Lewontin’s Fallacy and the Faux “Diversity” of Panmixia

Posted by James Bowery on Tuesday, 24 July 2012 11:16.

One of the most endearing things about the erstwhile human, E. O. Wilson, is the manner in which he, as now a mere extended phenotype, expresses his selective brain-death. Its almost as though a remnant of his humanity remains to telegraph the exact way in which his mind might have gone if he hadn’t become infected with the metaphorical gordian worm. Here’s a beautiful example of what I mean, drawn from his book “The Social Conquest of Earth”, chapter “The Creative Explosion”:

Changes in gene frequency due to evolution at the level of one gene or a small ensemble of genes, whether linked on the same chromosome or not, and referred to by biologists as microevolution, are expected to continue as a natural process into the indefinite future. For the immediate future, however, emigration and ethnic intermarriage have taken over as the overwhelmingly dominant forces of microevolution… This change, unique in human history, offers a prospect of an immense increase in different types of people worldwide, and thereby newly created physical beauty and artistic and intellectual genius.

The first sentence of the above quote is what I’m calling a remnant of E. O. Wilson’s humanity. The rest, of course, is typical extended phenotype speak with which we are all so familiar.

Why is that first sentence so endearing?

Well, a clue is that it makes indirect reference to genetic correlation structure hence Lewontin’s fallacy.. In so doing, he is pointing out the very reason why panmixia, that his extended phenotypic blather proceeds to praise, is so irreversibly destructive:

It is hard enough for an adaptive mutation of a single gene to arise, overcome the forces of genetic drift, and become fixed in a population. Sure, there will be occasional conjunctions of alleles with beneficial effects (and more often conjunctions of alleles with deleterious effects that we are all but legally commanded to ignore), but panmixia will immediately disperse their correlation structure rendering them subject to the forces of genetic drift. Consider then the difficulty of two synergistically adaptive mutations arising, overcoming the forces of genetic drift, and becoming fixed in a population—particularly if they are on different chromosomes where their linkage is far lower than on a single chromosome:

In a panmictic environment, these two mutations will be exponentially less likely to overcome genetic drift to ever meet each other in enough single individuals with enough consanguinity to establish their co-presence in a population. Even in a natural population mixing situation, the gradual accumulation of adaptive genetic correlation structures will require vastly longer time horizons than will single adaptive mutations.

As panmixia takes hold of populations that have gone through the tens of thousands of years of consanguinity that, alone, can give rise to such microevolution, these conjunctions of synergistic alleles will meet up with each other with decreasing frequency and, unable to express their adaptive phenotypes, doom the original “created physical beauty and artistic and intellectual genius” Nature created.

I appreciate the spirit of the now long-departed human that went by the name of “E. O. Wilson” for this message, written though it may be, on the soft underbelly of the empty vessel now dominated by the extended phenotype of The Other.

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Comments:

Posted by Leon Haller on Tue, 24 Jul 2012 13:07 | #

I clicked on the gordian worm link, and tried but failed to figure out exactly what was being proposed.

Somewhat off-topic, I noted this:

Posted by James Bowery on December 16, 2006, 03:32 AM | #

Since analogic thinking is the strongest correlate of general intelligence among the various component tests

Is there a cite or reference for this? I’m self-interested on this one, as Analogies was always my best section when practicing for the GRE I had to take last year in order to apply for doctoral programs. I am skeptical of this claim, however, as success in the Analogies section really hinges on the extensiveness of one’s vocabulary, which obviously can be learned and improved upon (it’s something I’ve worked on informally my entire life), whereas I thought “general intelligence” was supposed to be overwhelmingly genetic. Commonsense suggests to me Reading Comprehension (if not, wrt the ‘purest’ IQ tests, some type of visual pattern recognition) as the most ‘g-loaded’ section of at least American standardized tests.

BTW, I’m positive that the hostile discussant “Pobble-Face” on that thread was in fact our own Graham Lister.

