Home » Skin color and violence, Down syndrome and “cheerfulness”

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Skin color and violence, Down syndrome and “cheerfulness” — 41 Comments

  1. neo: You are correct there is no “skin-color gene.” I was surprised Frog got that wrong.

    Not only that, he was generalizing about “blacks” and “browns” — referring to Africans, Latin Americans, and West Asians at the same time even though, to the extent we talk about race, those are of three different races.

    It was hard not to catch a whiff of old-fashioned white supremacy there.

    (Though not the new-fangled white supremacy, where if you disagree about “Black Lives Matter” you must be a white supremacist supporting a white supremacist state.)

  2. There are many levels to the discussion. Wiki tells us that:

    Modern scholarship regards race as a social construct, that is, a symbolic identity created to establish some cultural meaning. While partially based on physical similarities within groups, race is not an inherent physical or biological quality.

    A genetics researcher, Craig Venter, declared on the occasion of the first draft of the genome, his company was working “to help illustrate that the concept of race has no genetic or scientific basis.”

    Which seems to fly in the face of commonsense, when one notices, for instance, that 95% of sprinting records are held by runners of West African descent.

    Of course discussion of race is vastly complicated by the horrible history of racism. I can understand, to a point, the impulse to ashcan the whole concept as dangerous and refuse to speak of it further.

    I’m less sympathetic to the dogmatic approach of declaring race, like gender, to be a social construct and suppressing anyone saying otherwise.

  3. Huxley:

    Race is actually one of the few areas where I think the phrase “social construct” is appropriate. And I came to that conclusion over 50 years ago, when I studied physical anthropology in some depth, and before I’d ever even heard the phrase.

    It’s too long a subject to go into in this comment; maybe another post some day.

  4. Race is actually one of the few areas where I think the phrase “social construct” is appropriate.

    neo: While race has fuzzy edges and much baggage, I disagree — unless one over-defines “race” and under-defines “social construct.”

    There’s been interesting computer work on the differential frequencies of alleles. Without telling the computer program about “race,” it sorts the genetic data for large numbers of people into, alley-oop, groups which we would recognize immediately as white, black, red, yellow and Australian aboriginal.

    Nicolas Wade, a science journalist for the NY Times, wrote a book about it: “A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race, And Human History.” Wade got the Charles Murray treatment for his effort.

    It is a long discussion.

  5. Its not the color of the skin, its the cultural values that a culture embraces, neglects or rejects. Logic and reasoned consideration is not the determinative factor in that calculus. Geography appears to be one factor. In northern climates, delayed gratification and a strong work ethic are cultural requirements for survival in civilizations dependent upon agriculture with a short growing season. Having enough food stored to get through the winter is critical. The expression “making hay, while the sun shines” succienctly describes their reality. Those cultural attitudes continue even after industralization.

  6. Neo writes: “Race is actually one of the few areas where I think the phrase “social construct” is appropriate. And I came to that conclusion over 50 years ago, when I studied physical anthropology in some depth, and before I’d ever even heard the phrase.”

    Your knowledge is dated. Small events like the mapping of the human genome have happened since you were in school [/s]

    Nicholas Wade’s book A Troublesome Inheritance provides references that show that race is indeed a very real physical characteristic that can be determined with high accuracy from your genome. No single gene determines race. Instead it is a statistical concept determined by the distribution of alleles of a large number of genes. But just because it is statistical does not mean it is not accurate. Classifications based solely on genetic data have a high overlap with subjective classifications based on appearance.

    Another way to say this is that you can cluster people based on their genome into groups that match common racial groups. It is not perfect. There are some individuals who do not clearly fall into any single group. But the theory that race is a social construct only is contradicted by physical evidence.

  7. BTW, Nicholas Wade is no right wing crazy. This is his bio:

    Nicholas Wade received a BA in natural sciences from King’s College, Cambridge. He was the deputy editor of Nature magazine in London and then became that journal’s Washington correspondent. He joined Science magazine in Washington as a reporter and later moved to The New York Times, where he has been an editorial writer, concentrating on issues of defense, space, science, medicine, technology, genetics, molecular biology, the environment, and public policy, a science reporter, and a science editor.

  8. @skeptic

    In the reviews I read, it is claimed that this clustering is the result of geographical distance. Wade wants to say it isn’t. Trouble is, how can he disprove this alternative?

    The review claims that he relied on samples taken from geographically distant groups. For example, taking samples New Brunswick and taking samples in Sichuan. The review claims that if you took more samples, the clustering would disappear. In other words, I take samples in New Brunswick, Ontario, Manitoba, B.C., the Russian Far East, Heilongjiang, Beijing, Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Qinghai and then Sichuan.

    If I do that, they claim there would be no clustering. So they’re not just saying Wade is wrong. They’re making a falsifiable claim.

    To your knowledge, has anyone attempted to conduct such a study?

