So... okay, the picture is fuzzy, and Asia is much more important as thought.
What I don't understand is, the article also says the genetical picture still points to the established ("old") theories centering on Africa? As someone only reading about the subject on the side whenever something interesting comes up I'm slightly confused by this aspect of the article.
I'm not confused about there not being a linear but a convoluted story - I never thought there was (except when I was fresh out of an East German school quite some time ago and everything being a linear progress story eventually leading to communism was quite clear :) ).
The fixed factor is that 97℅ of our DNA matches with that of fossils in Africa. So our ancestors must have come from there, but that doesn't mean there were a few intermediate stops.
Also always worth remembering that the classification as eg sapiens, heidelbergensis or erectus is not one checklist that always ticks the same boxes. In each of these groups defined by us on the basis of some common features but there is much variation. And of course there are regional or temporal differences within eg sapiens.
Then you have parallel evolutions, interbreeding, fakes, unclear dating, and you never know if a particular specimen that you find really has 'typical ' features and genes for that time and space, eg it could have been that one lady/guy that happened to have wandered far from where the rest of its group remained, or could have been somewhat different. Eg imagine the only specimen that remains from our era is an inbred Egyptian pharaoh or someone with down syndrome. Those are bad examples as you could probably figure such things somewhat from the DNA, but it's not so clear for every condition, eg if epigenetics* had some bigger effect.
* = A layer on your genes that De/activates or strengthens/weakens their effects and that we barely understand. The famous example is that data on Danish military recruits, which were measured upon entry into service, showed that if a man suffers starvation/malnutrition in his childhood his sons (!) will on average be less tall than others of their generation. One generation is not enough for genetic selection, so it must be a change in epigenetics.
Forgot to add this second main piece of evidence that modern humans are 'out of Africa': modern African populations have more genetic diversity. When populations migrate it's not a representative sample of all genes, but rather just limited groups, so you can find most diversity at/near the place where it evolved.
I believe that this is being brushed over. Cats have 90% DNA matches with modern humans as well as the overlap with chimps you mentioned.
It is clear that just a couple of percent different is a HUGE difference in animals (I am including humans as animals).
So, while it is clear that there is some relationship, the percentage of DNA matches does not seem like strong evidence of "this follows from that" and seems more like "this and that share common previous DNA".
And of course there is a political and social-responsibility component to this, even though people pretend like scientist are immune to politics or social trends.
Wish we had a "house paleontologist" here to explain the story better.
My takeaway is that there is new fossil evidence, which I think should excite researchers everywhere. Instead, the article ends on a researcher expressing cautionary restraint.
What am I missing? Is fossil evidence not reliable? Does this new evidence challenge conventional wisdom about human evolution?
> Some Western researchers suggest that there is a hint of nationalism in Chinese palaeontologists' support for continuity. “The Chinese — they do not accept the idea that H. sapiens evolved in Africa,” says one researcher. “They want everything to come from China.”
In other words, opinion vs opinion. Maybe that's why the posted story is so murky. The following sentences:
> Chinese researchers reject such allegations. “This has nothing to do with nationalism,” says Wu. It's all about the evidence — the transitional fossils and archaeological artefacts, he says. “Everything points to continuous evolution in China from H. erectus to modern human.”
> But the continuity-with-hybridization model is countered by overwhelming genetic data that point to Africa as the wellspring of modern humans. Studies of Chinese populations show that 97.4% of their genetic make-up is from ancestral modern humans from Africa [...]
> “If there had been significant contributions from Chinese H. erectus, they would show up in the genetic data,” says Li Hui, a population geneticist at Fudan University in Shanghai.
Simply saying "opinion vs opinion" is a false equivalency.
It's basically the equivalent of climate deniers vs climate change, with the deniers' funding basically coming from a single government.
There's intense nationalism (and racism) at play here, and the Chinese government isn't funding pure science so much as it is funding science with the intent of finding a specific result.
I'm not a paleontologist, but I've lived and studied International Relations in China (at Tsinghua University, where many of China's leaders studied), and I saw first hand how research was corrupted and self-regulated to draw certain conclusions that agreed with the Government's known or perceived position. This was often felt to be necessary to protect funding and academic positions (one professor of mine in private confessed to me that "80% of what I say is true, and the rest I say for reasons we all know").
I know there is strong nationalistic beliefs around human origins in China as well, and suspect strongly the same forces that affect IR academic research are at play here.
Fake fossils are also extremely common in China[1][2], and widespread racism, especially toward black people, is difficult to overstate[3] (which leaves many Chinese refusing to believe they may have originated in Africa).
There's a good reason many paleontologists outside of China are taking many of these studies and theories with a China-sized grain of salt. That isn't to say that there isn't good science being done in China as well. But sometimes it can be difficult to separate the 20% from the 80%, and when findings seem to draw conclusions that the Government wanted to see all along, they're rightly viewed highly suspiciously.
>I saw first hand how research was corrupted and self-regulated to draw certain conclusions that agreed with the Government's known or perceived position
When China was promoting the idea of it controlling the South China Sea, suddenly my feed was full of bullshit academic articles about finding Chinese culture artifacts on those not-really islands. As well as a fabled 600 year old book that no longer exists. Its clear this was done by the CCP to help their claim of those islands.
Back in the old days China made propagandist attacks on western medicine and cooked the books on its traditional medicine, which was administered at the time and still today in many/some cases. It was almost all fraud. They weren't claiming a little bit of zing from Ginseng or a bit of pain relief from massage or acupuncture but cancer cures and such using roots and stews.
> Simply saying "opinion vs opinion" is a false equivalency.
No, it's not. That "one researcher" made an opinion that he thinks nationalism is at play. “They want everything to come from China.” is literally an opinion.
> but I've lived and studied International Relations in China (at Tsinghua University, where many of China's leaders studied), and I saw first hand how research was corrupted and self-regulated to draw certain conclusions that agreed with the Government's known or perceived position.
That's anecdotal. The snippet I included, directly after the nationalist's opinion, is a Chinese guy (part of the "they" I assume) at a Chinese university, disagreeing with him. Do you have actual numbers of how widespread the nationalist agenda on this particular issue is? Or is this just more opinion? Also, that sounds similar to lots of PhD's lives trying to get funding from their government.
>I know there is strong nationalistic beliefs around human origins in China as well, and suspect strongly the same forces that affect IR academic research are at play here.
Fake fossils are also extremely common in China[1][2], and widespread racism, especially toward black people, is difficult to overstate[3] (which leaves many Chinese refusing to believe they may have originated in Africa).
I could replace "China" with "Japan", who aren't exactly strangers to a similar agenda, heck even the NYT commented on it. But I don't claim to assume the whole country thinks that way because I doubt there are numbers on it.
There is always nationalism embedded in this field. It is naive to think it is free of it.
On the other hand, it is moronic to think it "comes down" to nationalism. It is utterly disrespectful to dozens of scientists devoting their careers to the research. As the article says itself, it is a 'fuzzy picture', as many fields still are, like evolutionary biology. Darwin's theory of natural selection is regarded as mostly correct. That doesn't mean Lamarck's theory is completely wrong. If you have studied epigenetics, you would have re-considered all you had learned on evolutionary biology. That is how science progresses.
The Piltdown man is one example of why cautious restraint is prudent when new fossil discoveries are made which seem to contradict established science.
“Everything points to continuous evolution in China from H. erectus to modern human.”
Quote from the Chinese researcher. Essentially they're saying that the modern human evolved in China, even though:
"Studies of Chinese populations show that 97.4% of their genetic make-up is from ancestral modern humans from Africa, with the rest coming from extinct forms such as Neanderthals and Denisovans"
> Essentially they're saying that the modern human evolved in China
I think they mean Asians, not all humans? Which looking at a few points on this interactive map may have a point - IF I interpret that map correctly (which may not be the case, I don't completely understand it):
So its about Asians being on their own branch (also out of Africa, earlier) according to this, not Asia as the original origin.
From the text:
> Stringer even suggests that H. heidelbergensis might have originated in Asia and then spread to other continents.
> But many researchers, including most Chinese palaeontologists, contend that the materials from China are different from European and African H. heidelbergensis fossils, despite some apparent similarities.
So I read this that the Chinese opinion is explicitly not that they are the origin for all, only that they are on their own branch.
And this is quite clear:
> Most Chinese palaeontologists — and a few ardent supporters from the West — think that the transitional fossils are evidence that Peking Man was an ancestor of modern Asian people.
It says "of modern Asian people".
> In this model, known as multiregionalism or continuity with hybridization, hominins descended from H. erectus in Asia interbred with incoming groups from Africa and other parts of Eurasia, and their progeny gave rise to the ancestors of modern east Asians, says Wu.
It is a (possible THE) major journal in science but call me skeptical. I tell you three things about the Chinese:
1. They have had a highly developed culture since at least 5000 years (but please don't tell them that their bone carvings can't compete with what the Egyptians had)
2. Their culture developed totally independent and without exchange with other cultures and civilizations in the West. (Don't mention for example the Tarim mummies, this is insulting for Chinese: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarim_mummies )
3. Chinese always hated and rejected the idea that they developed from African/black ancestors. So this is really a question that is asked in China with a very strong bias.
This field has generated a lot of questionable research and discoveries over the last 100 years. Piltdown Man is the most famous example, but there was also a big hoax perpetuated by Fujimura Shinichi in Japan about 15 years ago (1):
Prominent Japanese archaeologist Shinichi Fujimura has been caught red-handed burying artifacts at a site, prompting demands for a review of the nation's Palaeolithic record. Nicknamed "God's Hands" by colleagues who marveled at his luck in locating ancient sites, Fujimura was senior director at the Tohoku Paleolithic Institute. His discovery of artifacts dated to the early Palaeolithic period (600,000-120,000 years ago) at the Kamitakamori ruins in Miyagi Prefecture in 1994 established the site as Japan's oldest. Fujimura's team recently made headlines again following discovery of postholes that provided evidence for early Palaeolithic dwellings at Kamitakamori.