Posted by Leon Haller on Tue, 24 Jul 2012 13:29 | #

Something else very interesting. Clicking on the link to Bowery’s first MR posting re the Lewontin fallacy, there are a couple of solid, well-reasoned and expressed, and, gosh, normal, comments from ... JRichards of all people (I assume that “J Richards” was the same person as our present “JRichards”).

What the hell happened, Richards? Jewish anti-anti-Semites like to say that embracing anti-Semitism warps the mind, but this is too descriptively accurate for mental comfort ...

Posted by Leon Haller on Tue, 24 Jul 2012 13:57 | #

JB,

I agree with your basic point, and think it well-perceived (if I actually understand it, which may not be the case). But is it really necessary to express it in all the obfuscating biological jargon?

Aren’t you just asserting that ‘panmixia’ (um, what’s wrong with “race-mixing”?) will reduce genetic diversity, as well as the likelihood that adaptively beneficial mutations will arise and spread as widely as they would have in breeding populations possessing a high degree of genetic kinship?

I’m not a scientist, nor have I made a serious amateur study of any science. But what’s wrong with older terminology; that is, that race-mixing is bad for whites because mixing a superior race (ours) with inferior ones ends up lowering the human quality of the superior race?

The white race is the supreme achievement of evolution thus far. Why risk messing it up, and sacrificing/losing the precious DNA, by facilitating race-mixing?

Posted by daniel on Tue, 24 Jul 2012 14:20 | #

I think that what Jim is saying is that the beneficial qualities mutating and selected in closer group evolution is far more precious and natural, as careful adaptations are made and matched very precisely over time, carefully controlled by the contexts; while the atavistic and destructive results of outbreeding are predictable, the superficial choices of outbreeding partners likely to mis-match on important genetic points, destroying those points tens of thousands of years of important, organic evolution; losing them perhaps forever.

Shame on E.O. Wilson for recklessly endorsing the latter, superficial and irresponsible means of evolution.

I did not know he was so politically correct, myself.

Posted by daniel on Tue, 24 Jul 2012 15:22 | #

Actually, no - looking back on E.O. Wilson’s “Whispers Within”, I remember being repulsed by his suggestion that intermixing was a solution to the world’s ailments…so, he has been that way for a while.

Posted by daniel on Tue, 24 Jul 2012 15:31 | #

..
....
It is the kind of thing, along with utterances from scientists such as, “we’re all very closely related; it is just a matter of a few minor genetic markers, such as skin tone,” that sent me among the skeptics, if not critics of science and scientists even more so, dependent as they are upon their semitically correct grant money, etc.

Posted by daniel on Tue, 24 Jul 2012 16:08 | #

Just as Carl Schmitt sagaciously advised the demarcation of even the scientific works of Jewish authors, perhaps such designations would be advisable for extendend phenotypes as well

Posted by Harris on Tue, 24 Jul 2012 18:55 | #

But is it really necessary to express it in all the obfuscating biological jargon?

Aren’t you just asserting that ‘panmixia’ (um, what’s wrong with “race-mixing”?)

It could be because Wilson uses “ethnic intermarriage”. Today the term “race” tends to just refer to the large continental macro-races, and “race-mixing” the mixing among the macro-races. It tends to obscure other levels of mixing. In the past “race” was used more generally to connote the various “breeds” of people (“German race”, “Anglo-Saxon race”, etc.). Macro-race mixing is obviously more salient and destructive but other levels of mixing may be having their effects as well especially given their sheer scale in certain modern environments.

Posted by James Bowery on Tue, 24 Jul 2012 19:16 | #

Harris, there is, in addition to the concern you raise, the fact that panmixia is a recognized scientific term with a body of literature relevant not just to human populations. Indeed, once we remove the connotations that have been smeared on “race” and even more so on “race-mixing” we are left with gems such as this quote from the Wikipedia article on Panmixia:

As the species’s populations interbreed over time, they become more uniform, with a decrease in genetic diversity, and thus a decrease in total biodiversity.