  9. dexiansheng: I notice in the first graf you spoke of plural “reviews” but in the second graf “reviews” became singular. Perhaps you could provide link(s) to the review or reviews you are referencing.

    I read five or six reviews of Wade’s book and didn’t run into that criticism. The critics were mostly complaining that in the later sections Wade was speculating beyond the data — a concern I shared — and being worried Wade would reawaken 20th century racism.

  10. How about taking the position that “race” as a collection of quantifiable physical characteristics does exist (without sharp boundaries); but “race” as a collection of behavioral characteristics is a social construct (that is, some behaviors attributed to the “social construct race” are not applicable to all members of the “physical race”).

    Using the same word for both factors is problematic.

    I have some (legally immigrated) friends from Liberia and Ivory Coast who display none of the behavioral pathologies attributed to “black peoples” by (real) white supremacists. So, which “race” are they?

  11. Sure. I read a few reviews. The one I’m relying on for the geographical distance stuff is below. It seemed the most clear cut. I’m also trying to chase down a set of five reviews published in Human Biology — just in an attempt to get a handle on the geographical distance stuff.

    I happily confess to being completely ignorant on the particulars. Not my field whatsoever. But I do think it is an important question, particularly as these sort of debates are becoming more common.

    https://www.americanscientist.org/article/a-troubling-tome

  12. AesopFan: There are genetic blacks with IQs over 130. However, very few compared with whites. Those blacks don’t become white or yellow or Ashkenazi Jews because of their IQs. They are still black.

    Nonetheless, the aggregate truth remains that blacks are 15 points behind whites on IQ tests and further behind Asians and Ashkenazi Jews.

    There are rebuttals that blacks in some studies are picking up a few IQ points and maybe some day they will catch up.

    I’d like to believe that — it would make things simpler and happier — but I don’t. My bet is that in aggregate blacks are not going to catch up on IQ any more than whites, Asians and Jews are going to catch up with blacks in the NBA.

    So what do *you* do with that?

  13. if Africa is the home of all humans where every race originated from, you could also make the assumption that those who stayed behind must be the less advantageous ones lacking the intelligence and courage needed to leave the comfort of home and embark on a risky journey to venture out to new territories, or they were simply physically the strongest who were able to drive out everyone else to claim the land as their own.

  14. huxley; skeptic:

    I’m aware of the newer research as well, but nothing so far has changed my mind.

    Of course race is something, a set of characteristics that cluster, with the clusters originally corresponding to certain geographic areas. But the lines are not absolute and the characteristics that most people think constitute a “race”—such as, for example, skin color—do not constitute a race.

    That’s what makes race a convenient social construction—because it conforms to our perceptions but does not strictly conform to scientific boundaries.

    And the term “subspecies” has no meaning to me in terms of human races. It means, basically, “groups that are different but don’t rise to the level of separate species.” Races don’t even come close to doing that. They are categories we use, but they are not scientifically discrete, and the boundaries are arbitrarily drawn. People don’t even agree on how many races there are. The fewer there are, of course, the more discrete the categories become. No one would mistake a white Scandinavian for a person from Kenya, for example.

  15. huxley:

    On subspecies:

    Biologists studying mammals saw that across the same species, individuals could be very different. You could have for example a mammal of a different color, or with a different behavior, but they were still the same species. Virtually every population differs to some degree from every other population of a species, but that doesn’t make them a subspecies. If that were the case, then you’d have a whole lot of subspecies and any utility for a taxonomic classification would be lost. But at one point, the differences between some populations become so significant that they simply can’t be considered similar. But it’s the genetic differences which are most important here.

    Take dogs, for example. Different dog breeds can be very different from one to each other (think about a chihuahua and a German shepherd), but they’re not even considered different subspecies. The main reason for this is that dogs originated from domesticated wolves, and there is less genetic variation between dog breeds than between wolves — even if they look so different. So without a genetic analysis, it’s really hard to define a new subspecies and even with it, things aren’t so clear.

    Basically, the species is the largest group within which interbreeding produces viable offspring. The subspecies is loosely defined and the name should be used with much caution because it requires much familiarity with the particular species, and the philosophy through which it got its subspecies status. It’s not necessarily an intrinsic concept whereas the species is. The breed is not the same thing as the subspecies, it usually refers to a domestic population with little genetic variation.

    Even though it’s a vital concept, biologists sometimes differ on the details of both the definition of species and the mechanisms of speciation, the mechanism through which a new species is created through evolution. So it can be extremely difficult to say when a new subspecies starts to emerge or when a subspecies becomes a species in itself.

    A rather useless word, and particularly useless in terms of humans.

  16. Twin studies.

    Raise one in one environment, the Hamptons,

    Raise one in Shoot em up Detroit.

    Rinse and repeat.

