsewhere (which, btw, do allow distant dispersal. See one of the most cited papers, Taylor 1992). More viscosity creates greater genetic distance between groups (higher FST), but REDUCES between-group competition (fewer dispersers -> fewer mate competitors from other groups). In fact, it’s hard to imagine a reasonably long-term population structure in which mate competition is greater between more genetically distant people. (Higher dispersal will put you among strangers, but it also quickly erodes FST, so that doesn’t really work over evolutionary timescales either – but could produce some transient effects, no doubt). Probably something could do it, I suppose.
But if none of my comments have been “meaningful” to you, then I’m done here.
If the vast majority of competition for mates and resources over human history has been with people who speak (approximately) the same language, wear the same clothes, worship the same gods, and use the same economic system as you (again – this has to be the case for mating competition, otherwise groups wouldn’t diverge), then it would be hard to evolve a genetic instinct to behave altruistically toward these folks, contra others
But we could still evolve a general mechanism for relative altruism. That is the more someone looks like us, the more altruistic we are compared to those who look different. So even people who we normally compete with we could suddenly help when confronted by a foreign enemy
And then we might even become loyal to the foreigner when confronted by someone even more foreign
“The level of competition is a separate measure from genetic distance.”
Increased genetic distance will tend to incentivize more intense competition when paths do cross. That’s the only point I was trying to get across.
“then it would be hard to evolve a genetic instinct to behave altruistically toward these folks, contra others. In other words, if group selection occurs at the level of small bands of the same ethnicity, then it probably won’t select for the same behavior as it would for large-scale, inter-ethnic group selection. ”
I know it’s hard to believe, but humans seem to have evolved the capacity to notice subtle gradations in speech, appearance, dress, etc. Even more surprisingly, it appears that larger differences (different language vs. different accent; different race vs. different subrace) may be even more salient for many humans.
“If I’m right, this would be maladaptive: selection didn’t favor large-scale ethnocentrism directly, so it’s not going to suddenly favor this misapplication.”
No, it doesn’t follow that if “large-scale ethnocentrism” wasn’t selected for directly, it must be maladaptive. Again, the question of whether or not any particular manifestation of ethnocentrism is adaptive will depend on the numbers, relatedness, and sacrifice involved.
This discussion looks smart. There are also environmental factors there. The factor ” language ” is very important. And if all human beings speak Esperanto ** Well, Americans speak English and since then, racial miscegenation has not been very common so far.
Are disregarding the natural variety that is necessary for natural selection. It seems clear that there are people who are altruistic that are racially motivated, that is, apply their altruism in their own race.
You are questioning here in scenarios like this racial altruism could manifest itself and not on the existence or not of racial altruism.
And do not confuse ethnicity with race. They are not the same thing. Ethnicity is an intra-racial variation while race consists of an inter-species variation.
There is a range of personality types, where certain combinations will be much more ethnocentric than others. All these factors are important.
The human altruism evolved into different possibilities of altruistic behavior, but in particular to improve their own family. This explains why most people despise those who are on the streets, homeless, who are not related.
Therefore, I believe that we are discussing here about possible scenarios for the demonstration of large-scale racial altruism.
I believe that with the awareness of many white people as its dramatic backdrop of today, you can turn on this predisposition in many whites.
Unrealistic scenarios will not help us. Some of the best examples of racial altruism are the inbred populations and culturally closed as the Amish and Orthodox. But this shows that culture (manifestation of personality conceived by ideology) is very important to select the types that most fit the proposed cultural model.
Scenarios of Hollywood movies, where an individual ” sacrifice ” for his people, not yet prove the racial altruism, only if there is a clear emphasizing as the desired motivation. And is not the only example.
So it’s not just genetics, but the manipulation of innate behavioral plasticity to a specific strategy.
“Do you really think there is a genetic reason why people living 20 km away from the Franco-Prussian border were bitter enemies, at one point in history? “
Each had more in common with the rest of their country even if they only lived 20km from the border. Even so, human nature is a little more complicated than what your question implies.
**
“Older instincts that evolved under conditions of higher kinship coefficients would decline in frequency “
Without selective pressures to reinforce them. No one has said otherwise. But it would take quite a while. People still have genes to eliminate toxins from when they were hunter gatherers eating wild plants. I’m not sure what effect current selective pressures are having. There are likely multiple forces at work.