Of course, the selectively brain-dead extended phenotype quoted in the original post can’t bring himself to such consilience between the study of humans and the science of biodiversity. Its just one of those aspects of being human he’s no longer capable of even with his loudly proclaimed religious ferver favoring biodiversity. It would be pathetic if I thought “he” was still human.

Posted by Graham_Lister on Tue, 24 Jul 2012 19:29 | #

“Pobble face” Leon?

100% NOT guilty on that charge.

I don’t even know what thread you are referring to. I have no interest in your g-spot (cognitive or otherwise).

Leon the OP in this thread is about co-adaptive gene complexes and a phenomena called outbreeding depression. However your superior/inferior talk is a bit silly insofar as if their are indeed specific sub-Saharan phenotypic traits then they would be adaptive (or optimal if you prefer) in their local environment.

In saying that one wants to preserve one’s own particular in-group is not the best justification not that it is ‘objectively’ superior to others but simply that it is different and of unique value to those of that group. No-one really would give up on their immediate circle of kith and kin if they were in some way not quite as good as some putative alternative. Why? Simply out of basic loyalty - because they are ‘your own’. Does oikophilia really need justification by some ‘external’ and ‘objective’ metric?

Would you only love your children if they always came top of class?

Posted by Captainchaos on Wed, 25 Jul 2012 06:41 | #

It would be pathetic if I thought “he” was still human.

The function Bowery expects single deadly combat to serve is for “humans” to exterminate, one at a time, the “subhumans”. Single deadly combat is Nazism for (eccentric) individualists. LOL

Posted by James Bowery on Thu, 26 Jul 2012 19:15 | #

Only CC could come up with “Socialist Individualism”.

I may, however, be accurately accused of National Individualism since I defined a “nation” as individuals related by consanguinity and congeniality and I do see some nations as being made up of individuals who are more individualistic than are the individuals of other nations. Moreover the basis for congeniality of some nations is more conducive to the evolution of individualism over socialism.

Posted by nils hellstrom on Sat, 28 Jul 2012 15:10 | #

From Hellstrom’s Hive Manual. The significant evolutionary achievement of the insects, more than a hundred million years ago, was the reproductive neuter. This fixed the colony as the unit of natural selection and removed all previous limits on the amount of specialization (expressed as caste differences) that a colony could tolerate. It is clear that if we vertebrates can take the same route, our individual members with their vastly larger brains will become incomparably superior specialists. No other species will be able to stand against us, ever—not even the old human species from which we will evolve our new humans.

