[HN Gopher] Too many species have been lumped together into Homo...
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Too many species have been lumped together into Homo sapiens
Author : CapitalistCartr
Score : 161 points
Date : 2021-12-03 12:19 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sapiens.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sapiens.org)
| jl2718 wrote:
| This seems like an argument over semantics. Just just show the
| DNA in a phylogenetic tree:
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Fixation_index_i...
| technobabbler wrote:
| What if you can't extract DNA from the fossils?
| jeremyjh wrote:
| As the article notes, DNA doesn't survive more than around
| 100,000 years in the fossil record.
| [deleted]
| Victerius wrote:
| A slight tangent, but I sometimes wonder how 'humanoid' any
| potential intelligent alien species must be, if they exist. Some
| science fiction writers depict alien species as quite
| morphologically similar to humans - Romulans and Klingons in Star
| Trek - or radically different - Hutts in Star Wars, Hanars and
| Krogans in Mass Effect. If you take a quick look at "Star Wars
| alien species" or "Mass Effect alien species", most of the
| differences imagined by writers are around the head shape, and
| the overall distribution of muscle mass around the rest of the
| body. So most alien species you meet in pop sci fi is 90%
| identical to humans, with a different head. Human heads in this
| sense are pretty basic. We don't have a leku like Twi'leks,
| ridged foreheads like Klingons, long necks and slender frames
| like Kaminoans, a small ring of horns and skin patterns like
| Zabraks, or scalp-crests like Asari.
|
| But if we _did_ , would these traits ever go away? Would human
| evolution eventually "revert" us back to our present form?
| Because something tells me that we wouldn't, and the selection
| process would basically say "good enough". In other words, the
| reason we don't look like Asari or Twi'leks is probably pure
| luck, and the reason alien species may look the way they do
| (again, if they exist) is also pure luck. But they probably share
| some of the general characteristics of humanoids, such as limbs
| not necessary for motion and with opposable fingers, a head
| separate from the rest of the body, etc.
| tomrod wrote:
| Some humans have freckles and others have thicker hair. As
| evolution has no mind or will, if there is nothing pressuring
| these traits to leave the gene pool then it would be negligible
| probability that they do.
|
| Same with any morphological traits, I reckon (I am not an
| evolutionary biologist).
| retrac wrote:
| > I sometimes wonder how 'humanoid' any potential intelligent
| alien species must be, if they exist.
|
| TV uses humanoid aliens because they're easy to cast :)
|
| Just look at the other intelligent life on Earth. Some birds,
| whales, elephants are near the top. If we hadn't nearly wiped
| elephants out maybe in another 10 million years they'd be
| making spaceships with their trunks (which have a fine
| manipulation ability approaching the human hand).
|
| A little further away evolutionarily, jellyfish are remarkably
| intelligent and seem to even have individual personalities, and
| they don't have a brain.
| andrewl wrote:
| As retrac says, it's easier to cast for humanoids. And
| decades ago the special effects technology was nowhere near
| what we have now, so there were fewer options for more
| unusual forms and they were expensive.
|
| Novelists had no such restrictions, so Larry Niven could
| create Pierson's Puppeteers in 1966:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierson%27s_Puppeteers
| Scarblac wrote:
| And Douglas Adams could invent a hyper intelligent shade of
| the colour blue :)
| raverbashing wrote:
| > Some birds, whales, elephants are near the top.
|
| They're different from humans, but much closer than we
| expect: mammals (apart from the birds, sure), with similar
| skeletal structure, similar overall "how it works" biology
| (brains, skeleton, digestive system, circulatory system, etc)
|
| The closest "intelligent alien" we know of is the octopus.
| That's really something else. But even then a lot of biology
| is shared.
|
| If you want to get creative don't think of humans mating
| neanderthals, think animals re-evolving from an earthworm or
| a jellyfish.
| heymijo wrote:
| > _I sometimes wonder how 'humanoid' any potential intelligent
| alien species must be_
|
| Great question. I enjoyed Andy Weir's take on this in his most
| recent book Project Hail Mary. If anyone hasn't read it yet and
| they're intrigued, I would suggest picking it up without
| finding out any more about it.
| messe wrote:
| > Hutts [...] and Krogans
|
| I would hardly classify these as radically different. Hutts
| have two arms, two eyes a nose and a mouth, and vocalize
| similarly to humans. Krogans are very much humanoid as well and
| follow the same basic body plan.
|
| I'd agree about the Hanars. Better examples of radically
| different would be the Dwellers from the Algebraist, the Tines
| from A Fire Upon the Deep, or Alex Ries' Birrin[1]. Even then,
| they are all relatively human-like in their culture.
|
| [1]: http://abiogenisis.deviantart.com/
| adolph wrote:
| Not at all. An example is the intelligence embodied in
| cephalopods such as the octopus. The fork between us and them
| occurred maybe 600m years ago. Suggested reading:
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40910274-the-deep-histor...
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28116739-other-minds
| stirfish wrote:
| > selection process would basically say "good enough".
|
| You ever start a refactor, find some dead code, and realize you
| could work it into a new feature? I wonder if vestigial organs
| are ever reused like that.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| "They're made out of meat."
|
| "Meat?"
|
| https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think...
| mikepurvis wrote:
| > 90% identical to humans
|
| I mean, we share 90% of our DNA with mice, and 70% with worms.
| Victerius wrote:
| I mean, physiologically. But, yes.
| xwolfi wrote:
| Yeah it's probably not pure luck but instead complete
| adaptation to the particular environment.
|
| Now you talk of aliens breathing and eating meat which can be
| conceived but... what of a pure liquid helium planet ? The
| intelligence there might be completely different, with
| reproduction cycles we cant imagine and energy transformation
| that may not even require eating other life form like us.
| albert_e wrote:
| thinking-aloud --
|
| alien life may be so different from what we are familiar with
| ... that we may not even recognize it as life when we encounter
| it first
|
| the differences may be in sheer size of the organism -- think
| licens and moss at planetary scale -- or even loosely collected
| soup or vapors of chemicals
|
| the difference could be in metabolism that we may need 4-5
| generations of humans to see them live and grow and die -- or
| they might live for only a fraction of a second
|
| just like there are billions of microbes living in each of our
| bodies (and they have no mental capacity to comprehend us or
| our world) ... we may in-turn be microbes inside a much grander
| macro-cosm that we can never wrap our heads around
| jjk166 wrote:
| > And there are circular arguments: DNA is identified as, say,
| Neanderthal because the fossil was identified as such, and then
| it is used to identify other fossils as Neanderthal, even if they
| don't look Neanderthal-like.
|
| This is the opposite of a circular argument, this is the
| foundation of inductive reasoning. A = B and B = C thus A = C. If
| something has unambiguous neanderthal DNA but doesn't look
| neanderthal-like, then your idea of what is neanderthal-like is
| discredited.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The issue is that humans share ~99% of their DNA with
| chimpanzees. Pick any of that, say "this is chimpanzee DNA,"
| and you're now identifying billions of humans as chimpanzees
| (or vice versa).
| jjk166 wrote:
| And 60% of our DNA is shared with a banana, but that's not
| the dna used to classify species. The overwhelming majority
| of both our and chimps DNA comes from our common ancestor,
| and all of that is neither human nor chimp DNA. But there are
| specific genes which Chimps evolved after our lineages
| diverged, and any animal containing those genes must be in
| the chimp lineage.