Fujimura's hoax, occurring less than a month after his team's headline-making posthole discovery, was exposed by Japan's Mainichi Shimbun newspaper, which published three photographs on its front page of him deliberately burying 61 artifacts on the Kamitakamori site. The artifacts were taken by Fujimura from earlier excavations. He has also confessed to deliberately burying artifacts at the Palaeolithic site of Soshinfudozaka, but insists his other discoveries were authentic.
A lot of questionable finds and outright hoaxes tie into ethnic, nationalist, or local pride. (2)
China has a record of attempting to use historical/archeological artifacts to establish modern-day territorial claims (3):
China’s archaeological work in disputed islands also extends to the Spratly Island chain, which it disputes with the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan. China has identified roughly 200 different underwater “cultural heritage sites” between the Spratlys and the Paracels, and has been conducting archaeological explorations in the Spratlys since at least 2013.
Maritime archaeology seems like an innocuous enough field. Yet Kaogu-01’s deployment close to the site of a battle between China and Vietnam in an island chain still claimed by the latter, as well as ongoing archaeological work in the disputed Spratly Island chain, indicate that China may see a secondary, political purpose in expanding its maritime archaeological industry, namely strengthening China’s claims to disputed areas in the South China Sea.
I'm always amazed that they talk evolution but they're looking for human or human like remains.
Where are the other remains? The ones with fish fins? How did we go from the primordial soup to land based? I'm sure those must exist, right?
I don't think that's an accurate summary. If you were right than it would be a clear case, which according to the article it is not. I think you selected just one thing out of the long article. Just read the last few paragraphs, they contradict your summary:
> Despite the different interpretations of the Chinese fossil record, everybody agrees that the evolutionary tale in Asia is much more interesting than people appreciated before. But the details remain fuzzy, because so few researchers have excavated in Asia.
> When they have, the results have been startling.
> ...
> But all agree that Asia — the largest continent on Earth — has a lot more to offer in terms of unravelling the human story. “The centre of gravity,” says Petraglia[0], “is shifting eastward.”
Note that the person cited last telling you about a shift to the East is not Chinese.
> It is utterly disrespectful to dozens of scientists devoting their careers to the research.
China is a one party state with dictatorial control over pretty much everything. Do you really think those guys have any check against CCP thugs telling them what to publish? Being a good scientist takes a back seat to your survival and the survival of your family. Most people aren't willing to be tortured or killed for their views.
What you described is true in 1950's until early 1980's. The government had dictatorial control over everything in academia. (Let's restrict our discussion in academia. Otherwise, it would be a very large topic.) The scenarios in natural science research have been gradually opened up. The scientists doesn't enjoy as much academia freedom as in USA, but it is not as restrictive as the news media said. (That doesn't mean the government has no influence or control, either.)
For example, in the article, Dr. Li Hui apparently disagrees with the continuity-with-hybridization model. Dr. Li Hui works in Fudan University, Shanghai.
I did biology research in Beijing for two years in 1990's. My advisor openly challenged the research of a "government-sponsored" professor in department meetings. Many professors supported her, my advisor. I don't think she got any "special" treatments from the government. The last time I heard from her, she was enjoying her time after retirement.
Authorities also tightened press restrictions. The State Administration of Press Publication, Radio, Film, and Television issued a directive in July requiring that Chinese journalists sign an agreement stating that they will not release unpublished information without prior approval from their employers and requiring that they pass political ideology exams before they can be issued official press cards.
In July, the CCP’s disciplinary commission announced that researchers at the central Chinese Academic of Social Sciences had been “infiltrated by foreign forces” and participated in “illegal collusion” during politically sensitive periods. The party subsequently issued a rule that would make ideological evaluation a top requirement for assessing CASS researchers; those who fail are to be expelled.
The open access publisher BioMedCentral has this week announced the retraction of 43 medical journal publications by Chinese researchers after it discovered widespread peer review fraud. Most of the articles were submitted by medical researchers at universities in China, including China Medical University, Sichuan University, Shandong University and Jiaotong University Medical School.
Including uncivil swipes like that in your arguments here will eventually get you banned, so please be scrupulously civil from now on, especially when commenting on inflammatory topics and/or when you think someone else is wrong.
> The scientists doesn't enjoy as much academia freedom as in USA, but it is not as restrictive as the news media said.
There are problems with scientific freedom in the U.S. related to funding and job retention. Even if the situation in China isn't as bad as it used to be, it's still not good.
"Science" is the practice of empiricism. Empiricism (in a nutshell) says that knowledge comes from sensory experience, so science is interested in what is observable.
Repeatable, controlled experiments are certainly the gold-standard of observation, but but they're not the only form of scientific observation.
I don't think it is confused, it is just more precise than your notion. If there is no way that I can actually verify a scientific claim if I really really want to, then it isn't a scientific claim. Then it is just gospel that I may or may not believe in. Then it is like the bibel.
You certainly are confused, but now it's apparent whence this confusion stems: the notion of verification.
Non-experimental studies can still be verified and often repeated. Take a cor relational study for instance: you can perform the same measure on a totally new sample and see if the effect is still exhibited.
With regards to fossils, these are available for cross-examination, so in principle, you can replicate the carbon 14 dating sequence or examine morphological features in light of new paleontological findings.
I repeat: experiments are not the only verifiable/replicable forms of empirical study. You are confused (and that's quite alright!)
>But that's quite alright, not everyone is cut out to be a scientist.
I apologize, but I can't resist the urge to ridicule you: I have a Ph.D in cognitive neuroscience so I think I'm more "cut out to be a scientist" than most.
>So how do you verify that the fossil was found where they said it was found?
You would have to ask a paleontologist, but I would be inclined to verify the following:
- You should find evidence of tectonic forces in fossils (fissures? encasings of a specific rock type?) that are consistent with the location in which they were claimed to be found.
- You should find other fossils near the location of the original
- Less satisfying, perhaps, but fossils are photographed on-site when they are found and the pictures are annotated with date, time and GPS coordinates
- The encasing sedimentary rock should contain the same proportions of minerals as the purported location.
So, again, you are misinformed/confused. Rather than lashing out, I urge you to take a genuine interest in these things; it's essential to understand a claim before disagreeing with it.
That's fine, you are a biologist then. That's about what I thought, as it is the natural science most removed from mathematics and proof.
All of the above are nice indicators, but not above being faked by people who know exactly how these things are normally verified, except maybe the "finding lots of fossils nearby" point, which is unlikely if that fossil finding was so spectacular.
I am not emotionally involved in this argument, as you seem to be, sorry for trolling you, I just couldn't resist. You basically cannot win this argument: in the end you will have to admit that none of this constitutes proof. Another Ph.D. here who knows one or two things about proof.
If there are experiments I can perform in principle AFTER the fossil finding to convince myself that the fossil finding is not a fake, then this would constitute enough experimental proof for me. Because then the fossil finding has in fact become a repeatable experiment. The only question then would be if the journal that accepted the paper about the fossil finding has performed these verifying experiments?
You can make predictions and verify them. For example, I remember reading that in the context of trying to figure out the extreme ancient history of live billions of years ago someone made the prediction of some element that I forgot to be present in stone layers of a certain age period at to a very exact amount that was different from what would be expected without that specific theory. When they found such stone that element was present with exactly the predicted concentration.
Darn if I remember the details, but this serves to illustrate a point: You don't need to repeat the creation of the earth. You can develop theories and instead of repeating the whole process predict something obscure that isn't obvious at all to a very high precision, and see if at some later point what you predict might be found.
Same here: They could make predictions about what they expect to find at what locations, and when something is eventually found we can check if it's true. If you are specific enough with your prediction and not just "we'll find ancient bones" your prediction is as good a validation of the theory as is possible, and the more of it the better. After all, your one prediction isn't the only one, there will be others and everything builds on top of other stuff equally verified. Either a whole section of such a house of knowledge crashes if a prediction doesn't come true (something is found and it's different from predicted), or, on the other hand, more and more predictions are added on top and more and more come true, with each new one you can be a little surer of the basis than before.
You won't get much better than that in any field. Maybe math, but that's a "helper", not a field of science (insert the famous Einstein quote here...). Repeatable experiments don't give you that much more - if a lot of such predictions are made and verified it may even be better. A network of many things that all fit together (each one verified by such predictions) is really good evidence, also compared to just a single repeatable experiment. Sure, having both is even better. There are no absolutes.
I'm glad to read other people saying this. There is a cult that has arisen surrounding the randomized control trial that really verges on pseudoscience. Rather than come up with precise predictions like you mention and then run the experiment to test the prediction, they just kind of use them to see if two groups of people are different, etc. The reason I say this procedure verges on pseudoscience is that it skips the key step of coming up with a real theory that makes predictions.
While experiments are great when you can do them, natural observations can also be used to test these predictions just fine.
I've been trying to follow the developing human origin story (as a layman) for while now. It's hard to overstate the importance of the elephant in the room here, which is race and variation within the human species. There was a huge movement, especially post-WW2, to scientifically "want" to find that all humans were the same and therefore "equal"
The Out-of-Africa narrative has to be understood in this context, that it is a very positive narrative, that humans-as-humans developed just once in this tiny spot in Africa and then spread out around the world very recently, never interbred with other hominid species so they're all gone, and therefore we're all pretty much exactly the same.