    Do it enough times, with enough twins and you can say something definitive

  17. Huxley: gene or genes, singular or plural? It is all DNA, and that was the hub of my query.
    As to the “more nuanced” studies of Down personalities, the piece Neo quoted is shot full with mays, as in “it may (or may not) be due to……” Not solid stuff, IMO, regardless of the number of “studies” done. I have seen many Down Syndrome kids, more than most people, and it remains my strong impression that the fairly large majority are pleasant, cheerful, and indeed eager to please. Down kids also have a signif. higher rate of congenital heart disease. It is the genome.
    Alleles are part of the genome.

    I was throwing out a thought about violence and its geographic (brown and black) distribution (see Neo’s piece on dangerous cities!) in my original comment, wondering if there might be a DNA link, as there seems to be in Trisomy 21 behavior and, certainly, its lower median IQ. Sure skin color is genetically complicated, but at its heart it remains DNA-based. I look for and wonder about biological root causes, just as social “scientists” wonder about different root causes.

    You appear convinced that blacks have lower IQs. That would be genetic, principally.

    It is speculation, wonder, that’s all. Why have parliamentary democracies never been successful beyond whitey lands, except, as I said, in India, where a great deal of Southern European DNA was sown by Alexander the Great’s troops about 400BC?

    One cannot, should not generalize from a very small data set, as AesopFan appears to do from his handful of West Africans.

  18. Anyone who’s curious why I believe race is primarily a social construct rather than a purely scientific one should read this for a discussion of the differing points of view on the subject.

  19. Frog:

    Many people have observed that Down syndrome children (and adults) tend to have “cheerfulness” as a characteristic more often than people without Down syndrome. Although some of the research quoted in that article has not found that to be so, when studied, some research has indeed found it to be so.

    The article—and the points it was making—does not rely on the idea that Down syndrome people don’t exhibit the trait of “cheerfulness.” The question is whether is it genetically determined, and rather than recap the social/cultural/psychological argument for the preponderance of the trait in people with Down syndrome, I suggest you reread it. The point is, the “cheerfulness” may be there for interpersonal reasons rather than genetic ones.

    The fact that heart defects, and early Alzheimer’s, and other strictly physical characteristics are more common in people with Down syndrome as well does not tell us anything about whether the particular trait “cheerfulness” is an inherited genetic one or whether it is culturally/socially/psychologically determined as a result of other characteristics of people with Down syndrome.

    It’s a pretty simple principle. The idea is that just because some characteristics are more common in a group with a certain genetic marker and are genetically determined, that does not mean that all characteristics that are more common in that group are genetically determined.

    Your personal and professional observation that people with Down syndrome exhibit the trait of cheerfulness has absolutely no bearing on the question of why this might be so.

  20. huxley and everyone else:

    By the way, on the subject of IQ differences and race, please see excerpts from this article by Thomas Sowell, one of the smartest people (of any race) in the world.

  21. I read the Bell Curve when it was new, and followed some of the fuss thereafter.
    While the statistical and other arguments may be convincing, there is a strong undercurrent of “THIS CAN’T BE TRUE! CAN IT?”
    Murray once remarked that we should drop any reference to race and let people go where their abilities and energies take them. Implicitly, we should stop bean counting. The problem with that is a difference in results in, say, SES representation can’t be defined as a result of genetic propensity, or of discrimination.
    I may have mentioned this before. Look up “spatial orientation” “australian aborigine”. The aborigine–traditional peoples in Oz speak–score far, far better than non-traditional peoples–whites. The effort by some of the researchers to make this cultural–the traditional peoples score much better even if they live a non-traditional (urban) lifestyle and so there must be some way of passing it on. Because if it’s heritable, we have some concerns about the differences on standard IQ tests. So we presume that trad dad on Saturday mornings lays out a bunch of items on the dining room table, gives the kids thirty seconds to look at it and has them draw the layout as if they were standing on the other side of the table. Yup. Got to be.
    Some of the same speculation is made regarding the Inuit skill in the same areas of visual memory and spatial orientation.

    It is probably useful to read Sowell, “Conquests and Cultures” to see the differences cultures make and how long such differences last after people move–Poland to the US, Germany to Russia, etc.

  22. yes, autisms quirk is honesty and validity over social and being liked… – we dont like to lie… but we get accused of it and so on because others do, and we really dont like people that play head games

    Asperger’s / autism and the conundrums of honesty, bluntness, diplomacy, & lying
    https://thesilentwaveblog.wordpress.com/2017/03/02/aspergers-autism-and-the-conundrums-of-honesty-bluntness-diplomacy-lying/

    if I become any more straightforward than that, in the interest of being more direct and transparent, I ruffle the feathers of the more delicate. Nasty words can hurl back toward straightforward people. Racist, bigot, misogynist, conspiracy theorist, fringe, or ableist (the latter being the broadest, widest-encompassing, confusing, and sticky one) are common current favorites. People who know me know that none of these words actually apply to me. But that’s the price one might pay for being too direct.

