Was watching a recent intereview of Reich on a podcast recently but it was too hard to try and get some work done at the same time, plan to pick it back up. I have not read his 2018 book, is it worthwhile reading if you are already pretty well versed on some of this stuff through Razib Khan or Nicholas Wade?
I see the rate of increase on intelligence was steepest 9,000-6,500 years ago--so agriculture more than widespread literacy seems to have been the biggest trigger. And no sign of a significant post Industrial Revolution decline--although the resolution at this relatively narrow time frame isn't very clear.
It will be interesting to see if this pattern holds for other populations worldwide with an early history of agriculture, and how it compares to those populations who are more recent newcomers to farming.
Or they could trade with herdsmen, such as the early Hebrews. Maybe the necessities of commerce between specialized populations spurred intelligence as it did written language, it wasn't just the change in diet and occupation. The African tribes didn't need to trade or cooperate as much to survive, so they just killed off each other's (thought) leaders at whim.
There is a huge cull underway right now for whites who can have grandkids. I wonder if we can take from this that the whites who emerge at the other end of this population-halving event will be hell on wheels.
I was going to guess more 'Mormons, traditionalist Catholics, and evangelical Christians'-conformist and disciplined. (High conscientiousness, high extroversion, high agreeableness, low openness.) Culture may get a lot less interesting, but the group will survive.
Right, it's a relative thing. If it does happen, there will be more religious people and the culture will move in that direction, and more questionably-religious people will become fully churched to fit in.
A future that includes Amish, but with guns, would be (will be?) pretty interesting.
Not sure what happens with the Mormons. I don't think they believe their founding documents or the theology anymore. I meet more people whose parents were Mormon than Mormons these days.
These are just polygenic scores associated with that trait to some level of statistical significance in people (maybe even just white people) today. It's possible there is causality that spans the eons, but I would not assume it. The point of the paper is more to show that selective pressure was occurring over that time period if you look at polygenic scores. I don't know that they would make the leap to those being the traits that were selected for
As someone who agrees that obviously long-separated ethnicities will differ on all sorts of matters, many of them cognitive, my own (Biblical) take is that this doesn't make any person less intrinsically valuable than another.
What it means is that our societies ARE INDEED biased against certain individuals by its very make-up.
The fact that we can see this so blatantly with our own eyes when it comes to entire races being so ill equipped for our current world order ought to wake us up to ALL individuals whose genes (or environment) make them doomed to suffer in out society.
And we ought to fix that.
And if we don't, we deserve every vengeance we instill.
My new video is on this very subject.
"NEW! For Intelligent Skeptics: One Rabbi's Torah Mission"
You needn't worry, YouTube doesn't like me (my first two YouTube videos were my citizen-reporting on the Maxwell Trial, and many subsequent ones are extremely critical of Israel's approach to dealing with its enemies, etc) so not too many people are likely to see it unless you (Steve) give it some attention.
It's a view rarely seriously considered, which is a shame, because under my administration life would probably be a lot happier and safer for EVERYONE than it is today.
The study employed a tremendous amount of data massage to show those many genetic trends through time. As such, I would recommend awaiting the results of peer review before relying too much upon its findings.
I'm reading through the paper, trying to comprehend the methodology. I don't think I have the time, knowledge, or patience to understand things like their statistical corrections so I'm just looking at the high level view and Steve's conclusions.
My read of the paper is that they are saying it looks like evolution through natural selection has been significant over the past 10,000 years. This is intuitive to me but I guess the field of evolution thought that was too short a time period previously.
The main gag of this study is that previous studies looked at individual alleles to discern selection from background noise (drift etc.) while this study expanded the power by looking at changes in polygenic scores. They used a lot of statistical manipulation (cleaning and imputation) that I am not qualified to judge, and were able to show statistically significant evidence of selection through those polygenic scores over the 10k years.
That's a pretty cool finding but given our somewhat nebulous understanding of the implications of PGS I would wait to see people in the field critique the methods before treating this like "settled science" (hehe).
I definitely think it is a leap (though a very tempting leap) to assume that this means the traits associated with the PGS were actually selected for on the timeline shown. It's a complex system, I don't know that those PGS work across different groups of people now, let alone over 10k years. If the genes in the PGS cause the traits they are associated with we certainly don't know how or which ones included in the score and how they interact. I also don't see (as far as a I read- would probably need to read the references) how strong these PGS scores are for each trait.
A statistically significant association between a PGS today and educational attainment might well be small enough to get swamped by the 10k years and/or relatively small sample size.
OTOH it is super plausible that intelligence shot up during the historical period shown so if I had to guess, this will be more and more validated over subsequent studies
Was watching a recent intereview of Reich on a podcast recently but it was too hard to try and get some work done at the same time, plan to pick it back up. I have not read his 2018 book, is it worthwhile reading if you are already pretty well versed on some of this stuff through Razib Khan or Nicholas Wade?
It's still worth reading imho, if only to get a lot of things in one place.
The book is superb and I would recommend to anyone with an interest.
David Reich – How One Small Tribe Conquered the World 70,000 Years Ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj6skZIxPuI
Will Stancil must be horrified that he's going to have to start exterminating inferior subspecies of humans!
The Stancil Solution.
I see the rate of increase on intelligence was steepest 9,000-6,500 years ago--so agriculture more than widespread literacy seems to have been the biggest trigger. And no sign of a significant post Industrial Revolution decline--although the resolution at this relatively narrow time frame isn't very clear.
Right, it looks like the invention of agriculture was just about the biggest thing ever, which sounds not at all implausible.