|
| In the case of hominid interbreeding, we can see genes that
| are common in neanderthals appearing in non-african modern
| humans. Had these genes existed in our common ancestor, they
| would be present in african populations as well. The opposite
| being the case, the only way for those genes to get there is
| if only some people descend from neanderthals, which in turn
| requires successful interbreeding.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| You still have the question of directionality.
|
| Suppose humans migrate to Europe from Africa, then have
| some local divergence from their ancestors. Then those
| humans interbreed with neanderthals, so that those
| divergent genes spread within the neanderthal population as
| well.
|
| Putting aside the question of whether the existence of
| interbreeding makes neanderthals not a separate species,
| it's going to be difficult to tell where those genes
| originated.
|
| Suppose the first person to have those genes was a human
| who bred with both humans and neanderthals, but it so
| happens we have fossils of some of the earliest
| neanderthals with those genes and not the earliest humans
| with them.
|
| Then you could have the result that some "neanderthals"
| descended from humans but not vice versa, and be unable to
| distinguish that from the other way around.
| Swizec wrote:
| The part that blows my mind is that according to this article,
| the idea that we evolved in a straight line was an attempt at
| fighting nazi propaganda about inferior races. Before ww2, the
| scientific consensus was that we evolved in a branching species
| rich manner, same as any other animal.
|
| By 1963 it was again okay to talk about multiple hominid species,
| so the scientific consensus started moving back in that
| direction.
|
| I find this fascinating because I never realized science could be
| so political.
|
| More interestingly still, when the author talks about species
| being mis-identified as homo sapiens despite stark morphological
| differences and that they probably represent an extinct close
| relative, that gave me a funny gut feeling. Felt like dangerous
| territory to talk about ...
|
| Fascinating
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Before ww2, the scientific consensus was that we evolved in a
| branching species rich manner, same as any other animal.
|
| This was a time referred to as the "nadir of race relations" in
| the US, and if you read the output about humans as a species
| from that period, you'd be a lot less impressed. It's all out
| of copyright and a lot is available online. It's not what most
| of us would look at as science, now. It's more like mythmaking.
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| > This was a time referred to as the "nadir of race
| relations" in the US,
|
| Its incredible how little people know about the period in
| American history between the end of Reconstruction and the
| start of WWII beyond just: "WWI", "Market Crash", "Great
| Depression".
|
| Following one theme: Nadir of race relations, Red Summer of
| 1919, and Great Migration (one of the largest movements of
| people in history).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadir_of_American_race_relatio.
| ..
|
| It makes it so much more difficult to have an objective
| discussion about the past simply because people are unaware
| of it, or simply understand it at a very high / hand-wavy
| level. "Some bad stuff happened then eventually it stopped."
| geofft wrote:
| Also, take a look at the history of eugenics, which was seen
| in the years before World War II as a legitimate and noble
| scientific goal - to improve the human species by the
| application of science and engineering, no more immoral than
| breeding hardy tomatoes or fast horses. Many countries that
| joined the war on the side of the Allies had significant
| scientific, governmental, and public support for eugenics
| (the US and the UK had a Eugenics Society, Canada had
| provincial Eugenics Boards in Alberta and British Columbia,
| etc.). Neutral Sweden had an active eugenic sterilization
| program.
|
| So, the "scientific consensus" of that era involved a number
| of scientists from many countries who agreed with policies
| and goals that, in retrospect, we now see as not only
| politically partisan but also specifically aligned with Nazi
| political ends.
| tomrod wrote:
| The history of taboo thought in science is indeed fascinating.
|
| What seems sort of funny is that now that the existence for
| potential taboo censoring has been recognized, in recent
| decades there are several charlatans, conspiracy-mongers, or
| other ideologues who paint themselves as subject to scientific
| taboo despite "being accurate" in their own minds. The pendulum
| has swung towards over-acceptance of claims.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Keep in mind that species is a human concept and not some
| natural law.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| They are, in the same sense as "rain", "fog", "snow", or
| "sunny weather" are human concepts, and not natural low.
| After all, these are invented by humans, blurry on the edges,
| and sometimes overlap.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Sure, but that isn't the point, the point is that if you
| manufacture categories, you shouldn't then reason forward
| from the manufactured categories.
|
| "It's snowing so there can't be unfrozen water in the air"
| or whatever.
| AinderS wrote:
| Nor should you reason backwards, e.g. "The categories are
| manufactured therefore the differences do not exist"
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Taxonomy is a wild world, exactly because species are human
| inventions. Taxonomists can generally be classified as
| 'joiners' (who advocate for fewer species) and 'splitters'
| (who advocate finer divisions). The linked article is written
| by a splitter. "Can't produce human speech sounds" seems like
| a good indication that a split in human taxonomy is
| worthwhile, though.
| tomca32 wrote:
| Is it? I always thought that species is defined as a group
| that can have fertile offspring.
|
| Horse and donkey, for example are not the same species
| because their offspring, a mule, is not fertile.
| maxerickson wrote:
| You get the occasional fertile mule!
| tomca32 wrote:
| Oh interesting. I had no idea
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Theoretically that wouldn't be a killer issue, since
| fertile mules are extremely rare, so you could refine the
| definition to say "is very very likely to produce fertile
| offspring" (while horses and donkeys breeding is not).
|
| The bigger problem are things that have massive
| morphological differences but can still successfully
| interbreed, such as dogs, coyotes and wolves. They
| produce fertile hybrids and there is good evidence that
| this occasionally happens in the wild, but nevertheless
| it is rare and they have clear, stable morphological
| distinctions, even in areas where they overlap.
|
| Even worse, that definition is entirely useless for
| paleontology, as it is impossible to know if two
| individuals species could even interbreed, nevermind
| knowing if their offspring would be fertile. Even modern
| genetic evidence (which is extremely rare for fossils
| anyway) is very open to interpretation on the matter of
| potential interbreeding ("Neanderthal" genes in modern
| humans could more or less as easily be common genes older
| than both H. Sapiens and Neanderthals - we have far too
| little evidence to be sure, and no chance of genetic
| material from an older ancestor).
| retrac wrote:
| It breaks down with edge cases. There are a few documented
| "ring species" such as a diverse land-based amphibian
| around a lake. At all points the adjacent neighbours can
| mate, but if you take examples from the far side of the
| lake, they cannot. One species? Two? Infinite?
|
| I think it was Richard Dawkins who extended this idea
| through time. We could mate (sorry) with our immediate
| ancestors, who could with theirs, etc. and in fact there's
| a continual chain like that all the way to any other
| mammal. When did we stop being our ancestral species and
| become H. Sapiens? No clear line.
| jjk166 wrote:
| A ring species is an example of a species complex, and
| subpopulations with different but not mutually exclusive
| breeding compatibility are known as microspecies. If
| populations with distinct morphological features are
| isolated in space or time but could still interbreed with
| eachother if they were to be brought into contact, they
| are subspecies.
|
| This is really just an instance of Sorites paradox. But
| the inability to draw a precise line between two (or
| more) states does not mean there aren't two (or more)
| states.
