[HN Gopher] Yo mama's mama's mama's mama: our understanding of h...
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Yo mama's mama's mama's mama: our understanding of human origins
Author : rsj_hn
Score : 63 points
Date : 2021-12-19 18:05 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (razib.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (razib.substack.com)
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Despite the somewhat goofy title, this is actually a great
| academic summary of the current state of human origins by Razib
| Khan.
| stakkur wrote:
| > 'By "modern humans," I mean Homo sapiens'
|
| Though it's not a distinction many people care about, for me this
| is always the fundamental context: Homo Sapiens, not 'humans'.
| There have been _many_ species of humans; only one of them made
| it to modern times. So--the post isn 't on 'human origins', it's
| on 'Homo Sapien origins'.
| didibus wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand what you're saying?
|
| The article explains that modern humans actually don't descend
| exclusively from homo sapiens, but also have lineage from
| Neanderthals and Denisovans, and that's just of the ones we
| know. So the article seems to talk about the origin of modern
| humans as in the people alive today that we'd all consider to
| be human.
|
| That's why he specifies that now we understand that what we
| thought in the 80s, that modern humans = homo sapiens, we now
| know is wrong, as we now know that modern humans involve a more
| complex lineage. But what we thought of the homo sapiens
| lineage does seem to be correct though.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| The article clarifies that "human" includes the whole homo
| genus (well, not explicitly, but it at least mentions other
| species in homo as being human) within the same paragraph you
| quoted from.
| stakkur wrote:
| He's talking about the origin of 'modern humans', which are
| specifically the _homo sapien_ species, not about the origin
| of all humans. He even says so:
|
| >"Today almost everything we had figured out then is wrong.
| We didn't understand the _origin of modern humans_ , and
| we're still in the process of unpacking all the complexity as
| more and more findings come to light."
|
| And thanks for the downvote.
| RichardHeart wrote:
| The title is from the intro to this song:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x22cZ7MCxm4 Ms Jackson By
| Outkast.
| everydaybro wrote:
| We all came from Adam and Eve, Allah(God) created everything.
| some people are believing theories made by a handful of
| "scientists" and became facts all of a sudden.
| pezzana wrote:
| There's no need to believe anything in science. In fact, the
| default position should be disbelief. There are experiments and
| explanations. Some explanations keep working after many
| experiments. Many do not. Those explanations that survive many
| attempts at disproof become accepted. It doesn't happen "all of
| a sudden."
|
| The claim that the Bible explains creation does not stand up
| too well to experiment in this regard.
| everydaybro wrote:
| "Those explanations that survive many attempts at disproof
| become accepted"
|
| How can you experiment human origin?
| astrange wrote:
| Generate synthetic data according to a model and see if
| your technique rediscovers the model or not.
| astrange wrote:
| You need to believe /some/ things in science. It's just some
| things go away if you don't believe in them and some don't.
| pragmatic8 wrote:
| Surely the same can be said about religions.
|
| People start believing stories made by <prophet/whomever> and
| they become facts all of a sudden.
| murat124 wrote:
| Well, who do you suppose created Allah, then? Hint: It's the
| same god that was created by the exiled Jews who were later
| invited back to their lands by Cyrus. And this Allah you're
| referring to is the same deity that hebrews, christians and
| muslims are all viewing from different angles.
|
| And this single god is the consolidated version of all the
| deities that had come before then and understandably it's a
| deity that loves violence and has little to no mercy to those
| who oppose it. You wouldn't expect people who were oppressed
| for centuries to create a god that has never-ending love for
| all humans.
|
| God is an extension of human consciousness that replaces
| conscience. It's a way to easily delegate responsibilities and
| defer wrongdoings. It's there so you can contain
| compartmentalized conflicting thoughts in your head so you
| don't go insane. You have your god because you can't tell right
| from wrong. It's like a tick that's attached to your skull and
| feeds off of your thoughts. Obviously like with any other tick,
| it's hard to rid of it.
| [deleted]
| throwaway4666 wrote:
| Multiple inaccuracies there.
|
| Crick and Watson certainly didn't discover DNA as the substrate
| for Mendelian inheritance, that was known long before. They (in
| collaboration with Rosalind "don't talk to me about this woman"
| Franklin) discovered its _3D structure_.
|
| Africans do have Neanderthal DNA, up to 0.3%.