**
“the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians and Normans and Danes aren’t Huns but the Germans are?”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germans#Origins
blockquote>The arrival of the Huns in Europe resulted in Hun conquest of large parts of Eastern Europe, the Huns initially were allies of the Roman Empire who fought against Germanic tribes, but later the Huns cooperated with the Germanic tribe of the Ostrogoths, and large numbers of Germans lived within the lands of the Hunnic Empire of Attila.[35] Attila had both Hunnic and Germanic families and prominent Germanic chiefs amongst his close entourage in Europe.[35] The Huns living in Germanic territories in Eastern Europe adopted an East Germanic language as their lingua franca.[36] A major part of Attila’s army were Germans, during the Huns’ campaign against the Roman Empire.[37] After Attila’s unexpected death the Hunnic Empire collapsed with the Huns disappearing as a people in Europe – who either escaped into Asia, or otherwise blended in amongst Europeans.[38]
of course a Marxist explanation is a better one for the above poster. the exploitation of the stupid masses by the rich.
*rolls eyes*
I can see there’s no point in having a rational conversation with irrational people.
Has it occurred to anyone that the coefficient of relatedness only takes into account recent generations? People of the same ethnicity are distant cousins from multiple lineages. First cousins share 2 of 4 ancestors two generations back, but considering pedigree collapse, people of the same ethnicity could easily share 50% of the same ancestors not so far back.
There is also this study that looks at this issue from another angle: http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/16/3/7.html
“Ethnocentrism is the tendency to favor one’s own group at the expense of other groups. It is implicated in a variety of important phenomena from voting patterns to ethnic discrimination and armed conflict. It is widely believed in social science that ethnocentrism involves extensive social learning and considerable social and cognitive abilities (Hewstone, Rubin, & Willis 2002; LeVine & Campbell 1972; Sherif 1966). However, there is also evidence that ethnocentrism is common throughout a diverse range of animal (Chase 1980) and even plant (Dudley & File 2007; Runyon, Mescher & De Moraes 2006) species. Such evidence suggests that ethnocentrism may be rooted in biological evolution, and that its essential cognitive component is quite simple: the ability to distinguish in- vs. out-group members and select different behaviors based on that distinction. A striking example from red fire ants is that queens without a particular gene are detected and killed at birth by worker ants (Keller & Ross 1998).”
“Recent computer simulations with simple abstract agents demonstrate that ethnocentrism can indeed originate through evolutionary processes (Hammond & Axelrod 2006a, 2006b). The agents in these simulations can either defect against, or cooperate with, other in-group or out-group agents, generating four possible strategies: (a) a selfish strategy of constant defection, (b) a traitorous strategy of cooperation with out-group, but not in-group, agents, (c) an ethnocentric strategy of cooperation within one’s own group but not with agents from different groups, and (d) a humanitarian strategy of indiscriminate cooperation. From a random starting point, ethnocentrism evolves to become the dominant strategy under some variation in parameter settings, eventually characterizing about 75% of the world population. Our present work attempts to explain the evolutionary fates of each of these four strategies, and thus more fully understand the processes that may lead to ethnocentric dominance. We present two studies that test hypotheses for explaining ethnocentric dominance and two other studies documenting and explaining variation in early humanitarian competitiveness.”
“The average proportions of the four strategies during the last 100 of 2000 evolutionary cycles were .08 selfish, .02 traitorous, .75 ethnocentric, and .15 humanitarian (Hammond & Axelrod 2006b). Systematic doubling and halving of key parameters (e.g., lattice size, number of cycles, number of tags, cost of cooperation) did not alter this distribution much, suggesting that evolution of ethnocentrism is not a knife-edge phenomenon but is instead quite robust.”
“These results indicate that the decline of humanitarians is due to direct exploitation by ethnocentrics and is not mediated by humanitarian deficiencies in out-competing selfish agents. As the world fills up and clusters of agents collide, ethnocentrism starts to dominate its closest competitor humanitarianism by virtue of ethnocentrics directly exploiting humanitarians across cluster boundaries.”
“In contrast to the notion that humanitarians cannot out-compete free-riders, humanitarians do very well against both selfish and traitorous agents. Selfish and traitorous agents limit growth of their own genotypes by not cooperating with them; although Laird (2011) noted circumstances where across-tag cooperation can sustain traitorous agents. Consistent with the direct hypothesis, the chief problem for humanitarians is ethnocentrism.”
“We find here that individual differences between evolving worlds are characterized mainly by early competition between the two fittest strategies: ethnocentrism and humanitarianism. Ethnocentrism always pulls away from humanitarianism by around cycle 300 as world population reaches its asymptote, while selfish and traitorous strategies never gain much of a foothold.”