    Not knowing which path to err on the side of, we can experience temporary cognitive paralysis.

    Do I say [x] or not? It could be interpreted as insensitive.
    But if I don’t say it, people might think I’m fence-sitting.

    The same is true for questions. For some reason, people in offline life love to ask me questions. Sometimes it’s a simple seeking of a personal opinion.

    But how do I answer? It’s often a case of “damned if I do, damned if I don’t”. There doesn’t seem to be a correct answer. The carrot moves every time. [actually sometimes its hobsian – both answers are bad and you shouldnt answer but leave – artfldgr… isolation means your not IN any of those situations imposed on you with such painful costly ends]

    If I’m honest, then people often recoil, as though I’ve suddenly smacked their hand.

    What follows is a mutually-shared confusion with completely different roots.

    I’ve maintained my integrity by stating the full truth, but I’m criticized for being too “blunt”. [asians have it better, socially the rule is do not ask a question you do not want the answer to!! artfldgr]

    The world in general is not prepared to hear the truth.

    For the longest time, I never realized that the world at large expects you to lie in order to save face. The face saved is theirs, but in saving theirs you also save your own. I’ve lost a lot of faces over the years.

    life for me is a constant living with a blindfold dancing on ranjau
    (landmines)

    come dance with me… lets see if this week is like last week where its easy to destroy decades long relationships on slip ups… of course the social ideas are they are tougher than that, but not really

  23. A great place to look for this kind of thing is in Double X and Double Y..

    note… that agressiveness and color may develope in parallell given the more free for all nature of sunny places vs cold places… everything near the equator in paradise is trying to kill you or get you from top to bottom… while colder spaces, the threat is less in terms of agressive creatures in the environment to an agressive enviornment

    ie. aggressiveness will work against critters, but not against weather..

    [i work in genetics… programmers can go anywhere ]

    Fragile X syndrome

    Individuals with fragile X-associated tremor/ataxia syndrome (FXTAS) are likely to experience combinations of dementia, mood, and anxiety disorders. Males with the FMR1 premutation and clinical evidence of FXTAS were found to have increased occurrence of somatization, obsessive—compulsive disorder, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, phobic anxiety, and psychoticism

    Children with fragile X have very short attention spans, are hyperactive, and show hypersensitivity to visual, auditory, tactile, and olfactory stimuli. These children have difficulty in large crowds due to the loud noises and this can lead to tantrums due to hyperarousal. Children with FXS pull away from light touch and can find textures of materials to be irritating. Transitions from one location to another can be difficult for children with FXS. Behavioral therapy can be used to decrease the child’s sensitivity in some cases

    Perseveration is a common communicative and behavioral characteristic in FXS. Children with FXS may repeat a certain ordinary activity over and over. In speech, the trend is not only in repeating the same phrase but also talking about the same subject continually. Cluttered speech and self-talk are commonly seen. Self-talk includes talking with oneself using different tones and pitches

    i could go on and on about tons of things that i can even tell you WHERE in the genome to look to read it..

    several companies have started that developed programs to read DNA and tell you what the person looked like

    each time they do, they get put out of business.. so far i have counted three of them ten years apart.

    why?
    because your a blank slate and ALL These things reverse progressive ideas of molding natures not accvepting them

    of course, the idea is to make us all equal leggo blocks where you can move people aroujnd withotu care of their personalities, llikes dislikes, foible.s..

    guess what they think is the failure of communism? lack of leggo type people which makes the planners job impossib.e.. so if thye can just…

    anyway..
    XX male syndrome

    XX male syndrome is a rare congenital condition where an individual with a female genotype has phenotypically male characteristics that can vary between cases. In 90% of these individuals the syndrome is caused by unequal crossing over between X and Y chromosomes during meiosis in the father, and results in the X chromosome containing the SRY gene, as opposed to the Y chromosome where it is normally found it much less common than Klinefelter syndrome

    but they tell you NOTHING about their personalities..
    why? because want to guess what would be a natural lesbian

    reatment is medically unnecessary, although some individuals choose to undergo treatments to make them appear more male or female. It is also called de la Chapelle syndrome, for Albert de la Chapelle, who characterized it in 1972

    Klinefelter syndrome

    Klinefelter syndrome (KS) also known as 47,XXY or XXY, is the set of symptoms that result from two or more X chromosomes in males The primary features are sterility and small testicles. Often, symptoms may be subtle and many people do not realize they are affected. Sometimes, symptoms are more prominent and may include weaker muscles, greater height, poor coordination, less body hair, breast growth, and less interest in sex. Often it is only at puberty that these symptoms are noticed. Intelligence is usually normal; however, reading difficulties and problems with speech are more common. Symptoms are typically more severe if three or more X chromosomes are present

    next one is fun…

  24. Oppositional defiant disorder
    is defined by the DSM-5 as “a pattern of angry/irritable mood, argumentative/defiant behavior, or vindictiveness”.[2] Unlike children with conduct disorder (CD), children with oppositional defiant disorder are not aggressive towards people or animals, do not destroy property, and do not show a pattern of theft or deceit.