|
| The post tries very hard to make it look like 'Out of Africa' is
| wrong and not the mainstream accepted by the majority of
| scientists. Admixture doesn't change that.
|
| Also, isn't Razib Khan a "scientific racist"? (Protip: when
| someone's wiki page has a 'Controversies' tab it doesn't look
| good) I remember him being huge into 'HBD' despite not being
| credentialed in any way beyond dropping out of his PhD program to
| get in on the 'consumer genomics' grift. Not a good look imo.
|
| If you want a real overview of current population genetics check
| out Graham Coop's lectures, he's a prominent professor in the
| field and his teaching materials were inspirational for many
| people. Alas, he does not have a substack, neither does he make
| contrarian takes for a living (probably due to having a real job)
| pezzana wrote:
| > Crick and Watson certainly didn't discover DNA as the
| substrate for Mendelian inheritance, that was known long
| before. They (in collaboration with Rosalind "don't talk to me
| about this woman" Franklin) discovered its 3D structure.
|
| From Wikipedia, it goes back to at least 1927:
|
| ... In 1927, Nikolai Koltsov proposed that inherited traits
| would be inherited via a "giant hereditary molecule" made up of
| "two mirror strands that would replicate in a semi-conservative
| fashion using each strand as a template".[186][187] In 1928,
| Frederick Griffith in his experiment discovered that traits of
| the "smooth" form of Pneumococcus could be transferred to the
| "rough" form of the same bacteria by mixing killed "smooth"
| bacteria with the live "rough" form.[188][189] This system
| provided the first clear suggestion that DNA carries genetic
| information.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA#History
| Leary wrote:
| I didn't know claiming a genetic component in explaining
| differences in racial averages for IQ is scientific racism.
| throwaway4666 wrote:
| You will find that 'some races just have the dumb SNPs, you
| know' is indeed a fringe and unserious position often posited
| by Pioneer Fund recipients (you know, the organization
| founded in the 30s for the 'purpose of race betterment' that
| literally inspired Hitler) to justify that we abandon all
| welfare and remedial programs toward the poorer demographics.
| If that's not scientific racism, I wonder what's your
| definition of it.
| keewee7 wrote:
| >Also, isn't Razib Khan a "scientific racist"? (Protip: when
| someone's wiki page has a 'Controversies' tab it doesn't look
| good)
|
| He is a Bengali-American (with a Muslim name) who has
| repeatedly debunked Hindu nationalist claims about ancient
| human migrations in and out of India.
|
| Unfortunately, as your comment shows, they have been succesful
| in maligning him as a racist for speaking the truth.
| Dharmakirti wrote:
| > they have been succesful in maligning him as a racist for
| speaking the truth.
|
| This comment is so full of intellectual dishonesty. Razib
| Khan's controversy is a result of his so called cancellation
| by Left-liberal media like NYT/Times which are decidedly
| against Hindu nationalism.
|
| In fact, Razib Khan is the founder of Brown Pundits, which is
| arguably more center right and has more Hindutva supporters
| than left-liberals. I found Razib Khan and Omar Ali both to
| be a prudent and neutral observers of the developments in
| subcontinent and are more leaning towards Hindutva (in its
| original spirit)
| culi wrote:
| I'm not taking a stance on either side of this, but the fact
| that he's Bengali-American doesn't somehow mean he can't be a
| scientific racist. (Btw by "Scientific racism" I'm talking
| about the pseudoscience movement)
|
| I'd suggest you take a look at some of his work yourself and
| make a judgement of how unscientific he really is:
|
| https://vdare.com/letters/vdare-khan-letter-and-sailer-
| reply...
|
| Here's a paragraph for instance (trust me reading it in
| context doesn't make it any better)
|
| > Also, I am not sure the blonde preference is as dominant
| among people from Asia as it is among Europeans, and Asians
| have not been as culturally dominated by Europeans as
| Amerindians have. Though certain European features were
| traditionally praised by Asians (fair skin), others have not
| been emulated (large noses, reputed body odor due to diet,
| hirsute body, etc.). In addition, though Japanese may comment
| on the nice figures that European women have (i.e., Europeans
| tend to exhibit more sexual dimorphism), they will also
| comment that many American women are too large and, as they
| would say in the States, "big-boned." In other words, even if
| blondeness is preferred by Eurasians, there are other
| attributes that work against them (their size in comparison
| to petite Asian women, the perception by many Asians that
| European women, and Europeans in general, age faster and
| don't keep their appearance up after the bloom of youth,
| etc.).