What has been emerging especially now that genetic sequencing is becoming rapidly cheaper and more advanced at picking human genomes out of the genetic diaspora found in old fossils, is a much more complicated picture. The Chinese obviously have little need to adhere to US political correctness, so they're beginning to push the evidence that Asian hominid genes contributed to the emergence of modern humans/civilization.
The emerging picture to me is one of multiple waves of hominin advances spreading in a varied way and admixing with existing local populations. So there's pretty clearly an ancient Out-of-Africa wave of homo erectus(who were far more advanced than previously acknowledged), a possible evolution of "homo erectus+" and wave out of Asia, and likely an "Out of Arabia" mix of neanderthals and AMHs in the Levant, all of which intermixed imperfectly. The Neanderthals themselves look plausibly responsible for some advances in human civilization (Mousterians)
What you wind up with is a far more complex picture of human evolution and far more significant and long-standing difference between human populations, which I think requires a new narrative and philosophy for what human equality means and a way to ground it on something more fundamental than a wished-for genetic similarity.
> which I think requires a new narrative and philosophy for what human equality means and a way to ground it on something more fundamental than a wished-for genetic similarity.
As with so many sociological effects caused by technology and knowledge, there's a tradition of science fiction that deals with this concept. Is a human level AI intelligence human, or something else? If it's something else, does it deserve the same rights as a human? If we uplift a species, do we expand the classification of "human" to cover that as well? What does it mean to be human? We can inch along and slowly change our laws based on the understandings we have right now, or we can attempt to leap-frog that thinking and provide a framework for protecting intelligent species (to whatever degree) and try to take a more holistic approach to this before it becomes a mess. This is a problem we will have to deal with eventually, should we be so lucky to survive that long.
Here's a less extreme (but still wild) scenario: A tribe of neanderthals is discovered. Do they deserve human rights? I could see some not very good things happening in the short time before consensus formed around that answer, but what, really makes neanderthals more deserving than Gorillas, dolphins, cows, or cats and dogs? We, as a species and as nations (mostly, there are exceptions) have been able to punt on this question because it may upset the way we currently function, but we owe it to ourselves to answer why we should care more about a neanderthal than a cow (if we should).
>The Chinese obviously have little need to adhere to US political correctness
What? They're crazy racist and don't want to believe they're African. That's it. Its a common bias with the Chinese. You're playing up a conspiracy that doesn't exist. Why would the US give two fucks about telling everyone they're African? The US has a history of slavery and segregation and still is economically/socially segregated today.
We have good evidence that everyone is from Africa:
By assuming a mutation rate anchored to archaeological events (such as the migration of people across the Bering Strait), the team concluded that all males in their global sample shared a single male ancestor in Africa roughly 125,000 to 156,000 years ago.
"Obviously"? Have you ever met any older Chinese people, or folks fresh from the mainland? They're racist as hell. My dad was fond of telling me that the one black physics professor he knew at UC Berkeley was a very nice guy, but clearly a charity case, and that blacks were just lazy in general. It's much more safe to say that it's 'obvious' that the Chinese could have a political agenda in pushing the notion that there are special Asian hominid genes. They're as susceptible to racism and patriotism as anyone else.
No man, or woman, on this planet, is free from ideological bias.
I am not sure. Calling people lazy seems a logical conclusion for older generation Chines people. My parents call me lazy very often, because I cannot keep my apartment tidy...
They led a life with prevalent poverty and lack of food, and almost any kind of living supplies. They all need to work hard. I am not surprised that an older generation Chinese call most US people lazy.
As for whether there is a racism judgement, I dont know. You are most close to your dad. :)
There's all the difference between calling you, his son, lazy, and saying "blacks are just lazy in general". Can you easily see your dad telling you: "you're lazy, like all yellows"?
I think there is a history of contorting facts about world to work well with moral or political goals, often well meaning. There’s the connection between homogenous Out Of Africa humanity to promote egality and fraternity, directly opposite nazi race theories. The Nazi race and culture theories were themselves contortions to support nazi political and moral agendas.
Feminism did it, with the nature-nurture stuff. To some extent, gay rights did it with the “born like this slogan.”
The effects on our theories of the world, popular or scientific, can outlast the political need by generations.
>There was a huge movement, especially post-WW2, to scientifically "want" to find that all humans were the same and therefore "equal" ... The Chinese obviously have little need to adhere to US political correctness
I also love following the human origin story (it's probably the scientific topic outside my field of study I read up on the most), and I have to admit I really don't like the way you framed your comment. You are following the pattern of many other anti-academics who paint a strawman of simple-minded scientists who miss obvious conclusions for some ulterior purpose. I'm sure you're not purposefully doing it, but you have to understand that 1000s of people have devoted their life to studying this topic, and there isn't some conspiracy to hide the truth.
It's been known for years that modern humans have bred with other hominid species, and the theories have been changing to reflect this. A lot of evidence of early human settlements are 20 feet under water today, so it's a surprisingly tough study of topic. You're right that genetic testing has been changing our understanding of things, but this is a recent development. No one is trying to hide anything or avoid topics of study; everything is widely written about, including in pop-literature like this excellent book (which has a very candid chapter on variations in human intelligence, btw): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/014303832X
>> which I think requires a new narrative and philosophy for what human equality means and a way to ground it on something more fundamental than a wished-for genetic similarity.
I'm sorry but that sounds mighty dangerous. Human equality was never grounded in genetic similarity; you do not need to know that your salad mix of ancestors are different to others to understand that every human today deserves equality. Sure groups of people may be different - like culture - but once we start thinking that one is better than the other, we get hierarchy, and we get superiority. It's not as if it doesn't exist today at varying degrees but careful that it doesn't gain mass momentum. It's a slippery slope and one we've gone down far too often.
What you're noticing in the grandparent's comment -- or, should I say, what is revealed by the grandparent's comment -- is your own ideology. I don't read anything particularly ideological in the original comment.
Out of Africa is true, but on a different timescale than more recent adaptations like skin color. You can walk back from eastern Asia to South Africa in well under a year. Assuming migration was completely in one direction is a laymen misunderstanding of long standing theory's. It's a density argument where you need populations in an area before there is any trace over these timescales.
Consider some early hominid decides to follow the rising sun and ends up in Beijing. Great, well unless he finds someone else there he is going to live out his life and die without children. Even a small group does the same, without sufficient genetic diversity or immigrants they die out fairly quickly or are simply overwhelmed by the next wave.
Also, 'humans' tend to make it safer for other humans in the area by killing off large predators, finding edible plants etc.
PS: 70,000bce - 1,600,000bce is a very long time period. But, 1.6 million years ago South East Asia already had human ancestors and fire use is ~1.5 million years old.
Not only that, another 'large mammal' in the room is the 'founder effects' that happen on every level (i.e. family, community, regional, ethnic) and their behavioral implications, that were common-sense non-taboo topics of discussion up to early modern times.
There has been a BIG push in social sciences, which for whatever ridiculous reason has gained pull in universities that basically states "Race is a social construct" that "we're all equal" There's even videos where a guy goes across universities and queries students. He asks them "do you think we need more black students on the hockey team" All the students say "yes we need to do a lot more to get black students on the hockey team"
Asking same student body, do you think we need white students on the all black basketball team? The students replied "No, the team is the way it is based on skill and merit."
So the climate in universities is pretty ridiculous right now. One state is celebrating being able to racially profile for admissions.
One should be able to push back against this double standard in academic climates. The answer of "socio-economic inequality" or "systemic bias" is a non-answer. Seems to just create a victimhood complex in individuals and groups, as their new reasoning as to why their outcome in life may be different from others.
This is true. People want to believe that everyone is created equally. No. People are not equal. Black men, on average, have larger genitalia than other ethnic groups. How can you say all men are created equally?
Race really is a social construct. Why do you think Jewish people are considered "white" nowadays? They didn't used to be. They really do have a shared heritage; Levites really do seem to be descended from a small group; etc. But they're white... unless you ask a neonazi.
Meanwhile, there is more genetic diversity in Africa than in most of the rest of the world and yet in America there's one "black" race. In South Africa there's White, Colored and Black. In Brazil it's more complicated. People have been trying to divvy up the world into races "scientifically" and it literally never stands up to scrutiny. It can't be done.
?? You saying it's a social construct doesn't make the world believe you over it's 'lying eyes' differences in people are real, differences in groups are real. You don't like the term race. So what? So you like the word heritage. BTW of course Africa has more genetic diversity. It's an entire continent, unlike the United States, less landmass, different migration history. Just because there are overlaps doesn't mean a group of people can't have a pattern of genetic and visual and even behavioral traits that can't be divided into a race. Time to grow up.
"Differences in groups are real" doesn't mean anything, everyone agrees that differences between groups is a thing, that is the entire purpose of groupings, what you've failed to prove is that racial groupings represent anything other than "what the eyes see". The bottom line is that it doesn't matter what your eyes tell you because "eyes" are not a sufficient tool for genetic analysis, otherwise something like a paternity test would never be necessary because it would be apparent by looking at a father and child that they are directly related. Your eyes provide a crude signal for some genetic traits, not a definitive description. Your reasoning is akin to sorting boxes into groups based on their weight and then suggesting that weight classes are sufficient to describe the content of boxes because years of analysis based on weight has yielded statistical trends about particular weight class groupings.
It's not just what the eyes see. It's susceptibility to diseases, it's how it responds to environmental situations over short and long term. It's whether various medical treatments work and do not, it's personality, organization, temperament, child bearing. You may feel unconfortable with group differences being labeled 'race.' That's your problem, no reality's problem. And just because heritage can be about a thousand other markers, doesn't mean that there's not advantage to general highly useful but maybe less than absolutely perfect information such as forensically one can tell the race of an individual based on their remains.