| lazide wrote:
| It's the 'what's a sandwich' problem, which is hard. Is a
| stack of pancakes a sandwich? Is a stuffed pita a
| sandwich?
|
| What is it that makes a PB&J clearly a sandwich, and
| excludes a stack of pancakes with butter in between - and
| doesn't exclude a club sandwich.
| jjk166 wrote:
| If you eat two pancakes with butter between like a
| sandwich, it is a variant of butter sandwich. If you cut
| up your PB&J such that you're only eating pieces of bread
| with some spread on them, that is not a sandwich. The
| bread must act as a container for the contents during
| consumption, regardless of ingredients.
|
| More generally, the key delimiter for sandwiches is the
| aspect ratio of the individual items contained by the
| bread. For something to be a sandwich, all of the major
| items inside must have one dimension which is
| substantially smaller than the other two. Sliced meats,
| bacon strips, cheese slices, sliced vegetables, lettuce
| leafs, spreads, patties, etc are all valid. Thinly spread
| peanut butter and jelly between bread is a sandwich, but
| a bread bowl with a pool of jelly and peanut butter where
| the depth is comparable to the radius would not be a PB&J
| sandwich. Flat cheese slice between bread is a sandwich,
| mozzarella sticks are not sandwiches. Hot dogs are by
| default not a sandwich, but if you cut the hot dog into
| thin strips it becomes a sandwich. An oreo is a sandwich
| but a quadruple stuffed oreo is not. The only commonly
| accepted sandwich which this definition claims to be a
| pseudosandwich is the meatball sub.
| wumpus wrote:
| You've never thought open faced sandwiches were a subset
| of sandwiches?
| jjk166 wrote:
| This definition includes open faced sandwiches so long as
| their contents have the appropriate aspect ratio and you
| hold them via the bread. If you needed two pieces of
| bread to make a sandwich then that would rule out
| everything served on a roll. Pizza is an open faced true
| sandwich, pancakes are not.
|
| That said, just because something has a word in the name
| doesn't mean it's a subset of that category. Strawberries
| aren't berries, english muffins aren't muffins, prairie
| oysters aren't oysters, black pudding isn't pudding, etc.
| mcbits wrote:
| You're carving out a definition to fit intuitive
| inferences gleaned by observing instances of "sandwich"
| and "not-sanwich" labeled by influential people in your
| life who had no objective reasons for constructing and
| perpetuating those categories in the first place.
| jjk166 wrote:
| I agree it would have been a lot easier if we precisely
| defined the sandwich before foods were invented so we'd
| know which category to place them in ahead of time, but
| alas barring the invention of time travel we have to deal
| with our forefathers' mistakes.
| lazide wrote:
| But what about the named club sandwich, which 1) has a
| width to height ratio so unfavorable it needs toothpicks
| to hold it together, and 2) often has more bread than
| ingredients (at sub-par establishments), but sometimes
| far more ingredients than bread (leveraging the
| toothpicks).
|
| Regardless of these facts and it not meeting your
| criteria, it is still both in common usage and by
| explicit name a sandwich!
|
| (Also, love it!)
| jjk166 wrote:
| It's not the thickness of the sandwich, it's the
| thickness of the individual things in the sandwich.
| Everything in a club sandwich is flat, there's just a lot
| of stuff.
| tomca32 wrote:
| That's a pretty interesting edge case.
|
| Now that you've said this I do remember Richard Dawkins
| making that argument. That's pretty compelling.
| Scarblac wrote:
| There are far too many edge cases (e.g. ring species), but
| it's also not practical. How are you going to decide
| whether two individuals can't reproduce together, or choose
| not to? What if all you have are some dead specimens?
|
| It's mostly based on DNA analysis these days, I think.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I think the fertile offspring test would say a lot of these
| humanoids _aren 't_ different species, though?
| FundementalBrit wrote:
| Is the domestic dog the same species as the coyote or
| wolf?
|
| All can interbreed all can have fertile offspring with
| each other. Then look at the genetic variation between
| all three species.
|
| Yeah this type of science is the stuff which destroys
| careers...
| sdenton4 wrote:
| How do you actually test that as a working ecologist,
| though? Given two geographically and somewhat
| morphologically district warblers (for example) you would
| need to convince two of them to breed (after capturing at
| least one) and then check viability of an offspring. It's
| not terribly practical...
|
| Or, in this case with ancient human remains, there's no way
| to check viability when all subjects have been dead for a
| hundred thousand years.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Even if we limited ourselves to the Homo genus, the rule
| does not work well.
|
| Based on the admixtures of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA in
| modern humans, we once had a lot of sex with those other
| humans (and they with us), resulting in fertile offspring,
| but the differences between us and them are pretty
| meaningful and probably worthy of not considering us and
| them just subspecies of the same species.
|
| For example, Neanderthals probably could not vocalize in
| the same way that we do; and being capable of speaking is
| quite an important distinction. They had very different
| anatomy, including that of important joints (shoulders).
| nerdponx wrote:
| This reminds me of how the scientific community has attempted
| to handle the public image of climate change or Covid-19.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > I find this fascinating because I never realized science
| could be so political.
|
| Surely we already know that there was research (whatever its
| quality or rigor) back pre-WWII that was supposed to defend
| racist theories. And that's political. So I don't understand
| why we would be surprised that there was a (political) backlash
| once millions ended up dying in part because of that kind of
| research.
| [deleted]
| rosmax_1337 wrote:
| This is very dangerous territory indeed. Arguably the most
| taboo field in science right now. Sadly.
| zqna wrote:
| The only reason why there are no other hominids on this
| planet is because homo sapiens were the most violent of the
| subspecies. It's in our blood to enslave any opposition or
| rivals if possibel. When not, we exterminate them. We do the
| same within our own species too.
| Causality1 wrote:
| Frankly I think we're quite lucky we're not a more diverse
| species. There's no biological reason a human subspecies
| couldn't have gotten isolated in a valley somewhere and ended
| up being fifty IQ points smarter or dumber than the rest of
| humanity. Same goes for our sexes being identically
| intellectually capable. Would the principle of egalitarianism
| have ever emerged in such a world?
| technobabbler wrote:
| There's also no biological reason 8 billion individual
| hominids evolved under different conditions and upbringing
| and nutrition should share the same intellectual capacity,
| any more than all 8 billion would be equally good sprinters
| or have the same skin tone or oxygen capacity.
|
| The brain is just another blob of flesh, and what we
| understand of its capacities suggest it's at least
| partially inheritable. You'd have to ignore a lot of
| evidence to believe that all humans are intellectually
| equal. If there is variation and there is mutation and
| there are different pockets of populations, there are going
| to be evolutionary differences between them. Then in terms
| of sexual selection, we'd have to believe that intelligence
| as a criterion for mate selection is equally important
| across cultures, and also impacts offspring fitness the
| same across all cultures and environments -- vs, say,
| disease or sun resistance in the tropics. Otherwise,
| differences would naturally arise over time.
|
| The tricky part is coming up a way to define, much less
| measure, "intellectual capacity" across different cultures
| and ways of knowing. IQ tests are pretty biased and
| arguably a useless measure of evolutionary fitness in many
| human cultures. Even if you could create the perfect cross-
| cultural IQ definition and test, administering and
| collecting such a thing would be nearly impossible in a
| world where many countries don't even have proper birth
| records or thorough population censuses (even a basic
| count, without in-depth testing).