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| >Unfortunately, as your comment shows, they have been
| succesful in maligning him as a racist for speaking the
| truth.
|
| Could also be your typical sour grapes over a dissenting view
| on the science. Academia is full of childishness like this
| (especially but not exclusively as you go further away from
| stuff that can be unambiguously measured and into the realm
| of the squishy soft sciences).
| Mary-Jane wrote:
| Science, indeed any intellectual thought, won't progress
| without contrarian views challenging the/your status quo.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Also if they're wrong (those being contrarian) who cares?
| Hypothesis and there's should be able to defend themselves
| rationally against any attacks if they can't then they are
| not studied well enough to have rigorously tested the
| hypothesis
|
| At least imo, sure misinformation is one thing but if we're
| talking about other scientists I assume, not some layman on
| facebook
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Once the mud slinging stuff like "he's a scientific
| racist!" comes out (especially when it's clear the author
| would vehemently disagree with the label), you gotta
| somewhat adjust your Bayesian priors that the person
| slinging the mud isn't doing it because he ran out of
| rational arguments.
| amusedcyclist wrote:
| Using the word bayesian doesn't make you sound smart, You
| might want to try something new
| throwaway4666 wrote:
| Yes, this is the usual precanned retort when faced with the
| fact that one's fringe viewpoint isn't in line with the
| mainstram science. It's not an argument though, in that it
| doesn't tilt the balance of probabilities (from a Bayesian
| point of view) away from the initial prior (i.e. the fringe
| is likely wrong and experts are likely right - note that I
| said _likely_ , not 100%, like a good Bayesian). If anything,
| his elementary mistake about Crick, his failure to stay up to
| date with recent findings about African DNA, and motivated
| agenda with roots in scientific racism are tilting in the
| opposite direction.
| Mary-Jane wrote:
| I have no skin in the game; didn't even read the article.
| "You're just being contrarian so you're wrong" is a weak
| and lazy retort. I did appreciate that op provided a
| counter-perspective though; that's rare.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Here is his page on the takimag site:
| https://www.takimag.com/contributor/razibkhan/130/
|
| Decide for yourself if he is a "scientific racist." Takimag is
| not shy about stuff like that.
| throwaway4666 wrote:
| Ah, he also believes in "Ashkenazi IQ" stuff. And is best
| friends with Greg Cochran who thinks homosexuality is caught
| by germs. Very instructive stuff
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Scientific racist is a funny term. If a scientist shows that
| "race" X has a different distribution of traits than "race" Y,
| does that mean that they are a scientific racist? Doesn't
| racism also have to have an associated hatred, prejudice, or
| antagonism against a different race? Is it scientifically
| racist to say that blacks get a certain blood disease more
| frequently than whites?
|
| To put it another way, if a scientist does a study and shows
| that the Ainu people of northern Japan are statistically taller
| than the Mbuti people of the Congo, does that mean the
| scientist is a "scientific heightist"? Wouldn't they need to
| amend their report with something like "...and therefore, Ainu
| people are better than Mbuti" or something like that?
| sjtindell wrote:
| No. A scientific racist is a racist (someone who thinks one
| race is inferior to another) who uses science to back up
| their claim. Not sure this person is one.
| throwaway4666 wrote:
| Scientific racists don't use such crass words like
| 'inferior', they'd rather say 'have a lower mean IQ and
| impulse control due to genetic differences'
| astrange wrote:
| Note, some people do have genetic conditions that affect
| their ability to take IQ tests - these include Down
| syndrome, phenylketonuria, even IBS if you're giving them
| a test without bathroom breaks.
|
| The point of knowing this is so you can treat it. You can
| raise the IQ of a phenylketonuric by not feeding them
| Diet Coke. It doesn't seem like the HBD people would be
| happy seeing this, because they just want to prove
| someone is inherently superior and someone else isn't.
| culi wrote:
| Scientific racism is a pseudoscience. To think that it's
| actually scientific is to get caught up in semantics. It is a
| very unscientific fringe group
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| I didn't get the vibe that _this particular article_ was
| rejecting OoA, but simply pointing out that the modern approach
| is OoA + "it's complicated".
|
| The HBD stuff is troublesome and it's certainly worth regarding
| the author more critically, but I found the bones of what was
| linked fairly pedestrian and uncontroversial. I suspect that
| will not be true of the follow-up article about origin models
| within Africa though.