    bad mood generally or DISORDER?
    now deseases are whatever doesnt toe a tight line that gets less and less variable as those doing the work, tighten the line to themselves as norm… (or what would htey do? make themselves disorderd)

    The genetic epidemiology of personality disorders

    all ten personality disorders (PDs) classified on the DSM-IV axis II are modestly to moderately heritable. Shared environmental and nonadditive genetic factors are of minor or no importance. No sex differences have been identified. Multivariate studies suggest that the extensive comorbidity between the PDs can be explained by three common genetic and environmental risk factors.

    The genetic factors do not reflect the DSM-IV cluster structure, but rather: i) broad vulnerability to PD pathology or negative emotionality; ii) high impulsivity/low agreeableness; and iii) introversion. Common genetic and environmental liability factors contribute to comorbidity between pairs or clusters of axis I and axis II disorders. Molecular genetic studies of PDs, mostly candidate gene association studies, indicate that genes linked to neurotransmitter pathways, especially in the serotonergic and dopaminergic systems, are involved. Future studies, using newer methods like genome-wide association, might take advantage of the use of endophenotypes.

    Genetics of aggression
    The genetic basis of aggression, however, remains poorly understood. Aggression is a multi-dimensional concept, but it can be generally defined as behavior that inflicts pain or harm on another.

    Genetic-developmental theory states that individual differences in a continuous phenotype result from the action of a large number of genes, each exerting an effect that works with environmental factors to produce the trait

    [most of the things ahveing to do with intelligence and such are lots of things coming together in a additive subtractive way that makes us unique – when the thing is farther out of some band of ok, thats when normal behaivioe becomes abnormal]

    four decades ago, the XYY genotype was (erroneously) believed by many to be correlated with aggression. In 1965 and 1966, researchers at the MRC Clinical & Population Cytogenetics Research Unit led by Dr. Court Brown at Western General Hospital in Edinburgh reported finding a much higher than expected nine XYY men (2.9%) averaging almost 6 ft. tall in a survey of 314 patients at the State Hospital for Scotland; seven of the nine XYY patients were mentally retarded.

    In their initial reports published before examining the XYY patients, the researchers suggested they might have been hospitalized because of aggressive behavior. When the XYY patients were examined, the researchers found their assumptions of aggressive behavior were incorrect. Unfortunately, many science and medicine textbooks quickly and uncritically incorporated the initial, incorrect assumptions about XYY and aggression–including psychology textbooks on aggression.

    kinsey was mor damaging..
    buy who cares?

    since there is a lot, there is one interesting case that hits the book that is quite famous.. if you read this crap… [for someone who isnt a doctor and doesnt get on jeopardy, what would you call it?]

    [i have rain mans memory sort of… everything i read i remember]

    A Violence in the Blood

    One day in 1978 a woman walked into University Hospital in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, with a problem: the men in her family. Many of them–including several of her brothers and a son–seemed to have some sort of mental debility. Gradually, as the clinical geneticists who counseled the woman got to know her and her family, the details of the strange behavior of the woman’s male kin emerged. One had tried to rape his sister; another had tried to run his boss down with a car; a third had forced his sisters to undress at knife point. Furthermore, the violent streak had a long history. In 1962 the woman’s granduncle had prepared a family tree that identified nine other males with the same disorder, tracing it as far back as 1870. The granduncle, who was not violent himself–he worked in an institution for the learning disabled–had apparently come to suspect that something was terribly wrong with his family.

    Three decades later, and 15 years after the woman’s first office visit, geneticist Han Brunner and his colleagues at the Nijmegen hospital think they’ve figured out what that something is. Some of the men in the woman’s family, they say, suffer from a genetic defect on the X chromosome- -a defect that cripples an enzyme that may help regulate aggressive behavior. If Brunner and his colleagues are right, it would be the first time a specific gene has been linked to aggression. That means their finding cannot fail to be controversial.

    [note feminism has no idea of sorting out the men with mental conditions from normal men.. what men above do, are waht all men do!!!!!!!!!!!!!]
    http://discovermagazine.com/1993/oct/aviolenceinthebl293

    the only way FROG will get his answer is if he does some legwork himself
    researchers now avoid anything that will give information, while being trutful, will bring the women down and destroy them… so they shut up on father absence causing early menses as they look for plastics, they shut up totally on how early fertility issues happen and degradation of genomes (much higher since we are now laer, that alone would increase violence and other things as its frequency went up, so would such things as in a partly decimated tribe), and tons of other things i watch… yes i watch them do this and know that if i point out hte missing papers, i would be out a job, not thanked.. they are here to prove feminism right, not do medicine… (i am NOT kidding)

    The research raises the possibility that babies could be screened for genetic mutations that increase the risk of excessive aggression later in life. Scientists may also develop drugs to reduce the risks of violent offending in adolescents and young adults.

    a dangerous proposition at best
    we were still forcibly sterilzing people into the 1980s..