|
| We already know that, within the upper and lower bounds,
| there can be great variations of "intelligence" WITHIN
| populations group, as well as smaller differences between
| them. But we lack the methodology and cultural transparency
| to be able to accurately measure whether the cross-cultural
| error bars fall within the intracultural ones. That's not
| for lack of trying, mind you... many careers have either
| risen to infamy or else have been destroyed for daring to
| suggest such things.
|
| In other words, it's not that all humans are equal, it's
| that we're SO diverse it's hard to group us into neat
| little groups, whether by race, ancestry, skin color,
| intelligence, or any other genetic factor. Because the
| underlying genes themselves don't work that way. They're
| always changing and competing.
|
| The principles of egalitarianism are a cultural ideal (not
| shared by much of the world, mind you), not necessarily
| scientific observations. The scientific input to the ideal,
| if anything, is not that "the are no differences between
| groups" but "there are so many differences that these
| groupings don't really make sense; there are a million
| other equally valid groupings".
| avgcorrection wrote:
| We wouldn't want a world where IQ fetishists were to be
| even more discriminatory against people with lower IQs. (Or
| supposedly lower IQs.) It's bad enough as things currently
| stand.
| foobiekr wrote:
| What if it cured cancer and HIV?
| avgcorrection wrote:
| No.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > There's no biological reason a human subspecies couldn't
| have gotten isolated in a valley somewhere and ended up
| being fifty IQ points smarter or dumber than the rest of
| humanity. Same goes for our sexes being identically
| intellectually capable. Would the principle of
| egalitarianism have ever emerged in such a world?
|
| I want to say yes, because how are you even distinguishing
| that world from this one? There exist humans who are fifty
| IQ points smarter or dumber than other humans who also
| exist.
|
| The batshit crazy idea is that these differences are caused
| by or intrinsically bound with skin color.
|
| As for sex differences, here's the money quote:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intelligen
| c...
|
| > All or most of the major tests commonly used to measure
| intelligence have been _constructed_ so that there are no
| overall score differences between males and females.
|
| We believe in egalitarianism, therefore IQ tests that show
| a sex difference are wrong, therefore we use IQ tests that
| show no sex difference.
|
| Now, if there are biological differences between the sexes,
| they could not only go either way, they could go _both_
| ways. It 's possible that on average women are better at X
| and men are better at Y, so you could really design a test
| to show whatever result you want.
|
| It's also obviously the case that no matter what the
| averages are, the world's highest-scoring male will almost
| certainly have a better score than the world's lowest-
| scoring female and vice versa. So arguments of the form
| "women can't do X" are stupid even if you can find a
| statistically significant difference in the _averages_
| using some metric. Because most people are _not_ exactly
| average.
|
| Discrimination is the assumption that all members of a
| group are the same.
| Causality1 wrote:
| _There exist humans who are fifty IQ points smarter or
| dumber than other humans who also exist._
|
| Sure but they're not all in the same ethnic group. What
| if a populous group had the peak of their intellectual
| curve far down the range? If, say, Gauls/French people
| were almost entirely simpletons equivalent to someone
| with Down Syndrome? Would they be enslaved and turned
| into a worldwide servant class? Every other group that
| were thought of as being inferior can be demonstrably
| equal to their oppressors but I think a world in which
| they weren't could be very different.
| rebuilder wrote:
| The thing is, when humans conquer a rival group, we tend
| to rape the survivors. That kind of ensures genetic
| mixing, so this kind large discrepancy in innate ability
| couldn't really appear.
| mcguire wrote:
| Note: He is asserting that this fellow:
| https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/h...
| is an example of "stark morphological differences".
|
| I have that funny gut feeling, too; I suspect he's more than
| half-way to deciding that modern races are actually separate
| species.
| bambax wrote:
| > _People sometimes forget to ask the question: If humans and
| Neanderthals actually crossed paths as often as molecular
| anthropologists claim--which is not supported by archaeological
| or paleontological evidence--would they have recognized each
| other as potential mates? I don't think so: They looked too
| different. Even present-day hunter-gatherer groups have been
| observed to engage in violence when they encounter each other._
|
| Ok for the "looks" part, but violence is really not counter-
| evidence of interbreeding. Systematic rape is an ordinary part of
| war, and it would of course produce offsprings (biology
| permitting).
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Even on the looks front, we're a species with diverse tastes.
| Some humans like metal rods stuck up their urethra. The idea
| that a Neanderthal would universally be prohibitively ugly is a
| bit silly.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Agreed, and given circumstances, it doesn't take more than a
| few successful pairings to propagate a new hybrid species if
| the environment is favorable to their survival.
|
| I don't know how much we can extrapolate from modern humans
| to present-day, but modern psychology research suggests that
| what people find attractive or repulsive is extremely early-
| experience-dependent. I suspect a homo sapiens society living
| near a Neanderthal society may not grow to find them as
| repulsive as, say, a homo sapiens society that has rare
| contact with Neanderthal. And if a child was raised by
| Neanderthal / homo sapien parents, or adopted from one tribe
| to the other, I have no particular reason to assume they'd
| find either species repulsive.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| That's a strange quote, and just wrong. There's the 1/8
| Neanderthal (7/8 Cro Magnon?) buried with normal burial rituals
| in a 40,000yo site. If that's not evidence of 'crossing paths',
| (three generations of integration into a tribe?) I don't know
| what is.
| praptak wrote:
| > would they have recognized each other as potential mates?
|
| Any doubts about that? There are literally people having sex
| with farm animals, why would Neanderthals be different?
| criddell wrote:
| A potential mate is one with which you could have offspring.
| fazzer wrote:
| Samonell made a video about this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX0Dg9MxsOg
|
| Slightly nsfw.
| bambax wrote:
| This was entertaining, thanks.
| lazide wrote:
| Isn't the definition/line drawn for the delineation of a
| species (compared to a sub-species/variety/variant) if
| offspring will be produced that can also reproduce.
|
| Horse vs Donkey == mule (which can't reproduce) being one of
| the few examples where anything is produced, and why they are
| considered different species.
|
| One challenge here of course is while we have examples of
| Neanderthal/human hybrids, we don't have enough of them to say
| it's anything but a crazy fluke. But that could just be due to
| not having enough data points, not due to it being hard.
|
| If it wasn't a crazy fluke, then yes they shouldn't be a
| separate species.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Even regarding looks, when I look at images of Neanderthals
| such as this guy on the Smithsonian's web site
| (https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-
| fossils/species/h...), I see a human, and nothing more. Leaving
| aside the idea that Neanderthals probably lived in groups with
| other Neanderthals, and modern humans with modern humans, I
| don't have a problem believing they may have intermated.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| Yea I also found this really surprising. Like you said, rape is
| one option, but you could still expect some mixing even if 90
| or 99% of encounters were violent.
| adolph wrote:
| Maybe the implicit question is how different can an
| interpretation/assertion from one field of study be from
| related fields before the fields need a reorganization for
| coherence's sake?