It will be interesting to see if this pattern holds for other populations worldwide with an early history of agriculture, and how it compares to those populations who are more recent newcomers to farming.
A few years ago, fish were touted as brain food. Who were the first people to fish and when and where?
What was the problem with hunting--too much time between kills, or pathogens in the meat? Why didn't the farmers get pellagra?
The farmers didn’t stop eating meat. They raised their own animals such as cattle and chicken.
Or they could trade with herdsmen, such as the early Hebrews. Maybe the necessities of commerce between specialized populations spurred intelligence as it did written language, it wasn't just the change in diet and occupation. The African tribes didn't need to trade or cooperate as much to survive, so they just killed off each other's (thought) leaders at whim.
There is a huge cull underway right now for whites who can have grandkids. I wonder if we can take from this that the whites who emerge at the other end of this population-halving event will be hell on wheels.
I was going to guess more 'Mormons, traditionalist Catholics, and evangelical Christians'-conformist and disciplined. (High conscientiousness, high extroversion, high agreeableness, low openness.) Culture may get a lot less interesting, but the group will survive.
Some non-religious people are still having kids. Not as many as in the past but not zero.
Right, it's a relative thing. If it does happen, there will be more religious people and the culture will move in that direction, and more questionably-religious people will become fully churched to fit in.
That seems to depend on if there are any white majority nations in the future. So far it’s not looking good.
A future that includes Amish, but with guns, would be (will be?) pretty interesting.
Not sure what happens with the Mormons. I don't think they believe their founding documents or the theology anymore. I meet more people whose parents were Mormon than Mormons these days.
I’m surprised that the PGS for walking pace has increased since pre-agricultural times.
I always assumed our hunter-gatherer ancestors spent a lot more time on the move than us, mainly foraging and sometimes hunting.
Perhaps the agricultural landscape is simply easier to navigate due to lack of forest and undergrowth.
These are just polygenic scores associated with that trait to some level of statistical significance in people (maybe even just white people) today. It's possible there is causality that spans the eons, but I would not assume it. The point of the paper is more to show that selective pressure was occurring over that time period if you look at polygenic scores. I don't know that they would make the leap to those being the traits that were selected for
You’re right. Selection didn’t have to be adaptive necessarily.
According to chart number 10, westerners have only recently re-achieved their IQ levels at 1,000 BC. What caused that decline?
The Roman Empire. https://www.anthro1.net/p/was-the-roman-empire-eugenic
As someone who agrees that obviously long-separated ethnicities will differ on all sorts of matters, many of them cognitive, my own (Biblical) take is that this doesn't make any person less intrinsically valuable than another.
What it means is that our societies ARE INDEED biased against certain individuals by its very make-up.
The fact that we can see this so blatantly with our own eyes when it comes to entire races being so ill equipped for our current world order ought to wake us up to ALL individuals whose genes (or environment) make them doomed to suffer in out society.
And we ought to fix that.
And if we don't, we deserve every vengeance we instill.
My new video is on this very subject.
"NEW! For Intelligent Skeptics: One Rabbi's Torah Mission"
https://youtu.be/7jesi_6VDOc
You needn't worry, YouTube doesn't like me (my first two YouTube videos were my citizen-reporting on the Maxwell Trial, and many subsequent ones are extremely critical of Israel's approach to dealing with its enemies, etc) so not too many people are likely to see it unless you (Steve) give it some attention.
It's a view rarely seriously considered, which is a shame, because under my administration life would probably be a lot happier and safer for EVERYONE than it is today.
Here, I made you a "Youtube Short" from this morning's video:
https://youtube.com/shorts/Nr2CFH4o9os?feature=shared
I hope you dig it.
The Full Video is here: "NEW! For Intelligent Skeptics: One Rabbi's Torah Mission"
https://youtu.be/7jesi_6VDOc
The study employed a tremendous amount of data massage to show those many genetic trends through time. As such, I would recommend awaiting the results of peer review before relying too much upon its findings.
I'm reading through the paper, trying to comprehend the methodology. I don't think I have the time, knowledge, or patience to understand things like their statistical corrections so I'm just looking at the high level view and Steve's conclusions.
My read of the paper is that they are saying it looks like evolution through natural selection has been significant over the past 10,000 years. This is intuitive to me but I guess the field of evolution thought that was too short a time period previously.
The main gag of this study is that previous studies looked at individual alleles to discern selection from background noise (drift etc.) while this study expanded the power by looking at changes in polygenic scores. They used a lot of statistical manipulation (cleaning and imputation) that I am not qualified to judge, and were able to show statistically significant evidence of selection through those polygenic scores over the 10k years.
That's a pretty cool finding but given our somewhat nebulous understanding of the implications of PGS I would wait to see people in the field critique the methods before treating this like "settled science" (hehe).
I definitely think it is a leap (though a very tempting leap) to assume that this means the traits associated with the PGS were actually selected for on the timeline shown. It's a complex system, I don't know that those PGS work across different groups of people now, let alone over 10k years. If the genes in the PGS cause the traits they are associated with we certainly don't know how or which ones included in the score and how they interact. I also don't see (as far as a I read- would probably need to read the references) how strong these PGS scores are for each trait.
A statistically significant association between a PGS today and educational attainment might well be small enough to get swamped by the 10k years and/or relatively small sample size.
OTOH it is super plausible that intelligence shot up during the historical period shown so if I had to guess, this will be more and more validated over subsequent studies
Tangentially related - what's the deal with this?
https://theinfinitesimal.substack.com/p/where-are-the-recent-selective-sweeps