> You may feel unconfortable with group differences being labeled 'race.' That's your problem, no reality's problem.
You keep trying to paint your opponents as unwilling to concede to your argument because it makes them feel uncomfortable, but pushing those imagined assumptions onto someone else's argument does not help your case.
> It's not just what the eyes see. It's susceptibility to diseases...
You can extrapolate statistical correlations based on any grouping criteria, so listing off correlations based on race does not prove that race is a fundamental description of genetics. I can list off numerous and similar statistical correlations based on finger length ratios but that doesn't prove that the length of your fingers is anything other than an arbitrary grouping; race just happens to be a socially convenient grouping mechanism because its criteria are based off of traits that are readily apparent to the naked eye.
"Susceptibility to disease"- yes, there's a genetic basis to many diseases and they can run in communities. Ashkenazi Jews have a particular constellation of diseases that are more common for them. But they are not a race. Nobody in America who isn't an anti-Semite will say you can't be Jewish and White.
All the discussion and research in the thread you responded to is about genetics, not race. So you're either not following carefully or you're trying to create a politically charged tangent. Either way I think it's worth responding because your argument is very common and misinformed.
The issue here is partially semantic (the worst kind of argument), but you're on the other side of most scientists for very good reason. The way race is defined in the West is a terrible proxy for genetics, which to me is enough to declare it a social construct. Compare the pygmy Mbenga people of Cameroon with the Dinka people of South Sudan, and you'll find two "black" populations with a two foot height difference and totally different genetics. You could define race in a more principled manner, but then you'd end up with 1000s of races with arbitrary distinctions between them.
> once we start thinking that one is better than the other, we get hierarchy, and we get superiority
Words like "better," "hierarchy," and "superiority" do not imply each other or follow from words like "different." I don't think the Irish are any worse (or less deserving of respect) than Kenyans because they're slower in a foot race. I can acknowledge the difference without accepting any of the value judgements you seem to think are inevitable.
We're almost certainly going to discover less palatable differences between races -- e.g. around intelligence. And the grandparent is right: you'd better be ready with a philosophy that accepts that reality on its own terms.
>>And the grandparent is right: you'd better be ready with a philosophy that accepts that reality on its own terms.
This makes me despair. How many times must history repeat itself?
You may be able to acknowledge just the difference, but I stick to what I said earlier: it's a slippery slope. And I'm not talking about dissimilarities in physical features like Irish vs Kenyan legs, but things like comparing intelligence in different races opens up Pandora's Box. Intelligence is not the only factor that makes up who we are, but it is easily and so often turned into a debate where it seems that it's the only thing that matters.
The discovery that one group is on average less intelligent than another needn't imply any particular policy anymore than the discovery that you're smarter than me implies that you and I should be afforded differing rights on that basis.
Also, let's be clear about the type of philosophy I mean. I mean one that affords all people the same basic rights, the position that none of our differences are so large as to justify preferential treatment, the position that our similarities are self-evident and sufficient.
> We're almost certainly going to discover less palatable differences between races -- e.g. around intelligence.
So whenever that is, I'll be eager to discover which phenotypic traits represent themselves on the spectrum of intelligence. I also wonder what concentration of melanin correlates with laziness and also about the particular hair texture and eye shape that can indicate poor driving skills. We can also demystify the relationship between nose size and financial proficiency (after factoring out penis size, of course).
Pick any metric. It doesn't matter. The position that differences aren't possible is a position that crumbles when the evidence shows otherwise. My position, on the other hand, is that all people should be afforded the same basic rights, regardless of their differences.
Note that my position does not hinge on crossing my fingers and hoping that the future of science corresponds with my sense of morality. My position weathers any outcome.
> My position, on the other hand, is that all people should be afforded the same basic rights, regardless of their differences.
Great, you've espoused the ostensible position of every person who isn't a self-identified racist.
> The position that differences aren't possible
Differences are clearly possible and readily apparent, my point is that any definitive conclusions drawn from correlations to "race" are of dubious merit because our racial definitions (as defined by the government and thus as it relates to policy) are imprecise heuristic amalgamations of apparent phenotypes. Skin tone, hair texture, facial structure in addition to language pretty much constitute the entirety of racial identity, so the impulse to group abstract polygenic characteristics like intelligence into what is essentially an individual's outward appearance doesn't lead to much in the way of profound insight. It's like trying to draw conclusions about road safety by measuring the correlation between car color and rate of receipt of speeding citations.
I think it's clear from your first comment which of us feels superior. Smugness seems to pass as argument in this debate.
I was clearly distinguishing between those who hold that position because they think there are no significant differences and those who would maintain that position if uncomfortable differences were discovered.
> I think it's clear from your first comment which of us feels superior. Smugness seems to pass as argument in this debate.
Not sure what you're referring to here but I did not use the word superior or make any references to superiority in any of my replies, but I think it's ironic that you accuse me of using smugness as an argument when you only responded to the first sentence of my reply (to tell me I'm smug) instead of the paragraph describing the argument.
> I was clearly distinguishing between those who hold that position because they think there are no significant differences and those who would maintain that position if uncomfortable differences were discovered.
What I'm telling you is that "those who hold that position because they think there are no significant differences" is a strawman. Once again, everyone except self-identified racists (they do exist) claim that all people should be treated equally and it is fallacious for you to claim a monopoly on this position because you believe it to be an inevitable truth that some races are genetically predisposed to stupidity.
Apologies. There's another commenter in this thread focused on superiority and I think I confused you two.
I would like to highlight how this argument engenders emotional hyperbole, though. My position is that there are likely uncomfortable genetic differences to be revealed ahead. You characterize this view as the "inevitable truth that some races are genetically predisposed to stupidity."
I'll just have to leave it to others to decide if I said anything at all like that.
> We're almost certainly going to discover less palatable differences between races -- e.g. around intelligence.
I read that as "we are almost certainly going to discover, for example, that some races are more intelligent than other races". From this statement it follows that we will be able to prove that some races are "more intelligent" and some races are "less intelligent", thus it seems fair to conclude that you're asserting that the genetic factors that cause someone to fall into a specific racial category predisposes them to a certain level of intelligence. From that position we can conclude that if an individual displays the phenotypic traits that meet the definition of one of the less intelligent races, it follows that this individual would be genetically predisposed to less intelligence, also known as stupidity.
I do notice that you said "almost certainly", not "inevitably" so I apologize for that, but please let me know if I have otherwise misinterpreted your position.
I don't know what you mean by "definitive conclusions". Any conclusions that will be made will naturally be statistical in nature, and obviously the boundaries between groups are fuzzy in many cases. That does not mean that groups do not exist. It's not a coincidence you can pass people by on the street and readily identify 95% of them as being "white", "Asian", "Indian (/Pakistani/etc)", "black", etc, and that if multiple people perform this task, the agreement will be very high. It's obviously shared genetics that are causing these groupings, and if shared genetics are leading to statistically significant identifiable observable characteristics in one area (appearance), it's reasonable to ask if they are leading to other statistically significant differences.
These differences are already used very widely in discussions about policy, as you noted, and that's exactly part of the reason why it should be fair game to fully investigate those differences.
> I don't know what you mean by "definitive conclusions"
I mean any conclusions that follow from a baseline assumption that certain races are genetically predisposed towards abstract characteristics. For example "we should target white communities for voluntary firearm buy-back programs because white people are genetically pre-disposed to firearm suicide." We know that white people are statistically more likely to commit suicide and statistically more likely to use a gun to do it, we also know that genetics play a large role in suicide risk, what does not follow is that the common genetic factors that culminate to express the phenotypes that are unscientifically identified as "white" necessarily imply the existence of genetic factors that increase suicide risk.
You might ask, "Well what's the practical difference? In your example we should still target white people for the buy-back because the statistics show the population we define as white is the most vulnerable". To this I say, that's ok, we collected data on "white" people so targeting them for assistance is the best we can do, but it doesn't mean that we cannot do better in the future by disentangling the specific genetic factors that increase suicide risk from the opaque genetic category of "white" people.
> It's not a coincidence you can pass people by on the street and readily identify 95% of them as being "white", "Asian", "Indian (/Pakistani/etc)", "black", etc, and that if multiple people perform this task, the agreement will be very high. It's obviously shared genetics that are causing these groupings
Right, what I'm saying is that walking down the street and categorizing people into races based on how they look is a crude and unscientific (but efficient) method for grouping people with some shared genetics. Obviously, shared genetics are at the root of these groupings because genetics are the foundation of all phenotypes, but it is not a given that the presence of the phenotypes used to define arbitrary categories like "white" or "black" or "indian" necessarily account for the genetic factors that culminate to make someone more or less prone to violence, or intelligence, or an affinity for musical composition.
> These differences are already used very widely in discussions about policy, as you noted, and that's exactly part of the reason why it should be fair game to fully investigate those differences.
Investigate away, I have no problem with that, we use racial categories because they are practical, what I reject is the hypothesis that we will one day be able to prove that there is an intrinsic link between the particular genes that cause the expression of a given phenotype and the specific polygenes that constitute complex characteristics like intelligence.
False dichotomy. People who currently assume that there is no correlation between skin pigmentation and intelligence are unlikely to stop believing in equal human rights if genetic studies were to prove them wrong.
On the other hand, people who believe that there is such a correlation have a convenient excuse to consider themselves objectively superior while smugly granting rights to the inferior races.