|
| My intuition is that the gene acts as an data ledger relatively
| more reliable than other physical artifacts both in terms of
| semantics and availability. I'm open for that view to be
| falsified and it would be preferable for concordant
| interpretations and presence of molecular and other types of
| evidence.
| FundementalBrit wrote:
| This is a very very very dangerous subject for your career. I'll
| be honest I'm not sure any legitimate journal would publish
| anything further along in this line even if it was replicable,
| which scientist would risk peer reviewing something that could
| lose them their job.
|
| A domestic dog, wolf and coyote can all breed together and all
| produce fertile offspring. Then you look at genetic variation
| between the three species.
| rackjack wrote:
| He's a professor emeritus, I think he'll be alright.
|
| The website also has similar articles, for example "How Human
| Are We?":
|
| https://www.sapiens.org/biology/evolution-human-identity/
| kergonath wrote:
| All sorts of quacks still get tenure. There's always a
| university willing to accept most heterodox views.
|
| I see regularly comments along those lines on the Internet. I'd
| like some examples of "unpublishable scientific theories" that
| are not obviously bunk, as opposed to just controversial.
| Otherwise it is mostly a convenient bogeyman for bunk mongers.
|
| Also, replicability seems a strange concern for this field.
| We're never going to have an Earth Mk2 to test hypotheses.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Here's an example:
|
| https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-
| a-p...
| rootsudo wrote:
| If it's repeatable, why does it deserve to be censored? Science
| is empirical, if it can be measured, measure it. If you can re-
| create it, do so. The very nature of it being "replicable"
| means it is worth publishing and discussion.
| 323 wrote:
| Because a lot of what we think we know might actually be
| false. For example the empirical idea that there are two
| biological sexes. That is false, despite seemingly being well
| established:
|
| > _Sex Redefined: The Idea of 2 Sexes Is Overly Simplistic_
|
| > _Biologists now think there is a larger spectrum than just
| binary female and male_
|
| > _"My feeling is that since there is not one biological
| parameter that takes over every other parameter, at the end
| of the day, gender identity seems to be the most reasonable
| parameter," says Vilain. In other words, if you want to know
| whether someone is male or female, it may be best just to
| ask._
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-
| the...
| bongoman37 wrote:
| You obviously haven't paid attention to the world political
| climate over the last decade or so.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Modern social media has ruined many careers unnecessarily.
| The mob mentality sometimes wins and destroys people that it
| shouldn't. Social media can be as much a disease as a benign
| influence.
| sirtaj wrote:
| Why? He quite clearly states that " All modern humans are
| clearly, morphologically H. sapiens." Do you suspect that
| further research along this line will disprove this?
| anonporridge wrote:
| I think it's just a bad article title that doesn't explicitly
| clarify that we're not talking about existing, modern homo
| sapiens.
|
| Piddling about the taxonomy of extinct species isn't
| problematic, but I could see a mob misinterpret this as him
| saying that not all living humans belong to the same species,
| and go on a witch hunt over the misunderstanding.
|
| However, _if_ some evidence started emerging that modern
| humans were _not_ all the same species (whatever that
| actually means in practice) then I think the above comment
| applies. No one with a reputation to protect would touch that
| bit of truth with a ten foot pole.
| raven105x wrote:
| I often wonder how many decades of progress political
| correctness (different from ethics) has cost us when it comes
| to science (when it's sound, provable, and replicable).
| [deleted]
| carapace wrote:
| Probably not as many decades of progress as racism and sexism
| have cost us, eh?
| cowuser666 wrote:
| This would be clever if political correctness and
| racism/sexism were necessarily opposed to each other.
| Alas...
| Jensson wrote:
| Racism and sexism were political correctness.
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| Whining about political correctness is political
| correctness.
| Causality1 wrote:
| Sometimes I feel bad for the people whose legacy was
| tainted by scientific racism, especially if they lived to
| see its end and changed their opinions accordingly.
| Lovecraft is an example of this.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| I wasn't aware Lovecraft stopped being a xenophobe late
| in life. Would you be willing to provide articles or
| something?
| Causality1 wrote:
| Oh he never stopped being a xenophobe, but he drew a line
| between his personal dislike and the idea that other
| races were inherently inferior. This is a good read:
| https://motifri.com/lovecraftcontext/
|
| I like to think that if he hadn't died so young his
| personal tastes might have matured.
| geofft wrote:
| I see what you're getting at, but this is a bit of a
| motte-and-bailey argument. While it is literally true
| that widespread acceptance of racism and sexism was (and
| is) motivated by a desire to avoid being wrong in the
| eyes of prevailing politics, that's not what the specific
| term "political correctness" popularized in the early
| '90s referred to.
|
| The NYT opinion article that popularized the term said:
|
| > _Affirmative action is politically correct. So too are
| women 's studies, gay and lesbian studies, and African-
| American studies, all of which are strongly represented
| in the scholarly panels at such professional meetings as
| those of the American Historical Association and the
| Modern Language Association. [...] Biodegradable garbage
| bags get the p.c. seal of approval. Exxon does not._
|
| And Bush Sr. gave a speech shortly thereafter decrying
| it:
|
| > _The notion of political correctness has ignited
| controversy across the land. And although the movement
| arises from the laudable desire to sweep away the debris
| of racism and sexism and hatred, it replaces old
| prejudice with new ones._
|
| They and all the other media figures and conservative
| politicians and so forth in the early '90s would have all
| looked at you confused if you claimed that racism and
| sexism, themselves, were forms of political correctness.
|
| If your argument is that public pressure to conform to
| racist and sexist cultural consensuses was bad for
| scientific research, it does not actually help the cause
| to defend opponents of "political correctness" who
| advocate for the freedom to express now-unpopular racist
| and sexist viewpoints.
| Jensson wrote:
| > If your argument is that public pressure to conform to
| racist and sexist cultural consensuses was bad for
| scientific research
|
| My argument is that public pressure to conform to the
| political norms for its time is always bad for scientific
| research, regardless what the political norms are. The
| political norms are what is called "politically correct",
| things that you should believe because otherwise society
| will become hostile against you.
|
| Political correct pressure on science is similar to
| banning all smoking health research that isn't funded by
| tobacco companies. Sure tobacco funded research is still
| research, but it will be extremely biased. The same about
| politically pressured research. The pressure to confirm
| racist ideas lead to a lot of bad science in the past.
| The pressure to confirm modern political ideas lead to a
| lot of bad science today. Those two works in exactly the
| same way. However since I live today and not in the past
| I care about the problems science face today rather than
| the problems it had a long time ago that are no longer
| relevant.
