[update March 20, 2016: Commenter “Swank” deserves a lot of credit for at least subconsciously inspiring me to write this post. Swank has long argued that ethnocentric behavior is misfiring of normal kinship altruism. However the term misfiring implies that ethnocentric behavior is not genetically adaptive because it was and is not arguably selected for, which I consider a non sequitor]
One of the arguments that often gets made against Ethnic Genetic Interests (EGI) is that we couldn’t have evolved to act on our EGI because through most of evolutionary history, people never saw anyone of a different race.
But it suddenly occurred to me that this argument supports EGI rather than refutes it. If humans evolved to live in small tribes where everyone looked like they do, they would have had to have evolved extremely precise kinship recognition to behave more altruistically towards their brothers than their half-brothers, to their first cousins than their second cousins etc..
A person who was more generous to his second cousin than his first cousin would have lower inclusive fitness than a person who was more generous to his first cousin than his second, because our first cousins share more of our genes than our second cousins. Thus what likely evolved was an instinctive ability to compare two people, decide who is more related to you, and prefer the more genetically similar person.
Now when humans met members of other races, this hierarchical kinship recognition simply caused them to be more altruistic to their own race than to other races and this largely explains racism. So I guess one could argue that racism per se didn’t evolve, but hierarchical kinship preferences did, and races are just extended kin, and so the recognition system works on races as long as the genetic similarity between them correlates with something humans can instinctively recognize (physical similarity).
Does this make racism genetically adaptive or was hierarchal kinship preference only adaptive when humans lived in tiny genetically homogenous groups where it distinguished between close relatives, not extremely distant relatives? Its hard to judge the genetic adaptiveness of something that may not have been tested much by natural selection, but there’s no question that if you maximize the genetic fitness of your race while minimizing the costs to your individual genetic fitness, you have increased your total genetic fitness relative to the average human.
How would we evolve to recognize people of a different race and not behave altruistically towards them? This may seem like a stupid question, but in the case of Sub-Saharans and Papua New Guineans, you have two groups that are about as distant as possible on neutral DNA mutations. Sure, they share some alleles for dark skin and kinky hair and broad noses, but that’s about it. They diverged tens of thousands of years ago so, before Europeans or Asians diverged from Sub-Saharans. So Sub-Saharans in you theory should be more altruistic towards those latter groups than they are towards Papuans.
Well that might be an example where hierarchal kinship preference misfires. The cues that normally signal kinship don’t work in that case.
There’s nothing terribly unusual about that. You can trick animals into thinking you’re their close family member once you understand how they recognize kin, so the system isn’t perfect
But it should be said that Papuans and Africans are probably far more genetically similar than their neutral DNA suggests. Although they separated long ago, both genetically preserved the physical, behavioral and cognitive phenotype of sub-Saharan Africa.
When an African saves Papuan lives, there are more copies of that combination of alleles in the next generation so he has enhanced that part of his genetic fitness
Africans have more neutral DNA in common with Europeans than they have non-neutral DNA in common with Papuans.
So whether or not it’s genetically adaptive for Africans to help Papuans comes down to how you define genetic fitness. Is it defined by how efficiently you replicate your total DNA, or just the DNA that codes for traits, or the specific combination of alleles etc.
I suspect the answer is arbitrary, but the key point is that humans have likely evolved to be more helpful
to those who look/act more like themselves (or the people they grew up around ) because statistically, the more similar someone seems, the more likely he is to share genes.
So Africans would probably side with a Papuan over a European because of physical similarity, even if doing so is genetically maladaptive given that physical similarity might mask great genetic distance in this case
What about the IQ differences between the 2 groups? Papuans appear to be smarter like the Eastern Africans. They might be less aggressive, given the Asian elephant is less aggressive than his African cousin.
Papuans = Asiatic Blacks?
JS, surprisingly Papuans seem to score lower than Africans though the quality of the studies is poor
But in a way it makes sense. Papuans
are descended from the primitive Africans who left the continent 50-110,000 years ago & then they became too isolated to absorb much of the genetic progress occurring in the rest of humanity
By contrast, in sub-Saharan Africa, occasional high IQ mutations would trickle in from the Middle East
Lion of the Judah-sphere,
A black guy would be more altruistic toward another black guy than toward is blasian son if he dont know he is his son.
Pumpkin is right, the only way to these kind of altruistic behavior to happen is by the recognition of physical and comportemental similarities, you have no “genetic sixth sens”.
People favorise people from their own family because they looks more like them + because they know that they are family members, and it seems normal for a lot of people to help people of their own family, while people dont know that it is normal to help people of their own races(some people but it isnt like family) and this because it is not really normal from an evolutionnary point of view because these altruistic genes evolved for family not for race even if they have an effect on racial altruism
Racial altruism is not fully express because we are not in a situation in which it is evolutionnary useful. But you can observe it in other real world situations like in jail (of course you can say that it is normal because its the gang things and we hve to do that etc… but these things have an origin right ?).
By a socially liberal point of view, it may be true. But, physiological similarities is a excuse for something more deep, called ”groups”. Mixed race brazilian immigrants in USA are more likely to help their own than americans with other ”communities”. But, same mixed race brazilian immigrants will tend to be less cooperative in their own country. Instinctively, we search for people who look familiar for us, specially when we are a minority and others are not open to ”integration”. We make pre-judgment based on non-verbal language to interact with other people.
Because human behavioural plasticity, we can be convinced to cooperate and mate with people with different background.
socially liberals are anxious to see most blacks behave like him, like white people on the left.
Other question, reciprocity, altruism doesn’t exist without reciprocity.
In more primitive and testosteronic populations,tribalistic instinct is stronger than in cognitive-domesticated evolved human populations.
Hbd’ers love to say: ” a W.E.I.R.D sample of liberal arts is not a representative sample to explain common human behaviours”. So??
Other possible and interesting question: sons of socially conservative men tend to be similar with their fathers while the otherwise is likely to happen among socially white liberal fathers. Well, a lot of speculatio in a single comment.
The question: there are or not genetic interests? is nonsense. For domesticated-like populations will be weaker than in ”robust” populations. It is not a paradox, my opinion.
Some people said violence is higher among iq range 80-90. The appex of ”masculinity” seems happen in iq range 90-100. Iq < 80 seems more pacific.
This is a ”fact” by swank.
End of discussion.
Miracles can happen!!! Grrrreat!!
”Black bermudians” and ”white bermudians” who, you know, are extremely similar in all traits, less ”color skin”, now ”have” the same intelligence ‘or’ iq because same environment.
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