| throwaway4666 wrote:
| Yeah I'm not saying literally everything in the article is
| trash, my thought process basically went as follows:
|
| "Wait this is an elementary mistake. Also he's not really up
| to date on the science. Who wrote this again? That name rings
| a bell...oh dear..."
| tempestn wrote:
| What exactly what the elementary mistake?
|
| Edit: ah, answered in another comment. It was this part:
|
| > Crick and Watson certainly didn't discover DNA as the
| substrate for Mendelian inheritance, that was known long
| before. They (in collaboration with Rosalind "don't talk to
| me about this woman" Franklin) discovered its 3D structure.
| throwaway73838 wrote:
| > Protip: when someone's wiki page has a 'Controversies' tab it
| doesn't look good
|
| If wikipedia had existed in the time of Copernicus, Plato,
| Giordano Bruno, Galileo or Darwin, I do not think they would be
| without their own large 'controversies' section ;)
| culi wrote:
| I don't think someone arguing that Africans shouldn't be
| classified as humans[0] or that there are more Asian women in
| porn because of male desire for high IQ,[1] which he believes
| Asian women possess, is comparable to the controversies that
| Copernicus got himself into...
|
| [0] https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/the-race-
| question-ar... [1] https://vdare.com/letters/vdare-khan-
| letter-and-sailer-reply...
| busyant wrote:
| > Crick and Watson certainly didn't discover DNA as the
| substrate for Mendelian inheritance, that was known long
| before. They (in collaboration with Rosalind "don't talk to me
| about this woman" Franklin) discovered its 3D structure.
|
| Just to add a little bit.
|
| They discovered the 3D structure, but the structure
| (specifically, the base pairing) made it quite clear that the
| _mechanism_ of inheritance was due to each complementary strand
| serving as a template for information copying.
|
| For me, that was the stunning bit of the discovery.
| csee wrote:
| You're misrepresenting him, and it sounds like you have an
| ideological stake in this.
|
| > Africans do have Neanderthal DNA, up to 0.3%.
|
| He never claimed or hinted that Africans do not have
| Neanderthal DNA.
|
| He says "non-African modern humans were discernibly more
| similar to the Neanderthal sample than Africans were", which is
| factually accurate, given that there's about a 1.5-2.5% gap in
| the amount of DNA that's shared, at least according to best
| current knowledge.
|
| > The post tries very hard to make it look like 'Out of Africa'
| is wrong
|
| No such thing is insinuated.
|
| He makes it explicit that he's talking about the " _total-
| replacement plank_ of the old out-of-Africa model ", and he
| spends a while talking about how we're all descended from a
| single male and single female within Africa, it's only the case
| that certain populations outside of Africa mixed with other
| hominids and got up to 5-7% of their DNA from them
| (Neanderthals and Denisovans), which is far more than what
| Africans have.
| wyager wrote:
| > Protip: when someone's wiki page has a 'Controversies' tab it
| doesn't look good)... Not a good look imo.
|
| Is "having a good look" a core part of your epistemology?
| sega_sai wrote:
| I knew nothing about the author of the text, and read it with
| interest, but the fact that he didn't mention Franklin was
| certainly a surprise and warning sign. To anyone who studied
| the issue, it's clear that Franklin should be credited at least
| equally with Crick&Watson.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| It's quite possible not to be familiar with the issue, or
| only aware of it peripherally. "Crick & Watson" is the way it
| was taught to almost all Americans, correct or no.
| traject_ wrote:
| >Africans do have Neanderthal DNA, up to 0.3%.
|
| That ancestry comes from later interactions with West Eurasians
| and is at trace levels compared to the substantial 2-3% in non-
| Africans. This does not change the point that non-Africans
| received input from Neanderthals just before expansion
| outwards.
|
| >The post tries very hard to make it look like 'Out of Africa'
| is wrong and not the mainstream accepted by the majority of
| scientists. Admixture doesn't change that.
|
| You've misread the article if you believe that. The point is
| that the total replacement model of out of Africa imagining a
| small band of hunter gatherers expanding out of an East Africa
| giving rise to all of humanity popular in the 2000s was proven
| wrong. The point was that single locus markers like mtDNA and
| Y-DNA can create biases that allowed for such a consensus that
| was changed by the whole genome of the Neanderthal. The ancient
| DNA we have now suggests a multi-regional model for modern
| human evolution within Africa.