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| You can take the words and use their individual meaning
| to come up with any definition you like to make any
| argument you like. However you don't win arguments by
| arbitrarily definition words or phrases to be what you
| would like them to be. You definition factually is not
| the definition of political correctness. As such
| historical racism and sexism were _not_ political
| correctness.
|
| > Political Correctness- the avoidance, often considered
| as taken to extremes, of forms of expression or action
| that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult
| groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or
| discriminated against.
| rkk3 wrote:
| > However you don't win arguments by arbitrarily
| definition words or phrases to be what you would like
| them to be
|
| > the avoidance, often considered as taken to extremes,
| of forms of expression or action that are perceived to
| exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are
| socially disadvantaged or discriminated against.
|
| Aren't you taking an arbitrary definition (un-sourced
| from google/Oxford Language) to win your argument?
|
| Here is Merriam-Webster's
|
| > conforming to a belief that language and practices
| which could offend political sensibilities (as in matters
| of sex or race) should be eliminated
|
| Seems like both are acceptable modern-day usages... like
| other terms a difference between capital vs lowercase
| might help here like... "republican" vs "Republican",
| "democrat" vs "Democrat"
| Jensson wrote:
| From wikipedia, the same source you used:
|
| > In 1934, The New York Times reported that Nazi Germany
| was granting reporting permits "only to pure 'Aryans'
| whose opinions are politically correct".[2]
|
| The definition you read there is just what is politically
| correct today, it isn't what the term really means.
| Racism was politically correct back then, it isn't
| politically correct today.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness#Early
| -to...
| geofft wrote:
| I think what I'm saying is that what is called
| "politically incorrect" is a small slice of the things
| that will cause society to turn hostile. Moreover, in
| fact, many things that are "politically incorrect" simply
| won't result in hostility that effectively suppresses
| work at all (after all, the two quotes I gave earlier
| were from the most influential newspaper in the world and
| the president of what had just become the world's only
| remaining superpower).
|
| That is, I agree with you that public pressure to conform
| to political norms is bad for scientific research, but I
| am arguing that a specific focus on avoiding "political
| correctness" means that you in fact succumb to a lot of
| _other_ (present-day) political norms, which is the
| actual thing that is bad for scientific research.
|
| Taking your tobacco-funding example - you are, of course,
| correct, that tobacco-funded research is extremely
| biased. Suppose someone says that this research cannot be
| taken at face value, and Philip Morris accuses that
| person of _anti-tobacco_ bias, of succumbing to anti-
| cigarette political correctness, of conforming to
| political pressures about how terrible Big Tobacco is.
| Who do you side with? There are two accusations of bias
| here; how you do determine which one is correct?
|
| The heuristic "Political correctness is bad" is clearly
| unhelpful in this scenario; it cannot guide you to the
| correct decision. If you want a more meaningful
| principle, you have to look deeper at things. Even your
| phrasing "conform to the political norms for its time" is
| a more meaningful phrasing - but then an obvious
| consequence is that _opposition to political correctness_
| was the political norm of the early '90s when the
| president and the Gray Lady were telling people how bad
| political correctness was.
| Jensson wrote:
| > but I am arguing that a specific focus on avoiding
| "political correctness" means that you in fact succumb to
| a lot of other (present-day) political norms, which is
| the actual thing that is bad for scientific research.
|
| Right, this is a really hard topic. I didn't say I had a
| solution, just saying it is a problem. There will always
| be a lot of political influence in research topic related
| to controversial things and people living under that
| influence will have a hard time identifying it. The
| racists 70 years ago probably didn't think they were
| doing anything bad etc. But today we recognize it as bad.
|
| > but I am arguing that a specific focus on avoiding
| "political correctness" means that you in fact succumb to
| a lot of other (present-day) political norms, which is
| the actual thing that is bad for scientific research.
|
| Yeah, you have counter movements and resistances. But if
| the context is non-stem non-economic researchers at
| universities then it is pretty much only in one
| direction. There is no allowance for the other side to do
| much research in those areas, meaning research in those
| areas is a one sided politically correct story.
|
| If we let tobacco companies publish research, and other
| people publish research, then people can look at the two
| and make their own decisions. But if you basically only
| let one side research then you will get bad research.
| fnord77 wrote:
| has the author never heard of "furries" ??
| errcorrectcode wrote:
| The core problem of taxonomic classification of species is that
| they're semi-arbitrary, constantly-drifting centroids of
| similarity, not static, walled-off groups with definitive
| boundaries.
|
| For those who aren't scientists, we are sometimes referred to as
| _H. sapiens sapiens._
|
| Neanderthals / Neandertals are sometimes grouped as a subspecies
| of _H. sapiens_ as _H. sapiens neanderthalensis._
| lmilcin wrote:
| Well, they are tripping on their own imprecise definitions.
|
| Using the most prevalent definition of species, the one listed
| on Wikipedia, we don't have "too many species lumped together
| into Homo Sapiens", we actually have too few. We know all or
| almost all "species" since and including Homo Erectus were able
| capable of interbreeding, meaning they were actually single
| species.
|
| The trouble is they are trying to use definition that has been
| developed on observation of the current state that is not
| suitable for classifying evolving organisms over long periods
| of time.
|
| That might not have been a huge problem when discussing other
| animals, but for some reason we pay much closer attention to
| precision of resolving our own parentage and that is when the
| definition falls short of being able to serve the need.
| User23 wrote:
| > We know all or almost all "species" since and including
| Homo Erectus were able capable of interbreeding, meaning they
| were actually single species.
|
| While this is what we were taught in grade school, actual
| biologists don't use this children's definition anymore than
| actual quantum physicists say atoms are like little solar
| systems.
|
| There are plenty of separate species that are physically
| capable of producing fertile hybrid offspring. Dogs and
| wolves and polar and grizzly bears are a couple obvious
| examples. Also plenty of species don't reproduce sexually, so
| defining species in terms of sexual compatibility isn't even
| well defined.
| dsjoerg wrote:
| > actual biologists don't use this children's definition
| anymore
|
| Can you link me to the definition biologists use? I googled
| for a minute and didn't get very far.
|
| Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species): "A
| species is often defined as the largest group of organisms
| in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or
| mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by
| sexual reproduction."
|
| What is the correct & concise definition?
| ufo wrote:
| The whole problem is that there isn't a single correct
| definition. For example:
|
| https://evolution.berkeley.edu/biological-species-
| concept/
|
| https://evolution.berkeley.edu/other-species-concepts/
| mcguire wrote:
| "We know it when we see it."
| errcorrectcode wrote:
| Yes and I think we're stuck with what's already
| happening: modifications to existing classifications by
| genetic discoveries as they occur. There's no good way to
| please everyone, have a trillion special cases, or throw
| it all away because it's imperfect.
| hyperpape wrote:
| There isn't a correct and concise definition, any more
| than than there is a correct and concise definition of
| good art, good code, mathematical proof, or sandwiches.