It's always the people most against innocuous suggestions about the possibility of differences that use words like "superiority." That is your hang-up, not mine.
Look, if you're going to go around blowing white supremacist dog whistles then you don't get to act surprised when people call you a white supremacist.
Is it possible that you're not really a white supremacist, and that you're just leaving your mind open to whatever the science determines? Maybe. But if that's the case, the burden is on you to convince us clearly and thoroughly that you are not a racist.
Yours is an unfortunate if predictable reply that demonstrates how (generally) broken this discussion is. I don't think it's possible to dispassionately read into my comment what you have. You're plainly layering a bunch of your own stuff on top of my argument.
> You're plainly layering a bunch of your own stuff on top of my argument.
There is baggage associated with your argument, and it didn't originate from me. You can't deny that. What you can do is acknowledge the baggage and disavow it. You have not done so, which leads me to suspect that you might be comfortable with the baggage.
As far as I can tell, all you have contributed to this conversation are the assertions that inherent racial differences "almost certainly" exist and that those who disagree have a world view that is inconsistent with universal basic rights, followed by affectedly exasperated claims that anyone who disagrees with you is simply too encumbered by hang-ups and complexes to understand your reality. Do you understand that even if your position is genuinely non-racist, you have completely failed to communicate that? Part of communication is recognizing the broader context in which our words will be interpreted and addressing that context. We do not have the privilege of communicating in a vacuum.
Put another way, and charitably assuming that you are not a white supremacist, what's different between what you have said and what a white supremacist would say if they were trying to be oblique about it?
> once we start thinking that one is better than the other, we get hierarchy, and we get superiority
...with a rebuttal that argues against drawing that conclusion on the basis that uncomfortable discoveries do not imply a hierarchy.
In other words -- and note how absurd this is -- you're saying that my position, which is that differences need not and should not imply a hierarchy, implies not only that I do think there is a hierarchy, but that it's a hierarchy with whites on top.
You drew the exact opposite conclusion from very plain words.
Bluntly: the game you're playing -- you're a white supremacist until you say otherwise! -- is gross. I've said absolutely nothing to imply that I am one. (Again, I actually said exactly the opposite.) Your attempt to hold me hostage is absurd.
And before you respond that I still haven't denied it: Knock it off. This is not how adults disagree.
> Bluntly: the game you're playing -- you're a white supremacist until you say otherwise! -- is gross. I've said absolutely nothing to imply that I am one. Your attempt to hold me hostage is absurd.
I think I've been fairly clear about what I'm saying, and that's not it. What I am saying is that you are either a white supremacist or a terrible communicator. Frankly I'm surprised you are willing to toe the line this closely with an account that is personally identifiable.
> And before you respond that I still haven't denied it: Knock it off. This is not how adults disagree.
Mr. Burkett, you have littered this thread with short, asinine replies that carefully avoid engaging with anyone's arguments. You are not in a position to be accusing anyone of childishness.
>Frankly I'm surprised you are willing to toe the line this closely with an account that is personally identifiable.
It's only surprising to you because you're ascribing to me views I don't hold.
Second, though my details are in my profile, your use of my name is clearly meant to be threatening and is therefore over the line. A comment like that is simply out of line.
It's a serious violation of the rules here to bring in someone's personal details as ammunition in an argument, regardless of how wrong they are. Please don't do this again.
We have both clearly broken the civility rule and I apologize for my part in it, but if someone chooses to identify themselves I don't see how it's uncivil to address them by name. Indeed, I see it done fairly regularly here on HN.
Why does your "philosophy" have to presume that such hypothetical uncomfortable discoveries are actual fact? Why can't you accept that we don't understand genetics nearly that well and that human rights aren't based on genetics? Why do you believe that people who disagree with you are basing their philosophies on genetics? I don't believe a person with Downs Syndrome is entitled to fewer rights, for example.
My comments were controversial, but they were certainly not instantly uncivil. That's quite an uncharitable reading, given my history on this site. However I clearly did let the conversation go on too long . That was pointless and wrong. Apologies for that.
It obviously goes beyond the word "instantly." I'm afraid we disagree irreconcilably about the limits of reasonable civil discourse. Your definition of "starting a flamewar" is indistinguishable from "stating an unpopular position."
Those of you who turned this discussion into a circle of hell with your incivility, ideology, and attacks make me ashamed to be associated with this site.
We're soon going to release a much stronger version of the site guidelines and start making it a lot clearer how unacceptable such behavior is on HN. If you want to abuse each other or blast your views at enemies, please go elsewhere. There's no intellectual curiosity in any of this, and the vast majority of us are here to avoid it.
HN is very China sensitive with a huge Chinese population. Anything critical of China, no matter how well sourced, will lead to stuff like this. Its shameful. HN isn't what it used to be. It is no longer a place to criticize state run media or state run science from corrupt autocratic states.
The problem with eternal September is that it quickly devolves into eternal political correctness. What is pc is then determined by the majority, so its a classic case of mob rule. Minority opinions are called offensive as a way to censor others. I can't believe HN has become like this.
Eternal September is usually seen as a devolution from political correctness, not towards it. That the culture established by the consensus is undermined by new users who refuse to respect it and act "correctly" is Eternal September.
That's a common resort of people who've broken the civility rules here, but the rules have nothing to do with "the narrative". They have to do with protecting civil, substantive discussion. Those things ought to be orthogonal; that they aren't seems to be a side effect of people feeling that they needn't treat others well if their position goes against the mainstream. An odd supposition.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 182 ms ] threadWhat I don't understand is, the article also says the genetical picture still points to the established ("old") theories centering on Africa? As someone only reading about the subject on the side whenever something interesting comes up I'm slightly confused by this aspect of the article.
I'm not confused about there not being a linear but a convoluted story - I never thought there was (except when I was fresh out of an East German school quite some time ago and everything being a linear progress story eventually leading to communism was quite clear :) ).
Also always worth remembering that the classification as eg sapiens, heidelbergensis or erectus is not one checklist that always ticks the same boxes. In each of these groups defined by us on the basis of some common features but there is much variation. And of course there are regional or temporal differences within eg sapiens.
Then you have parallel evolutions, interbreeding, fakes, unclear dating, and you never know if a particular specimen that you find really has 'typical ' features and genes for that time and space, eg it could have been that one lady/guy that happened to have wandered far from where the rest of its group remained, or could have been somewhat different. Eg imagine the only specimen that remains from our era is an inbred Egyptian pharaoh or someone with down syndrome. Those are bad examples as you could probably figure such things somewhat from the DNA, but it's not so clear for every condition, eg if epigenetics* had some bigger effect.
* = A layer on your genes that De/activates or strengthens/weakens their effects and that we barely understand. The famous example is that data on Danish military recruits, which were measured upon entry into service, showed that if a man suffers starvation/malnutrition in his childhood his sons (!) will on average be less tall than others of their generation. One generation is not enough for genetic selection, so it must be a change in epigenetics.
Chimpanzee and human DNA are 96 to 99% identical. Does the 97% DNA match between human and the African fossil have any significance at all?
It is clear that just a couple of percent different is a HUGE difference in animals (I am including humans as animals).
So, while it is clear that there is some relationship, the percentage of DNA matches does not seem like strong evidence of "this follows from that" and seems more like "this and that share common previous DNA".
And of course there is a political and social-responsibility component to this, even though people pretend like scientist are immune to politics or social trends.
My takeaway is that there is new fossil evidence, which I think should excite researchers everywhere. Instead, the article ends on a researcher expressing cautionary restraint.
What am I missing? Is fossil evidence not reliable? Does this new evidence challenge conventional wisdom about human evolution?
> Some Western researchers suggest that there is a hint of nationalism in Chinese palaeontologists' support for continuity. “The Chinese — they do not accept the idea that H. sapiens evolved in Africa,” says one researcher. “They want everything to come from China.”
> Chinese researchers reject such allegations. “This has nothing to do with nationalism,” says Wu. It's all about the evidence — the transitional fossils and archaeological artefacts, he says. “Everything points to continuous evolution in China from H. erectus to modern human.”
> But the continuity-with-hybridization model is countered by overwhelming genetic data that point to Africa as the wellspring of modern humans. Studies of Chinese populations show that 97.4% of their genetic make-up is from ancestral modern humans from Africa [...]
> “If there had been significant contributions from Chinese H. erectus, they would show up in the genetic data,” says Li Hui, a population geneticist at Fudan University in Shanghai.
It's basically the equivalent of climate deniers vs climate change, with the deniers' funding basically coming from a single government.
There's intense nationalism (and racism) at play here, and the Chinese government isn't funding pure science so much as it is funding science with the intent of finding a specific result.
I'm not a paleontologist, but I've lived and studied International Relations in China (at Tsinghua University, where many of China's leaders studied), and I saw first hand how research was corrupted and self-regulated to draw certain conclusions that agreed with the Government's known or perceived position. This was often felt to be necessary to protect funding and academic positions (one professor of mine in private confessed to me that "80% of what I say is true, and the rest I say for reasons we all know").
I know there is strong nationalistic beliefs around human origins in China as well, and suspect strongly the same forces that affect IR academic research are at play here.
Fake fossils are also extremely common in China[1][2], and widespread racism, especially toward black people, is difficult to overstate[3] (which leaves many Chinese refusing to believe they may have originated in Africa).
There's a good reason many paleontologists outside of China are taking many of these studies and theories with a China-sized grain of salt. That isn't to say that there isn't good science being done in China as well. But sometimes it can be difficult to separate the 20% from the 80%, and when findings seem to draw conclusions that the Government wanted to see all along, they're rightly viewed highly suspiciously.
