Autodomestication

Posted by Guessedworker on December 24, 2005, 09:31 AM | #

So, for the zillionth time, race exists and racial difference exists, right up to and beyond the neck.  Or, to quote John Hawks’ quote:-

One of the more intriguing categories overrepresented in inferred selective events is neuronal function. We define this category to include a diverse assortment of genes, including the serotonin transporter (SLC6A4), glutamate and glycine receptors (GRM3, GRM1, and GLRA2), olfactor y receptors (OR4C13 and OR2B6), synapse-associated proteins (RAPSN), and a number of brain-expressed genes with largely unknown function

Posted by Fred Scrooby on December 24, 2005, 12:38 PM | #

“So, for the zillionth time, race exists”  (—GW)

They’re still going to deny it, GW.  Their excuse will be the existence of intermediate forms.  Categories aren’t invalidated by intermediate forms of course, but they’ll continue to insist some are, those “some which are” being human races—in other words, the ones they don’t like.  When you realize that will be their reaction—when you realize, in other words, that in their minds they’ve already got this discovery “covered” with their marxist tactics and their feebleminded sophistries—you understand you never needed genetics in the first place to show races existed, but only the classic Linnaean taxonomic categories that have been around for hundreds of years—thousands actually, since the ancients already understood them though they didn’t systematically apply them.  What they’re trying to do is literally on a level with denying two plus two equals four and trotting out one sophistry after another in support of it.  What fools we’d be if we wasted our time paying attention, because their store of sophistries is infinite—in the end we’d have devoted our entire lives to getting ensnared in their insincere marxist-motivated sophistries.  We’re in a real-life version of the fable, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” where the marxists pushing this stuff are the deceiving tailors, the dupes who fall for it are the people in the crowd exclaiming at the passing cortège how dazzling the Emperor’s new suit of clothes is, and we’re the little boy who shouts out, “But ... the Emperor’s not wearing anything, not a stitch—he’s stark-naked!” 

No matter what you think has been proven by science this bunch are going to deny the existence of race because their denial never depended on science in the first place—they just do not want there to be races, and so refuse to admit there are any.  That’s not going to end with this or any other scientific discovery.

Some recent log entries by Steve Sailer on the subject of race and genetics are here, here, and here.  They’re all excellent.

Posted by James Bowery on December 24, 2005, 11:09 PM | #

A breakthrough in meta-science (read that phrase again—it is for real) has occurred that will silence these sophists if money is put up to support my proposed C-Prize.

The breakthrough is in a Theory of Universal Artificial Intelligence which elevates Ockham’s Razor from a mere philosophical guideline to be recognized as the founding principle of science and indeed of universal intelligence.

The statement of the theory given by Matthew Mahoney is:

the most likely outcome for any experiment is the one with the simplest explanation, where “simplest” means the smallest program that could model what you currently know about the universe

What this means is that arguments over whether you should use “race” or not boil down to the question:  “Is using “race” as a construct going to result in a shortest program that simulates the observed world?”

The answer currently seems to be yes because so-called “exceptions” are most simply described as admixtures of geographic races.  This is not to say that more continuous constructs like clines are not valid.  You need them as well to represent gradients such as the correlation of skin color with latitude and other features of the world so this is not an either/or—it is an and/or. 

Now having said that—until serious effort is made to fund something like the C-Prize, which directly rewards those who provide real—objectively verified advances toward simpler models of the world—people will continue to make irrational arguments supporting the implicit conclusion that the world is more parsimoniously described without resort to “race”—and no clear-cut metrics will be available to test their nonsense.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on December 25, 2005, 01:40 PM | #

John Zmirak has an important Christmas meditation up at Vdare.com today.  A traditional community’s or nation’s reasonable, humane measures aimed at preserving its race and ethnoculture intact, measures not only thoroughly compatible with Christianity but, I would say, mandated by Christianity, are too often viewed nowadays as an offense against the requirement of Christian self-abnegation and other Christian obligations.  This is wrong, to say the least.  Such measures, provided they are reasonable and humane, are fully compatible with Christianity, and to view matters otherwise is a huge, epochal mistake of incalculable proportions and almost unimaginable consequences.  Christian authorities need right now to be acknowledging this truth—not ten years from now, not five years from now, but now because, to put it bluntly, time’s running out:  the other side’s managed to climb into the saddle and is spurring Euro nations across the globe to gallop to their demographic deaths in furtherance of its own selfish aims, in one of the worst crimes against society in the past three thousand years.  Part of the importance of Zmirak’s piece is that he courageously addresses this issue, as I commented on

here

.  May we see many further explorations of this issue in the very near future from Christian thinkers and authorities!

Here’s an excerpt from the Zmirak piece:
______  

Christianity is universal—but it accepts and works through the particular: the [Christ child] in the crib, the family, the nation. [...T]ension will ever persist between the global and the local, between the human race in general and our own kin in particular.  A Christian is bound to honor both resonant truths.  [...W]e cannot let globalism overwhelm our love for neighbors and kin—whom we owe far more than strangers.  The parent who denies his child piano lessons to fund a clinic in Rwanda is rightly viewed with suspicion—by sociobiologist and theologian alike. Nor must I as a Christian grind up my dogs to feed the North Koreans. Because we live in the flesh as well as the spirit, we value what is near above what is far, and real loves over philanthropy. This insight, exaggerated, spawns bigotry; repressed, it emerges as ideology. [...] The peoples of the West once found a decent solution to the tension between universal and particular, in the form of the nation-state. [...] In Europe [today], the ferocity of race and cult burns bright among the Moslems, while post-Christian elites eat lotuses by Utopia’s dim moonlight. In England, Islamic clerics who preach treason will keep their pulpits—but books that warn against jihad will soon be banned. [...] Now competing theory has quietly captivated Western elites: Particularism may prevail among any group—except if it’s Christian or white. Mexicans may band together on racial grounds [...]. Moslems may rally around the jihad. But Christians of European descent have no right to anything, anywhere—not even in church or in Europe. Nothing may be done to foster the survival of white nations, which (it is implied) is simply and plainly immoral.  To which one must respond—well, why?  Is there something in particular about the races descending from Europe which inclines them to special evil? Are they more prone to genocide? Tell that to the Tutsis and Cambodians. If it is payback for colonialism, then why inflict it on the Irish?  Or is the explanation more sinister? Do Western elites impose different standards on Christians and Europeans, because they quietly assume we are superior? As if we were above such tribal fetishes adored by “lesser breeds without the law.”  In fact, it is “racist” to expect less of Mexicans than Americans, or to coddle outright tribalism amongst the tribes, while imposing on the smart set a bloodless globalism.  God Himself sees fit to honor particularity, the claims of kinship and even of race, as part of the universal good. [...] He will not have us shuck off as worthless dross or moral poison the heritage of our fathers [...].

Congratulations, John Zmirak, on an extremely important piece!  (And, if you happen to see this comment, a Merry and Blessed Christmas to you!)