    Between five and 10 per cent of wild and captive male rhesus monkeys are extremely violent. They pick fights with the strongest males and turn play fights among their siblings into bloodbaths.

    Dr Suomi split the monkeys into two groups. Half were deprived of their mothers at birth and reared with their brothers and siblings for the first six months. The rest were reared naturally.

    The scientists then looked for a gene called 5HTT that has been linked to impulsive aggression. The gene is involved in the way the brain handles the feel-good chemical messenger serotonin and comes in two varieties – a “short” mutation that leads to low serotonin levels, and a “long” variety that leads to higher levels.

    The animals who had the short, “bad behaviour” version of the gene and who were separated from their mothers developed into ultra-violent monkeys.

    yes. much of what happens in the body is inversive… this avoids a null signal and a non signal being the same… so have too little testosterone? you get MORE violent not less like the fmeinists say..
    Testosterone and Aggressive Behavior in Man – NIH

    Earlier in development at the DNA level, the number of CAG repeats in the androgen receptor gene seems to play a role in the expression of aggressive behavior. Neuroimaging techniques in adult males have shown that testosterone activates the amygdala enhancing its emotional activity and its resistance to prefrontal restraining control. This effect is opposed by the action of cortisol which facilitates prefrontal area cognitive control on impulsive tendencies aroused in the subcortical structures. The degree of impulsivity is regulated by serotonin inhibiting receptors, and with the intervention of this neurotransmitter the major agents of the neuroendocrine influence on the brain process of aggression forms a triad. Testosterone activates the subcortical areas of the brain to produce aggression, while cortisol and serotonin act antagonistically with testosterone to reduce its effects.

    everyone hates me for long posts.
    but how hard is it to talk about these thigns without common language or so on?

    hint… you look for the races and people who have some of these things in whcih the numbers of the genes matter and their living condition response maters… (they dont do father absence studies to avoid feminsits! seriously, i hear them talk about it! self censorhsip.. like what i am doing now to avoid being cut down)

    bye

  25. The heritability of aggression has been observed in many animal strains after noting that some strains of birds, dogs, fish, and mice seem to be more aggressive than other strains. Selective breeding has demonstrated that it is possible to select for genes that lead to more aggressive behavior in animals

    [ergo my statement that aggressiveness is more useful in temperate areas where other creatures are the major danger, than in the north, where you cant beat up nature to solve the problem, so being agrressive is a less than amiable trait that gets you killed more]

    Selective breeding examples also allow researchers to understand the importance of developmental timing for genetic influences on aggressive behavior. A study done in 1983 (Cairns) produced both highly aggressive male and female strains of mice dependent on certain developmental periods to have this more aggressive behavior expressed. These mice were not observed to be more aggressive during the early and later stages of their lives, but during certain periods of time (in their middle-age period) were more violent and aggressive in their attacks on other mice.

    look up

    5-HT pathway
    and
    A variant of the monoamine oxidase-A gene has been popularly referred to as the warrior gene. Several different versions of the gene are found in different individuals, although a functional gene is present in most humans (with the exception of a few individuals with Brunner syndrome). In the variant, the allele associated with behavioural traits is shorter (30 bases) and may produce less MAO-A enzyme

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    In a 2009 criminal trial in the United States, an argument based on a combination of “warrior gene” and history of child abuse was successfully used to avoid a conviction of first-degree murder and the death penalty; however, the convicted murderer was sentenced to 32 years in prison

    The results showed the effects of the 4-repeat allele of MAOA promoter polymorphism on physical aggressive behavior for women. It seems that there is an interaction between the 3-repeat allele of MAOA promoter polymorphism and emotional abuse experiences on aggressive behavior for women.

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    i coud fill up years of your time with this kind of thing as it took me years to memorize it.. (sleeping only 3-4 hours and being hyper lexic since early childhood with semi eidetic memory helps) – i can study subjects like people pour water into buckets..

    i get more than 1460 hours a year extra that others dont have and have had since i was 5… times 40 (first thirteen years as primer).. 58,400 EXTRA hours to paint, draw, study math, subjects physics, biology, etc..

    thats about six extra years of wake time spent studying everything i could get like a rat chewing on a wood block..

    if you normalized it to average person and said the average person spends 1 hour a day studying… they would have to do that for 160 years just to read what i did… (and not remember it the way i do given autism)

    🙂

    next subject..