[1] https://www.paleodirect.com/fake-chinese-fossils-fossil-forg...
[2] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-fake-fossils-p...
[3] http://thediplomat.com/2016/06/racism-with-chinese-character...
When China was promoting the idea of it controlling the South China Sea, suddenly my feed was full of bullshit academic articles about finding Chinese culture artifacts on those not-really islands. As well as a fabled 600 year old book that no longer exists. Its clear this was done by the CCP to help their claim of those islands.
Back in the old days China made propagandist attacks on western medicine and cooked the books on its traditional medicine, which was administered at the time and still today in many/some cases. It was almost all fraud. They weren't claiming a little bit of zing from Ginseng or a bit of pain relief from massage or acupuncture but cancer cures and such using roots and stews.
No, it's not. That "one researcher" made an opinion that he thinks nationalism is at play. “They want everything to come from China.” is literally an opinion.
> but I've lived and studied International Relations in China (at Tsinghua University, where many of China's leaders studied), and I saw first hand how research was corrupted and self-regulated to draw certain conclusions that agreed with the Government's known or perceived position.
That's anecdotal. The snippet I included, directly after the nationalist's opinion, is a Chinese guy (part of the "they" I assume) at a Chinese university, disagreeing with him. Do you have actual numbers of how widespread the nationalist agenda on this particular issue is? Or is this just more opinion? Also, that sounds similar to lots of PhD's lives trying to get funding from their government.
>I know there is strong nationalistic beliefs around human origins in China as well, and suspect strongly the same forces that affect IR academic research are at play here. Fake fossils are also extremely common in China[1][2], and widespread racism, especially toward black people, is difficult to overstate[3] (which leaves many Chinese refusing to believe they may have originated in Africa).
I could replace "China" with "Japan", who aren't exactly strangers to a similar agenda, heck even the NYT commented on it. But I don't claim to assume the whole country thinks that way because I doubt there are numbers on it.
On the other hand, it is moronic to think it "comes down" to nationalism. It is utterly disrespectful to dozens of scientists devoting their careers to the research. As the article says itself, it is a 'fuzzy picture', as many fields still are, like evolutionary biology. Darwin's theory of natural selection is regarded as mostly correct. That doesn't mean Lamarck's theory is completely wrong. If you have studied epigenetics, you would have re-considered all you had learned on evolutionary biology. That is how science progresses.
Quote from the Chinese researcher. Essentially they're saying that the modern human evolved in China, even though:
"Studies of Chinese populations show that 97.4% of their genetic make-up is from ancestral modern humans from Africa, with the rest coming from extinct forms such as Neanderthals and Denisovans"
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0214/14022014-inter...
Unless you're saying that two identical homo sapiens groups evolved in parallel in Africa and Asia, they're saying homo sapiens came from Asia.
http://www.nature.com/news/535218a-i2-jpg-7.37680?article=1....
So its about Asians being on their own branch (also out of Africa, earlier) according to this, not Asia as the original origin.
From the text:
> Stringer even suggests that H. heidelbergensis might have originated in Asia and then spread to other continents.
> But many researchers, including most Chinese palaeontologists, contend that the materials from China are different from European and African H. heidelbergensis fossils, despite some apparent similarities.
So I read this that the Chinese opinion is explicitly not that they are the origin for all, only that they are on their own branch.
And this is quite clear:
> Most Chinese palaeontologists — and a few ardent supporters from the West — think that the transitional fossils are evidence that Peking Man was an ancestor of modern Asian people.
It says "of modern Asian people".
> In this model, known as multiregionalism or continuity with hybridization, hominins descended from H. erectus in Asia interbred with incoming groups from Africa and other parts of Eurasia, and their progeny gave rise to the ancestors of modern east Asians, says Wu.
1. They have had a highly developed culture since at least 5000 years (but please don't tell them that their bone carvings can't compete with what the Egyptians had)
2. Their culture developed totally independent and without exchange with other cultures and civilizations in the West. (Don't mention for example the Tarim mummies, this is insulting for Chinese: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarim_mummies )
3. Chinese always hated and rejected the idea that they developed from African/black ancestors. So this is really a question that is asked in China with a very strong bias.
They're not very far behind the West in that regard. Piltdown man was only discredited in 1953...
Prominent Japanese archaeologist Shinichi Fujimura has been caught red-handed burying artifacts at a site, prompting demands for a review of the nation's Palaeolithic record. Nicknamed "God's Hands" by colleagues who marveled at his luck in locating ancient sites, Fujimura was senior director at the Tohoku Paleolithic Institute. His discovery of artifacts dated to the early Palaeolithic period (600,000-120,000 years ago) at the Kamitakamori ruins in Miyagi Prefecture in 1994 established the site as Japan's oldest. Fujimura's team recently made headlines again following discovery of postholes that provided evidence for early Palaeolithic dwellings at Kamitakamori.
Fujimura's hoax, occurring less than a month after his team's headline-making posthole discovery, was exposed by Japan's Mainichi Shimbun newspaper, which published three photographs on its front page of him deliberately burying 61 artifacts on the Kamitakamori site. The artifacts were taken by Fujimura from earlier excavations. He has also confessed to deliberately burying artifacts at the Palaeolithic site of Soshinfudozaka, but insists his other discoveries were authentic.
A lot of questionable finds and outright hoaxes tie into ethnic, nationalist, or local pride. (2)
China has a record of attempting to use historical/archeological artifacts to establish modern-day territorial claims (3):
China’s archaeological work in disputed islands also extends to the Spratly Island chain, which it disputes with the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan. China has identified roughly 200 different underwater “cultural heritage sites” between the Spratlys and the Paracels, and has been conducting archaeological explorations in the Spratlys since at least 2013.
Maritime archaeology seems like an innocuous enough field. Yet Kaogu-01’s deployment close to the site of a battle between China and Vietnam in an island chain still claimed by the latter, as well as ongoing archaeological work in the disputed Spratly Island chain, indicate that China may see a secondary, political purpose in expanding its maritime archaeological industry, namely strengthening China’s claims to disputed areas in the South China Sea.
1. http://archive.archaeology.org/0101/newsbriefs/godshands.htm...
2. http://www.anonymousswisscollector.com/2014/10/faking-the-pa...
3. http://thediplomat.com/2015/07/archaeology-and-the-south-chi...
> Despite the different interpretations of the Chinese fossil record, everybody agrees that the evolutionary tale in Asia is much more interesting than people appreciated before. But the details remain fuzzy, because so few researchers have excavated in Asia.
> When they have, the results have been startling.
> ...
> But all agree that Asia — the largest continent on Earth — has a lot more to offer in terms of unravelling the human story. “The centre of gravity,” says Petraglia[0], “is shifting eastward.”
Note that the person cited last telling you about a shift to the East is not Chinese.
[0] Prof. Michael Petraglia: An archaeologist at the University of Oxford, UK. - http://www.arch.ox.ac.uk/MP1.html and http://www.shh.mpg.de/178394/petraglia
China is a one party state with dictatorial control over pretty much everything. Do you really think those guys have any check against CCP thugs telling them what to publish? Being a good scientist takes a back seat to your survival and the survival of your family. Most people aren't willing to be tortured or killed for their views.
For example, in the article, Dr. Li Hui apparently disagrees with the continuity-with-hybridization model. Dr. Li Hui works in Fudan University, Shanghai.
I did biology research in Beijing for two years in 1990's. My advisor openly challenged the research of a "government-sponsored" professor in department meetings. Many professors supported her, my advisor. I don't think she got any "special" treatments from the government. The last time I heard from her, she was enjoying her time after retirement.
Authorities also tightened press restrictions. The State Administration of Press Publication, Radio, Film, and Television issued a directive in July requiring that Chinese journalists sign an agreement stating that they will not release unpublished information without prior approval from their employers and requiring that they pass political ideology exams before they can be issued official press cards.
In July, the CCP’s disciplinary commission announced that researchers at the central Chinese Academic of Social Sciences had been “infiltrated by foreign forces” and participated in “illegal collusion” during politically sensitive periods. The party subsequently issued a rule that would make ideological evaluation a top requirement for assessing CASS researchers; those who fail are to be expelled.
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2015/country-chapters/china...
Academic Fraud in China:
http://www.chinesemedicalnews.com/2015/03/academic-fraud-in-...
The open access publisher BioMedCentral has this week announced the retraction of 43 medical journal publications by Chinese researchers after it discovered widespread peer review fraud. Most of the articles were submitted by medical researchers at universities in China, including China Medical University, Sichuan University, Shandong University and Jiaotong University Medical School.
Including uncivil swipes like that in your arguments here will eventually get you banned, so please be scrupulously civil from now on, especially when commenting on inflammatory topics and/or when you think someone else is wrong.
There are problems with scientific freedom in the U.S. related to funding and job retention. Even if the situation in China isn't as bad as it used to be, it's still not good.
So, it's a magicians trick: Make people think you are doing A (Science), but you really are doing B (pushing your own agenda).
Repeatable, controlled experiments are certainly the gold-standard of observation, but but they're not the only form of scientific observation.
Your notion of science is confused.
Non-experimental studies can still be verified and often repeated. Take a cor relational study for instance: you can perform the same measure on a totally new sample and see if the effect is still exhibited.
With regards to fossils, these are available for cross-examination, so in principle, you can replicate the carbon 14 dating sequence or examine morphological features in light of new paleontological findings.
I repeat: experiments are not the only verifiable/replicable forms of empirical study. You are confused (and that's quite alright!)
So how do you verify that the fossil was found where they said it was found?
I apologize, but I can't resist the urge to ridicule you: I have a Ph.D in cognitive neuroscience so I think I'm more "cut out to be a scientist" than most.