Posted by Miville on Mon, 10 Sep 2012 16:08 | #

Panmixia never existed. It is a purely ideological concept, to suit a programme. It is even falser than pure aryan or judaic race. Bastardization can be achieved to a certain degree, but racial categories then remain and even multiply, the most bastardized and identity-blurred ones disappearing quite fast in front of the ones that remain faithful to some original archetype albeit they admit a tiny amount of foreign admixture. Brazil is a perfect example of what I mean. I has often claimed to be a racial panmixia democracy, for want of anything democratic in any sense at any point of her history. Brazil is a racially-based caste society, not unlike ancient India and even large stretches of present-day India. Brazilian Portuguese Whites are whiter in genes and in consciousness than most Whites in the European Metropolis, and are intent in remaining so. Brazilian Blacks are varieties of African Blacks, pure and simple, and form self-contained voodoo-practicing communities that are not bound to disappear. The poor black ghettoes of Bahia are even more heavily guarded and harder to visit for the tourists than the rich gated communities for bourgeois of German or Japanese descent. A mulatto class, or rather a gamut of mulatto castes also exist side by side with the original rather pure communities, but it is far from growing so as to encompass the whole as the multiculturalists hope for. Actually, Brazilian Mulattos, though quite numerous, are perceived as what they are, the product of pure leisurely sexual relationships between rich white bourgeois and black slaves or quasi-slaves, and keep on being specialized in that social niche of mere sex symbols. Whenever prostitution is the main symbolic trade of a caste, it is by definition a genetic dumping ground bound to be shunned and contained within very strict unsaid fences, even though it can be more prosperous than ordinary black or even Portuguese workers. Rich Cariocas often say they marry a girl of their kind for having children and maintaining the family line, keep a mulatto mistress for amorous and sentimental pleasure, and hire a black servant for purely physical tasks and raw pleasures. The mulatto mistress generally practices birth control and abortion which are now making the mulatto numbers dwindle back, whereas the real black woman generally doesn’t like having a mixed offspring. Some original Portuguese from the Lisbon region are quite dark. They are not, as is feared by many who see there our own future of a bastardized and impoverished former world power, the mixture of real original aryan Portuguese and black slaves in Portugal at the time there were in Portugal as well as in Brazil. Historically the Lisbon region was first people by Moors, which were very dark, although somewhat different from subsaharan blacks : they were also very cunning, entrepreneurial and adventurous, and thus rich, far more so than the whiter than white Celtic peasants of Galicia in the North. Nevertheless, the ideal of white colour propounded by Renaissance and Classical aesthetics propelled the richer Moors to marry whiter and whiter girls in order to have clearer and clearer descendants of nobler outlook. The blackness of the Moors went down from 60% to 10% as it is nowadays in the Lisbon region. They are called Morenos, never, never to be confused with mulattos. On the other hand, there have been Blacks and mulattos in Portugal form the heydays of slavery, and they have always be a separate caste, as per the one drop rule. Historically, Portuguese racism has been gentler than the English one, tempered by Catholicism and sentimentalism, but is has always been there and is less bound to disappear than elsewhere in Europe : Blacks and Half-Blacks are more loved for what they are, but everyone agree, including themselves, that they are good in sensual arts and not in any intellectual pursuits due to their blood, and that their economic contribution is at best zero. Portuguese are somewhat more tolerant of own offspring marrying Blacks, but is happens very rarely due to the fact is it clear the resulting family will be neither Black neither Moreno but Black or Mulatto in a caste-based society. All societies of the world have racial ideals toward which they tend back despite all racial admixture.

Posted by Miville on Mon, 10 Sep 2012 16:48 | #

The reason why Portugal fell back into underdevelopment after having achieved world power is not a racial one. As I have just said, the only real racial transformation that happened then was the Southern Moorish genetic stock getting clearer by northern admixture, which now makes some moorish village names like Fatima sound strange in a so European-looking population. The reason why Portugal got so poor again is simply that the style of prosperity and power Portugal then achieved could never mutate into an industrial one : good mariners and adventurers, hard-working shepards don’t necessarily turn into efficacious industrial workers and engineers : some among them have the genetic innate quality to turn so, some others not and it happened that the Portuguese did not. What makes a country prosperous is not so much the quality of its elite, but of its workforce. To maintain a purely maritime and military empire the Portuguese workforce was then more than ideal, as it remained ideal up to a very recent time to maintain traditional-style colonies in Africa. Courage and audacity, not mechanical ability, was the commodity in demand. France, though more advanced as per contemporary standards, did not have the same disposition then, and could secure no such empire despite the grandiosity of her dreams. England did like Portugal, but for reasons that then had little to do with what would make her so rich under Victoria ; England, for having been peopled by both Saxons in the inland and by Vikings on the seashore, had both an adventure-inclined population like Portugal and an industry-inclined population like Germany that was not yet discovered. The USA a for sure heading for a far grander fall into underdevelopment than befell Portugal, but it won’t be that much due to racial mixing, which is not happening as the liberals are pushing it, nor to multiculturalism, which is mostly fake. The reason is simply that the industrial production, and also the post-industrial virtual good production mode is passing out too. Even very mono-ethnic countries like Japan that have been too heavily investing in it are suffering an even steeper economic decline. The resources to maintain first-world consumption style as we have knowing it are lacking more and more, traditional oriental despotism as described by Wittfogel, as well as the workforces best suited to it, that is to say those of India and China, are gaining back the first place they once enjoyed.