  26. I hope this reply gets noticed past artfldgrs filibuster. Neo, this is a real problem. I do not think anyone has the time to read comments thousands of words long but they crowd out other discussion.

    dexiansheng says:
    “In the reviews I read, it is claimed that this clustering is the result of geographical distance. Wade wants to say it isn’t. Trouble is, how can he disprove this alternative?”

    That is interesting because by my reading of Wade’s book he says that racial differences came about precisely because of geographical separation. The main point of the book is that evolution is occurring to this day not that it stopped 50,000 years ago as is claimed by some biologists. So any group of people who are separated from other groups will evolve characteristics that give an advantage in their environment. For example, the oft cited distribution of lactose intolerance.

    The review you cited in American Scientist states:
    “But sampling geographically distant parts of a continuum and ignoring the regions between the samples can provide apparent clustering that does not actually prove the existence of discrete groups.”

    I have a PhD in electrical engineering with a specialty in statistical signal processing and this is baloney. If there were no racial differences then taking samples in different regions would not introduce statistically significant clusters. The author of the review is assuming his conclusion.

    But as the review observes and as we see here the field is highly politicized. So you can choose negative reviews to suit your political inclination and I can choose positive reviews to suit mine. The best thing to do is look at the arguments and see whether they make sense. The review you cite does not.

    BTW, “the author Greg Laden is a biological anthropologist who has worked in the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa.” The stark difference in the evaluation of the book between anthropologists and hard scientists is even cited in the review. The review is evidence of it.

  27. huxley Says:
    March 14th, 2018 at 9:53 pm
    AesopFan:
    My bet is that in aggregate blacks are not going to catch up on IQ any more than whites, Asians and Jews are going to catch up with blacks in the NBA.

    So what do *you* do with that?
    * * *
    Keep treating people as individuals, and not assume they have any particular physical skills or behavioral characteristics until they demonstrate them.

    I would be interested in exploring Dave’s hypothesis on the “left behind” genetic selection process.

    I’ve seen it suggested that US boys are more ADHD (if they actually are) because of the “pioneer genes” from their ancestors who migrated (voluntarily) to the New World.

    arfldgrs — people who don’t like your comments can skip them; I always learn something from them that I didn’t know before.

    PS: This has been a good example of discussion (as so many Neo posts are) that I wish I could find in other blogs.

  28. Neo writes:
    “Of course race is something, a set of characteristics that cluster, with the clusters originally corresponding to certain geographic areas. But the lines are not absolute and the characteristics that most people think constitute a “race”–such as, for example, skin color–do not constitute a race. ”

    Wades point is that the clusters from genetic information correspond to the commonly observed traits of race. Your claim that skin color does not constitute a race is a straw man. No one is claiming it does.

  29. I’m curious about how the sampling data accounts for some variables. If you’re sampling a population in a mid-Africa, you’re also sampling a geographic area, people who grew up in a warm climate, people who ate certain foods and not others, people who had different cultural practices whether it’s focus on education or farming. People who may have been exposed to more anti-oxidents, or perhaps lead and mercury. One or more things could be missed, unimportant or very important. How long you’ve lived under a certain form of government. I’d hate to see how the average North Korean would do on world history quiz, certainly bring down their overall score.

  30. On the subjects of race and IQ, race and skin color, race and just about anything else, I’ve reached the conclusion that Neo has a blind spot. (That means we disagree, and I think most of the evidence supports my arguments.)

    More seriously, I think that this is a complicated and delicate topic that increasingly requires a knowledge of modern genetics. Doing the topic justice can’t be done in a comment. Even a long blog post isn’t usually enough. There are a few specialized blogs that get at the problem by greatly narrowing the scope of each post, and by assuming an audience with academic training in genetics. I’d rather see the subject left to them. Surely there are other interesting things for Neo to talk about.

  31. skeptic:

    There is a popular and commmon perception that skin color is by far the most important determinant of race. So, plenty of people claim it. It is no accident that the comment sparking this post involved skin color.

    Scientiists do not believe it any more. But it is still fairly common among non-scientists. In fact, it also used to be a perception among scientists, with the early racial classifications reflecting that perception. Look up “color terminology for race” and you can see the history of this strain of thought in science and in popular parlance,, which persists in popular thought today.

  32. Scientists backpeddle over new pet theories every year. Nothing new to me. I’m sure the popular masses thought the science of 1950s was the penultimate truth as well.

    Notably, the number 1 evidence as race being a social construct is when Demoncrats constructed the concept of a “white race” to include a confederation of Irish Scots and other ethnic groups that were often at war with each other in Europe. This White Alliance was based upon pre KKK supremacist beliefs and designed against abolitionist social causes and black slave revolts.

    So when Leftists talk about race being a social construct, that’s because they would know given their ancestors.

    Computer models inaccurately trace DNA based upon family lines, because society and families follow the same pattern throughout one’s ancestors. Same migration patterns and haplogroups. Which is why red indians didn’t arrive from Alaskan land bridge btw.