>So how do you verify that the fossil was found where they said it was found?
You would have to ask a paleontologist, but I would be inclined to verify the following:
- You should find evidence of tectonic forces in fossils (fissures? encasings of a specific rock type?) that are consistent with the location in which they were claimed to be found.
- You should find other fossils near the location of the original
- Less satisfying, perhaps, but fossils are photographed on-site when they are found and the pictures are annotated with date, time and GPS coordinates
- The encasing sedimentary rock should contain the same proportions of minerals as the purported location.
So, again, you are misinformed/confused. Rather than lashing out, I urge you to take a genuine interest in these things; it's essential to understand a claim before disagreeing with it.
All of the above are nice indicators, but not above being faked by people who know exactly how these things are normally verified, except maybe the "finding lots of fossils nearby" point, which is unlikely if that fossil finding was so spectacular.
I am not emotionally involved in this argument, as you seem to be, sorry for trolling you, I just couldn't resist. You basically cannot win this argument: in the end you will have to admit that none of this constitutes proof. Another Ph.D. here who knows one or two things about proof.
If there are experiments I can perform in principle AFTER the fossil finding to convince myself that the fossil finding is not a fake, then this would constitute enough experimental proof for me. Because then the fossil finding has in fact become a repeatable experiment. The only question then would be if the journal that accepted the paper about the fossil finding has performed these verifying experiments?
Darn if I remember the details, but this serves to illustrate a point: You don't need to repeat the creation of the earth. You can develop theories and instead of repeating the whole process predict something obscure that isn't obvious at all to a very high precision, and see if at some later point what you predict might be found.
Same here: They could make predictions about what they expect to find at what locations, and when something is eventually found we can check if it's true. If you are specific enough with your prediction and not just "we'll find ancient bones" your prediction is as good a validation of the theory as is possible, and the more of it the better. After all, your one prediction isn't the only one, there will be others and everything builds on top of other stuff equally verified. Either a whole section of such a house of knowledge crashes if a prediction doesn't come true (something is found and it's different from predicted), or, on the other hand, more and more predictions are added on top and more and more come true, with each new one you can be a little surer of the basis than before.
You won't get much better than that in any field. Maybe math, but that's a "helper", not a field of science (insert the famous Einstein quote here...). Repeatable experiments don't give you that much more - if a lot of such predictions are made and verified it may even be better. A network of many things that all fit together (each one verified by such predictions) is really good evidence, also compared to just a single repeatable experiment. Sure, having both is even better. There are no absolutes.
While experiments are great when you can do them, natural observations can also be used to test these predictions just fine.
The Out-of-Africa narrative has to be understood in this context, that it is a very positive narrative, that humans-as-humans developed just once in this tiny spot in Africa and then spread out around the world very recently, never interbred with other hominid species so they're all gone, and therefore we're all pretty much exactly the same.
What has been emerging especially now that genetic sequencing is becoming rapidly cheaper and more advanced at picking human genomes out of the genetic diaspora found in old fossils, is a much more complicated picture. The Chinese obviously have little need to adhere to US political correctness, so they're beginning to push the evidence that Asian hominid genes contributed to the emergence of modern humans/civilization.
The emerging picture to me is one of multiple waves of hominin advances spreading in a varied way and admixing with existing local populations. So there's pretty clearly an ancient Out-of-Africa wave of homo erectus(who were far more advanced than previously acknowledged), a possible evolution of "homo erectus+" and wave out of Asia, and likely an "Out of Arabia" mix of neanderthals and AMHs in the Levant, all of which intermixed imperfectly. The Neanderthals themselves look plausibly responsible for some advances in human civilization (Mousterians)
What you wind up with is a far more complex picture of human evolution and far more significant and long-standing difference between human populations, which I think requires a new narrative and philosophy for what human equality means and a way to ground it on something more fundamental than a wished-for genetic similarity.
As with so many sociological effects caused by technology and knowledge, there's a tradition of science fiction that deals with this concept. Is a human level AI intelligence human, or something else? If it's something else, does it deserve the same rights as a human? If we uplift a species, do we expand the classification of "human" to cover that as well? What does it mean to be human? We can inch along and slowly change our laws based on the understandings we have right now, or we can attempt to leap-frog that thinking and provide a framework for protecting intelligent species (to whatever degree) and try to take a more holistic approach to this before it becomes a mess. This is a problem we will have to deal with eventually, should we be so lucky to survive that long.
Here's a less extreme (but still wild) scenario: A tribe of neanderthals is discovered. Do they deserve human rights? I could see some not very good things happening in the short time before consensus formed around that answer, but what, really makes neanderthals more deserving than Gorillas, dolphins, cows, or cats and dogs? We, as a species and as nations (mostly, there are exceptions) have been able to punt on this question because it may upset the way we currently function, but we owe it to ourselves to answer why we should care more about a neanderthal than a cow (if we should).
What? They're crazy racist and don't want to believe they're African. That's it. Its a common bias with the Chinese. You're playing up a conspiracy that doesn't exist. Why would the US give two fucks about telling everyone they're African? The US has a history of slavery and segregation and still is economically/socially segregated today.
We have good evidence that everyone is from Africa:
By assuming a mutation rate anchored to archaeological events (such as the migration of people across the Bering Strait), the team concluded that all males in their global sample shared a single male ancestor in Africa roughly 125,000 to 156,000 years ago.
http://www.livescience.com/38613-genetic-adam-and-eve-uncove...
No man, or woman, on this planet, is free from ideological bias.
They led a life with prevalent poverty and lack of food, and almost any kind of living supplies. They all need to work hard. I am not surprised that an older generation Chinese call most US people lazy.
As for whether there is a racism judgement, I dont know. You are most close to your dad. :)
I think there is a history of contorting facts about world to work well with moral or political goals, often well meaning. There’s the connection between homogenous Out Of Africa humanity to promote egality and fraternity, directly opposite nazi race theories. The Nazi race and culture theories were themselves contortions to support nazi political and moral agendas.
Feminism did it, with the nature-nurture stuff. To some extent, gay rights did it with the “born like this slogan.”
The effects on our theories of the world, popular or scientific, can outlast the political need by generations.
I also love following the human origin story (it's probably the scientific topic outside my field of study I read up on the most), and I have to admit I really don't like the way you framed your comment. You are following the pattern of many other anti-academics who paint a strawman of simple-minded scientists who miss obvious conclusions for some ulterior purpose. I'm sure you're not purposefully doing it, but you have to understand that 1000s of people have devoted their life to studying this topic, and there isn't some conspiracy to hide the truth.
It's been known for years that modern humans have bred with other hominid species, and the theories have been changing to reflect this. A lot of evidence of early human settlements are 20 feet under water today, so it's a surprisingly tough study of topic. You're right that genetic testing has been changing our understanding of things, but this is a recent development. No one is trying to hide anything or avoid topics of study; everything is widely written about, including in pop-literature like this excellent book (which has a very candid chapter on variations in human intelligence, btw): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/014303832X
I'm sorry but that sounds mighty dangerous. Human equality was never grounded in genetic similarity; you do not need to know that your salad mix of ancestors are different to others to understand that every human today deserves equality. Sure groups of people may be different - like culture - but once we start thinking that one is better than the other, we get hierarchy, and we get superiority. It's not as if it doesn't exist today at varying degrees but careful that it doesn't gain mass momentum. It's a slippery slope and one we've gone down far too often.
How is this the top comment?
The call is coming from inside the house.
Out of Africa is true, but on a different timescale than more recent adaptations like skin color. You can walk back from eastern Asia to South Africa in well under a year. Assuming migration was completely in one direction is a laymen misunderstanding of long standing theory's. It's a density argument where you need populations in an area before there is any trace over these timescales.
Consider some early hominid decides to follow the rising sun and ends up in Beijing. Great, well unless he finds someone else there he is going to live out his life and die without children. Even a small group does the same, without sufficient genetic diversity or immigrants they die out fairly quickly or are simply overwhelmed by the next wave.
Also, 'humans' tend to make it safer for other humans in the area by killing off large predators, finding edible plants etc.
PS: 70,000bce - 1,600,000bce is a very long time period. But, 1.6 million years ago South East Asia already had human ancestors and fire use is ~1.5 million years old.
Asking same student body, do you think we need white students on the all black basketball team? The students replied "No, the team is the way it is based on skill and merit."
So the climate in universities is pretty ridiculous right now. One state is celebrating being able to racially profile for admissions.
One should be able to push back against this double standard in academic climates. The answer of "socio-economic inequality" or "systemic bias" is a non-answer. Seems to just create a victimhood complex in individuals and groups, as their new reasoning as to why their outcome in life may be different from others.
Meanwhile, there is more genetic diversity in Africa than in most of the rest of the world and yet in America there's one "black" race. In South Africa there's White, Colored and Black. In Brazil it's more complicated. People have been trying to divvy up the world into races "scientifically" and it literally never stands up to scrutiny. It can't be done.
Race is a shared fiction. Heritage is real.
You keep trying to paint your opponents as unwilling to concede to your argument because it makes them feel uncomfortable, but pushing those imagined assumptions onto someone else's argument does not help your case.
> It's not just what the eyes see. It's susceptibility to diseases...
You can extrapolate statistical correlations based on any grouping criteria, so listing off correlations based on race does not prove that race is a fundamental description of genetics. I can list off numerous and similar statistical correlations based on finger length ratios but that doesn't prove that the length of your fingers is anything other than an arbitrary grouping; race just happens to be a socially convenient grouping mechanism because its criteria are based off of traits that are readily apparent to the naked eye.