|
| The remainder of the post (other than the first nitpick) is
| non-substantive ideological claims that appears to be largely
| because Razib's politics lean conservative. Interest in human
| populations and such phenotypic differences does not imply
| scientific racism once you realize the basic scientific
| principle that humans are animals and consider how animals
| exist in populations with phenotypic differences.
| throwaway4666 wrote:
| The science is constantly evolving to this very day on the
| supposedly 'trace levels' of Neanderthal DNA in Africans
| (especially as we gather a more diverse range of cohorts) so
| I'll leave it at that.
|
| I just want to comment on this: opposing 'scientific racism'
| is an ideological claim now?! The dude has a pretty large
| record making claims about race and IQ and 'human
| biodiversity', works in an industry that's banking heavily on
| grifting money out of rich people with PGSes, and _mainstream
| scientists_ debunking it are the ones being ideological? I
| feel like I 'm dreaming here, imagine a Philip Morris
| lobbyist accusing you of being 'ideological' when you point
| out flaws in their 'actually cigarettes are pretty good for
| you' studies. (Wait, that actually happened)
| csee wrote:
| What _specifically_ are you saying is an example of his
| scientific racism?
| traject_ wrote:
| > The science is constantly evolving to this very day on
| the supposedly 'trace levels' of Neanderthal DNA in
| Africans (especially as we gather a more diverse range of
| cohorts) so I'll leave it at that.
|
| No, the trace levels of Neanderthal DNA in Africans is very
| unlikely to change by gathering more diverse range of
| cohorts. It is a matter of identifying major strands of
| ancestry within Africans (by admixture over thousands of
| years to now be in various African populations) which all
| are distinguished by a lack of Neanderthal DNA outside of
| West Eurasian admixture.
|
| And for the last point, I did not condone scientific
| racism. To repeat, interest in human populations and such
| phenotypic differences does not imply scientific racism
| once you realize the basic scientific principle that humans
| are animals and consider how animals exist in populations
| with phenotypic differences.
| throwaway4666 wrote:
| Seeing how African populations are _extremely_ diverse
| and we 're just seeing the extent of it I would refrain
| from making such definitive statements.
|
| >To repeat, interest in human populations and such
| phenotypic differences does not imply scientific racism
| once you realize the basic scientific principle that
| humans are animals and consider how animals exist in
| populations with phenotypic differences.
|
| That's a needlessly stilted PR-like statement that
| basically hides the meat of the whole 'controversy':
| behavioral and IQ differences between populations and
| their genetic origins. Khan has a position, mainstream
| scientists another. Oftentimes fallacious arguments are
| invoked involving 'but look at domestic animal breeds'
| (not unlike your repeated admonition that 'humans are
| animals' which I will assume is just a boring triviality
| on your part for the sake of charity).
| traject_ wrote:
| > Seeing how African populations are extremely diverse
| and we're just seeing the extent of it I would refrain
| from making such definitive statements.
|
| There's no reason to not. Holocene expansion of
| farming/pastoral populations all over the world
| (including Africa) has largely homogenized human ancestry
| into identifiable distinct strands that is in varying
| proportions. Africa is indeed diverse genetically but it
| is not magic or anything. It most likely comes from the
| earlier mentioned multi-regional model within Africa
| through drift and admixture with highly drifted
| populations. And almost all of these populations outside
| of those of North Africa were outside of the Neanderthal
| range and we have archeological evidence to support this
| as well. There is no logical reason to believe in an
| (outside of the obvious example of historic West Eurasian
| admixture in the Horn/North Africa) African population
| with non-trace levels of Neanderthal ancestry. High
| levels of diversity in Africa does not imply a
| significantly large population with non-trace levels of
| neanderthal ancestry.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Not everything he says is wrong just because he has lots of
| nutty beliefs more generally. Maybe I missed something, but
| I didn't see anything terribly controversial or wrong in
| the article.
| xwdv wrote:
| One of the things I do know about my great grandmothers of
| several centuries far back (and maybe she is also one of yours if
| she is a common ancestor), is that she must have been an obese
| woman, even for the standards of the day. We're talking late
| 1400s or so. This woman indeed must have been so fat, that at the
| time of her death the earth was flat, _but when they buried her
| it became round._
| mayli wrote:
| Yeah, I cannot stop searching for "fat" in this thread.
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