  33. Which seems to fly in the face of commonsense, when one notices, for instance, that 95% of sprinting records are held by runners of West African descent.

    An easier and more accurate way to summarize the recent advances in research is that “race” is an obsolete classification for ancestral genetic memories and inheritances.

    Humans were never born equal. One is only equal if the same leader/power is over us all and treats us all as equals to each other.

    Popular science and front men like Bill Nye the “science guy” with a bachelors in engineering have created a perception amongst the common masses. Specialists and researchers will find it will take time to deprogram the average person from the popular conception of DNA.

  34. Geoffrey Britain Says:
    March 14th, 2018 at 6:52 pm
    Its not the color of the skin, its the cultural values that a culture embraces, neglects or rejects. … Geography appears to be one factor. In northern climates, delayed gratification and a strong work ethic are cultural requirements for survival in civilizations dependent upon agriculture with a short growing season.

    Which is precisely why the Assyrians and Greeks and Persians and Romans were trivial compared to the early Celts! What? They weren’t?

    Northern European dominance is quite recent.

    Why in the Americas were all the dominant civilisations in the warm bits, if your theory has any merit?

    Why has southern China been better than the north at pretty much everything except killing people? The Mongol contribution to civilisation seems to have slipped me by.

    Having enough food stored to get through the winter is critical.

    Your knowledge of geography is somewhat bizarre.

    Egypt and the Middle East is the prototypical society where food has to be stored seasonally through the dry spell. Many argue that is why centralised states first developed there. Europe has a much more even spread of crops.

    Cultures like the Nabatean Arabs had to save water rather than food, and built some sophisticated systems to do so while the Britons were still riding chariots and covering themselves in woad. But apparently their culture, which lasted longer than the current western European one, doesn’t count.

  35. Chester Draws Says:
    March 16th, 2018 at 2:39 pm
    Geoffrey Britain Says:
    March 14th, 2018 at 6:52 pm
    * *
    Time for a Stature of Limitations on Cultural Affinities?

    I don’t think anyone living today gets “points” for their geographical region’s culture any time before about 200 years ago.
    The connections are too tenuous, benefits of good ideas too diffuse over large regions, and populations too movable.

    PS that includes no reparations after 150 years or so for things that happened to your putative ancestors (and maybe didn’t happen to them anyway).

  36. Here’s a story with “race” front-and-center-right. Also hard to excerpt, and an excellent biographical piece with fewer than usual political digs from Politico, but this is the most appropriate quote here, because it makes an interesting distinction that resonates with the discussion:

    https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/16/senator-tim-scott-black-republican-trump-profile-217237

    “When I list Trump’s history of race-based controversies–housing discrimination suits, the Central Park Five, lying about Obama’s birthplace, Mexican “rapists,” the Muslim ban–Scott bobs his head up and down: “I am not unaware of the president’s past,” he tells me. A long pause. “Do you think he’s a racist?” I ask. Scott shakes his head. “I don’t. I don’t,” he replies. “Is he racially insensitive? Yes. But is he a racist? No.”

  37. Why in the Americas were all the dominant civilisations in the warm bits, if your theory has any merit?

    Before Islam or the Vikings came on the scene, trade was what created the prosperity of the ancients. That and technology, but few educates the masses on that.

    The North had a huge Viking problem, which delayed issues in the Dark Age. Before the Dark Age, the Celts had quite advanced political and economic systems. They merely didn’t have a powerful enough Watcher or military to protect themselves.

    The Celtic tribe survived all the way to Galatea, in Asia Minor, what is now known as Anatolia or Turkey. Meanwhile the Romans ran away from Briton with their legion tails tucked in between their legs.

    Why has southern China been better than the north at pretty much everything except killing people? The Mongol contribution to civilisation seems to have slipped me by.

    There’s something called water in the southeast of China. And with water one can use something called trade as well.

    Mongolians came from the steppes, and as Russia knows, having a water frozen locked north harbor isn’t so great.

  38. All this falderal that attempts to prove or demonstrate or claim that “race is a social construct” is absolute bullshit. RACISM is a social construct. Race is not.

    Race = breed. Chihuahuas are not Great Danes. Both are dogs, and both display physical, mental AND temperament differences across the breeds. Pick any breed of dog, cat, horse, cattle, etc, and you will find that there are distinct differences across the species. It is the height of FAITH to claim that, of all higher mammals, humans are exempt from this biological reality. The fact that German Shepherds and Bulldogs can breed with one another does not change the fact that they are German Shepherds and Bulldogs, not Whippets and Dachsunds. Yes, still dogs, but not the same, and the differences are not “a social construct.”

    RACISM makes the claim that these differences impart greater or lesser METAPHYSICAL value to the different breeds. One does not have to deny the biological differences in order to deny differences in metaphysical value. Anybody who tells you otherwise is full of it.

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