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/species/
|
| Even the term planet has recently given us trouble. There
| we've adopted a definition, it's just not fully agreed
| upon.
| lrem wrote:
| Wait, mathematical proof?
|
| > A mathematical proof is an inferential argument for a
| mathematical statement, showing that the stated
| assumptions logically guarantee the conclusion.
|
| Unlike all the other sciences, mathematics is abstract
| enough to allow for things being fundamentally simple and
| true.
| mcguire wrote:
| As a formalist, I would like to agree with you. As
| someone who knows most mathematicians are not formalists,
| I think you may have some problems.
| hyperpape wrote:
| As a mathematical object, a proof is a series of
| derivations from axioms to a conclusion. That is well
| defined in various systems, can be studied as a branch of
| mathematics.
|
| In fact, most mathematics isn't done this way (though
| there's interesting work in the Lean community).
| Mathematical proof as it is actually done is far messier.
| Here's the paper that first came to mind (Probabilistic
| Proofs and Transferability, by Kenny Easwaran), though
| I'm sure there is a more canonical source: https://ucfc6e
| b8f695030deb8332de441a.dl.dropboxusercontent.c...
|
| P.S. You're free to adopt a way of speaking in which you
| say the majority of graduate mathematics textbooks do not
| involve any proofs, but I think that's a revision of the
| term.
| lmilcin wrote:
| Mathematical proof actually has very precise definition.
| You can take something and answer precisely whether it is
| or is not a mathematical proof.
| technobabbler wrote:
| > What is the correct & concise definition?
|
| IMO it's that "species" is a term coined by older, less-
| informed biologists who didn't yet understand all the
| nuances of genetics, and created a taxonomic system
| based, erroneously, on superficial differences in
| appearance. It's like how old scientists believed in
| "ether" to describe the mysteries of space and "humor" to
| describe the mysteries of the body. Species is what old
| scientists used to describe the mysteries of genetics.
| mayregretit wrote:
| Older, less-informed biologists also gave us scientific
| racism. Polar bears and Asiatic black
| bears live in different places and have different
| appearances and behaviors. They called those different
| species. Norwegian humans and Chinese humans
| live in different places and have different appearances
| and behaviors. They called those different races.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| This is the correct answer imo. There's a huge rift in
| this area of biology on how to organise things, with
| multiple different ideas.
| colechristensen wrote:
| > What is the correct & concise definition?
|
| There isn't one. "Species" is an abstraction, vague when
| you look too closely, and increasingly meaningless when
| you move from animals to plants to fungi to bacteria and
| archaea.
|
| There's just no way to decisively say exactly when two
| closely related organisms transition from one species to
| two.
|
| You will find debate and varying methods but in the end
| for the professional scientist, it's mostly an
| unimportant question for most because it's obviously just
| vague and never possible to be perfect, and you have to
| ask "what's the point?" of the really fine grained
| labeling which seems to only be done for the purpose of
| labeling.
| seszett wrote:
| That Wikipedia article does cite other ways of defining
| species, just after your quote.
|
| The bottom line is that there is no one correct and
| concise definition.
|
| It's also obvious that the fertile offspring definition
| is not sufficient of you look at plants (pomelos,
| mandarins and citrons are rather obviously different
| species, but they are interfertile and most modern citrus
| species are their hybrids) or even more obviously, at
| bacteria or yeasts that don't even reproduce sexually.
| lukas099 wrote:
| iirc dogs and wolves _are_ classed as the same species.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Wolves are canis lupus, while dogs are canis familiaris
| (and coyotes are canis latrans). All are capable of
| interbreeding and producing non-sterile offspring.
| jl6 wrote:
| While you are of course right, and much terminology is
| endlessly challengeable, we can also drift too far in this
| direction and end up denying that words mean anything. I do
| find words useful when there is consensus on their meaning, and
| I think it is still valid to attempt to define classifications
| even where they must inevitably be imperfect.
| [deleted]
| igammarays wrote:
| The problem of classification is deeply philosophical. The core
| problem is that the taxonomic classification of _anything_ is
| arbitrary, proven only by consensus.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I've had a series of conversations elsewhere over the past
| several months on the question. My own view being that
| _classifications are based on usefulness to the classifiers_
| , and we have terms for things which we both 1) experience
| (there's much of the Universe we've yet failed to classify)
| and 2) based on our own interactions with those things.
|
| Ideas are interfaces. And interfaces provide _utility_.
|
| The very notion of "biological species" is based on the
| underlying notion of philosophical _species_ , that _specific
| classifications_. Evolution turned this on its head by noting
| that _species evolve_ (that is, _change_ ), _over time_.
| There is no such thing as an absolute species in the earlier
| philosophical sense.
|
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/species
|
| So the question becomes "where is it _useful_ to define
| boundaries between species? ", with various arbitrary
| boundaries proposed. The question isn't of their
| _arbitraryness_ , but of their _utility_.
|
| And those definitions are ultimately _a relationship between
| us and the universe we 're attempting to define_.
|
| You can drag in Wittgenstein and a whole bunch else. Knowing
| some of the philosophical background is useful, less so
| because a particular view is _right_ , but more because
| _virtually any argument or viewpoint proposed has been
| offered before_ , and many of the strengths and weaknesses
| discussed. Usually to great length.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I like to half-jokingly claim that people who use the
| internet are a different species from people that don't use
| the internet, since the two groups don't interbreed.
| bobthechef wrote:
| Philogenetic taxonomies may suffer from this, yes. Ontological
| classification is a different ball game. Any "rational animal"
| in the universe qualifies as "human".
| jeremyjh wrote:
| I think the term "people" is better. Neanderthals were
| clearly people, even if they were a different species.
| coldacid wrote:
| Any entity of genus Homo is (or was) human. Just not
| necessarily culturally or physiologically modern.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Interesting. A deep seated cognitive flaw of a positively-
| directed evolution (more evolved vs less evolved) places us in
| the situation where we are forced to characterize all humans and
| predecessors that are close enough into Homo sapiens.
|
| But that is only because we have this innate cognitive error.
|
| In some sense, intelligence past a certain point should be
| sufficient to classify as "one of us" but such trans-species
| sentiment is generally limited to those who believe memetic
| reproduction is somewhat more important than genetic
| reproduction.
|
| The one thing the article does not help me understand is the
| purpose of the classification. The utility of models to me is in
| the ability to make falsifiable predictions about the real world.
| Is it perhaps the history of our species and the way speciation
| works that is being contributed to? That seems reasonable and
| makes the taxonomic classification have some utility. But perhaps
| categorization is not a useful tool here, and tagging is
| superior, i.e. "neanderthal-like in feeding habits" and "sapiens-
| sapiens-like in communication habits" and so on.
| random314 wrote:
| > And there are circular arguments: DNA is identified as, say,
| Neanderthal because the fossil was identified as such, and then
| it is used to identify other fossils as Neanderthal, even if they
| don't look Neanderthal-like.
|
| > While certain similarities between our DNA and Neanderthal DNA
| have been interpreted as evidence of the two species
| interbreeding, these similarities could just be run-of-the-mill
| features of the genome, common to many species.
|
| These and other arguments by the author to try and dismiss DNA
| evidence seems really suspect. The "circular reasoning" argument
| doesn't even make any sense. Neither does the scientists being
| too stupid to understand that DNA overlap between Neanderthals
| and humans is meaningless.
|
| As a non expert, this makes me have doubts about the veracity of
| any of these arguments made in this essay
| vmception wrote:
| archeologist will find a person with scoliosis and think its a
| significant branch in evolution when it's the same
| species/whatever with a birth defect that offers no advantage or
| disadvantage to reproduction
| tsimionescu wrote:
| While this is not impossible, the argument usually goes that
| there are so few specimens that get fossilized that it's
| extremely unlikely for a particularly unique specimen to have
| been the one getting fossilized. Basically fossilization is
| "pick a random individual", and the odds of picking an
| individual with a rare condition are going to be very small.
| tomrod wrote:
| Side question for designers:
|
| [1] What is the design behind this article called?