The issue here is partially semantic (the worst kind of argument), but you're on the other side of most scientists for very good reason. The way race is defined in the West is a terrible proxy for genetics, which to me is enough to declare it a social construct. Compare the pygmy Mbenga people of Cameroon with the Dinka people of South Sudan, and you'll find two "black" populations with a two foot height difference and totally different genetics. You could define race in a more principled manner, but then you'd end up with 1000s of races with arbitrary distinctions between them.
Words like "better," "hierarchy," and "superiority" do not imply each other or follow from words like "different." I don't think the Irish are any worse (or less deserving of respect) than Kenyans because they're slower in a foot race. I can acknowledge the difference without accepting any of the value judgements you seem to think are inevitable.
We're almost certainly going to discover less palatable differences between races -- e.g. around intelligence. And the grandparent is right: you'd better be ready with a philosophy that accepts that reality on its own terms.
This makes me despair. How many times must history repeat itself?
You may be able to acknowledge just the difference, but I stick to what I said earlier: it's a slippery slope. And I'm not talking about dissimilarities in physical features like Irish vs Kenyan legs, but things like comparing intelligence in different races opens up Pandora's Box. Intelligence is not the only factor that makes up who we are, but it is easily and so often turned into a debate where it seems that it's the only thing that matters.
So whenever that is, I'll be eager to discover which phenotypic traits represent themselves on the spectrum of intelligence. I also wonder what concentration of melanin correlates with laziness and also about the particular hair texture and eye shape that can indicate poor driving skills. We can also demystify the relationship between nose size and financial proficiency (after factoring out penis size, of course).
Note that my position does not hinge on crossing my fingers and hoping that the future of science corresponds with my sense of morality. My position weathers any outcome.
Great, you've espoused the ostensible position of every person who isn't a self-identified racist.
> The position that differences aren't possible
Differences are clearly possible and readily apparent, my point is that any definitive conclusions drawn from correlations to "race" are of dubious merit because our racial definitions (as defined by the government and thus as it relates to policy) are imprecise heuristic amalgamations of apparent phenotypes. Skin tone, hair texture, facial structure in addition to language pretty much constitute the entirety of racial identity, so the impulse to group abstract polygenic characteristics like intelligence into what is essentially an individual's outward appearance doesn't lead to much in the way of profound insight. It's like trying to draw conclusions about road safety by measuring the correlation between car color and rate of receipt of speeding citations.
I was clearly distinguishing between those who hold that position because they think there are no significant differences and those who would maintain that position if uncomfortable differences were discovered.
Not sure what you're referring to here but I did not use the word superior or make any references to superiority in any of my replies, but I think it's ironic that you accuse me of using smugness as an argument when you only responded to the first sentence of my reply (to tell me I'm smug) instead of the paragraph describing the argument.
> I was clearly distinguishing between those who hold that position because they think there are no significant differences and those who would maintain that position if uncomfortable differences were discovered.
What I'm telling you is that "those who hold that position because they think there are no significant differences" is a strawman. Once again, everyone except self-identified racists (they do exist) claim that all people should be treated equally and it is fallacious for you to claim a monopoly on this position because you believe it to be an inevitable truth that some races are genetically predisposed to stupidity.
I would like to highlight how this argument engenders emotional hyperbole, though. My position is that there are likely uncomfortable genetic differences to be revealed ahead. You characterize this view as the "inevitable truth that some races are genetically predisposed to stupidity."
I'll just have to leave it to others to decide if I said anything at all like that.
> We're almost certainly going to discover less palatable differences between races -- e.g. around intelligence.
I read that as "we are almost certainly going to discover, for example, that some races are more intelligent than other races". From this statement it follows that we will be able to prove that some races are "more intelligent" and some races are "less intelligent", thus it seems fair to conclude that you're asserting that the genetic factors that cause someone to fall into a specific racial category predisposes them to a certain level of intelligence. From that position we can conclude that if an individual displays the phenotypic traits that meet the definition of one of the less intelligent races, it follows that this individual would be genetically predisposed to less intelligence, also known as stupidity.
I do notice that you said "almost certainly", not "inevitably" so I apologize for that, but please let me know if I have otherwise misinterpreted your position.
These differences are already used very widely in discussions about policy, as you noted, and that's exactly part of the reason why it should be fair game to fully investigate those differences.
I mean any conclusions that follow from a baseline assumption that certain races are genetically predisposed towards abstract characteristics. For example "we should target white communities for voluntary firearm buy-back programs because white people are genetically pre-disposed to firearm suicide." We know that white people are statistically more likely to commit suicide and statistically more likely to use a gun to do it, we also know that genetics play a large role in suicide risk, what does not follow is that the common genetic factors that culminate to express the phenotypes that are unscientifically identified as "white" necessarily imply the existence of genetic factors that increase suicide risk.
You might ask, "Well what's the practical difference? In your example we should still target white people for the buy-back because the statistics show the population we define as white is the most vulnerable". To this I say, that's ok, we collected data on "white" people so targeting them for assistance is the best we can do, but it doesn't mean that we cannot do better in the future by disentangling the specific genetic factors that increase suicide risk from the opaque genetic category of "white" people.
> It's not a coincidence you can pass people by on the street and readily identify 95% of them as being "white", "Asian", "Indian (/Pakistani/etc)", "black", etc, and that if multiple people perform this task, the agreement will be very high. It's obviously shared genetics that are causing these groupings
Right, what I'm saying is that walking down the street and categorizing people into races based on how they look is a crude and unscientific (but efficient) method for grouping people with some shared genetics. Obviously, shared genetics are at the root of these groupings because genetics are the foundation of all phenotypes, but it is not a given that the presence of the phenotypes used to define arbitrary categories like "white" or "black" or "indian" necessarily account for the genetic factors that culminate to make someone more or less prone to violence, or intelligence, or an affinity for musical composition.
> These differences are already used very widely in discussions about policy, as you noted, and that's exactly part of the reason why it should be fair game to fully investigate those differences.
Investigate away, I have no problem with that, we use racial categories because they are practical, what I reject is the hypothesis that we will one day be able to prove that there is an intrinsic link between the particular genes that cause the expression of a given phenotype and the specific polygenes that constitute complex characteristics like intelligence.
On the other hand, people who believe that there is such a correlation have a convenient excuse to consider themselves objectively superior while smugly granting rights to the inferior races.
Is it possible that you're not really a white supremacist, and that you're just leaving your mind open to whatever the science determines? Maybe. But if that's the case, the burden is on you to convince us clearly and thoroughly that you are not a racist.
There is baggage associated with your argument, and it didn't originate from me. You can't deny that. What you can do is acknowledge the baggage and disavow it. You have not done so, which leads me to suspect that you might be comfortable with the baggage.
As far as I can tell, all you have contributed to this conversation are the assertions that inherent racial differences "almost certainly" exist and that those who disagree have a world view that is inconsistent with universal basic rights, followed by affectedly exasperated claims that anyone who disagrees with you is simply too encumbered by hang-ups and complexes to understand your reality. Do you understand that even if your position is genuinely non-racist, you have completely failed to communicate that? Part of communication is recognizing the broader context in which our words will be interpreted and addressing that context. We do not have the privilege of communicating in a vacuum.
Put another way, and charitably assuming that you are not a white supremacist, what's different between what you have said and what a white supremacist would say if they were trying to be oblique about it?
> once we start thinking that one is better than the other, we get hierarchy, and we get superiority
...with a rebuttal that argues against drawing that conclusion on the basis that uncomfortable discoveries do not imply a hierarchy.
In other words -- and note how absurd this is -- you're saying that my position, which is that differences need not and should not imply a hierarchy, implies not only that I do think there is a hierarchy, but that it's a hierarchy with whites on top.
You drew the exact opposite conclusion from very plain words.
Bluntly: the game you're playing -- you're a white supremacist until you say otherwise! -- is gross. I've said absolutely nothing to imply that I am one. (Again, I actually said exactly the opposite.) Your attempt to hold me hostage is absurd.
And before you respond that I still haven't denied it: Knock it off. This is not how adults disagree.
I think I've been fairly clear about what I'm saying, and that's not it. What I am saying is that you are either a white supremacist or a terrible communicator. Frankly I'm surprised you are willing to toe the line this closely with an account that is personally identifiable.
> And before you respond that I still haven't denied it: Knock it off. This is not how adults disagree.
Mr. Burkett, you have littered this thread with short, asinine replies that carefully avoid engaging with anyone's arguments. You are not in a position to be accusing anyone of childishness.
It's only surprising to you because you're ascribing to me views I don't hold.
Second, though my details are in my profile, your use of my name is clearly meant to be threatening and is therefore over the line. A comment like that is simply out of line.
Fine, you're just a terrible communicator then.
> Second, though my details are in my profile, your use of my name is clearly meant to be threatening and is therefore over the line.
Bullshit. For a guy who demands that everything he writes be taken 100% literally, you sure are quick to read extraneous meaning into what I wrote.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It's okay though because race Y is better at other things. They are better at physical labour for example.
It's just basic nature. Should cause no controversy at all.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12160669 and marked it off-topic.
I've sent a message to hn@ycombinator.com.
We're soon going to release a much stronger version of the site guidelines and start making it a lot clearer how unacceptable such behavior is on HN. If you want to abuse each other or blast your views at enemies, please go elsewhere. There's no intellectual curiosity in any of this, and the vast majority of us are here to avoid it.
The problem with eternal September is that it quickly devolves into eternal political correctness. What is pc is then determined by the majority, so its a classic case of mob rule. Minority opinions are called offensive as a way to censor others. I can't believe HN has become like this.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12162795 and marked it off-topic.