“The dominance of ethnocentrism over humanitarianism, and the marginalization of selfish and traitorous strategies, can be explained purely via individual selection, without recourse to group-selection mechanisms.”
“The high degree of abstraction in the models discussed here ignores many of the complexities of cooperation and social organization. However, these models are useful abstractions that capture some fundamental principles that function in a variety of species and environments. They make few cognitive assumptions about the agents, and remain within the scope of minimal cognition.”
Very interesting! Thanks for finding this!
No one has taken that into account because it doesn’t really matter. The entire rule is based around what kind of altruism would be most likely to evolve or be selected for, which is why the kCo is of primary importance at the outset.
an example of:
1. how conspiracy theories, conspiracies at the level of consciousness, aren’t required to explain de facto conspiracies among co-ethnics…like the Jews.
OR
2. an example of how lion was right as Jews despite their outsized wealth and power marry non-Jews more often than they marry Jews (in the US at least) and have few children than gentiles (though the haredim have more) and are thus unfit in a purely Darwinian sense.
In a purely Darwinian sense Jews will probably turn out to be quite fit because the size of Israel keeps expanding thanks largely to the support Israel gets from the United States. To the extent that politically savvy American Jews have caused the United States to support Israel, they have arguably enhanced their inclusive fitness (assuming American Jews share lots of genetic variants with Jews in Israel).
Two examples of racial altruism or better, racial empathy, we may say so. Because of empathy that produces altruism. Altruism is a dynamic empathy, the action of empathy, while empathy is the concept of herself.
That white british woman reporter who commented on the strangeness in relation to its non-white child. Who remembers this ****
In most cases, we help because we put ourselves in the place of the other. Pure selfishness. We think, and if I were in his shoes ** Well, is not necessarily selfish, just words …. but whatever.
The case of this reporter and the case of a white former teacher of mine, biology, who married a mulatto man and when she realized that his daughter began to become less like her (especially regarding hair), she became depressed. The case is hilarious, but it is real.
The racial altruism, or should, racial empathy, empathy for itself, self esteeme, is when you are like to the point of wanting to have a child that looks like you. This is racial, because you, like it or not want, is a individual representative of a race, decanted and stabilized, or mixed.You and me can begin a people.
Jayman like your child was born like in appearance with him. Even among mixed race people. Race does not need to be pure, just need to be a natural desire to have a child that looks like you, after all, the largest and most common form of altruism is that parents have for their children. Necessarily not be the most noble.
To say that there is no racial altruism, would be similar than to say that it consists of a cultural construction only. And this is to deny gene-culture evolution.
It is also difficult to say that there is ” a gene ” that was selected. ”He” has always existed, ‘he’ or ‘they’, because it relates directly to the consciousness of itself. I think.
Mulatto Children almost never look like their parents, which you can find among other racial mixtures such as White-East Asian or White-Middle Eastern, because sometimes these types, the children can look dominantly White. Blacks are completely different and their genes become very dominant, such that any other race who mix with them cannot have a child that resemble the non-black parent in any way.
Yes, but for non-white pair, is better because the children will look like him.
Martial artist Bruce Lee, who was East Asian, his son is also now dead, maybe due to Hollywood conspiracy (killed by Jews?), looked almost White. He would blend in better with a group of Whites than East Asians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Lee
Mulattos are always dark and their african features overtakes the non-black side.
Most mulattoes look no more black than white. Compare them to someone from subsaharan Africa and it’s obvious. For example, Rhianna, Stacey Dash and Halle Barry look nothing like someone from Cameroon or Ghana. It’s not so obvious elsewhere because the population being compared already has a lot of mixture. I will agree, however, that other mixtures don’t look as different. That’s because the genetic distance between the parents wasn’t as far apart to start with.
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WWhat needs bearing in mind is that genes individually or collectively possesses no intellect.
It’s the brain’s intellect that makes sense of the body whole and not the assortment of genes that also comprise it. All humans are completely aware of racial differences which is why the vast majority are attracted to their own racial kin rather than others outside of it, Also, each tends to view alien examples with naturally instilled caution and/or suspicion, in some cases without necessarily betraying the fact.
Accordingly, to deny that racial awareness is a reality and that the instinct of racial preservation also exists as a consequence, is simply futile.
There will always be individuals of any race who miscegenate simply because their level of racial awareness happens to be weak or they’ve been brow beaten into denying it. In some primitive parts, they may be afforded no choice.