|
| [2] No matter what I do in my browser settings, it seems like
| text is small without zooming in individual websites. I need to
| zoom in to 200% to be able to read it. Is this just a recent
| trend? https://imgur.com/a/6C2xJkG
| bambax wrote:
| I use reader view everywhere and it helps tremendously.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| There's always been a push and pull between the splitters and the
| lumpers. Discovering a new species can seem more exciting than
| finding another member of an existing study. But the concept of a
| species (genera, etc.) is very slippery anyway; sometimes its
| said that inability to breed viable offspring is a necessary
| condition, but we have examples of that happening ... without
| subsequent revision of the taxonomy. Life (and the physical
| world), slips past the edges of our ontologies all the time (one
| reason that I laugh when people justify the object model in
| programming in terms of them somehow mapping onto real world
| objects.
| tgbugs wrote:
| Criteria for being classified as human are diverse, most of the
| criteria we use for classifying living people (some of which are
| actively being used to commit genocide) cannot be applied to our
| ancestral lineages, we give our genes too much credit relative to
| our memes, and cladists will use whatever evidence they can find
| to support their cladism. If the splitters in the lumper splitter
| debate are using splitting as an excuse to murder and
| disenfranchise people then it is hard in good conscience to
| openly articulate the truth and ethically is probably better to
| attempt to slow the splitters' efforts by confusing the whole
| field with alternate hypotheses.
|
| On the whole lineage does not imply capability, skeletal anatomy
| is not predict cultural level, etc. but because the great chain
| of being continues to drag our civilization down to its lowest
| basest form we belittle anything and everything that looks even
| slightly different than us. The fact that the null hypothesis in
| life sciences is that other species do not feel pain, do not have
| emotions, do not have cognitive process, etc. is derived from the
| abhorrent idea that only human beings have souls, or that the
| abhramic god gave man dominion over the animals. Is it a surprise
| then that some scientists have fooled the bigots by classifying
| everything as human? They know that by some criteria the lineages
| are sufficiently different to be classified as such, but there is
| no reason to give bigots ammunition for public policy.
| itqwertz wrote:
| There may be some truth to the political argument:
|
| http://stonetoss.com/comic/wagging-the-dog/
| mcguire wrote:
| I'd really, _really,_ like to see a statistical comparison of the
| differences between and within (fossil) species.
|
| " _And the more specimens I study, the more I realize that most
| of the species designations don't make sense. If hominin fossils
| were treated the same way as nonhuman primates, specimens
| currently lumped into the same group would be allocated to
| different ones._ "
|
| Is this because the differences between purported groups is much
| greater than the differences within groups? Or because there's
| significant incentives to split groups in order to name more
| species/families/orders/etc?
|
| The "traditional", extremely simplistic, definition of "species"
| is a group of critters who do not (normally) (fertilely)
| interbreed with another group (in the wild). Where there is
| evidence, Neanderthals and Denisovans, _H. sapiens_ seems to have
| interbred rather frequently.
| Jensson wrote:
| > Or because there's significant incentives to split groups in
| order to name more species/families/orders/etc?
|
| You can ask yourself why such an incentive wouldn't exist for
| finding new human species etc. The interesting part here is
| that humans are treated differently, not whether one is better
| than the other.
| mcguire wrote:
| According to the article, before the 1940s, it did. Judging
| by the list of species in the image with spell-check
| underlines, anyway. Something weird happened in the 1940s.
| mabub24 wrote:
| This was an interesting article, but I found this editorial
| warning a little odd:
|
| > Please note that this article includes images of human remains.
|
| I don't think I've ever seen a warning like this before in any
| anthropological publication, or even in a museum or exhibit. I
| can't say I've ever found looking at skulls to be particularly
| weird or shocking, especially if they are extremely old. But, is
| this a warning that people or the general populace are requesting
| or feel is necessary? Or, is it purely an editorial decision?
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| I'm not sure exactly why, but it may have to do with certain
| cultural taboos. For instance, skeletons are considered bad
| luck in Chinese culture:
| https://magicuntapped.com/index.php/features/item/66-no-skel...
| annetipasto wrote:
| Other people bringing up cultural differences is appreciated,
| because to me that warning implied pictures of cadavers. Upon
| assessment, don't think I've ever looked at a skull (or any
| other decontextualized bone) and considered it "human remains."
| An entire skeleton, sure, but even then...faux skeletons are
| such common imagery throughout America, I've become 90%
| desensitized to what they're a representation of.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| According to their about us page, the warning fulfills some
| commitments they apparently have (clarity of reporting and
| empathy for example). So it might very well be a decision by
| the editorial team.
|
| https://www.sapiens.org/about-us/
| nerdponx wrote:
| On the contrary, you never knew who might be reading. Maybe
| there's a kid who gets really freaked out by skeletons? It's
| not hurting you to have the warning there.
| errcorrectcode wrote:
| It seems like an unnecessary accommodation for the easily
| offended. This sort of pandering cedes more and more control to
| the whims of sheltered, infantile crybullies.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| It doesn't hurt anybody, and could potentially help some folks
| that might have some trauma, so I don't see the problem at all?
| kop316 wrote:
| > I don't think I've ever seen a warning like this before in
| any anthropological publication, or even in a museum or exhibit
|
| I went to the Carnegie Museums in Pittsburgh a couple of weeks
| ago, and they had warnings for if an exhibit had human remains
| in them (even if they were not visible, I.e. in a mummy).
|
| They also had a short blurb on the ethics of displaying human
| remains, especially if the remains on exhibit didn't/couldn't
| give consent. I found it very thought provoking honestly.
|
| To extend it, I found it interesting that there was a lot of
| discussion on the ethics of showing human remains (taxidermy,
| in alcohol solution, bones, etc.), but then they showed a lot
| of animal remains and there was no discussion on that,
| especially when I would assume that many of the animals shown
| in the museum were killed for the specific reason of having
| them on a museum or for study.
| yaacov wrote:
| Some people avoid human remains for religious reasons too.
| Religious Jews who are Kohanim for example.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| This religious ban does not include _pictures_ of human
| remains, does it? And the warning mentioned in the root
| comment of this thread is located on a website.
|
| Edit: I wonder what is downvoteable about my original
| comment. My Jewish colleagues do not eat pork, but they do
| not avoid _depictions_ of it, such as photos in a menu. I
| guess it should be similar in the case of Kohanim being
| forbidden to come in contact with human remains. Direct
| contact is very different from a painting or description.
| errcorrectcode wrote:
| > I wonder what is downvoteable about my original
| comment.
|
| Lazy randoms who disagree also often feel entitled that
| they don't have to explain their displeasure or engage in
| meaningful discourse. Instead, they will try to silence
| you for having an opinion different than theirs. Also,
| sometimes I think it's passive aggressive social win-lose
| mentality or maybe even gaslighting. Best to not care
| about popularity and move on seeking discussions of
| valuable insight rather than dwelling on being clobbered
| for no apparent reason.
| Jensson wrote:
| Skeletons are taboo in Chinese culture. All sorts of companies
| and organizations has gotten much more aware of Chinese things
| the past few years, so maybe that is why.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's not too odd that some people don't want to look at gore.
| For most of us corpses sterilize, become like objects the older
| they get, but I don't why that's anything but arbitrary.
|
| Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders get warnings
| that what they're about to view may contain depictions of
| people that have died. Not depictions of _dead people,_ but
| depictions of people who have died since they were filmed or
| had their picture taken.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Aboriginal_avoidanc...
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